During the process of creating both the two minute and five minute films we experienced both positive and negative situations which at times challenged us in the production and post production stages of development.
During pre-production it was clear that the idea needed refining in order for it to make a clearer sense of the emotion. Due to this we as a team decided to re-draft a storyboard, create shot lists and soundscape lists, and create a film treatment in writing in order for our idea to make more sense on paper. This gave each member of the team a clearer idea of what the directors intentions were before filming and to organise how the days of production on set were to unfold. As the editor although I wasn't able to make one of the shoots, it was clear to me that the actor which was cast by the director wasn't strong enough to convey the emotions we had wished. The actor wasn't comfortable enough dancing around the streets conveying the emotion of happiness in the way we would have liked, and thus has decreased the effectiveness of the idea. Due to lack of time however, the decision was made to keep using him rather than replace him, which personally wouldn't have been my first decision.
After looking through the footage from the shoots it became clear that the main idea was lost in the acting because it wasn't as strong as we would have liked, but due to time constraints we just had to work with it. This started to throw challenges our way because many shots that were taken didn't show enough happiness with in to make any sense of what the film was about. This meant we relied heavily on the sound to display this to the audience, rather than the body language and dialogue of the actor showing this. The stronger part of the film I feel is the state of anxiety on the stage at the end of the film, I believe the set design was strong and that itself engaged the audience more to empathise and relate to the characters emotions, rather than this being displayed through the actor himself.
One of the mains strengths of the edit I believe is the colour grading, and how a high saturated picture was used to represent the happiness, and the de-saturated colder picture was used to allow the audience space to empathise with the character in the sadder, more emotionally unstable shots. Without this I believe the narrative of the film would have been less clear and not make as much sense to the audience as we would like. One of the weaknesses however was the variety of shots I had available to use in order to convey the emotions of both happy and sad. I found it extremely challenging to edit without sound for the two minute because we weren't able to use synchronised sound. I felt I needed more communication with the sound department to understand what they wanted in the cut, so that it could correlate to the order of shots in my edit and the types of shots I used.
It became apparent how important Walter Murch's six rules of editing are when the edit solely revolves around the most important rule of emotion. Due to a lack of emotion in the actor it was vital that as the editor I ensure that the performance of the emotion is portrayed better by manipulating the edit. By planning a concise shot list and order of useable footage, and specific cut points of each shot the final film became more emotional due to the nature of the cutting alone. This has taught me that the story is driven and changed in post, and how important it is to ensure the cut is perfect to create the exact message the director wishes to.
Communication started to drop when it came to the five minute film, because of this we ended up with two rough cuts, one by myself and one by the director. This as a result wasted a lot of time, and meant that two very different ideas were created in post. After discussion, and viewing both ideas we decided to sit down and recreate and assemble one idea from both the rough cuts. In the end this was very effective, because it allowed us to experiment with two very different ideas, and I believe we have created the best fine cut edit we could have from the footage we had available. However it does give an outlook for further projects on team management and communication skills.
As a project I believe we worked well as a team to begin with, and towards the end the communication dropped to a level where it could have been better. I think this assignment itself has taught me personally that it important to allow each member of the team to go about their own role, and seek guidance and feedback from the rest of the team as and when it is required. Nonetheless the organisation of the workflow and the consistency of effort has shown, which reduced confusion and made it more effective at reaching the deadline as a team collectively. In my opinion because we had so long to create the edit and the sound, I feel that the time we had could have been utilised better and more evenly across all areas of production.
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