Today after submitting my Digital News Production work, I decided to get to Rochester Library and get straight into my Fiction Adaptation Film editing. The reason for this was that I had my hard drive on me, and I was definitely in a work mood, and so I thought I'd take advantage of this.
Within about an hour I'd produced the following video, which is a very VERY rough cut of what I expect my finished film to look like.
The rough cut video below is very unfinished, and so foley sounds haven't been added yet, my directing can still be heard, and the pacing of certain events haven't been messed with yet. Under the video are some time-codes with a brief explanation of certain points, and some notes.
0:00- The black titles that appear in this film are merely placeholders, which simply make my job easier when it comes to editing in certain clips which I plan to create later. These are pretty much for quick reference.
0:11- I really like this change of focus onto the kettle, and this is mainly because the sound of the kettle will be playing over the top of the action in the final video. This particular shot is just to clarify with the viewer that it is the kettle here that is making the sound. I also like the fact that the transition of focus from Andy to the kettle is very soft and subtle.
0:17- Admittedly, this jump in shot leads to a slight inconsistency. The previous closeup of Andy's eyes shows him looking very nervous and somewhat scared, and in the very next shot Andy looks completely fine as he stands up to walk over to the kitchen bin. This is something I overlooked during the initial filming process, possibly indicating that I need to take more care in future shoots.
0:24- Strange bin placement. Of course, nobody really has a bin in front of their kitchen sink, but I placed this here for technical purposes. The original position of the bin was in a very dark area of the kitchen, and due to the fact that I didn't have a lighting kit to use, I wouldn't have been able to clearly light certain areas of the bin up in future shots. Therefore it was important to put the bin in an area which would have been as light as possible, in this case- directly under a kitchen light. As mentioned in a previous blog, a lighting kit would have been useful, but transporting one of these without a vehicle would have been extremely difficult.
0:30- The subtitles used in this part are purposefully bad quality. I wanted to give the impression of some poorly translated indie film, and that is why I chose this style of writing and coloration
0:34- This part of the film is intentionally quick, as it throws Andy's character into a flashback sequence. I do not particularly like the fact that when I sped up the clip that zooms into Andy's eye, it appeared to be very unstable, but since it is a very quick shot, I am hoping that it won't be as noticeable
0:38- For some reason, when these first 3 photographs of Andy were taken outside, the aspect ratio was different to when all the other photographs were taken. Although this is perfectly fixable with a bit of cropping and resizing and such, it is quite frustrating, especially when I do not know why it happened.
0:47- At this point in the finished film, the sound of gun fire will be heard from over the hill, prompting Andy to react in the way he does.
0:50- I am also thinking about possibly inserting crossfades between each frame of movement, to make the movement of Andy's character softer in sequences such as this where he moves from one area to another. I will experiment with this idea further.
1:13- This shot will be a bit of a reveal of the battle-zone that Andy now finds himself in. I am not particularly fond of having this shot as the reveal shot, as the background is blurred. If I could go back and collect more material and such, I would probably have collected more to allow me to have a long-shot reveal so that all the details of the background could be taken in.
1:17- I am aware of the cloud looking bigger, Originally, I was just hoping that the cloud would look as though it was moving, but instead it just looks really obvious that it is being made bigger.
1:19- At this point in the final film, a plane will fly over Andy. I am thinking about using Adobe After Effects to animate the plane flying overhead, and I haven't gotten around to this point yet, which is why the sky appears blank. I really like the emptiness of the sky also, and I believe that the black and white colour scheme I chose for this section of the film compliments it perfectly.
1:28- This is Andy's reaction to the bombs which will be dropping from the plane. I chose a close-up for this part to really capture his expression. I think Andy did a great job of selling the emotions that his character was going through, which is basically shock and terror.
1:47- At this point in the film, the nuclear bomb that the plane dropped will detonate. The fading to white is supposed to represent the explosion engulfing Andy. If there was some way I could make the fade to white engulf him from the middle outwards, I think this would be a lot more effective, but unfortunately I do not know how to do this. The sound of an explosion will be used over this.
I am also tempted to have the line "Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes" played over this part of the film. The fact that the word "goodbye" is used in that sentence gives it a nice transitional element which makes sense when going to the next scene, which is Andy returning from the flash-forward, effectively "snapping out of it."
2:10- This is a particularly long scene in which Andy dials the number of the recruitment hotline listed on the letter. I am considering speeding this section up using the speed tool in Final Cut. Of course, the problem there is that speeding it up too much will make Andy move unrealistically, which could look ridiculous. I will have to be careful about how I go about this.
2:20- At this point I plan to insert controversial war images very rapidly, which will hopefully get a bit of a scare out of the viewer. This is to bring some life back into the film after the silence and slowness of Andy dialing the phone number. The images I am inserting will probably be found from Google images and so I will have to make sure anything I used is free to use and non-copyrighted.
2:35- I want to end my film with the line "A drawing down of blinds." This to me represents the scene going black, and I thought a pov of the bin lid closing would be a good way to do this.
As you can see from the rough-cut, I still have a very long way to go in terms of getting it completed. Some of the effects I have added at the moment look very cheesy, and although I will keep some of them, I will definitely consider using higher production values and such in my future films. Unfortunately it is a little bit too late to re-shoot anything, and so the graininess that some of the shots have and the darkness is something I will just have to work on.
I have learnt the importance of making sure I have all the equipment I require, and also the importance of shooting something well in advance.
If I take care with these steps in the future, there is nothing stopping me from producing great quality work.
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