Final Edit

The film has been fully edited and so I thought I'd go over some of my thoughts of it and the problems  that I encountered whilst editing. I am overall very pleased with the footage, there weren't any huge problems just a number of small issues that could have been avoided, such as the image having too much gain, however overall I feel I recovered from them quite well. One of the issues was lighting, which changed quite abit on the day of filming. Though we didn't notice how badly it was changing, this has taught me not to trust my eyes when it comes to light and that bringing a light meter is a very good idea when filming. Two of the shots were simply too dark to use, I suspect that an ND filter may have been left on from a previous shot possibly. To over come this I decided to re-shoot to these scenes.

Another problem was encountered when attempting to edit the scenes that were re-shot, on the day the headphones were not working and so we tried filming without it. When I looked at the footage the background noise was so loud that the dialogue from the characters was very hard to hear. With not enough time to organise another re-shoot I made the best of the footage by dubing it with the audio from the original footage, which was too dark but the audio was fine. This worked well though with more time I would have prefered to re-shoot again and I have learnt not to simply trust the audio will be fine, but make sure it will be by using working headphones, which save alot of time and effort.

For the look of the film I'm going for a very high saturation, party because I like the look and also because I'm experimenting with having the saturation drain away I feel it would be a more effective if the change was as drastic as possible, so going from very high saturation to low saturation is preferable. Originally I was using two layered shots and manipulating opacity, however after meeting with Stu I was shown how to do the same effect much easier and with only one layer.

Overall I'm very pleased with how the footage turned out, depite any problems that I encountered, and now I need to sort out paperwork, the correct formats that are required and editing it into the full portmanteau.

Inspiration

I thought I'd reflect upon the inspirations behind my section of the portmanteau film. My section is about a man talking with death and facing his mortality.

The original script was inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the former in particular. I liked the idea of having the personification of death as a character and having a chat with those he has come to reap. The idea was one I had been interested in exploring for a while and thought that it would be a good one to use for my section of the film. I looked at stuff like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Discworld whilst writing the original script.

Once reveiwing the script and after making the decision to explore the idea of subtly within the script some of the more Discworld and Hitchhiker's Guide inspired parts were taken out and/or changed, however much of the remaining script and style of the piece remains in the final film and they remain great sources of inspiration to me. as a small reference to Discworld, becuase of it being an inspiration, the that Sam reads during the film is "Mort"  the first of the Discworld books with Death as the main character.

( Scenes with Death from sky one's adaptations of Discworld novels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpaVFgOlIJ4 )

( one of my favourite scenes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series exploring reincarnation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5jMQvgE_Vg )

Sitting on a bench, chatting.

I thought i'd talk about where the idea of a portmanteau film came from. The idea orginated from an afternoon hanging around in plymouth with Isaac, Ben and Simon. We had just finished a session with Dan, in which we were shown "Coffee and Cigarettes" by Jim Jarmusch.  ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379217/ )
We were sat down on a bench chatting and I was looking at a wall infront of us, upon which we were reflected, sitting on the bench, chatting. I said that a couple of people sitting on a bench talking would be a nice and simple idea for a film. Then we all started to talk and bounce ideas off one another, Ben, I think, suggested that doing the fiilm as a portmanteau would be an interesting idea. So we all decided to split the film up into four with each of us taking control of a section, acting as writing, director etc. Each would have a similar theme of people sat on a park bench talking. That's how the idea originated.

Filming and Testing Effects.

Most of the project has been filmed, due to avaliblity I was forced to use a Z1 camera rather than the AF100 or the 7D, however this didn't really matter. Another Issue however was more annoying, the marantz we got out had no card and as we didn't realise the marantz used a card we didn't check it after we got it out. This ment we could not use the marantz to record sound, we however got round this by lining directly into the camera. Time was also an issue as both the script and the shorts planned were alittle too amibous for a day of shooting, to combat this I quickly replanned the shots so that any unneccesary shots were incorperated into other shots, meaning less shot changes were needed, saving time. Other than that all shooting went well and only a few shots need to be filmed and after a short session checking the footage is okay and playing with Final Cut I have alot of new ideas of how to imply things instead of say them, for example having the colour slowly drain out of a scene so what begins overly saturated ends up with barely any colour what so ever to symbolise the character's death. I feel very confident that I will be able to create a good film out of the footage and have certainly learnt the value of resstrant when planning shots etc, time management and learnt to check absolutely everything after getting it out from the ERC.

Second draft

I recently had a short meeting with Dan about this project. We went over what I want from the project and he gave some points on the script, the main point being subtlety, which I have never been too good at. So after the meeting I wrote a second draft, in which instead of a kevin smith-esque talk with death, about Death, the main character slowly comes to realise the truth, if at all. Now all of the main moments of the film happen between the lines and they never openly talk about the situation so it's up to the audience to think and read between the lines rather than all the facts be presented to them in a monologue.

First Ideas and Intentions

For this project regarding a response to time space and place, Ben, Isaac, Simon and I have decided to work togetrher again as we feel that we work well together. We came up of an idea inspired by the film "Coffee and Cigarettes" of making our own portmanteau film, centered around a park bench, with each of us taking responsiblity and control of our own section of the film.

We all have different ideas to explore within our section. In mine I wish to explore the idea of someone facing death, and confronting it. I also wish to explore more of the visual aspect of the film as I have always been better at the writing and narrative side of film and haven't explored how I could tell the audience a story without having the character say it in a monoitlogue. As much as I love writing and narrative, I fear my work will suffer if I continue to ignore the visual aspects of it,  particuarlly as film is primarily a visual art form.

I have written a script so that I have the story clear in my head and am currently in the process of going over and improving the script.