In this evaluation I will mostly cover the process of post-production, as I was the editor for this project, but first I will talk the shoot it self and the problem that a risen.
The shoot
Before the day of shooting, we double-checked the batteries worked and charged both over night, everything seemed to be in working order and fine.
But, upon filming our first shot, a mere thirty seconds long, the battery life dropped to a fraction of being full.
Half way through our second shot the camera died and the spare battery wouldn’t even turn on, let alone film.
This caused an instant feeling of disaster for us, luckily however I packed my handy-cam with me, just in case such a situation became a reality.
Obviously this has had a massive impact on the quality of our footage, it isn’t as crisp as we wish and we couldn’t perform certain focus pulls and shots we intended to with the canon.
Another draw back is the lack of quality when the footage is blown up, but this just something we’ve had to deal with and took in our stride.
Apart from that upset everything else ran smoothly whilst shooting, it was a rather gloomy, wet day but we made the best use of the rare glimpses of sun that we could.
My only other problem with shooting was that we gathered quite a few similar shots and didn’t cover enough locations over all, this proved to be a problem later on editing.
Team work
Zach and I worked well together as a team and share similar creative ideas.
We found ourselves both accommodating each other’s opinions and helped push each other to perform efficiently.
We shared the workload equally, splitting up roles (him being camera man, me the editor).
My only problem with us as a pair was that we were too relaxed during planning, we did well together but just didn’t brain storm enough strong, initial ideas.
Post-production
I was editor for this project and felt it was really on my shoulders to provide a strong backbone to this piece, whilst talking about metaphorical bones now would be a perfect moment for me to mention using the handy-cam had left us crippled and misshapen, the quality was poor, we couldn’t obtain all the shots we needed etc.
This lead me to the conclusion of absolutely bombarding the footage with effects, as in my opinion there is no body on this earth who would enjoy watching silent, grainy footage of a rainy day in some fields.
I decided on obtaining washed out, warmth to the footage, similar to that seen in old film or super8, focusing on yellows and reds.
I used a combination of effects to achieve this, playing around with Gaussian Blur, flicker filter, adding noise, contrast and brightness, color corrector three-way and vignette.
After finding a rough combination I was happy with, I went on to adorn all footage used in this way, altering some so things didn’t become stale.
I found this had an interesting effect on the sunlight and glare, making it radiant and dazzling.
We had planned on making use of natural light too so we were both satisfied with the outcome.
Originally the editing style for the piece was erratic and extreme, comprised of jump cuts, it was all very shambolic.
We did aim for this style though as a way of captivating the audience, as with out sound this is no easy feat.
But something about it just didn’t settle right and after our discussion with Debbie, we decided to concentrate more on the narrative, ‘the journey of a rambler’ starting with wide, establishing shots, representing all things large and noticeable that would dominate your vision.
We then move on through out the piece getting progressively narrower, focusing on the increasingly minute details, such as plants and wildlife.
All the while a walking POV shot represents the rambler and provides a core to which the other shots stem from.
My gripes with post-production are that it is quite evident were using the combination of effects to try and hide what is essentially, terrible quality footage.
This begins to grate after a while and becomes quite stale, next time I would prefer to just re-shoot completely on a better camera rather then rely on editing tricks.
I will provide screen grabs below to show some of the effects used, the time line etc.
Summery
Whilst being highly self critical, over all I’m still some what happy with the piece.
The problem’s that occurred were beyond our control at the time and I see no point in moaning about that, instead I'm proud of what we’ve managed to sculpt from the resources we had.
If given the chance to go and do the shoot again with better equipment then I would with out a doubt.
It is something I imagine I will do in the future, just for myself to see what we could of achieved.
The other vital part of the piece I would change would be the structure and narrative, we learnt the hard way how difficult it can be to express an idea through experimental film, especially when the idea it self is quite vague.
Next time I take part in a project like this I will dedicate far more time to planning and research, so I know I have a clean path when it comes to start shooting.
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