Post Production EvaluationFor the post production module this semester we had three tasks, two of which were to be achieved in pairs and the final one which was an individual project. The three pieces of work covered the following three genres; Drama, Documentary and Comedy. As well as these primary tasks, we were also given a range of smaller secondary tasks to meet week to week which were set to help enhance our views and knowledge of the world of post-production. These were in the form of given research questions, a reading list and self-directed editing reviews on a visual medium of our choice.

The TasksDrama: Drama comes in various hybrid forms, there is also a difference between editing drama in film and TV, whereby one is more factory based and the other is more about the creativity and variance. With this in mind I put myself in the “Creativity and Variance” mode for editing this drama piece. For the pairs projects I worked with Clarice. The footage for the Drama piece entitled Night Journey was one of the hardest. We were given the raw footage which we went through and labelled, and though there was a script readily available, it was still challenging to form a narrative that not only we as the creators, but the audience members understood. Overall I don’t think we quite achieved the universal understanding status that we had in mind and the final piece leaned more towards the experimental side but the majority of feedback we got back from the class was positive.Around the time of putting together the edit for the Drama piece I had recently finished reading In The Blink Of An Eye (Murch ,2001), and true to the title of the book the quote that stood out to me and helped me when editing the picture was the following quote; Look at the lamp across the room. Now look back at me. Look back at the lamp. Now look back at me again. Do you see what you did? You blinked. Those are cuts. (Murch, Pg.60, 2001). I applied this when editing, which helped me not to focus on one character to long. The more I started the more interesting the picture/voiceover and therefore the longer I kept the cut, and the same goes for the opposite. Not every cut was inspired by this technique but it came in handy when deciding whether or not a cut was necessary in a place I was unsure about.

Documentary: The second assignment (In A Climbers Hands) was a easier to configure in terms of the raw footage we were given, what was left for us to do was work out how we wanted to tell the story, and how we wanted the protagonist (further to be known as Emmanuel) to be perceived. Emmanuel was like a blank A4 piece of paper, which had both positives and negatives. The positive side to this is that we got to mould Emmanuel the way we wanted, giving him a personality and making him seem vulnerable etc. The negative is that audience members would get bored easily if we had him on screen for too long. I went around this problem by not having any face time with Emmanuel, using his voice over images of him rock-climbing. This back fired as during feedback we were told that this technique would make the audience not relate to him at all. With this in mind I tweaked this, and had a few clips of face time. Not really being a fan of documentaries that veer away from nature and animals, I found editing this very difficult and used my knowledge of standard Drama narrative editing when approaching this project. I also used what I knew from watching nature/animal documentaries which is where the idea of not seeing Emmanuel’s face and keeping with his voice and actions derived from. It was definitely a necessary experience learning documentary editing, despite not being a fan of the genre I can apply the techniques used to various other genres, and it helped in understanding the audiences’ emotive responses to the protagonist.

Example of Blink = Cut. This works better when you have no sound to manipulate blinking, as well as this I worked on the picture edit.

Initial cut where I decided to keep away from interviews with Emmanuel, but instead decided to get an emotive response out of the audience by portraying him as a sensitive, solitary person who is passionate about Rock Climbing.

This is the revised edit, where we have a few face to face interviews with Emmanuel. His perception has been changed slightly where the audience now view him as strong willed and determined. Here I am channelling Lumet (Making Movies), by knowing my story arc, which in turn influences my edit.

Working in a pair: Editing is usually seen as a solitary job, the work you create is based on what you personally envision; having to only answer to the director, so having two people work equally on the projects was more challenging than I expected. Though other groups had elected to split both the pair’s projects between the two of them, Clarice and I wanted to work on both together. We decided it was easier if one of us focused on Sound and the other on Picture, Clarice taking the reins of the former and me the latter. This system worked and we used it for both projects, I would put together an assembly and get Clarice’s advice and she would find a range of sound choices and get my opinion. I think we worked really well together and this showed me that if you are working with the right people then editing need not be a solitary confinement.

Comedy: The comedy (Out Of Sight) edit was a little different whereby we had to perfectly put together a single scene from the entire piece. Contrary to disagreement I chose to do the montage scene. The scene was simple enough to conceive, but although the raw footage for the scene may have been twenty minutes long, once you weeded out the bad bits and cut it to a beat you weren’t left with a lot. This meant that once finished the piece fell short of the two minute target. Although I could have left it as it was, I am so used to conveying a story with a beginning, middle and end that the one scene didn’t seem to be enough for me. Ergo I added the beginning of the next scene and thought that overall it still worked, and made the piece feel more rounded.Comedy editing in general is hard to achieve because not only are you cutting on the action and emotion of your characters, but you also have to consider cutting on the jokes, and puns and the reaction of the people it is aimed towards. As well as that different types of comedy require different editing techniques, so that had to be put into consideration when editing this piece which I would categorise as Slapstick Comedy; simple puns and over exaggerated acting. The comedy we were giving wasn’t exactly of the laugh out loud variety and I thought the montage sequence would be the best chance of getting a laugh or two out of the audience, helped by the choice of music I chose to put under it, this was effective. As previously mentioned Comedy, though it is its own genre can also be mixed with others, therefore it was good to use the most simplistic form of comedy to understand how to reconstruct it in a way to amuse audience members, a skill that can then go and be applied to funny segments/scenes that may occur in drama or even documentary pieces.

ResearchWhat really that helped with my overall enjoyment and understanding of the module was the various reviews, research and reading that I did. For example from the extensive list of books we were suggested to read I learned about personal experiences, problems and solutions that editors have had in the field. As the module went on I realised that my editing reviews on various mediums became more in depth and I stopped having to search for what to talk about in the edit.

The Reading List: From the reading list my favourite book would have to be Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, the quote that really stood out to me was about defining the Emotional Theme of your work; What is the theme of the movie, the spine, the arc? What does the movie mean to me? Personalising the movie is very important. (Lumet, p.10, 1996). Although this quote was taken in context of Directing I think it still applies to every aspect of the production process. Not only finding the emotional theme of the work, but also its emotion

Note the differences in the size of cuts of the montage sequence. By cutting to beat it means that the cuts are quicker ergo smaller, you can also then see that in retrospect with the former and latter that I added more to the sequence to get it to seem more like a story, this also helped the overall length.

to you helps you to shape and understand the work better. This was the notion I put forth when editing In a Climbers Hands, the documentary piece. Applying this to picture edit allowed me to come up with a story arc for the Emmanuel.

Q&A: The reading list was academic, the reviews were personal and the research topics we were given each week were more about general knowledge. They were things that we should be aware of in the industry as editors, stemming from technology to the personal enjoyment. Overall it helped shape our understanding as editors and made us consider everything from the reasons behind the software we used to who started the movement and why.

Film Reviews: I decided to keep my reviews in the theme of which ever project genre we were on. Looking at the use of Voiceovers in Drama for Night Journey, Documentary styled editing for In A Climbers Hands and different Forms of Comedy for Out Of Sight. I felt as though it worked best that way as it made it easier for me to edit the piece knowing I had deconstructed and pinpointed the highs and lows of something similar to it. I also varied what I reviewed, skipping between Film, TV and Trailers, giving me a wide breadth to analyse.

In conclusion the module on editing was very diverse; it was good to edit a range of different genres. It was also realistic to be given nothing but the stock footage and the script to work off, as we are used to being on set throughout production when in reality that isn’t how it’s done. On top of the three main assignments, the research topics given week to week paved a way to a new form of thinking and consideration for the past, present and future of editing. Documentaries such as Side by Side (Kenneally, 2012) and Books like Screencraft - Editing & Post-Production (McGrath, 2001) to name a few. Something that I have defiantly improved upon is my research abilities and my technique towards approaching a new edit. The need of three point editing has been drummed in and has proved very efficient, and will be something that I continue to do without a second thought. The understanding and the bane of the phrase; Don't worry we'll fix it in the cutting room (Rosenblum and Karen, Pg.1, 1986). A goal that could have been better achieved is getting a little more than one session working on avid as it is the industry standard form of editing, but the introduction we got lead the way for my further research and tinkering with the software to have a solid starting point. In retrospect, certain books on the reading list and the various research topics as well as my own handpicked editing reviews not only helped to inform the module projects, but will help to inform further editing I might pursue.

Reference

Lument, S 1996 Making Movies USA Vintage

McGrath, D 2001 Screencraft – editing and post production USA Focal Press

Murch, W 2001 In the blink of an eye 2nd Edition USA Silman-James Press

Rosenblum, R & Karen, R 1986 When The Shooting Stops... The Cutting Begins: An Editors Story USA Da Capo Press