24.11

Today we watched the last group's film. I really liked their documentary, about a domestic helper's dream in Hong Kong. I thought the quality of the film and especially the sound was very good compared to the others because there wasn't a lot of wind noise and it was balanced quite well. While watching the film I noticed they only interviewed one helper, and kept going back between that helper and the mom, showing both sides of the story and both opinions. I originally thought they could have interviewed more helpers, as their topic was about domestic helpers so they could have a gotten a range of interviews to get more information and thoughts from that side of the story. But I think in this case it was okay that only one helper was interviewed because the switching back and forth between the mom and helper, the way the footage was cut that way created really nice tension between the two. That pieced the film together and sort of weaved it along, because we can tell there's a whole other side to the story that someone is probably not telling the viewer directly, but that we can assume and guess.

The rest of the class was spent watching the movie Billy Elliot. The movie was directed by Stephen Daldry. It was later adapted into a musical and opened on Broadway in 2008. It was set during the 1984-1985 miners' strike which happened in the UK. The reason being that coal had been nationalized, and although some mines remained profitable, many mines ended up being shut down, resulting in tens of thousands of job losses. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called for a national strike. It greatly affected the coal industry in the UK at the time. This is the background for the movie. Billy is a young boy who loves to dance. Billy's dad and older brother Tony are both on strike, no money is coming in, so Billy's dad is very upset that he's wasting his money sending him to learn boxing while Billy is off somewhere else dancing.

While watching we had to pay attention to the sound design of the film. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the specifics because usually when you watch a movie you don't really pay attention to the sound. It comes very naturally and you expect it to be there; it plays a huge role in creating and stimulating emotions but you don't realize that. I have to focus and really try to notice the change in sound and the tone of the music. Sometimes it's easy to pick out the details such as the contrast between the music of the ballet and the noise from outside (workers on strike, protesting), which shows the two complete opposite worlds. One of childhood innocence, and the other of this hard-core reality. There was also the scene where Billy's dad is confronting Billy about the dancing. While this was happening there was no music, just the sound of their voices. This was to instill the sense of tension between the two people, especially with the invalid grandma sitting almost in the middle of them. But as soon as they get up from the table, the music starts and you notice the strong bass in the music to show the anger that's being let out and the frustration in the two people. I like the movie, but there's a lot of profanity and sometimes the accents make it really hard to understand!

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Jaws

22.11

Today we previewed the rest of the documentaries. I thought that I learned quite a lot from watching other groups documentaries because I could compare it to ours and see differences in where they did well and where we could have improved on. I thought having a good title sequence really set the mood and tone for the rest of the documentary and subsequently it really put the standard up high for the rest of the film. In particular Wilson's title sequence with the drop of water which really connected well with the topic of the film and I really liked that. I learned that it's really important to do research, because that really shows up in the film and it also makes the film a lot more knowledgeable, which is good if it's applicable to the topic.

Some criticism I had while I was watching our film was the shaky camera, the unfocused footage at some parts, the sound, sudden audio cuts and the entire length of the film. We went for the personal approach, adding the feel of us being a part of the film like a participatory documentary style. That's why a lot of the film is shot with us hand-holding the camera, instead of setting it up steady with a tripod. One of the reasons we did that because it was also very inconvenient for us to carry around the tripod everywhere in the school. Even so I still think we could have tried to make the camera more steady when we went around shooting because there's a really big difference between hand-held footage and footage shot with the tripod, creating a big contrast during the film, which sometimes affects the way the viewer sees the film. Because we used the school camera which doesn't give very good quality, which isn't a big deal, but when the footage is unfocused it ruins the overall effect of the film. We had a bit of trouble with focus when filming, because it was turned to manual focus and we weren't really sure how to work with that. We only realized that after we had shot some footage, which we couldn't go back and shoot again. But we can learn from that and next time improve :) All groups had the same problem with sound, the wind noise and it really bugged me when I was editing that I didn't know how to soften that noise and make the audio clearer. I think that would be a really useful technique to learn, whether it is something to do with the mic when we're out on the field shooting or afterwards during the editing process.

Another thing was the length of our film, which was pretty long. I think to cut that down we could have used some of the sound of the interview footage as voiceover for parts during the classes to make the footage less boring. An issue with that is the interview sounds have a lot of wind noise, so it would probably be very disruptive if we overlaid it over the footage of class time. We also wanted to have a bit of sound from the classes so if there was interviews at the same time there would be a lot going on, probably making it very confusing.

Nevertheless, I think we did pretty well :)

"May the force be with you." - Star Wars

16.11

Today was again focused on editing, finishing up on final touches and finally exporting it as we had to hand it in this class. It was quite an intense class because we had been a little behind schedule and we knew we had to finish by today so we all wanted to get it done and also do it well. There were a few things we needed to add in: the subtitles for the different classes/periods so that it would be clearer to the viewer what they were seeing, the opening credits, the ending credits and finally music. We also needed to add in audio and video transitions to make the whole film flow smoother, not with awkward fast cuts, jumping from one clip to another. There was also another thing I was concerned about which was the timing of the whole film; we were over by a few minutes so I wanted to see if there was anything we could cut out or make more concise, leave out anything unnecessary.

We started working on the audio and video transitions. I tried to pick simple effects, the ones as subtle as possible because we didn't want it to be very extravagant we just wanted a slight transition between say two interviews, and not for it to be very abrupt. This way the viewer has an easier time adjusting to the sound difference and it's also not so quick, so the viewer will understand everything easier.

While I was editing, cutting, Sophie and Bridgitte were looking for free music clips that we could put into our film as background music. We wanted something upbeat and happy because we thought that it would fit better, or create a positive atmosphere to our film, which was what we wanted. We found one clip from Royaltyfreemusic which was nice, but there wasn't anything else that we particularly liked so we decided to go elsewhere to look for the music. We didn't want one song to keep playing in the background on loop because we didn't want the music to distract the interviews so we chose to have a few clips of music for the beginning, the end and some parts in the middle where we could have done without the sound of the film.

There are many things that I still wanted to do when it was time for us to export. I think we could have spent more time looking for more music because there were still parts that I thought it would have sounded better with music for backup rather than the noise. I thought we could have spent a little more time on the opening and ending credits; we wanted to have a split screen effect in the ending credits where we showed a picture of both schools side by side with the credits rolling. If we had more time I think we could have tried to make that work but since it was too rushed we decided to just leave it simple, leave it be. But on the other hand, I think we did a pretty good job despite the many drawbacks, complications and challenges. I personally thought it was quite an interesting experience.

"We rob banks." - Bonnie and Clyde

8.11

During this class, some people were chosen to do their film documentary presentations in front of Ms.Rosati and others just continued with the editing of the film. We started to really get down to business and write down a plan, a general outline for our documentary. We had to keep asking ourselves the question, what are we trying to show? What is this going to tell people; what is the answer to our guiding question, what do we want to prove with this footage? I personally found it quite hard, because it's not like writing a story where you are in full control of the different way the story twists and turns, and the message is clear in your mind. You're the one telling the story and the message can become very explicit. It's a lot easier to make the reader understand the message, compared to trying to make a viewer come up with a conclusion on their own (with our documentary). I think our topic is also quite hard, there can be many ways to go about putting it together.

First we all agreed that we should put the footage together in the way that is like showing "a day in the life of a student in HKIS" compared to "a day in the life of a student in CIS". Since we filmed the same classes from both schools to make proper comparisons, we thought we would put the footage side by side, in order of each of the classes. This way the comparisons are clearer, which is what we want to show. To break up the pure footage, we would add bits of interviews to further explain what we're trying to show, to give us examples of the comparisons and further emphasize them. This is only a general outline so I didn't put the specifics of the interviews, I only wrote what I thought should be appropriate at that part and what I think should be there in order to make a balance between footage and interviews. I think to really put everything together we need to re-watch all the footage and really capture the things that relates closely, and the things people say that we can put into our documentary.

By the end of the lesson we managed to finish the outline and now I have a better idea of what our documentary is going to turn out like. For next lesson I think that we really need to manage our time better, come during lunch and break and maybe after school to really get the job done. There are many other aspects we have to work on as well, such as the title sequence which I worked on a bit last class and also the music/sound effects we might like to put in. But the important thing is to really get the footage in order and cut up properly, because then we'll have an idea of what sound effects would work well where and where we should put some music to liven up the mood or to create the mood/atmosphere. They're all very co-related, so that's why the different teams of putting together a film have to work together really well. I think that's very important in many things, such as putting together a music production, or a play.

"I'll be back." - The Terminator

4.11

We had to leave class early so we weren't able to get much editing done but because of that we worked efficiently and tried to get as much work done as possible. We started editing, taking the footage we actually needed from all our videos. I learned that this is called the assembly stage of editing, getting a rough outline of how the end film is going to turn out like. What we should always remember during editing is whenever you know there's a space between clips where we still need to fill in with some footage we don't have yet, we need to put a slug there. I learned this last year but I had forgotten. I think this is so you don't forget the order and timing of the outline of the film, and also so you have something there that you can replace later instead of just a space.

I think that before next lesson what we need to do is really sit down and think about what we want to show with our footage. We need to really plan out the content rather than actual footage. We have a lot of footage, we have a lot of material we could use but I think the important thing to always keep in mind is that your telling a story or giving a message, and that needs to be shown through the footage. We can't just put in some random footage and expect people to figure out what everything means. I think right now if we just started editing the footage, our end result wouldn't look bad, but after watching it people will turn around and ask us, "so what was the point of that?" I don't think that's the point of this unit. We did change our topic question slightly to adapt to the filming difficulties and the situation with getting permission so our ideas have probably changed from what we originally planned. This is again why we need to really think about the whole point of our film. That was the most challenging part of the lesson. It's a little like starting all over again from the beginning, going back to the plan stage, but I think once we get the outline of what we want to show with our footage everything will come together a lot smoother and a lot easier.

During the lesson, while my other group members were editing, I was experimenting with the different title templates. I was trying to find the best template, trying out the different effects, experimenting with the sizes and the timing and the positioning on the screen. At the same time I was also trying to think of a suitable name/title for our documentary. All of this made me realize again how much thought goes into every aspect of making a film. We can't take making the title scene or thinking of the film name lightly, because that's what see first when watching the film. The title has to grab our attention, and also if the director is clever, has special meaning to do with the film. But at the same time the title scene has to be incorporated well with the rest of the film. Sometimes it's a black screen with the title, sometimes the title is text on top of some footage. I guess the way you introduce the film is also like the introduction part to an essay, so it's pretty important as well.

"Round up the usual suspects." - Casablanca