Editing; Ice Mountain, Star FM.

Our second Edit was the Ice Mountain. Kim filmed the footage a few weeks before hand for us. Thanks Kim!
I felt a little more confident this time, although I am still not that happy with the result. I think it starts of quite well, but I felt I needed a lot more time and was rushing to finish in the allotted time. This is because of my inexperience, it really slows me down I feel. But the more I edit the faster I will become and the better, I hope. i was trying to make the peace fun and informative as well as make it feel as though a radio station would have it on their website, which is why I added the music. I composed the track using Sound Track Pro which is so wonderful to use and really simple to add to the edit. The music is too loud though and again I didn't have enough time to really finish the track, so it doesn't really go anywhere, which is a shame. But again, the more I use Sound Track Pro the better I will become, in theory!
So over all, I was mostly pleased with the edit, although I can see its faults. But I think I had a sense of direction, certainly at the beginning and although it got a bit lost towards the end and the sped up section is a bit too fast, I think it flowed quite well. So when it is graded I hope they mark it on the first half!!

group project pre-production

Project members:

Tom Hopkins, Kate Pritchard, Adam Jones, Sam Simmonds

Project title: Beach Body

Our project began with the member selection, I had worked with Tom and Adam before on our radio project last semester, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with them again. Katie is genius at organizing and planning, so she really rounded out the team.

Together we ran through a few ideas for the project. A chase movie, drama, comedy etc. But we settled on the beach body idea after I suggested that we begin the film with a shot of a dead body on a beach and then ran back through the series of events that resulted with the body.

We went down to the location, Sand Bay, and took the camera with us to shoot some simulations. I wanted to get a feel for how the beach looked on camera and to run through some ideas for framing the shots. This was a really useful exercise, and it gave me a lot more ideas for shots and angles and content.

Tom suggested that it would be interesting if the body on the beach was completely ignored by anyone who encountered it. We adapted the original idea to the final pitch. A family goes to the beach for the day and sits next to a dead body, but ignores it completely. Then when they leave we see that the beach is covered in bodies. I wanted to incorporate footage of real dead bodies, in various natural disasters and wars etc. The point being that we chose to ignore what goes on around the world every day, and we can easily by changing the channel or reading another article. But if we had to deal with death on a daily basis, many people do for various reasons around the world, would we be able to do the same? The film poses the question, and by mixing in shots of war and death we will hopefully drive the point home.
We also decided to have very little dialogue for several reasons. In previous experiences, its usually the sound that is the hardest to get right on 0 budget films, and filming on location adds a million different variables to the problem. I knew from filming a recce that even with no wind, wind sound would be a problem on the beach, as well as working with inexperienced actors having to earn lines. Although my lead actor is a very experienced American actor, everyone else would be amatures.
So cutting out the need for dialogue really helped in the planning and expectations. We may well add some dialogue later on, recorded in the studio, taking care to shoot in such a way that this can be done without the need for syncing to actors mouth movement.
I am really looking forward to the shoot and working with everyone. We need to cast, although I have cast the main part already. One of the children will be played by my daughter and the other by a family friend. We just need to cast the 'mother', which I am working on now.

Editing; Wake Up - music video

For our first edit we decided to use some footage we took last semester when we spent a day trying out the cameras. We had the idea to shoot a music video to make things a bit more fun for our first attempt. In the morning we shot in the TV studio on campus and in the afternoon we went out on location to the beach in Weston and in town shooting on the high street. Since we had two cameras for the day one camera took some cut way shots on the beach while the other was filming in town, it was a great way to get two completely different perspectives and techniques. So using the footage later as an edit was interesting because the time break had given me a completely different vision for the piece. I actually had about three different versions on the go at the same time, just to see where they would go. In the end the one I settled on was the more simple of the three. I used some repetition, using the same shot several times to mimic musical motif's in the song.

http://www.myspace.com/samsimmonds 

I recorded 'Wake Up'  a couple of years ago now and has several different mixes, and is actually being remixed right now by LA based Groovejunkies for release through the Morehouse label some time this year. 

http://www.myspace.com/morehouserecords

So it was a wonderful opportunity to play with the images for the track.

I haven't been using Final Cut for very long, so I was a little nervous to start with, but I think being thrown into it was a great learning curve for me. I can see now what I would change of course, but at the time I had a more limited knowledge and very little experience with Final Cut. I wanted to use as much of the footage we shot as possible while maintaining a connection to the music. But I know I could have improved on my cut if I had made smoother transitions between edits and worked harder on the rhythm  of the piece.