Statement of intentions

For the upcoming media exhibition day, we have been asked to provide a one-minute screener for the presentation, as well as a visual poster, a page on the Writing For Film blog and a compilation of longer clips for the exhibition. Bonnie and I have divided said deliverables fairly and equally in order to best showcase our hypothetical feature, Black Flat. I will endeavour to put together the one-minute screener, Bonnie will make the poster and together we will write the page for the blog. I hope that our work is well received by the media community and the amount of effort that went in is recognised.

Reflective report

The media exhibition day was a fantastic opportunity to not only showcase our own work, but also see what the rest of the cohort has been up to. And who’s gonna say no to free nibbles and drinks?!

As for Squadron’s contribution, Bonnie and I divided the deliverables fairly and equally as planned. I was responsible for the one-minute screener, while she took on the Black Flat poster. We were luckily both able to churn these out pretty quickly and were satisfied with the quality of each. Bonnie’s poster looked a treat, featuring a number of screen grabs, relevant imagery and succinct descriptions of our objectives and practices.

My experience editing the screener was actually really positive and I was pleased with what I was able to create in a short span of time. While there was mixed suggestions as to what we could include in the screener (clips, text, voiceover etc.), I decided to focus on creating something of a high quality that would be engaging and intriguing for the audience. With that in mind, my aim became to merge our scenes together into a trailer format in a way that showcased the best of our work, whilst encapsulating the eerie vibe we originally set out to establish. I was glad I got the opportunity to do this as the outcome was in fact more so what Squadron intended to create from the beginning of our project. As seen in the presentation, Jackson and I only had time to piece together the two complete scenes in their entirety, and we did not get the chance to take this extra step to merge the two scenes together. Thus, the exhibition presented perfect opportunity to undertake this step, as I knew we had some great moments that would suit the trailer format seamlessly.

In terms of the stylistic tools utilised, I made the effort to colour grade and add music and text to the screener. As we did not have a chance to properly do these things for our complete scenes for our week twelve presentation, I was keen to see to what extent they would transform our footage. I believe the colour grade really tied it all together, with the blue hue giving it a cinematic feel and creating the ideal dark and creepy mood. In addition, Jackson’s score had a similar effect: in its complete form it was ideal for the length for the clip, and I used it as to guide the pace and build-up of the trailer. The titles, albeit cliché, also served to enhance the dramatic nature of the screener and worked well to transition from one scene or moment to the next.

I would say that the most challenging aspect of editing the screener was trying to condense our footage down to the one-minute mark. There was lots of great conversation between Emily and Ted that I was forced to cut out, but I was conscious to include the highlights whilst ensuring it still flowed in a logical order. Whilst I was in the suites, Paul stepped in to give me a hand with some of the technical aspects, which was a big help as it opened my eyes to some different ways of doing things. Putting this screener together ultimately tested my skills as a solo editor, but I think I was able to do did a decent job. I certainly learnt a lot about pacing, titles, transitions and colour grading in the process.

Bonnie and I also collaboratively wrote the blog post for the website through the use of a shared Google document. We used the script for our week twelve presentation as a template then edited it accordingly to provide a more general, well-rounded insight into our production practice. We also added our film poster and a few behind the scenes photographs to enhance the visual aesthetic of the page, as well as of course our three final film prototypes. While it was hard to gauge the level of engagement of onlookers with our film, based on comments from my peers I think it was quite well received. It’s always nice to hear positive feedback on something you’ve worked so hard on, so that was a bonus for me.

Upon reflection, the presentation and exhibition was a great opportunity to showcase our work to like-minded others. As a class, I believe we collectively had some strong outcomes that we can be truly proud of.

The artefacts

Our screener/teaser trailer can be found below, and the blog post for the website can be found here.