Lyndon, Luke and I did the editing of the film while Patrick and Adam looked for music to use and edited the wiki. When we submitted the rough edit of our film I think that the whole group was a little concerned about how we could improve on it because none of us were entirely happy. However, we used all of Mike’s feedback and started to look at the film with fresh eyes, we realised that there were a lot of different sections that just weren’t necessary to the plot and that there were also things we could add in to create more of a style. We removed a lot of dialogue, which was making the film feel very long and drawn out, we also added music that helped pick up the pace as well as shooting a few extra bits to add in and round everything out.
As a group we realised that there were parts of the story that weren’t exactly clear to the viewer, on top of this the film didn’t feel complete, there wasn’t something that ran throughout to link the beginning with the end. These factors lead to one of the most important decisions we made in the editing process. This was to use our idea of adding voice over narration to round out the film a little bit. Marcus and I recorded the voice-over and added it to the film and I think that the whole group felt as though that was what had been missing right from the very beginning.
By the time we handed in the final edit we were all happy that we’d done the best we could with the footage we had and that overall the film worked. We didn’t want to make a film that left you feeling a little confused and dissatisfied by the ending so we made sure that despite being funny and silly, our film told a story which would leave viewers satisfied having watched it.
We are currently still discussing which film competition we would like to submit to.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Filming Weekend Two
The filming weekend went better than everyone expected. By Friday we had a main character as well as a few confirmed extras. Lyndon’s cousin also agreed to play the lightly older character of the businessman in the film, which was good because we wanted it to be convincing.
Our first day of filming went very quickly and surprisingly smoothly. We essentially shot the film in reverse order so our first shots were some of the final ones in the film. The scene in the Michael Tippet centre was challenging in some ways because of the changing light and the echo of such a large room. Our main actor was very helpful and contributed a lot of ideas but struggled slightly with lines during this scene and I feel, seemed to have a very different interpretation of the character and the style of film than the rest of us. This was partially due to his becoming involved at quite late notice and us generally not having a lot of rehearsal time.
While the acting was not exactly what we had hoped for, as a group we were very happy with how each shot was being framed and, despite the fact that I was directing, we generally made group decisions about what we thought looked best. We ended up finishing early on the first day which left us a little time to play around with different shots and angles, many of which were used in the final edit.
On the second filming day, things were a little tighter in terms of time. We had finished all the scenes set at the university but we had to film everything that took place before that and needed to be filmed in the houses. On top of this, the scenes we shot were a lot more complex. We had to put together a montage of our main character making his hangover cure and we wanted to be sure that we had all the shots we wanted. We also shot an important scene between the character and his friends, which contained a lot of dialogue. Everything went pretty well in terms of getting things done but we struggled to make the shots as interesting as we had the day before because there was such limited space and quite a few people everywhere.
During filming we had several revelations about how we wanted the film be to experienced by its viewers. Though the story was never meant to be a serious and dramatic piece, we decided that we really needed to emphasise the comedic elements of the story in several ways in order to compensate for acting abilities, any confusion regarding the story and slightly amateur looking sets. One of the ideas that we had was to use music as an integral part of the film and use it to emphasise certain moments, actions or lines. We also decided to use editing to paint the main character as more of a fool than we had first discussed, deciding that if we used more humour that people would not be inclined to take the character and his situations seriously. We also discussed putting a voice over narration over the film in order to make things more clear to the audience. We felt as though the acting might not have conveyed the motivations behind the characters actions and the most effective way of conveying them would be to literally tell the audience what was happening and why.
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