Select from one of the readings and briefly describe two point that you have taken from it. Points that interest you, something you could apply to you own documentary.

In the reading Sheila Bernard explores the different ways to present even a focused chronological story in an order that better satisfies the requirements of good dramatic storytelling. She notes that through the imaginative manipulation of time that the filmmaker can present events in an order that they can control. Conversely, in a documentary driven by a narrative sequence of events the filmmaker can’t change the important facts of the main underlying chronology, meaning you can tell the story in the order you like as long as you do it accurately.

“Filming real life is a constant struggle to distill reality into a meaningful subset of itself, into the telling moments, the telling gestures, the lines of dialogue that will suggest the rest of the scene without actually having to see the rest of the scene.”

Bernard notes that shooting through editing is a process of expanding and/or collapsing real time and is about filming a variety of footage so that when it comes to the editing stage there is sufficient material to make the creative edit possible. Steven Ascher’s quote from the reading above outlines the importance of the editing stage as a way to articulate the essence of the scene in a moment, without having to spell it out for the viewer with the whole scene. Furthermore, achieving importance in scenes can also be achieved through the amount of time you devote to a scene to signify their weight within the piece. This is something we’ll have to plan and experiment with in our documentary as we have so many characters and it will be pivotal to interpret their weight to the story by the amount of time the viewer gets to spend with them.

“There are two primary reasons to edit an interview: to focus information for placement in the best possible location in your film’s story and to shorten it.”

Bernard makes some interesting comments about condensing interviews, particularly about the ethical consideration in condensing the material that doesn’t alter the original meaning. Our interviews and filled with great moments and sound bites we can use in correlation with the battle events. However we have to be careful not to displace the comments too much from the base of the interview, as our topic holds a fine line and the last thing we want to do is to satirise the subjects through the edit.

“It’s generally easier to cut into a hard consonant, such as b, t, or v. Words that begin with soft consonants, such as s or h, can be more difficult.”

I find this last quote incredibly interesting, as it’s not really something you initially think about when editing footage. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up with the progression of images that you forget about whether the cut actually works on a harmonic level for the viewer. I’ve experienced this with sound and music, where cutting on a certain note simply doesn’t work, but it will be fascinating to experiment this with speech.

Reference

Curran Bernard, S. “Manipulating Time.” Documentary storytelling for film and videomakers, Burlington: Focal Press, 2003. Page 63-73

“From a distant gaze …” (1964) directed by Jean Ravel, picture Pierre Lhomme & Chris Marker, words by Louis Aragon, narrated by Jean Negroni, music by Michel Legrand.

Describe a few things that intrigue you – it might be shot construction, camera work, editing, overall structure, thematic concerns etc. Describe the camera work and why you think it has been shot that way.

“From a distant gaze…” (1964, Jean Ravel) has been shot in a way to get the viewer right amongst the action of the shot, so they can feel the movement as much as see it.

The framing of shots is captivating as it only allows you to see a certain part of things at a certain time before it shows you something else, for example when the shot is following the man with the ladders, as he walks further along away from the camera the shot moves down to show a monkey on a leash. Therefore the figure who was just the man with the ladders then becomes the man with ladders and a monkey. Through this technique, the shots act as a constant discovery of space.

The space within the frame also contested, with shots being tight within the scenes, zoomed in on certain parts of the movement sometimes making the viewer feeling claustrophobic with their relationship with what’s on screen. For example, in the beginning of the clip we see the people walking with the occasional car driving past taking over the shot in front of them. This choice to shoot from a far and allow the cars to disrupt the shot at different moments, juxtaposes the organic movement of people as if it’s overpowered by mechanical movement, perhaps suggesting the mechanical takeover of movement on people.

In terms of camera work, there are moments when you can truly appreciate the fearlessness in following a shot for a long time, sitting and tracking the movement instead of moving on. This can be seen when the little boy bounces the basketball along the street, people walk past him but in us following him, he is isolated to his own world where bouncing and being a child is the only priority. Furthermore, editing follows the flow of movement throughout the piece, only getting people’s legs at the start to disassociate them from the body, but correlating it with other people’s legs.

This short clip is also very inspiring for our documentary about Larping, with many of the shots being on field in the action and framing things close up, to be able to re-interpret this kind of edit where movement is sustained and explored would be an achievement to strive towards in our piece.

Most application reserve keyboard shortcuts for the functions that you use most often. It is really good to learn all of these as it will speed up your editing and additionally alert you to functions that the software developers and other users find important. (You can learn much about the software by looking at keyboard shortcuts).

Find the keyboard shortcuts for Premiere (hint, film-tv blog) and note four or more functions that you’ve never used before and why they may be invaluable for you editing. (Different functions to what you wrote last semester)

Last semester I listed the main keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere, noting the L cut for dragging sound under a different shot and using ‘,’ for adding the selected clip to the sequence. To enhance this shortcut glossary, below lists four functions that I’ve never used before that will be invaluable to editing:

Duplicate – Shift + CMD + /

As editing is a task of trial and error the duplication of material will ensure that the original edit is not comprised if we wish to experiment with different elements of the program, such as colour grading in clips. Using this shortcut will also make the editing process a lot more efficient, as individuals will be able to duplicate and edit content in their own time, making adaptions to their own copies rather than directly editing the main sequence.

Clear In and Out – Opt + X

Clearing the ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the selected clip means no longer having to drag the points to the beginning and then end of the clip if you want to add the whole clip  to the sequence, it also means getting rid of previous ‘in’ and ‘out’ points which may have been set. This shortcut is more than invaluable to me, having already experienced the frustration of dragging the previous ‘in’ and ‘out’ points of a clip into the sequence without realising.

Change Speed/Duration – CMD + R

As I’m horrible at right clicking this shortcut will alleviate about five minutes of me trying to right click on the clip, before actually having to select ‘speed/duration’ from the drop-down menu. Furthermore, as our project has numerous action shots we may wish to slow down, this function will be a predominant part of the editing process, making its easy selection precious.

Mark Clip – Shift + / and Mark Selection – /

Marking important parts of clips while watching the content bookmarks ideas and moments of inspiration, therefore allowing you to jump to the significant content when you come back to search for clips. By marking favourite or interesting parts of clips by simply clicking two buttons while it plays, we can pre-select the vital content for our edit. With our project having an abundance of footage to go through, marking certain parts of clips will help us find what’s necessary with a click rather than having to scrub through the video content again to find it.

And lastly as a more general shortcut function:

Redo – Shift + CMD + Z

Surprisingly I’ve never used or been prompted to look up the Redo shortcut, and usually go to the edit menu and click ‘Redo’ from the drop down. Undo is probably a favourite among the keyboard shortcuts, something that’s got me out of numerous situations of peril, but sometimes it’s easy to undo more times than necessary. That’s where Redo comes in, allowing us to repeat operations previously undone and get back to the edit you want.

In this clip from Forbidden Lie$, Anna Broinowski’s 2007 film: describe in detail all of the audio, how it may have been recorded / sourced and how you think it has been edited / layered in post. (You do not need to describe how the music was recorded)

The clip begins with the Foley sounds of singing, birds, sparkle of a tooth, more birds, wind chimes and the harp, car motor, rustle of clothing being thrown, footsteps in sand and wind, to create a soundscape that enhances the story world and the fabrication of the things happening in this clip.

We are then jolted out of this melodic, mystical sing along with the harsh audio of the first interviewee the Jordan Times journalist as she states, “This is not the Truth!”, here the mixing between diagetic sound as sources being visible in the story world, and non-diagetic sound where the source is not visible, becomes more predominant. Her voice is the first authoritative voice, being passionate and driven therefore as an audience we listen to what she’s saying. The sound of the book getting slammed down on a hard surface then echoes this frustration, then the cash register ‘ding’, something that the audience interprets as a code for a sale, alludes to the true purpose of this book. Her dialogue appears to be sync sound as she speaks to camera, with the overlay of certain sound effects such as singing, car horns and typing on the keyboard. Similarly we can appropriate the voice of the Jordan National Committee for Women interviewee as she speaks to camera, her voice is sophisticated and she speaks wisely on the matter of factual errors.

The ongoing scenes are then connected through the narration reading of the book by different participants in the film, Norma the writer – who’s voice has quite an annoying tone therefore distancing the listener from much of what she says, the journalist and the Committee member; their audio picks up where the previous finished to display that the story they are reading is the same, but the interpretations and readings of that one story are different. The beating heart of Jordan and re-arranging of the map graphic aided through sound effects of dessert wind and ripping paper.

The words, “Indicted there is something wrong with this book” is followed by the sound of a rattle snake. Following this music then begins for the salon scene, the guitar overlayed with the interview audio of the Committee woman. The guitar then continues over the next shot where the reporter searches for the salon where the books set. The music continues, adding almost comedy to the scenes as we see all these elements of Norma’s story contested. We hear Norma speak the words “50 dinar bill from his wallet and handed it to her” to narrate what’s being re-enacted on screen, to then be objected by the reporter’s comments on the introduction of the notes not until after the books setting. We then hear the sound of rummaging in the draw and the click of the lighter as the cigarette is lit. At this point, the guitar playing is rewound (along with the images) to depict a replay of events where the cigarettes don’t exist. The turning of pages and the reading of the page numbers, acts as checklist ticking off each item. The sound becoming more playful with the stacking as the Hyatt is fast paced deconstructed and the sound of the wall falling. The guitar then begins again at the gym, echoing the pace of the visual treadmill runners and ending the scene with the journalist shutting the flip phone and laughing.

In terms of recording, the interviews would have been sync sound with the footage, along with the background sounds to create a canvas for the piece. Sourcing would have occurred for sound effects from archive sounds, or they would have been pre-recorded specifically. And music would have been recorded in a studio or sourced from the artist. All this different audio would have then been edited in post-production, accumulated into tracks so they could be layered over each other in the different forms of music, dialogue, sound effects and narration.