Rationale
My first IB Film production, “Retrospect,” was created by XTCStudios, consisting of Charles Mak, Shaheed Allie, Xeryus Collins, and myself. The treatment we used was Charles’s; essentially, a teen comes to terms with the death of his best friend. I feel we chose this treatment because of its simplicity, at least relative to the other proposed plots. Furthermore, attempting a drama for our first IB project (as opposed to an easier genre) allowed for a worthy first test of our skills. Lastly, one of our objectives could be easily accomplished with this idea: incorporating time, which we did using flashbacks.
Commentary
The first thing we did upon having our treatment and pitch greenlit was establish roles for production. Given my year of experience editing, I was assigned the job of editor. However, I feel that despite being named roles, all four of us impacted every decision in such a way that we could each be reasoned as having a different role. I, for example, in addition to editing our final piece, acted as a general consultant to Charles, the director; for some shots, handled the camera in place of our cinematographer, Shaheed; and collaborated directly with Xeryus in sound design. I also had a substantial role in writing our script.
But enough on that. As the editor, I was obviously in charge of editing, implying that my responsibilities lay solely in post-production. However, this is incorrect, as I have learned that the editor must always remain vigilant. During pre-production and while shooting, I had to ensure that every concept expressed could actually be attainable. Occasionally, one of my teammates would perk up with an idea, but I would be forced to reject it given that it was quite unlikely. For example, Charles voiced his desire to utilize a rack focus; I informed him that the equipment we had available would make this notably difficult, not to mention the fact that none of us had any experience or knowledge of how to do so. Contrarily, while I didn’t believe we could succeed in using the basketball rolling as a transition into a flashback, I was surprised to find that making said transition was actually rather easy and ended up one of the high points of my work.
Overall, editing this film was not a difficult task. About eighty percent or so of our footage was well shot; in fact, a majority of our scenes took only one attempt. Still, that leaves twenty percent of our footage unsatisfactory. These takes faced a variety of problems. The first was lighting; at times, our lighting was off given the time of day the film takes place, whereas later our lighting scheme silhouetted our actor and rendered his expressions invisible. Secondly, our on-set sound design was miserable. Almost all of our footage was marred by background noise including talking, coughing, sneezing, mechanical buzzing, basketballs bouncing, a passing aircraft overhead, etc. I was able to cope for the most part by simply cutting out any notable undesirable sounds, but occasionally doing so would interfere with audio we needed, hence the odd spike in volume during our piece.
There are a few suggestions I received that would have likely improved my final edit. First and foremost, I should have edited using a different format. Mr. Bigue informed me that I had edited in 4:3 when the proper format would have been 16:9. Unfortunately, I was only notified of this as I was preparing to export the finished project. Indeed, this had a notable effect on ouf final piece. Secondly, in correcting the audio problems, I was told I should have completely muted any shots with undesirable audio (and played music in its place). As aforementioned, I only cut out specific sounds; this resulted in distracting changes in the level of sound. Finally, for our two flashbacks, I learned that using mattes can be irksome and can cut off parts of the shot; instead, I should opt for color correction.
In all honesty, I believe that editing was the most difficult part of production. As a whole, creating this film was not as difficult as was editing. However, that’s not to say production was completely smooth sailing.
First of all, we encountered a handful of scheduling conflicts. The most significant was with sports. All three of my teammates and both of our actors were on the football team; I’m on the wrestling team. Because our practices were immediately after school, we could not shoot then. On days they had games, we could not shoot our night scenes. Our compromise was to shoot our night scene on a Thursday (November 3rd), when practices started earlier, and our morning scenes on a Saturday (November 5th) after their weekend practice. To a lesser extent our plans clashed with those of our crew’s. Our initial attempt (October 29th) to shoot coincided with a family dinner our supporting actor had to attend; on November 2nd our main actor had plans to work on another class’s project.
Secondly, we had several gear issues. My team’s lack of experience led to our first shooting session devolving into them familiarizing themselves with their gear. Our final day of shooting was impacted by a lack of a boom mic. Charles’s brother, Max, took the mic we had planned to use; his group was shooting miles away at the Golden Gate Bridge. We elected to simply tough it out; as a matter of fact, this was the reason for the audio issues I encountered in editing. On the same day, we discovered that our camera was mere minutes (less than thirty of them) from dying. With no alternatives, we were forced to rush the shoot.
Although these did not have any major or noticeable effect on our end product, I would have been more comfortable with our work had we been more organized with shooting.
This leads to my conclusion: my final evaluation of the film.
For a novice piece, I feel our project is excellent. The plot is understandable and there is little that the audience could potentially be confused about. Our actors gave fantastic performances, considering that neither of them had ever acted prior. The editing is slick and clean, with a few nice rhythmic matches. The score and sound design achieve their goal in translating emotion. The cinematography is satisfactory, with special notice of the single-shot ending in which the main character achieves catharsis and departs for the funeral. The mis en scene is somewhat lacking, but is not a negative; one positive example is the picture frame in the scene where the main character puts on his jacket.
There are also several issues with our project. The plot and character development are quite weak; we never learn either character’s name (although in our script we did plan to reveal their names in the film). It’s not explicitly stated what our main character is getting dressed for; however, I’ve been told that it’s generally understood that he’s preparing for a funeral. One problem I found with the acting was in our lead actor, Paea Dauwe’s reaction to the knock on the door. In my opinion, his reaction should have been more lethargic and depressed, while his reaction was a tad energetic. This could be remedied by a simple extra take. There are the aforementioned editing issues: the mattes over the flashbacks and the sound editing. The most significant problem with our score was that it was not created originally for the film; our sound designer downloaded the audio off of a YouTube video. Some scenes are a bit dark because they are shot directly against a window during the day. For most of the film the mis en scene was only what had already been there; we didn’t really add anything into our shots.
All in all, I believe this film was okay with much room for improvement. Whether it is ultimately deemed a success or failure, this project will only serve to better my crew for all of our future work.
Commentary
The first thing we did upon having our treatment and pitch greenlit was establish roles for production. Given my year of experience editing, I was assigned the job of editor. However, I feel that despite being named roles, all four of us impacted every decision in such a way that we could each be reasoned as having a different role. I, for example, in addition to editing our final piece, acted as a general consultant to Charles, the director; for some shots, handled the camera in place of our cinematographer, Shaheed; and collaborated directly with Xeryus in sound design. I also had a substantial role in writing our script.
But enough on that. As the editor, I was obviously in charge of editing, implying that my responsibilities lay solely in post-production. However, this is incorrect, as I have learned that the editor must always remain vigilant. During pre-production and while shooting, I had to ensure that every concept expressed could actually be attainable. Occasionally, one of my teammates would perk up with an idea, but I would be forced to reject it given that it was quite unlikely. For example, Charles voiced his desire to utilize a rack focus; I informed him that the equipment we had available would make this notably difficult, not to mention the fact that none of us had any experience or knowledge of how to do so. Contrarily, while I didn’t believe we could succeed in using the basketball rolling as a transition into a flashback, I was surprised to find that making said transition was actually rather easy and ended up one of the high points of my work.
Overall, editing this film was not a difficult task. About eighty percent or so of our footage was well shot; in fact, a majority of our scenes took only one attempt. Still, that leaves twenty percent of our footage unsatisfactory. These takes faced a variety of problems. The first was lighting; at times, our lighting was off given the time of day the film takes place, whereas later our lighting scheme silhouetted our actor and rendered his expressions invisible. Secondly, our on-set sound design was miserable. Almost all of our footage was marred by background noise including talking, coughing, sneezing, mechanical buzzing, basketballs bouncing, a passing aircraft overhead, etc. I was able to cope for the most part by simply cutting out any notable undesirable sounds, but occasionally doing so would interfere with audio we needed, hence the odd spike in volume during our piece.
There are a few suggestions I received that would have likely improved my final edit. First and foremost, I should have edited using a different format. Mr. Bigue informed me that I had edited in 4:3 when the proper format would have been 16:9. Unfortunately, I was only notified of this as I was preparing to export the finished project. Indeed, this had a notable effect on ouf final piece. Secondly, in correcting the audio problems, I was told I should have completely muted any shots with undesirable audio (and played music in its place). As aforementioned, I only cut out specific sounds; this resulted in distracting changes in the level of sound. Finally, for our two flashbacks, I learned that using mattes can be irksome and can cut off parts of the shot; instead, I should opt for color correction.
In all honesty, I believe that editing was the most difficult part of production. As a whole, creating this film was not as difficult as was editing. However, that’s not to say production was completely smooth sailing.
First of all, we encountered a handful of scheduling conflicts. The most significant was with sports. All three of my teammates and both of our actors were on the football team; I’m on the wrestling team. Because our practices were immediately after school, we could not shoot then. On days they had games, we could not shoot our night scenes. Our compromise was to shoot our night scene on a Thursday (November 3rd), when practices started earlier, and our morning scenes on a Saturday (November 5th) after their weekend practice. To a lesser extent our plans clashed with those of our crew’s. Our initial attempt (October 29th) to shoot coincided with a family dinner our supporting actor had to attend; on November 2nd our main actor had plans to work on another class’s project.
Secondly, we had several gear issues. My team’s lack of experience led to our first shooting session devolving into them familiarizing themselves with their gear. Our final day of shooting was impacted by a lack of a boom mic. Charles’s brother, Max, took the mic we had planned to use; his group was shooting miles away at the Golden Gate Bridge. We elected to simply tough it out; as a matter of fact, this was the reason for the audio issues I encountered in editing. On the same day, we discovered that our camera was mere minutes (less than thirty of them) from dying. With no alternatives, we were forced to rush the shoot.
Although these did not have any major or noticeable effect on our end product, I would have been more comfortable with our work had we been more organized with shooting.
This leads to my conclusion: my final evaluation of the film.
For a novice piece, I feel our project is excellent. The plot is understandable and there is little that the audience could potentially be confused about. Our actors gave fantastic performances, considering that neither of them had ever acted prior. The editing is slick and clean, with a few nice rhythmic matches. The score and sound design achieve their goal in translating emotion. The cinematography is satisfactory, with special notice of the single-shot ending in which the main character achieves catharsis and departs for the funeral. The mis en scene is somewhat lacking, but is not a negative; one positive example is the picture frame in the scene where the main character puts on his jacket.
There are also several issues with our project. The plot and character development are quite weak; we never learn either character’s name (although in our script we did plan to reveal their names in the film). It’s not explicitly stated what our main character is getting dressed for; however, I’ve been told that it’s generally understood that he’s preparing for a funeral. One problem I found with the acting was in our lead actor, Paea Dauwe’s reaction to the knock on the door. In my opinion, his reaction should have been more lethargic and depressed, while his reaction was a tad energetic. This could be remedied by a simple extra take. There are the aforementioned editing issues: the mattes over the flashbacks and the sound editing. The most significant problem with our score was that it was not created originally for the film; our sound designer downloaded the audio off of a YouTube video. Some scenes are a bit dark because they are shot directly against a window during the day. For most of the film the mis en scene was only what had already been there; we didn’t really add anything into our shots.
All in all, I believe this film was okay with much room for improvement. Whether it is ultimately deemed a success or failure, this project will only serve to better my crew for all of our future work.
A solid review of your role and film. In the future, please add evidence in the form of screenshots that can add to your analysis. Also when discussing your contributions in the future, limit your discussion about the issues with logistics and the crew; we would much rather talk about your story, technique and style.
ReplyDeleteThanks.