My initial observation of this clip is the use of a long focal length which has the effect of flattening the image, the cameraman is far away from the subjects and has zoomed in making size and distance hard to distinguish. It is hard to grasp perspective, the cars moving across the screen completely swallow whatever else was in the frame and act as distorted motion blurs that at times help hide edits between shots. A lot of emphasis is on form and motion. The zoom allows  for a wide depth of field within the frame, this allows the audience to focus on an intimate close up of a face yet still leaves a sense of distance and unobstrusive observation.

The clip almost feels like a montage or slide show of the inhabitants of Paris, with smooth edits between 2-4 second clips of various people. I think the intention is to allow a sense of what Paris is like through its various inhabitants. There are times of clever editing, for example succeeding the shots of women leg is a shot of a man looking back which makes it look like he was looking at the ladies but probably was not actually.

A point that keeps being emphasised and of which is of utmost importance when making and viewing documentaries is the fact that a documentary is a manipulated version of reality. A dcumentary is not a survelliance camera in a supermarket, as the reading points out, but a constructed and influenced and contrived film or work that regardles of whether the filmmaker has an agenda is in fact their view on that reality. All elements that must be deciding upon during the filmmaking process inclusing mise-en-scene, lighting, focal length etc are all manipulations on the reality they are trying to capture.

In the interview with Haslell Wexler, the point about the filmmaker envisaging how a shot will work and forseeing what needs to be shot in order for this to happen and overtly manipulating the shot in order to do so made me think about my documentary. At various steps along the way of producing our documentary we have been sharing examples of what we want the finished product to look like and because of this we have asked our interview subjects to do certain things or say certain things on camera. We also at times have asked people to act things out in front of us.

Ctrl-Alt-V – Paste Attributes.

This shortcut will come in handy when we are working on stylistic elements like tone, filter, colour correction and grain reduction. This way we can paste the attributes that we have changed on one clip directly to another, meaning if the clips are similar aesthetically we don’t have to change them all individually.

Shift-5 – Effect controls.

We will be using effect controls a lot during our edit so I think a shortcut to that panel will be handy.

= – Zoom in.

Instead of dragging the cursor along the bottom of the timeline constantly, a shortcut to zoom in and out quickly will be invaluable. You constantly need to zoom in and out to find and arrange clips and to slice and trim them.

S – Snap.

Sometimes you need to snap so the clips match up directly behind the one before and without snapping you have to zoom all the way in or free handedly place the clip there and its not the most precise way of doing things.

There are numerous types of sound in this clip of Forbidden Lies (2007), as the clip transitions from a make-believe flashback-esque sequence to real world montage. To highlight the fantastical nature at the beginning of the clip, music is layered with bird chirping that is much too loud to sound natural. This sound effect could have beens sourced from a free sound effect website or by recording a bird with a sound recorder. The twist visual effect is accompanied with music and chimes that could have also been soucrced from an online archive. The rest of the flash-back scene has foley sounds including car noises, wind and a thump when the scarf hits the ground. This could have been recorded in a studio. These sounds seem unnatural as well as they are louder and more abrasive as they would be in real life.

The rest of the clip primarily uses diagetic sounds that are synced with their visuals and usually blend into the next shot by running over the top or layered with other diagetic sounds from that next shot. Sound effects are also used here to support the dialogue, for example the sound of a camera shutter and a rattle snake.