Evaluation

For 'Night Journey' we went along the lines of portraying our business man character as paranoid schizophrenic that is making his way to Amsterdam on a train for reasons unknown however on his way encounters a passenger which he believes is a cannibal. We used the voiceover to drive the narrative forward, from how the dialogue plays out its clear this has happened in the past due to his use of tenses. To illustrate how the business man has fabricated the fellow passenger we used single frame cutting techniques in 'Final Cut Pro', once the man is seated we see him gazing at the seat opposite him we then placed a single over exposed frame between this shot and the next to create a sequence that suggests the cannibal has appeared before him in an abrupt manor. We had sure to cut the appearing shot as he removes his cigarette and puffs out smoke to generate an idea of his enigmatic persona. When constructing the rough cut we made continuity a key aspect and so didn't adjust and shots until it played out without any obvious mistakes, I felt that cutting to the exterior shots of the passing train they had boarded could aid us in retaining continuity as it disguises the characters movements as well as the mise en scene such as his jacket and news paper. The use of the over exposed shot to move the characters was done twice, on the second occasion we used it to remove both characters from the coach suggesting that the cannibal had taken the worried passenger somewhere other than the train, after some exterior cutaways were used we bough the characters back into the coach, we utilised the cutaways to show a digression of time. The narrative follows a curve that takes the passengers from day time through to night and then back to early morning, to advocate this lapse in time we cutaway to the exterior tracks we used the lighter ones in the daytime the darker ones at night and the same more luminous footage to signify the early morning at which point the cannibal departs from the train leaving the business man confused. Though the narrative follows the idea this man could possibly be insane its also indicative of the fact the man cannot sleep the use of the cannibal illustrates his inability to fall asleep this could be due to an outside issue that we haven't chosen to explain. Another technique we chose to display a progression in time is a cross fade, we placed it between the out of window shot and the shot that pictures the passing city lights, prior to this fade we had to change the playback motion of the lighter more rural landscape shot to reverse so that it matched the city scape shot direction, this change indirection also helped solve the issue of the previous shot that shows the train passing in an alternate direction. To justify the idea that the man cannot sleep on this journey we made sure the initial shots of the passenger show him in a fairly awake state of mind contrasting these with the later shots where the man looks stressed and fatigued. We incorporated the city footage of Amsterdam as part of his dream like state, to trigger this phase in the narrative we cross faded the pan to the window to the forward tracking utopian atmosphere of the city, the panning motion and the fast tracking movement work well together showing he is slowly drifting off into his dream. As the cross fade takes us from train to city we felt that fading the atmos out would work well to display his escape from the man he is in fear of, however we did use a small amount of dialogue at this point which helps to disrupt his dream throwing him back into reality. We implemented the CU shot of the man gripping his newspaper suggesting he is experiencing a nightmarish turn to his dream this fear then unfolds as we cut to a shot of the mans mouth, its clear at this point the man is intent on devouring him or so he believes. Though there is dialogue throughout the film we kept the lines short and fragmented as well as long pauses in speech allow us to understand the uncomfortable position the business man has found himself. To keep an interesting pace as the film progresses we have used cutaways to the railway tracks or footage of the passing train complimented by loud audio tracks, we felt these abrupt cuts help keep the audience focuses with out loosing interest. In the final stages of the film we encounter a CU shot of the worried mans eye line along side this shot we added a reversed atmos track to create an ambiguous sense of realisation of what he has just encountered. In terms how we constructed the soundscape for this film we set out to keep the dialogue always dominant by lowering the atmos tracks using key frames in the centre waveform box, however we experienced difficulty during this stage as the key frames we had designated wouldn't apply to the track in our timeline, we resolved this issue by using the blade tool to cut where we would fade the track down and then adjusted the mix using audio mixer in the tools menu, after finding the correct level for the atmos we placed audio fades either side of the sliced track as a way to graciously fade in and out without a noticeable difference.

After watching the documentary we were given in its complete form I felt that there were some problems with it as a whole and so before we constructed our own version of the documentary I made sure that we would avoid these problematic choices that they had made. In particular the typical bedroom footage that seems to appear in most student films, this was to be avoided as we felt it didn't bring anything to the documentary especially in one that is to be four and a half minutes in total run time. We decided to divide the film into sections of interview footage, this would be the basis of our piece and in between these scenes we would include tonal montages to establish a pace rather than loosing the audience in monotonous interview dialogue. We structured a short montage to introduce the character rather than starting with dialogue, so that people could grasp a brief insight as to what to expect in the later stages of the film, the montage was comprised of the most interesting and dynamic shots. This montage and the ones seen later in the film were purposely cut on the beat of the music much like a music video we felt this aspect worked well because the viewers will actively engage in what they are seeing due to it being pleasing to experience. We chose two different music tracks both of which fit into the genre of dubstep, drum and bass, and electronic. The pace of the tracks aided us in constructing an interesting energetic progression of narrative, the later song was used in the montage that shows the struggle of the character as he braves the cold in order to navigate a difficult rock formation. To indicate his struggle to overcome this difficult section we cut together the footage of him falling off the rock face along with his expressions suggesting he is failing, underneath the visuals depicting this mood we introduced the harmonious start to the second track, we then key framed the music so that the first more spirited note plays out at a noticeably higher volume on this key frame we then started to introduce footage of him utilising more progressive manoeuvres finishing off with him achieving his end result which was getting to the top of the rock. We took it upon ourselves to explain how the climber actually feels rather than making a documentary about climbing, to advocate this we started one of the scenes with the quote “fucking agony” it comes as unexpected turn in the film however keeps the viewer interested and involved, to exaggerate this statement we raised the volume to a more prominent level. Due to the tracks being downloaded from the internet despite their copyright free state they were in fact in the format of mp3 which was applicable when constructing the rough cut however when we came to tidying up the clips we decided to convert the mp3 to an uncompressed wav format thus giving us a more complete looking timeline. To retain the constant continuity throughout the documentary we had placed our renamed footage and dispensed them in bins, each one sub categorised the footage into what the weather was like allowing us to clearly see which clips we could and couldn't use indifferent stages of the film. We decided to end the film with the same way it started and so we chose clips that looked back on the sequences we had seen, a CU of the contributors face was used to gain a slight emotional connection especially one of him smiling showing that he has managed to climb successfully despite the harsh weather conditions completing the emotional arc ending on high spirits.

When it came to structuring 'Out O Date' I tended to follow the script quite closely as I noticed that some the footage was already problematic in terms of character positioning, therefore I only decided to cut out shots rather than making it more difficult. For the first scene I tried to construct the film as it plays out in the script however I chose not to use the establishing crane shot to introduce the characters, instead I went with the mid shot that points the characters in the direction of the audience which I feel makes for a more exciting gag as the words themselves which are spelt wrong aren't the most important idea in the film I felt the characters conversation was more of an entertaining subject to focus on. I chose to cut to 'Tony' as his character will be short lived in the piece and so I decided to utilise his most interesting dialogue and movement which was in fact removing the tights from around his head and looking whimsical, cutting to 'Tony' also helped to break up the mid shot before it was on for too long. In this scene there was a distracting car noise present, to tackle this issue I drew out the shot so that the audience could hear the car enter and disappear this made the cut to the adjacent reverse shoulder shot more fluid as there wasn't a jump in audio level. The problematic shot that introduces the female character 'Jane' was avoided by adding in the second angle of 'Alf' walking towards her briskly, though I do feel the following shoulder shot of 'Jane's' interaction with 'Alf' is rather snappy as she doesn't enter the frame nor have any movement I feel that this was unavoidable. This character positioning followed through to the next scene I constructed to make the piece feel less jumpy I drew out certain shots to make the character positioning in the next shot realistically achievable. My primary aim for the sequences was to make them play out naturally so that the audience could focus on the gags rather than being visually disrupted. Though there was a dilemma visually I found that the audio only need a couple fades to make it play out smoothly, the gaps in the dialogue allowed me to simply cut between without any real difficulty.

Out O Date

Firstly before anything I decided which scene I wanted to edit first,  once decided to imported all the rushes from that scene. So that I could begin categorising them.

I then began renaming every piece of footage that I had imported, in each clip I would clearly state whether it was INT or EXT as well as the shot type and who was in the frame so that I didn't have to click through every clip, I placed all of these clips from the scene in a bin categorising them in to a condensed location so that when it came to renaming the next scene the tab wasn't cluttered.  

 Before structuring a rough cut in the timeline I setup my user preferences making sure that the timeline was set to the industry standard of 10 hours.

Staying in the user preferences box I selected 3 minutes as my auto save timing under the 'General' tab.

Once the footage had been renamed and the bin for the scene had been established, I began constructing a rough cut in the timeline, I followed the script closely however decided not to use the establishing shot to start the film as I felt 'Alf's' reaction was more important and compelling to initiate the sequence. 

  

Shortly after we see the milk men exchange their feelings about the sign we see a car pull up in the foreground the shot itself works as a cut adjacent to the mid shot of the two men however the long walk before she addresses the men is too long and so I decided to use the shot of 'Alf' walking to meet her half way. 

By using this shot I was able to decrease the time it takes her to reach the milk men. 

After I was happy with the rough cut I went through to rid the piece of the pops that are heard as the audio track plays through varying clips, as I was only creating a smooth playback the sound tracks only needed very small fades. 

Throughout the scene I had tended to use small cross fades however between these two shots I chose to bridge the audio from one through to the other, as you can notice in the CU shot of 'Tony' 'Alf' can't be seen and so rendering the need for cross fades unnecessary.

 After watching the rough cut back I noticed that their is distracting car noise in the background which is unavoidable, to avoid this i chose to elongate the clip so that it could be heard appear and leave making the cut between the next shot clean.

The downside to keeping this clip long was that the audience couldn't see 'Jane's' reaction to 'Alf's' verbal abuse, however I was still able to cut back to her as she kicks 'Alf' in his lower area which I felt worked just as well.

Prior to these two clips I noticed that I had a clip that framed 'Alf' as opposed to 'Jane' this I changed because its distracting seeing her mouth move in the corner subsequently 'Alf's' reaction to what she's saying is rather dry and under humoured. 

After completing this scene I organised the next folder of rushes into a new bin along with categorising the types of clips .

I then constructed a rough cut in the timeline following the script however ignoring the door scene.

I then went through and trimmed the clips down so that it flowed more naturally, I chose to use the shot of 'David' opening the door after the establishing shot as I fell its necessary to display his character by framing his facial expressions as he directly clashes with 'Alf''. 

Through watching the rough cut and even the trimmed version its clear that their are problems with the characters positioning, to avoid any awkward/unnatural positioning I cut on pieces of head movement and drew clips out longer to make sense of the movement in particular 'Sandra's' sudden jump to the corner of the room after speaking to 'Jane'.   

Night Journey

 Before starting assemble a rough cut on the timeline we imported the footage into 'Final Cut Pro', we created sub clips from the rushes by setting in and out points in the preview window left of the tab (see above). To set the in and out points we used the shortcuts cmd+i and cmd+o, making for a more efficient editing process, these sub clips were then renamed accordingly. After all the footage had been sub clipped and renamed, we created 10 bins to categorise the type of shot or who was in it. We also did the same with the audio rushes, these were then placed into 2 different bins "Narration" and "Train Sounds". The final version of our 'Night Journey' tab can be seen above. 

 We went into 'User Preferences' after this to set the timeline to 10 hours to abide by the industry standard. 

Incase of the computer freezing, power cut or any other unforeseen circumstance we set the auto save to every 3 minutes.

Once we were happy with the overall structure of the footage in its rough cut stage we added all the outside audio to the appropriate shots, we then added the inside atmos in the gaps. 

Prior to adding the inside train atmos to the timeline we had noticed that there was a recording that was noticeably long, this we felt would fit perfectly in the inside train cuts as we wouldn't have to loop or repeat it, thus making a more realistic soundscape.   

Though we had cut sub audio clips from the rushes these still had to be matched to the visuals, the shot of the train in the above photo emerges toward the camera from a distance and so to give a realistic of time progression both audibly and visually we adjusted the timing of the recording. 

After watching the rough cut we went back and trimmed frames to create smoother and less noticeable transitions, this above shot is the previous frame before the inside medium shot appears, we felt the blurred piece of bridge creeping into the edge of the frame is a distraction to avoid this we cut a couple frames later with the dark structure in full frame. 

This is the frame we used opposed to the one above, the dark structure cuts seamlessly with dark interior of the train.  

To fade between shots in respect to the audio we used a very small fade on each clip, this was to reduce the pop and not as a stylistic choice, as we did feel the abrupt change in shot/audio worked well in this piece as opposed to a gradual fade. Notice that their is a long pause in the audio waveform before the actual train sound is heard this like mentioned previously was to create a tangible aesthetic. 

We felt that the out of window shot played in a unnatural direction in comparison to the previous long shot of the train and so we reversed its playback direction in the 'Change Speed" option box. 

To show a progression of time we cross faded this shot with a out of window shot of the city lights, this change in time alos aided the continuity as in the adjacent footage the window next to the characters is opaque.

After watching the transition between the two shots back a couple times we felt that a more elongated cross fade was needed to show a more substantial lapse in time, this theme time of development suggested by the editing choices justifies the idea that he cannot sleep as he's in fear of the canibal sitting opposite him.

As you can see in this shot the passenger looks exhausted by the fact he's unable to drift into sleep.

Following on from the shot above we decided to illustrate the character passing into sleep, we cross faded from the pan to the window to the scenic footage of Amsterdam. The motion of the pan and the tracking forward in the city footage creates a lucid transition advocating the drifting into the dream like state.

To exaggerate this sense of utopia we decided that at this point there should be no atmos just purely dialogue, developing a substantial difference between what is reality and what the character is actually experiencing.

Referring back to the statement about what the character is experiencing on board the train in terms of narrative context, we felt that the idea of the distressed man being schizophrenic and imagining the man on the train opposite him would be achievable through the use of the empty shots that match perfectly with the ones with characters in. For example this medium shot was cut together with another medium shot that pictures the character seated smoking a cigarette.  

We utilised a frame from the over exposed footage to initiate the cannibals appearance on the train, the yellow flash creates an immediate sense of bewilderment.

Though the shots are framed slightly different the flash helps to conceal this discrepancy, we decided the action of smoking the cigarette starting with it close to his face then blowing smoke was a powerful motif to introduce the character.

 Once the footage and audio had been added and trimmed to a point where we were happy we went through and modified the levels of the dialogue so that they played at 12db all the way through and as they were the most important track in the piece we kept them at this level throughout. We used the audio mixer to determine the levels. So that the atmos wasn't competing with the dialogue we brought the level of the atmos down to about half or to a level that worked, with the mixer in the centre box, we then added cross fades between each of the cuts in audio so the level change wasn't noticeable.

To end the film we used a CU shot of the mans face and the canibal walking off from the train and turning to the scared passenger, prior to this we reversed the train atmos suggest a state of confusion, leaving us with the question as to wether he actually met this man or he himself is psychotic. 

As the man passes off into the distance we faded out to black holding as the scared passenger emerges in the reflection of the window. 

'In A Climbers Hands' Editing

Prior to beginning to work on the timeline constructing a rough cut we decided to organise a new set of bins so that when it came to choosing clips we didn't have to click through each to find what we wanted, thus making the process much more efficient. These bins consisted of 'Bedrooms Shots', 'Cutaways and possible opening shots', 'Interviews', 'Interview Audio', 'Location 1', 'Location 2', 'Location 3', 'Location 4', ''Music/Sound design', 'WAV'.  

After organising the footage into separate bins in 'Final Cut Pro' we went through and renamed each clip to make the editing more dynamic. Each clip name would also consist of what type of shot it was such as 'Medium Shot' or 'POV', we also felt that the weather was an important detail to add to the title of the clip to help maintain continuity throughout the timeline as in some shots its distinctively frosty, snowy or luminous. 

Though we had arranged the bedroom footage into a bin of its own we felt that the shots themselves didn't add anything to the documentary, we understood the character talked about the weather and how it impacts his climbing therefore rendering this footage useless when formulating a story arc. This however made filling the 5 minute timeline more of a challenge, as well as not using the bedroom footage we decided not to use the interviews with poor audio quality with subtitles as they would ruin the flow. 

 For the opening of the documentary we introduced the character with climbing shots and wide establishing clips, in terms of audio we went for an energetic electronic track to give the documentary pace right from the outset. The initial opening montage shows footage that we would utilise later in the piece almost foreshadowing the narrative content, to fit the audio track we only used footage that would complement the dynamic feel the track suggested.

Prior to the opening montage we used some interview audio explaining the rocks/environment we were seeing on screen. So the dialogue wasn't competing against the music track, we reduced the volume of the music track to a subtle level and then key framed a fade as he finished talking then cut the montage previously mentioned on the highest keyframe, using keyframes in 'Final Cut Pro' as opposed to a audio cross fade in the effects tab we were able to control audio level much more precisely. When cutting the opening montage sequence we used the technique of matching a cut on a significant beat positively cutting through much like a music video thus forming a more interesting viewing.

The subject in the documentary mentions 'Stanage Edge' being a famous climbing spot in Britain and abroad and so we felt it would be right to cut to a wide shot of this location as part of a relational montage subsequently cross fading to the character for a locked off vox pop shot.

After the brief opening interview and tonal montage to establish the context of the documentary we decided cut out a piece of derogatory dialogue from the interview ('fucking agony') to create an abrupt beginning to the first interview, this statement was then contextualised by cutting from the vox pop to a shot of the climbers hands. We also amplified the volume of "fucking agony" to exaggerate the statement creating more of an impact to keep the viewer interested. He then goes on to talk about how the cold affects a climbers hands, shots such as him shaking his hands, slipping off the rock face and others relevant to this dialogue were then utilised.

To end this interview we faded out to black along with fading out the dialogue to suggest the end to a day of climbing, the character also talks about how he was happy to get off the climb on that day and so we felt the fades best conveyed this sense of relief.

To develop a rough narrative structure within the documentary we added text in the lower left corner stating what day it was, these dates substituted plot points which would be used in a narrative piece, thus allowing the sense of an emotional fluctuation. The suspended camera angle that overlooks the cliff is justified by the dialogue as the contributor talks about how you do get scared when you're climbing 'sometimes you do get scared".

Our next interview consisted of information about how he uses his ropes and safety equipment however we noticed that the audio was considerably low in comparison to the rest of the documentary, and so amplified it to the correct mix level of -12 db we used the green and red metering gauge in the lower corner to accurately adjust the audio.

In this specific piece of audio we brought the level up by an additional 5db.

 This sequence is indicative of a key plot point in the documentary as it suggests a struggle as the character fails repeatedly as he tries to overcome a difficult section of rocks. We started by introducing a track that begins with harmonious notes and then overlaying the actual diegetic audio at a higher volume in the mix as we felt his doubtful expressions aided the mood of his struggling endeavor.

 Shot 1

Shot 2
Shot 1 and 2 were used within the sequence, to retain the continuity made sure the safety mat was in the same place as the tonal montage continued.

After we had cut through a sufficient amount of shots that displayed the struggle, we raised the audio with key frames, the highest key frame was carefully placed where the song changes from harmonious to a significantly more paced and energetic beat ( see screen shot bellow).

Key frames used to introduce the music accurately, on the highest keyframe we cut to a shot of the climber overcoming the difficult section.

Though we had already added two music tracks they were 'lossy' as they had been compressed into the mp3 format, we addressed this issue by converting the MP3 version of the tracks to uncompressed WAV format with much higher quality playback.

We did this by opening the track in 'itunes', going to preferences and setting the conversion format to WAV. We could then right click the track and choose "Create WAV Version" from the list, this then converted and duplicated the track.

Once the file had been located we deleted the MP3 version from the bin within our 'Final Cut Pro' project and imported the WAV file subsequently reconnecting it the track in our timeline with the new high quality uncompressed variant.

 To end the documentary we established a montage with use of a previous track with a sequence of clips that reflect back on the already seen footage, the CU of the climbers face as he laughs in high spirits completes the emotional arc ending on a high.

 We placed two cut frames together to quickly display the sense he had overcome the rocks despite the poor weather conditions.

This is the second of the two cut frames.

Much like the opening montage we used shots that complemented the music track, here we used a shot of the climber dusting his hands with chalk, the movement in the shot works well with the sudden pitch/pace change making for more interesting viewing.

This is the last shot we used it works well to conclude the documentary as we see him pictured carrying all his gear which can be easily distinguished as a sign he's leaving the climb for that day.

The piece then concluded with a cut to black complemented with a beat in the music then holding black as the music fades out.