Month: April 2015

Feedback

On my piece

Red – good feeling about Jen, strong sense of what she’s about

Black – Jen’s name could have been more obvious

Yellow – found footage suited really well — good to find footage of Cambodia

Green – different shot sizes could have made piece more visually interesting

I gave green hat feedback to Jen. I thought her piece was outstanding but it would have been interesting to see the negative side of Amitoze’s visual impairment. The positive tone was really strong and added a lot to her piece but if she’d chosen to explore the other side I would have been curious to see the result.

Project brief no. 3

project brief 3 from Ellie Jamonts on Vimeo.

I’m happy with how my editing has developed since the last project brief. Simple techniques such as dissolves and slip editing have made a big difference to the smoothness of my piece. However, I think I failed in making Jen feel comfortable. A different set-up — with me sitting out of frame and talking to her conversationally – would have made a big difference.

 

I’m learning that portrait-making seems, like everything, a lot easier than it is. My piece is relatively straightforward, an interview edited down, but I found I had to make lots of choices to keep the integrity of the piece. I’d decided to let Jen speak for herself and then edit that rather than making an abstract piece, but the opportunities presented by found footage in particular were very tempting. In the future, I’d like to explore the abstract potential of portraits.

 

Before I began editing I watched a tutorial on Lynda. Watching a tutorial sounds like an obvious step but I went into my second brief without doing it and the difference it made this time was enormous. Since I watched it pre-production, I had new ideas about what to film based on the editing techniques I’d learnt. Although I think I’m still far away from realising my potential as an editor – and I don’t believe that editing will ever be a key skill of mine, I don’t have the attention to detail – I’ll continue to learn from the experts rather than trying to figure it out as I go along.

 

Having the actual experience of setting up a camera, negotiating filming etc has given me a lot to think about. I’m glad I was familiar with the camera, although I did have trouble with the tripod. I understand now, through practical experience, that it’s essential to go in with a plan. I wasn’t dissatisfied with the questions and plan I’d scribbled down but as I go on to develop larger and more complex media artefacts it’s clear I’m going to need to implement a system. As far as I can tell, the best way to develop this beyond getting advice is through trial and error.

The flexibility to edit Boyhood

I’ve written about how absolutely in awe I am of the editors and the editing process. The thought of wading through so much footage and then having the presence of mind to organise it into something beautiful is almost horrifying. I’m not a particularly detail-orientated person.

 

I thought about this in relation to two things: the idea in the lecture that technical skills are of diminishing importance (at least to a student interested in making media) since they’re so fast-moving; and the most-robbed film of the awards season, Boyhood.

 

Thinking about such a mammoth task led me eventually to one question: how the hell did they edit Boyhood? A film that was shot over 12 years, with rapidly changing technology and processes, is an effort in itself, but how would you go about editing it? I found an article from Filmmaker Magazine (you can read it here) that answers that question.

 

Did the technical jargon go largely over my head? Well, yes. First Assistant Editor, Mike Saenz, said, “We’d have needed to go back and retransfer tens of hours of film, and we didn’t want to do that. So we kept on, even until last year, doing things this really archaic way…” and went on to describe DV tapes and EDL lists and a panic based around camera reports and 3-perf and 4-perf, which turned out not to be a problem at all.

 

Still, in spite of my ignorance, I gathered enough from context to understand one thing: everything changes very, very quickly, and flexibility and imagination to work with it are more essential than ever. That gives me a little hope (although I know it doesn’t excuse me from learning how to use the technology in the first place).