Editing Evaluation

Video evaluation on editing

Promotional Videos And Evalutation

Evaluation:

Overall I'm happy with the finished product of my promotional videos for Warehouse 18. 

Although I had to abandon the idea of 3D tracking the text as there wasn't enough room due to the close ups, I feel that the videos still clearly show what it is you're buying in the rehearsal rooms and recording studio. After sending the initial videos to my client for feedback, he was pleased with them, asked for a longer video showcasing all of the rooms and said he is going to use them on his website and social media page (Facebook). Hopefully this will help him gain more bands to use the rooms and recording studio. The lighting in the room made the videos look a little bland and washed out but I managed to fix that with colour correction and levelling in Premiere Pro to give it more of a cinematic feel as well as adding in the letter box bars. 

Test Footage

The plan for this test footage is to use 3D tracking to label the equipment in the room letting the audience know exactly what it is they're paying for even if it's not visible clear on screen the 3D tracking will help. 

Music Video

Evaluation:

After creating the song "Falls In", I had some friends listen to it for feedback, everyone who listened said that they pictured a slow-motion fight between loved ones or fog over an ocean. This gave me the idea to use my song and create this music video. It internally started off as an idea of a couple getting into arguments and breaking up and showing the aftermath of a break up from the males perspective. During the time of gathering ideas, there was news of men committing suicide and going through depression without seeking help or feeling like they could talk to someone as they had to perform their "masculine" traits. This gave me the idea to make my music video into a male suicide and depression awareness music video.

During the filming process, we found it difficult to film shots the way we envisioned due to our budget, small spaces to work with, the weather and the amount of time we had left to film and edit. However, I am pleased with the cinematography overall but feel like we didn't have enough footage or different camera angles of the same scenes to keep the music video interesting with enough cuts as the music video feels more like a short film than an actual music video. I feel as leaving the colour blue in the present day shots and making the flashbacks in full colour helped to both set the mood of the times and how the character feels as well as differentiate between present day and the past. During editing, I also added in a glitch effect to making the video feel distorted as it would be inside the mind of someone with a mental illness such as depression. I also tried to keep the cuts as high as I could with the use of foreshadowing by quickly cutting to scenes seen ahead in the music video whilst the glitch effect happened.

One main challenge we found in a group was editing the footage to fit the entire length of the song (5:24) without using the same footage too many times and without cutting the song down. I managed this by using the same footage where it was appropriate in foreshadowing or flashbacks, I also reversed the entire music video towards the end of the song to rewind the viewer all the way back to the beginning to remind them where it all started as well as an extra "your life flashes before your eyes". At the end of the video whilst the music dies down, I also added in some facts about male suicide I found from "the Samaritans" website about male suicide rates and asked people to seek help if they're fighting the same battle of depression as well as reminding the viewers that "it's ok not to be ok" which I feel is an important ending to the music video reminding the viewers that they don't have to perform masculinity and it's ok to seek help when they need it.

I'm extremely happy with the feedback I've gotten from my music video. Friends and family have said they're amazed by it, people complimenting me on how deep it is, how it's a message that needs to be sent out there, sharing it on Facebook asking people to watch it, comments left on the video on YouTube and Facebook saying that "it hit them in the feels" and "the production is beautiful".                      

Film Studies Film and Evaluation

Failure

Directors: Jack Martin & Morgan Mills

Filmed By: Jack Martin & Morgan Mills

Thanks To: Dylan Barns & Max Everett

End of unit film using Freud's theory of the subconscious 

New Wave Film, Brief And Evaluation

Brief:

From the research of my contextual studies of American New Wave, I've noticed that the main focus of their techniques is to break the rules of what then was traditional Hollywood cinema. The way they break the rules includes, handheld cameras; lack of/improvised narrative (or one that makes little sense); lots of jumpcuts; long cuts that continue even after the main focus has gone off screen; unusual camera angles; natural lighting; and non-actors.

For my own new wave film, I want to take the unusual camera angles and bring it into the spotlight with the entire film being recorded from a POV (point of view) shot. By doing this I could create a behind the scenes film where it shows a day in the life of a new wave filmmaker as he gets up, does his morning routine, meets his friends and they make a new wave film. I also want to add in shots of the person looking into a mirror holding the camera to remind you that you're watching a film (breaking the 4th wall). During editing, I want to create the morning routine into a montage with lots of continuous jump cuts almost enough to disorientate the viewer. For the audio and lighting, I want it to be all diegetic and natural to give a sense of realism.

Evaluation:

Due to the weather and confusion of meeting points, I managed to get my morning routine shoot sorted but the recording of the fake new wave film, unfortunately, didn't happen but recorded most of the day all from a POV shot and ended up with 40 minutes worth of footage that needed to be taken down to about 2 minutes. I took this into consideration and made my entire film into a montage of the day with a lot of fast-paced editing unless there was dialogue in there I wanted the viewer to hear. Even though my contextual studies were based on the American new wave, my film had more influence from the French new wave, with the black and white and French writing. I added those French title cards in as partially a little in-joke but as well to openly reference the fact the film isn't perfect and has mistakes. The title cards translate to "missing images" and "SD card full" this was due to the fact some clips I felt were unusable or took up too much time so they were "missing images" and my SD became full at the end of the day which is why I stopped recording otherwise I would have gotten a home routine recorded too. After I edited my video I got some feedback and everyone felt like I could add something else to make it more disorientating. So I rendered my footage and revered it, lowered the opacity, panned the revered audio left and the original audio right. this created a more disorientating effect especially when the audio starts to sink up in the middle of the film making it more chaotic and with headphones on, gives the viewer a tingling sensation throughout.      

           

   

American New Wave Video Essay And Script

The American New Wave or also known as New Hollywood was a movement in American film history from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in the United States bringing influence from The French New Wave. It all started in 1919 when four leading figures of American Silent Cinema M. Pickford, C. Chaplin, D. Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed the first indie studio "United Artists". Their aim was to better control their own work as well as their futures.
Then shortly after the second world war, major studio companies lost the majority of their power due to The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers which was formed by many of those who were members of United Artists combined with portable cameras lowering in price allowed indie filmmakers to compete with major studios and create more films.

The movement started with 'The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" both released in 1967. They both influenced the future of movie-making as these films saw less influence from their production studios and more influence from their directors. This lead onto more films created in the same style with a brand new set of conventions which mostly included breaking the rules of traditional Hollywood movies. these conventions included: Non-linear narratives or ones that just don't make much sense. Handheld cameras. Hiring random people off the street to act and work on the film with you. Unusual editing techniques such as the jump cut which traditional now was never used in American Filmmaking before, and overdubbing. As well as natural lighting and a natural setting. Most of this was due to a low budget but it was also a new way for young filmmakers to express themselves like no filmmakers have before. New Hollywood resulted in commercially viable pictures that explored previously taboo subjects in innovative new ways. However, New Hollywood isn't so much a style of filmmaking as it is a movement and a period of time. Within this video essay, I'll be talking about "Bonnie and Clyde" "Taxi Driver" and "Easy Rider".

Taxi Driver:

This is one of the most famous scenes from "Taxi Driver" where Travis practices confronting someone in front of his mirror. He points his gun at his reflection and utters the words, “You talkin’ to me?”

Taxi Driver was definitely a massive departure from the traditional style of Hollywood and exemplified what The American New Wave wanted to achieve in a number of ways from its non-traditional narrative combined with the unique aesthetics

Its style of editing was one of the key conventions in American New Wave. In opposition to the traditional continuity editing of Hollywood, disjunctive editing further distanced American New Wave films from their predecessors and served a number of purposes – from forcing the audience to actively be engaged in the film to disorienting them for artistic, ideological, or psychological purposes

The editing used in this scene, as well as the non-diegetic sound of Travis’s voice-over,  was done to make the audience disturbed and disoriented, as well as portraying the paranoia and delusions occurring in his head. While it brings the viewer closer into Travis’s state of mind, it also makes his thoughts seem more violent and disturbing.

In her book, Hollywood Renaissance, Diane Jacobs discusses the innovative editing and camerawork present in Taxi Driver, saying: “While the camera’s pacing accelerates as the film progresses, it is as restless as its character’s mind from the very start” ( page 146).

Bonnie And Clyde:

With Bonnie And Clyde being one of the first American New Wave productions, it took a lot of its influence from The French New Wave. The film was based on the real-life events of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow who were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang, during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted

It originally took a while for "Bonnie and Clyde" to catch on. The film barely made it out with Warner Bros rebooting its opening. However "Bonnie and Clyde" dunked the cinema in style, blood, and glamour. It was the start of the creation of new American films which was proven by the fact that the two homicidal lovers on the run were to be recreated many times in films such as "Thieves like us" "Natural Born Killers" and "Badlands" But none of those films matched the brutal ending scene of "Bonnie and Clyde" where they were ambushed by the police, their bodies riddled with bullets in powerful slow motion. That exact sequence is what changed movies as we know it, opening the floodgates to more fearless movie makers to explore more taboo subjects and to not be afraid to show anything.

Easy Rider:

This scene from "Easy Rider" is one of the most iconic for American New Wave. It starts with a long cut of a mid 4 shot of the group actually drinking and smoking in a real cemetery. There wasn't a script written for this film so all dialogue was improvised from what the director told them to talk about or they were genuine reactions from what was happening like in this acid trip scene.

The dialogue in this long shot is heavily accompanied by what sounds like machinery making the dialogue almost inaudible. From what I can hear we have one of them asking "What's that?" and the others telling her to take what we can only assume is acid. When the acid is beginning to settle in, the scene starts to cut to and from a slowly tilting camera shot of an old run down building, with a huge lens flare and a female preacher talking in the background. This has been done to slowly show the effects on the acid in which they have taken. It's also done to remind you that you're watching a film instead of immersing you into it. American New wave was well known for doing this with techniques such the lens flare, breaking the 4th wall and bizarre jump cuts.

This is when the crew breaks one of the most important filming rules in Hollywood by pointing the camera directly into the sun. By doing this, the lens can act as a magnifying glass and focus the sun rays onto a very small area on the shutter and could burn a hole into the shutter or aperture mechanism of the lens itself

The rest of the scene is a montage/sequence of events that show a handful of American New Wave conventions. We see one of the actors having a real mental break down about the death of his mother as he sobs over a statue that reminds him of her. When he says "shut up" he's actually telling the crew to shut up and stop filming him. We also see more jump cuts and the use of hand-held cameras. Everything that happens here is unscripted and the crew secretly filming them. The director himself said that they used random people off of the street to hold the cameras for them and act as it was cheaper than getting professionals to do it for them.

4 Hour Film Challenge - Edit To The Beat Of A Song

For this 4 hour film challenge we had to find/record footage and edit it all together to the beat of a song, so the could be a cut or something happening within the shot on the beat.
The song I chose was Mr. Blue Sky due to it's 4 to the floor beat and how it would juxtapose my footage of people getting hurt.

In total this took 50+ clips to edit into this and they're all unique which made the editing process that bit longer. Personally I feel as this challenge went better than expected as it was just something funny and goofy however I feel as some of the clips could have been a bit tighter with the beat and some critic I got was that there could have been some rhythmic variation throughout my edits.

I used speed ramping from the techniques I learnt to help keep clips in time with the song as well as unlinking audio to the video to have the impact noise at the same time as the impact happened. I had to do this due to the fact light travels faster than sound but having them both at the same time added more impact to the beat.

4 Hour Film Challenge - Unusual Perspective

The brief for this 4 hour film challenge was that we had to use an usual perspective. We came up with two ideas to chose from, an usual perspective on men where would interview woman about the "typical male" and then over exaggerate what they say through acting. Our second idea was to record from the perspective of a pesky wasp that kept following us through out the day/our trip into town.

This idea left us with the freedom of camera angles to be whatever we wanted as wasps are able to fly which let us use a handheld camera and let it be shaky and in obscure angles. During editing I tried to have a fly eye effect on all of the shots but I couldn't find a tutorial but I still wanted the shots to be distorted in a way so I used the warping tools to create a weird effect across the screen that humans wouldn't see naturally. The issue with recording outside were that some shots changed from being over to under exposed to due to moving in and out of the shade on a bright day. I also added a "voice over" to the wasp which was me saying "buzz" in many different tones and lengths which is what many people said had "made the video". During group crit it was said that this could have been improved by adding subtitles to what the wasp was saying and also having a scene where the wasp was bouncing off of a window trying to get outside. But Billy said and I quote "I don't know if this is shit or genius"

4 Hour Film Challenge - Doors And Match On Action

The brief we were given for this 4 hour film challenge was that we had to use a door and match on action shots. This could be as simple as someone walking through a door, recording it from two different angles and then matching up the angles in editing to have the person seamlessly walk through the door.

Our initial ideas ranged from someone changing moods every time they walked through a door, to every time they walked through a door they ended up in a different locations. We scrapped these ideas as they would be too time consuming. We finally all agreed on to have someone who has no idea how doors worked as this would be easy to film as well as comedic. When location scouting, we wanted somewhere with a glass door so we could see all angles on the action no matter what side of the door we were on. We also wanted a long corridor for the actors to have a long run up for the door as well as to be able to have a wide range of camera shots and angles to choose from. The idea for it to become a silent film was a happy accident due to the lack of dialogue we could think of for this short film. Although this worked out in editing, during group critic we were told the pass of the editing could have picked up as the film went on just like it would in the short films, they would walk unusually fast because the tapes were sped up which would have helped with our comedic approach.

I was proud of a lot of the camera angles, the rule of thirds and double framing. The only issues discussed within the group critic were that a couple of the match on action shots could have been tightened up a tiny bit more and the intro shots were slightly out of focus. One the I picked up on myself was the framing of when I have the door hit me in the face whilst opening it. The camera should have been aimed down a little lower or zoomed out a bit more as my head was coming of the bottom of the shot.

The Development Of Editing

Editing is a key part of moving image, it can set the tone of the genre and set the narrative of the text being able to film scenes out of order and then edit them together to "make sense". Before editing in the 1900s film makers used to have to shoot each scene in the order it would appear in the moving image.

Lev Kuleshov, David Griffiths and Sergei Eisenstein are the main the film makers that experimented with editing techniques that are still used in the editing world today.

L. Kuleshov believes that the construction of a film is vital for it to be successful which is usually done through editing where the way two shots interact with each other matter more than the way two actors interact with each other. The "Kuleshov Effect" is his very own method of film making. This is where through the use of editing an audience can tell how a character is feeling with a close up and a cut to what the character is looking at.





D. Griffiths is known to have created parallel editing. This technique is where there is an alteration of two or more scenes that are happening simultaneously but in different locations. The conclusion of this occasionally ends up with the two parties meeting each other in a single place.

S. Eisenstein believed that montages were a way to create meaning to a scene and also show a progress of time. He was a student of Kuleshov, but they went separate ways due to conflicting opinions.


To edit before, film makers used to have to physically cut the film with a razor blade. This method was massively time consuming but was the only way to do it until 1924. This was when the Moviola invented by Iwan Serrurier was brought into action. This allowed editing within film to become much easier and more precise.

In the 1930s when the Flatbed was invented by Steenbeck and K-E-M (Keller-Elektro-Mechanik) the Moviola became less popular however the Flatbed didn't become mainstream until the 1960s as they were much smaller and easier to use. 

Until the 1990s linear editing was the only way to edit moving image using two video tape machines and a video monitor. Non-linear editing computers were introduced in the 90s the first being the CMX-600. Non-linear editing is more widely preferred today over linear editing. Non-linear editing is computer based, you upload footage from a camera into your editing software and you choose how you want to edit from there, the possibilities are endless from cuts, transitions and effects which are all built into the editing software.

Easy Rider Analysis

The scene starts with a medium four shot of the group - 2 men and 2 women all late 20s early 30s. This scene was shot with a 16mm camera giving it a grainy dirty look. This depicts the grubby lifestyle and situation they are currently in, drinking, smoking and taking acid in a cemetery. This scene is heavily accompanied by the sound of machinery making their dialogue almost inaudible. This scene is shot in a linear style with the same camera angle until the group take the acid tabs. Once their acid tabs settle into their systems we cut to a low angle shot of an old rundown build with the hand half camera slowly panning from left to right soaking the scene in lens flairs as a religious speaker talks about heaven. Heaven is usually depicted as a blinding white light when you die which matched the lens flairs and dialogue on in this scene. During this highly experimental stage, the director and camera crew begin to break standard filming rules that were set during the time of their filming like zooming directly into the sun. This is all done to remind the audience their watching a film rather than immersing them into it. The use of relatively fast pace editing, the non linear scenes going forward and backwards in time repeatedly within a small amount of time is supposed to represent the acid trip the group is on and give the audience the confusion and the disturbance of this acid trip that the group themselves would feel. As the cast of this production actually took acid for this scene everything that happens in unscripted making this acid trip and the actions of the cast that more authentic.