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FINAL STUDIO COMPLETED

 

I could not have asked for a better group or studio leader. I am very proud of the films I’ve made throughout this studio and cannot wait to make more documentaries soon. 

Here’s a picture Bradley took while Izzi was doing stills photography and I was shooting footage of Elizabeth.

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An idea. 

Although I am very pleased with how the edit turned out, and the lovely dynamic we cultivated in our group wherein everyone was willing to help out at every stage, I wonder if perhaps it would have been useful to each edit our own individual versions of the film.

I say this, because in a group project you naturally end up doing the tasks you’re best at. I ended up with cinematography and editing. Throughout editing, we made plans to come together for the fine edit so that everyone could learn the basics of colour grading and fine tuning a film to bring it to the next level. This however never ended up happening because we simply ran out of time. This is a shame because it was a missed learning experience. As I didn’t add in the elements of sound design I also missed out on that learning experience. Further to this, one of the greatest outcomes of seeing all the other groups’ works was that I got to see many different styles of editing – films put together in ways I would never have thought to approach the same material. Editing can make all the difference. If we had each edited our own versions of the same material, much like we saw in the first film assignment for this class, we would have ended up with films that were completely stylistically and structurally different. This would have been fascinating, and further, it would have provided everyone with the opportunity to build upon their editing skills, not just those who already had strengths in this area.

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On Collaboration

While more often than not group projects produce haphazard, rushed and disjointed material from a group that has barely spoken throughout, working on this film has been far from that. Whilst there were the inevitable hiccups in transferring files from one another, issues with technical skills, differences in cameras, editing styles, timelines and the withdrawal of not one but two subjects from the film, this project has been very enjoyable. Each member of our group was willing to help in whatever capacity, and we worked efficiently as a team.

Throughout the process of editing I realised that I enjoy editing with other people far more than I enjoy editing alone. When editing a film with multiple people, there are others to bounce ideas off and work through problems with. Here, although the initial structural edit couldn’t be done by five people at once, working through the fine cut with five different sets of eyes on the project was immensely helpful, as instead of simply watching the film over and over alone (and eventually going numb to it), we could watch it once, each notice separate things that needed to be changed, and offer different solutions to the problems presented. These sessions were always the most productive and enjoyable edits.

In addition to this, it should be noted that having one person edit alone, and then transferring the film to another person to edit the next stage of the film is not a productive way to edit. This simply ends up with a mess of different editing styles which ends up taking a large amount of time and energy to fix. This can be avoided by having one person control the edit, or by having more collaborative editing sessions scheduled (with a group of five this is always a difficult task however).

Having five different people with specific roles, although perhaps unnecessary for a project of this scale, was a far more relaxed way to approach a film, as each member could focus on their individual strengths. For example, Izzi and Alice took the lead as producers, contacting the subjects after we had developed the initial idea. This is the part of documentaries that I always find the to be the most stressful process, so having others to take on this role was very useful, and ultimately made the process much smoother and more enjoyable. Having additional people to shoot b-roll with was also very helpful as it took some of the pressure off, and further, by having someone else ask questions, and another record sound, I was able to really focus on my main task of cinematography. Many hands make light work, and many kind, communicative, enthusiastic and motivated hands make work fun.

For a group project, we really lucked out with this one.

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SHE DRIVES

Elizabeth became a taxi driver in the 1980s, Marz started driving for Uber in the 2010s. Though separated by a generation, these two women share more than just a job.

“It’s a bit of a boys club….”

When Elizabeth started driving her taxi in 1982, she was told it wasn’t the job for a woman. Over the next three decades she proved her critics wrong, built a fleet of female drivers and changed the industry from the inside.

Marz began driving for Uber to make some extra cash. Though she expected it to be a challenge, she quickly discovered that there is more to being a driver than just driving.

Produced by Alice Fairweather, Izzi Hally & Bradley Dixon 

Directed by Anna K. Miers & Alice Fairweather

Cinematography Anna K. Miers, Izzi Hally & Zitni Putriadi

Sound recordist Bradley Dixon

Edited by Anna K. Miers, Bradley Dixon, Izzie Hally, Zitni Putriadi & Alice Fairweather

Sound mix Bradley Dixon, Anna K. Miers

Runtime: 07:46:17

 

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SHE DRIVES

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Final edits

 

#1. The trouble with multiple editors. After we’d finalised the story edit, it came time for me to start applying the b-roll to the film. This is where I encountered an issue. The b-roll the Zitni and Alice had so nicely cut up for me, was unusable. Somehow the file names had been changed, and thus none of the files in their sequence corresponded to any of those on my laptop, and hence I couldn’t include the b-roll they had cut up unless I went through and manually found each film clip for each piece of randomly named b-roll. This meant that I had to start cutting up the b-roll again, leaving little time to fine tune the b-roll placement before the fine cut showing, and this was evident. Although the basic elements of the b-roll I had included were good, some were cut too fast, I included too many shots in some places and not all were paced perfectly. So after screening, we went through and noted down the elements that needed to change and got to work.

 

#2. Soundscape, final edits & reflections. Bradley kindly took the project to make final pacing adjustments along with adding in soundscape elements and music. The soundscape elements were something I had not used regularly myself in films, yet they make all the difference and add an entire textural layer to the film, grounding it in reality. The soundscape elements that Bradley included worked very well in achieving this, and he worked well with the limited amount of materials we had gathered for the soundscape while shooting. Some of the elements were far too loud and had to be toned down during the fine edit, and the music still presented a problem, as it cut between loud abrasive country music, to techno/electronic music, intended to represent the country/city, but it just did not work and was very distracting to the piece, especially when placed over Elizabeth who’s sweet personality and slow pacing made this disjunct even more apparent. Something more ambient was needed, to keep the pace of the piece, becoming slightly louder only occasionally when needed. I took the piece of more electronic music Bradley had found, layered a few elements, and quietly laid it under the piece, bringing it up only a few times throughout. This seemed to work better, and was the best we could muster with the time left and the resources of free, archival music that were available to us.

 

It was then on to the final adjustments to the piece. After stabilising shots, matching colour between cameras, fixing exposure and contrast to a better medium, I started on a simple colour grade. I initially tried to keep with our initial idea of having two distinct aesthetic palettes – orange in the country, blue in the city – however in practice this did not work, the aesthetic palettes of the original shots were too similar and grading them differently essentially just made both washed out and wrong. In the end I opted to grade them together, and create a cohesive feel throughout the piece, relying on the age, location, job factors to separate them instead. I feel this worked and ultimately created a nice looking piece.

Some elements that even in the finished piece still need to be worked on include:

• Conforming different shutter speeds to look the same – this is especially evident in one particular shot wherein the taxi is driving out the frame, and it just looks wrong. This will bug me forever and I intend to find a way to fix it, as the methods I tried did not do a good enough job.
• Sound – I didn’t have time to do extra fine adjustments to the sound, so there is still noise that should be removed, and mixing that needs to occur to make the interview more cohesive and smooth, as some sections where dialogue begins are quite jarring and should have been gradated to avoid this.
• Finessed the stabilisation – there are some sections which a more toned down approach to stabilising would have worked, but where quick fixes didn’t. There are also some sections, while not super noticeable, have stabilising artefacts present in them, which could also be fixed by finessing the stabilisation tools.

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Edit updates

#1. Long structure edit

The edit with both Marz and Elizabeth came back today. It is still very long, with not a whole lot of discernible structure to it – as Bradley said “it’s gone from a film about gender to just two ladies having a chat about their experiences.” All of the relevant parts are there however, so I need to just give it a big chop down to really condense the story, make it punchy and concise, and bring the focus back to the issues of gender dynamics in the industry.

 

#2. Consultation with Rohan

After condensing the film down more and focussing on getting the story, without b-roll or music, we had our second consultation with Rohan, wherein he gave us some feedback on the structure and timing of the piece.

 

Following the consultation we immediately went down to the edit suites and all went over the piece together, working through the changes suggested, and making our own adjustments as we went. This was a really great process, and much preferable to editing alone as you have people to make decisions with you and bounce off. Plus it’s just generally more fun.

After these adjustments, I sent the story edit back to Rohan for final comments before starting on the b-roll.

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Storyboarding 

Today in class we went over the structure for the final edit of the film, creating a rough paper edit to give us some direction to follow.

Over the weekend Alice will be cutting down Marz’ interview and intercutting it with Elizabeth’s interview, and Zitni and Alice will cut up the b-roll footage, removing any useless articles.

On Monday I’ll start making the fine adjustments to the structure. Then we have another consultation with Rohan where we will finalise the structure. Following this, I can start overlaying b-roll while Bradley and Zitni find music. After the b-roll is complete, Bradley will take the film to make adjustments to timing and work on the music and soundscape elements for the film, and then pass it back to me for colour grading, titles and fine adjustments.

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Shooting with Marz 

 

 

Shoot Day

Today we shot our second and final interview with Marz. This interview seemed to have an entirely different tone, and Marz was far more forthcoming than Elizabeth, and we did not have to push her as much for further information about things she brought up. This interview seems less personal, as we discussed broader topics of gender bias, with some personal stories accompanying. I believe this will turn into a great companion for Elizabeth’s interview.

Alice, Bradley, Zitni and myself (Izzie couldn’t make it) all met up early to check all camera settings, equipment and to go over questions. This was a good idea as Marz had to push the interview back a few hours, and so we all had a lovely lunch while we waited. Although we still had camera issues setting the white balance on Zitni’s camera, which we didn’t manage to remedy before we had to start shooting, this was easily managed in post – I checked in premiere, as the footage could be matched fairly well despite being recorded at very different white balance.

We maintained the same roles from the first shoot, and successfully recorded a great interview. This time around Bradley captured more atmos sound which will be very helpful in the edit, and Zitni recorded some beautiful b-roll while we were recording the interview.

After the interview had concluded, we went outside to shoot some footage of Marz in a car, first attaching a go-pro to the hood of the car, and then jumping inside to record some footage of the car’s interior. We also mounted the go-pro to the car’s window to shoot the rolling streetscape, however the red blinking light of the camera reflected in the window making all of these otherwise beautiful shots unusable, this is good to remember for in future this would could easily be covered up. After shooting in the car, we jumped out, and I took a few more shots of Marz driving through the streets from outside the car. Following this, we went back inside, and I took some more b-roll while we packed up and Marz gifted us all plants(!).

Another successful interview!

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Elizabeth Rough Cut

 

As we don’t have the interview with Marz yet, I decided to keep the rough cut of Elizabeth rather long to allow us to choose the portions that fit best into a discussion with Marz. It’s still very rough as I didn’t want to edit too deeply or cut out too much until we had the other footage to cut against. I created a rough structure for the film, and focussed on separating the interview into different topics to work through.

 

Feedback ✂️

topic is topical — female centric stories in the workplace

shot beautifully — world she lived in

more of her active day to day problems, how she deals with things

more anecdotal specific stories of how things have changed in the last 30 years?

needs a hook — part where she says a taxi driver is a psychologist, doctor etc. should go at the front, then move into chronological beginning of the story