Sunday 4 December 2016

Technical Evaluation of Ultra Short Film

Appropriate Techniques (Parallel editing) 



The technique that I have used in the ultra-short film is parallel editing also called crosscutting. What this techniques initials is two or more scenes that are happening at the same time that are cut from one to the other, they should have a clear connections to each other.

Where I had used this technique in the ultra-short film is at 1:15 to 1:40 what I had done to show this is that I had three different scenes that were linked between each other. I had three actors that where doing some kind of actions. For example the main actors in walking down the street. The drug dealer is selling drugs and smoking drugs and the girlfriend is getting ready to go out on a date.

How this Techniques impacts the audience is it made the audience ask questions to them self of how the three scenes are connected, and who would the boyfriend choose, would he choose the girlfriend or the drug dealer. Why I as a filmmaker wanted to include this technique is that I wanted the audience to gradually follow the characters storyline and to experience the journey.

Appropriate Transitions

The transition that I had use in the ultra-short film that was unique was a swipe. What this transitions is that there are two shots the first one is  on screen then the second shots comes swiping in from the left hand side. Transitions is placed in every media where it places two shots together, example of what transitions are commonly used e.g., cut, fade and dissolve.

Where I'd used a form of transition in the ultra-short film is at 1:53. What you can see on screen is that there are two actors that are hugging while the camera is tracking left, with a swipe of the next shot that links together. What the next shot includes is the main actors that walks up to the door and knocks on it, this is to represent the previous to make it seem like there both did the same action.

How this transitions effect the audience is that is gradually brings across the main character change of actions that he had chosen the drugs dealer of the girlfriend. Why I as a filmmaker do transitions like the swipe is to represent the next short and what it may mean. As I had used a swipe to show the other side the main character chooses.

Appropriate Conventions (Cutaways)

The convention that i had used in the ultra-short film was a cutaway. What this convention does is that it is filler shot where it could be placed in an interview, talents shows, and conversation in movie, where this allows to cut down the duration of the shots and to make the scenes look less jarring to the audience.

I had used a convention of cutaway in the ultra-short film at 0:24. What the shot denotes is that there is a shot of the actor’s left hand that is near his right pocket. This is a filler shot that allows us to cut the shot down to allow the next transition flow without looking jarring.

The effect that the conventions does to the ultra-short film, is from the film maker view is that is makes the scene look smoother, as it make cover up the jarring cuts. The effect that this has on the audience is that it gives them a clue to what the cutaway may relate to further on in the scene.

Effective pacing


The effective pacing is where there is a clear representation of two different speeds of cuts. The effect that the pacing allows the filmmaker to do is to show the amount of intensity of actions from the actor. This also allows the filmmaker to control the duration of footage to shown to the audience.

What you can see in the ultra-short film is that I've added fast and slow pace cutting to the film, where I've added fast cuts is where the actors has taking drugs this a representation of fast thoughts you have when you are on drugs this is shown at 0:12-0:20 and then it's changed by the slow pace cutting to represent the aftermath of drugs and the slows representation of the body of the actors recovered from the drugs this is shown at 0:21-0:50

How the pacing of the ultra-short film effects the audience is that it creates a representation of the drugs and the aftermath of the drugs. How I as a filmmaker used this am to make the paces of the cut represent the mental and physical representation of the character, I had done this to create an effect on the cuts on editing.

Convey information effectively


Convey information that I had included in the ultra-short film effectively. It is where the information has been shown across in a clear representation to the audience.

Where I have used to convey the information clearly in the ultra-short film is at 0:51-0:58 second. The information that I have brought across is that the boyfriend is feeling nostalgic and upset, why this is that he has to choose his girlfriend of his drug dealer. This also brings across information that he has a girlfriend and he is in love with someone.

How the convey information effectively effects the audience is that it create more of a story. It give out more of the information for the audience to understand what the story mean and what has happened in the past to the main character, it gives background information of the character.

Use sound to create Impact

Use sound to create impact is a technique that is used to emphasise to the scene. What this could also be called us motivated cut, were a sound is placed to emphasise and the next scene. It is a specific sound effect this is placed to create an impact on the scene.

Where I had used this technique in my ultra-short film is at 0:49. How this is shown in this part is that that there is a motivated cut that is placed in the part where the sound impacts the shots to trigger the motivated cut scenes, the sound effect that is used is that a sound of notifications sound is placed to trigger the scenes to create an impact and deliver more information to the audience.

How the use sound to create impact effect the audience is that it emphasise the scene, because it wants to stand out, as it want to show the importance to the scene. I as a filmmaker wanted to do this because i wanted to make the cutaway scene have a big impact to the storyline.


Synchronise sound and vision

Synchronise sound and vision, is another way of saying cutting to the beat. It is where the beat of the soundtrack that you placed in the film matches up to the beat of the soundtrack.

Where I had use the technique of synchronise sound with vision is at 1:17-1:35. How this is seen at this moment on the ultra-short film is that the parallel cutting of where the three characters that are linked to each other are cutting to individual shots to match with the beat of the music. The cuts are made every four beats of the music, what this is called is cutting to the beat.

The effect that synchronise sound and vision does to the audience is it keep them entertain, and engaged because the there is a sound track and cutting to the beat have a music video effect to the ultra-short film.


Mixing soundtracks

Mixing soundtrack is done in the process of editing it is where you level up the sound to be effectively heard by other. Where this may be seen is the background music may be levels down so the dialogue sound track can be heard by other.

Where i had used this editing technique of mixing sound is at 2:13-2:24. How this is used at this moment is that the back ground music is level down so the audience can still hear it but is not interfering with the sound track of the dialogue from the characters, which has been placed up to 1db to put more emphasis on the characters dialogue.

The impact that this mixing soundtrack had on the audience is give them a more realistic environment when watching the film, as it define the environment that the film was shot in. Why I as a filmmaker want to do this is to create live into the locations and to create representations of the location that the character is in.


Overlap sound

Overlap sound is where you use more than one sound track over the video. What this may be heard as being the sound of the character speaking, with a wildcat sound and a music sound track in the background. This is seen as one track on top of the other.

Where I have used the overlap sound in the ultra-short film is at 0:58. What you can hear at this moment is three different sound track that have been over lapped on top of each other. The first sound you can hear is the dialogue of the character of what he had said, then you can hear the wildcat in the background to match the setting of where they are and the final track is the music sound track of romantic music to convey the mood at this moment.

Why as a filmmaker I would use to overlapping sound is that I wanted to cover up more of the empty space with sound that could have effect the representations of the scene. The effect that this has on the audience is that gave them an idea of what the scene was going to be about due to the multiple sounds that was overlapped.

Offline/online editing


Online editing is the actual editing that you do on the computers in this case is was an I-Mac and offline editing is checking the shooting script to see if all the shoots are there that were meant to be filmed.

What I had done in this step is that I had pre done the scrip, as this was the pre-production stage of the productions and it was filmed on the day of the productions and online editing was done in the post production stage of where the footage is editing of was final cut x. what you can see on this stage is the timeline of where the footage was stitched together.

The effect that the online and offline editing does is that it allows me as a filmmaker to control of what i would be include in the final cut. As offline editing gave me a structure of what i will be editing at and online editing made me create what was on paper onto the screen.

On screen text


The on screen text is the, typography that is placed in the video, where this may be seen is in the intro, outro or other places in the video to display information. It is text that helps the audience to get more information from the video to understand the narrative.

Where I had placed the screen text in the ultra-short film is at 0:02-0:04. How this is placed in the ultra-short film, is that the background is blurred out, and then the text flickers in, with is done by a key frame techniques, the text has a red outline so it  could stand out from the background. The sound transitions is match with the heart beat as it flickers in on a heartbeat and flickers out on a heartbeat.

The effect that on scene editing did to the ultra-short film is that it directed to the audience of what the short film was about. Why i as filmmaker use typography in the film was to give a hint of what the film may be about and the colour that is used to represent the mood of the short film as i had used red to should that the short film may shed blood or be romantic.

Image Editing


Image editing is the editing that you have done on the visual side of the video. What image editing may mean is colour correction, colour grading, effects and cropping. This is used to make the video look to of a more professional standard.

Where I have used image editing in the ultra-short film is at 0:36. What you can see on screen is the side of the character that is sitting on the ground outside. The editing effect that I have done is that i have placed an effect on the footage of letterbox where is cropped down the video to have the ratio of a cinematic film, then I had added a lumer effect to make the look seem dark and then I had colour graded the footage to look blue to the footage had a mood of lifeless.

The effect the image editing has to the ultra-short film is that it allows the footage to look more meaningful to the audience. Why the film maker might want to do this is to create an emotions to the scenes, and indicate to the audience of what there should feel when watch the scenes.

Audio Editing

The audio editing is the editing that you do for the sound/audio side of the video. What audio editing may mean is the effect that is placed on the audios that could improve the sound of the audio or the change the sound of the video.

Where I have used audio editing in the ultra-short film is at 0:26-0:35. What you can hear is the wild cat that i had placed in the background. The effect that I had placed on the wild cat is that I had done a process of noise removal to make the sound of the wildcat for smooth without is high pitch level or wind placed in the sound.

The audience affect that audio editing has on the ultra-short film is that is make the footage feel fuller to the audience. What the audio editing is the most important elements when it comes to editing is this turns an empty shot to more active shot that create more of the storyline.


Tuesday 29 November 2016

Process Evaluation of Ultra Short Film

Software applications

The software application is the editing software that I had used to edit you project on. It is a digital source where it is usually placed on a computer or laptop of where you can get access to it. It is software where you cut and stitch digital video together.

The software applications that I had used for the post productions stage of the ultra-short film was Final cut X  version 10.2.3 it is an advance editing programme that is only found on an apple platform, for example the I-Mac, MacBook pro or air.

The effect that I had when using this application is that it was an advances editing software what this program allowed me to do is more technical edits such as, colour correct, colour grading and sound mixing, these elements had allowed me to editing my ultra-short film to a high film slandered for my audience to view later in the final cut.


Hardware (Non Linear)

Hard ware is the physically elements that you had used to edit your project. What this could count as is a laptop, net book or a computer. It is hardware where you could get easy access to the editing software application.

The hardware that we had used to edit that ultra short film on was the I-Mac. It is an apple product which allowed us to run our software applications without any problems. We had this hardware because it was the only hardware which allowed final cut x to be accessible on it.

The reasoning of why we had used the I-Mac for our hardware was that the editing software that we had was final cut x and only ran on apple computer. We had also used this because it was a fast hardware which ran the interface of the software clearly. The IMac was all in one built which allowed me to access the SD cards ports easily.


High Definition/Stranded definition 

High definition and slandered definition is the quality of what you have filmed and edited you video at. It is also the frame that you have also filmed at that could affect the quality of you video. Film is usually filmed at 25 fps with a 1080p quality.

I had filmed the footage at a high definition frame ate i had filmed the ultra-short film at 1080HD at 25 frames per second, as this is the standard HD film rate that the film should be filmed and edited at. I had made the editing software setting at 1080p at 25fps to match the recorded quality and not to lose out on quality.

The reasoning of why we had filmed and rendered the video at High definitions is that I wanted to get the best quality out of the final video file. I also wanted the audience to watch the ultra-short film at its best viewing quality.


Tapes

Tapes are the storage of where we had recorded the footage on. What this tape could be is tape, film reel, SSD or a SD card. This is where the camera footage is placed a then is placed into the hardware and transferred to.

What I had used as tapes where SD cards as this was the only sources of tapes that were accessible for the camera and also this was easy to upload the takes onto the I Mac because it has a SD cards slot to transfer the footage to the local hard drive.

The reasoning of why we had SD cards to place to footage on was that it was the only tape that was able to be placed into the camera to record the footage on. Why we had used SD cards was it allowed us to place the footage onto a tapes that was easy to access.


Hard disc

The hard disc is where the footage was imported to and where it was stored and placed. It is an internal hard dive that is placed in the hardware that you are using to editing you film project on. It is a drive that could be 250GB to 2TB hard drive.

The hard disc that the footage was placed at the local hard drive on the IMac. It is where we had uploaded the footage from the tapes into the local hard drive. By doing this it allowed us to place the footage on a file that was easy to access when editing the file and this allowed us to place a large amount of footage onto the file 

The reasoning of why we use hard disc is that it allows us to upload the footage into a placed that was easy to access when editing. The effect of uploaded to a hard disc is that it is internal placed on the I Mac which makes it reliable, because the hard drive is internal.


Data Transfer rates

The data transfer rate, is the speed that the tapes transfer all of the recorded footage onto the hard disc on the hardware. It's the rate the video is uploaded at and the duration it takes to upload all of the footage onto the software ware it will be edited at.

In this case the data transfer rates were coming from the SD cards. The rate that the SD cards were transferred at was 80mb/s. What this mean is every 80mb of footage it would take one second to transfer into the I Mac.

The effect that this process has is it allowed the upload of footage to be faster. Before it use to take 1 second for every one second of footage , which meant it would cost a lot of time, but due to the technology development it has allowed us to transfer the footage faster onto the I Macs and has allowed us to spend more time to edit the project.


Exporting Productions

Exporting Productions is the end step that you do when you have complete the final cut of the project. This is where you render the project into one file.

What I had done is that I had rendered the final cut of the ultra-short film to 1080pHD of 25fps. This process took 3min. This was a quick and easy process where it made the file be condensed down into a smaller file for other to load the video up easy without any buffering

The effect that this process is that it is the final step when you have completed the project is a step that allows you to distribute your film that you have complete it is to create one file where you can view on multiple devices.


File types, eg mov, avi, flv:


File type is the file that the final video project was rendered. And what the platform the videos could be viewed at. Some of the file type example includes mov, avi, flv and mp4. It is the file of where the project will be compressed at and the file would be labelled at.

The file type that I had rendered the video at was MOV. The reasoning for this was that the hardware that I was working on was an I Mac and the default video file type is MOV on quick time, which made the video easy to view on the I-Mac.

The effect that I have on choosing this file type is that it may be harder to view on other platforms for example a window computer may not support the MOV file which may lead to downloading a different video viewer. Some of the other file type may be expensive to view such as the flv file as you will need Adobe flash software which needs to be purchased.



Compression

Compression is a process of where the file that you have been working on in the editing software is condensed down into a small file. The stage that this process is done at is at the final stage of rendering the file project into one file.

I had compressed the file twice; the first stage was at the rendering stage where I had compressed the 20GB file into a 350MB mov file. Then it was compressed at the stage of the uploading the video at the process stage, where it made the video size smaller size.

How this process my effect my video is by compressing the size of the video, it will lead to losing out quality of the video when rendering the video and by the compression process on YouTube this will also reduce the quality of sound and video. This is a good effect where it is quicker to load up the video because it has a smaller file to load.


Sunday 27 November 2016

Preparing footage for editing

Saturday 5 November 2016

Production Reflection

What were the main strengths of your production phase?

The strength that we had during the production phase was the technical skills as we as a team had our equipment when we need it at the right time. What this had done is that it allowed us to film as many takes as possible without wasing anytime. the equmnetss was placed in the right place at the right time, you will see in the contnet that the sound recodes are placed correctly by the team , as techncally we had a 
Another strength that we had in the production was that all of crew member that was in charge of sound, camera, script (Directing) showed up on time at 7:00am, as we were intended todo.Which had really helped us on time managment and to get the right look aesthtics of the shoot.We were able to shoot 80% of the film in one day, i am proud of this due to the lake of light and the amount of shots we had on our shooting script.

What challenges did you face during the production phase and how did you overcome them?

The challenges that we faced during the production phase was that we did not have enough sunlight time when filming, as we had started the production at 7:00 am but did not have enough time of day to complete all the shots.How we had overcome this problem is that we had to spread out the filming on to do day to get the fullest of the daylight, the effect that this created is that it allowed us to release pressure from the crew and cast of not cramming all of the filming in one day.
What other challenges that we faced during the production phase is that the microphone that we were using died out, because the batteries had run out, we had realised this after we had record the performance that the microphone had died, which had impacted us to a really going performance that we had filmed on screen. how we had resolve this is that we had replaced the batteries in the microphone, what effect this created is this had cost us some time because we did not have the correct ones and had to go to the local shop.

What changes did you make from your planning? Why did you change these things?What was the impact of the changes?

The changes that we had made to the scrip when filming is that the montage section was location was changed from the Park bench to the living room at Ben house. why we had changed the location is that it would make the scene look more believable this has also allowed the to indicate more of the genera of the film of British realism. What was the impact of this change is that we had control of the environment that we filmed at, at this allowed the use to create a locations that match the characters conditions and the genre.
We had made a change of the duration we were going to film on set of the production, as we had released that there was not enough sunlight left in the day and also that one of our actors did not show up when we had needed them, what we had is add another day to the production, to allow us to spread out our film schedule. what effect that this had is this made it easier for the actors and the crew because it allowed them to spread there time out instead of filming all in one day which could have drained the actors and effect there performance.

What improvements would you make to your production Process if you were to do it again?

What improvement that I would have made if i had done the production again is that I would have, picked out more reliable actors that would show up on time, and that would be committed to working with us on the project. As one of the actors that we has waited to film an outdoor scene did not show up, why this was an effect to our production is that we had limited amount of sunlight left to film outside.
Another improvement that i would include when doing the production process again is that i would have filming the indoor location with more light. as we can see this in the encounter part of the filming we had done, as the lighting in the door was to dark, which lost out of detail in the shot, the effect of this is that it had made the  footage look non-professional, due to the grains shown in the shot from the low light condition.