In today’s workshop, we viewed the final products of Project Brief 3 from our class. We were then asked to review the films produced by those sitting around our table.

 

Grace Thomas – ‘Rosalie’

Grace made some interesting choices for this project brief. I feel by omitting a soundtrack, the interview felt a lot more candid; which was a very nice approach. However I felt like some of the image overlays felt a little bit clunky because they appeared ‘above’ the shot. Also it was tricky switching back and forth between descriptive and humorous overlays – it was a little bit jarring to determine what vibe the film was trying to give off.

You can check out ‘Rosalie’ here.

 

Fiona McEwan – ‘NED’

I feel like FIona made a very interesting subject choice. Ned and his discussion about learning to become an animator was a good choice, as I think he had an interesting story to tell. I also liked the framing of the interview with the animation running on loop in the background, to give a little bit of ‘life’ to the room around Ned. One criticism I had was that the soundtrack used was a little bit overpowering. I think, by editing the sound in Premiere, it would have been a little bit easier to hear Ned’s dialogue. This can be done using Premiere, but mixing the audio in Audition would have been another possible remedy for this.

You can check out ‘NED’ here.

 

Cameo Turner – ‘The Everlasting Job: Liam Craig Turner’

I liked Cameo’s decision to have very few shots of the interviewee. At first I found this a little bit jarring, but the more I think about it the more I realise that having cutaways to the interviewee talking to the camera would have drawn attention away from the subject. Also; adorable babies are adorable — she picked some great footage to use for this project. One criticism I can find is that with the large amount of found footage of babies, it was sometimes difficult to tell which shots were of Liam and which were found footage. Perhaps in future some sort of editing technique to better differentiate between shot and found footage would have been helpful.

You can check out ‘The Everlasting Job: Liam Craig Turner’ here.

 

Hattie Read – ‘Margaret Pollett’

I really liked Hattie’s choice for an interview subject. I think she gave a great interview, and I can imagine Hattie had a lot of great content to work with here. I think she also was very effective in her use of found footage. I think one criticism I found was that there wasn’t as much of a narrative to this as there were to others. I think creating some sort of link between the stories might have improved and rounded out the portrait a bit more. I felt like I came away from this knowing some of Margaret’s life but perhaps not really understanding who she is as a person.

You can check out ‘Margaret Pollett’ here.