Film Project Stage 7: Editing 2

So we uploaded a rough cut… which was promptly destroyed at the box office…. i’ve seen better reviews for troll 2

But anyways… it was only supposed to be a rough guideline, and doesn’t honestly reflect the final edit, i  had some interesting calls to make, i found out that my aunt who’s sound we needed to redo and who currently resides in Los Angeles… has no recording equipment! so it was down to crazy techniques to salvage our audio, however we found an awesome resolution in the form of re interviewing and recording her over the internet through a Skype call, i set up an external speaker from my computer and put a zoom recorder (my dad had one to himself all along… facepalm) up to the speakers.

I edited the sound as well as possible and Adnan and Jack Pieced together the final edit with the new sound, some clever editing form Adnan allowed us to “pretend” the new sound was the original sound. we also used mixcraft to put together a short intro and outro track for the final film, eventually we decided agaisnt out original use of narration in favor of text on screen

The link for the finished piece is here on vimeo: “What it takes”

Alternatively, check it right here:

 

 

Film Project Stage 6: Editing 1

So today we began the arduous task of compiling and editing our footage into something of awesome proportions, i did not realize just how difficult sound editing was until today… yuck. Myself and Jack recorded the narration for our poroject whilst Adnan worked away on the editing of the first footage, it wasn’t until we saw the second footage’s quality compared to the first footage that we realized we had a problem, i hadn’t even thought of it, i was busy looking for some cool in between scenes footage to think we had  a fundamental issue, so i took to sound editing trying to get the horrendous noise and wind out of the audio we had recorded, but alas, my talents lay elsewhere! i couldn’t get the footage to sound above crap.

So i have hailed my aunt in a n effort to get her to re record he audio, and hope fully save the day, our only other option is to get more footage,  but that may prove extremely difficult, due to the lack of actors i’m currently aware of. We will endeavor!

Adnan worked tirelessly with what footage we had, and we have until Thursday to work some magic, so hopefully we’ll  crank something worthy out…

Film Project Stage 5: Shooting Day 3

 

Today was the big day for our second interview, in contrast to the last interview we decided to hold this interview indoors, to counter the worsening weather conditions… as camera equipment is expensive and wind is VERY NOISY.

We used my room for our shoot, setting up a tarp against the wall and clearing the set up, so that a single chair was all that was present on screen, we ensured the lighting was good and made sure there was no subtle noises (such as the hum of a computer)  in the area.

Gordon came in and after a sound and visual check we began our take.

 - Gordon makes himself at home

This time i stayed out of shot, but the setup was much the same i interviewed Gordon and got the fledgling actors perspective, it went well, we all had lemonade.. the next step in the process would be the most challenging! Editing!!!!

 - Adnan aligns the camera for the shot

Film Project Stage 4: Shooting Day 2

The objective of our journey today was to capture ‘filler footage’ of Dublin, to break up the undeniable monotony of having a single character on screen talking, without the visual changing at all. I learned this the hard way, from the critique of  my last film !

We set about shooting the different theater’s and scenes of Dublin, it was an easy shoot… with lousy weather. we captured footage that we intend to use specifically for fade outs and fade ins in the project.

We decided to hit up the gaiety, Olympia and Abbey theater’s and film they’re exteriors, so as to develop a cool time lapse transition or overlay for some of our projects scenes.

now, while i’m sure it would be interesting to keep talking about filler footage,  i will instead talk about the references this film takes from previous shows! my personal inspiration for this show came form watching the channel four program Story of Film: an Odyssey both the theme of the show and the style in which it was shot appealed greatly to me and made me think along the same lines when i was considering this project.

Film Project Stage 3: Shooting Day 1

Our objective today was to shoot our first interview with our established actress; Sile Bermingham.

First We acquired all the gear we needed:

• One HD camcorder, + Adnan’s own HD Cam
• One RODE Mic
• Two tripods

Then we set off to our location, St.Stephen’s Green; There we met with Sile and found a quiet area of the Park to begin Shooting. we began our shoot in the place usually reserved for those shooting up; The Rockery.

We made use of the two cams to make a multi cam interview, as set out in the original treatment, one cam had the mic armed for recording while the other was used to capture different angles of the scene.

camera setup

I was on screen interviewing Sile throughout the day, in the finished project however, i will not appear on screen and the the questions will be voiced to both Sile and the audience through a narrator.

shooting day 1

Film Project Stage 2: Pre-Production

With our basic concept down we quickly devised roles for each member of our team

• Adnan would take care of any storyboards or scriptwork, he even made and audio walk through of the script.
• Jack was in charge of devising our shooting and production schedule (see fig 1.0 below)
• And i was in charge of developing our mood board and updating our treatment with any changes (see fig 1.1 below)

fig 1.0 – schedule

fig 1.1 –  mood board

So our next step was to make a few calls, see who’d be interested in helping us with our project, we’d need an established actor and a novice actor for our project, my own aunt Sile Bermingham had already been recruited as our established actress, so we were on the lookout for our aspiring actor.

We made some calls to Draoicht, Filmbase and IFI to see if anyone was interested.. unsurprisingly we barely even got a response… that’s people for you…  However, all was not lost, we happened upon Gordon Rose,  a novice actor just beginning his journey  into the thespian world… cheese. He agreed to help us out and  so we could begin  shooting.. as soon as we got the equipment!

Film Project Stage 1: concepts

So we begin!  our class was split into groups and told to set about creating a short (3-5 min) film project. The film itself could be on any topic, narrative documentary… hippy loving art movie… shudder. Our first objective was to create the concept, to do so we individually came up with ideas and then decided which we wanted to run with.

Our Team consisted of Adnan, Jack and Myself (manus)

Concepts

1. Adnans’ idea was to write a film about the internet police, this film was to be a comedic narrative telling the tale of the finctional internet police from their point of view, recounting what they do, how they operate and who they’re after.
2. Jacks’ idea was to shoot an Adam and Paul-esque movie that followed a young down on an average day of his life and out and was filmed in a mockumentary style, The film would show the protaganist as “a bit of a toe rag” but at the same time try and get the audience to empathize and eventually cheer for him.
3. My Idea was to shoot a documentary based around the central theme of acting, in particular i wanted to explore what it takes to be an actor in this day and age.

We each devised full treatments for our concepts and then amalgamated them together for a project pitch with all three.

So we compiled and pitched our concepts, based on the feedback we received from our peers, and our own deliberations we decided to expand on my concept and shoot it for our project, the title of my concept is “What it takes”.