Its all about control – First draft

So, above is the first draft of the film i will be submitting as part of the course. So Dom, if you are reading this, feedback would be much appreciated. 🙂

A few things that i have learnt through this process.

1. Dom was right, if you pre-plan all your shots, then the actual editing process is actually quite straightforward. You simply put the clip above the narration and Bobs yer uncle. I have never edited a video this fast before.
2. As suggested in previous posts, i have really got far more shots than i need. This is true for all of the scenes in the film. In hindsight i would not have spent as long in the field although i guess this just comes with experience.
3. At the moment i find it hard to know which shots will ‘work’ or not until i see them on the screen. As a consequence, when i was shooting in Estonia, i started to view every take of each shot. This meant that i could delete takes i didn’t like or change the type of shot if it wasn’t working. This saved myself both time in the sense that i didn’t have to return to get shots, as well as back home when i didn’t have to go through a series of takes to find the best one.
4. Quickly cutting between different shots doesn’t work as well as i thought it would.
5. My posh camera lens makes a noise when focusing that can be heard on the audio – Grrrrrrrrrr. manual focus for me from now on unless i want to use a separate recording device.
6. Audio – Despite being warned, i didn’t spend enough time focused on this aspect of the film.
7. Don’t try and undertake major pans with your own camera, do the panning in the editing suite, it is much, much smoother.

My thoughts on the first draft

Whilst editing the audio i managed to introduce ‘clicks’ (in the places i have edited it). This is bloody annoying and will need sorting out.

I had tried to put a ‘motif’ of signs all the way through the film. Not sure that it really works. Certainly when shown to my wife, she didn’t seem to ‘get it’ at all. Think i might be trying to be too clever again.

When i introduce the ‘cattle’ into the shot, i didn’t do an establishment shot, to show the viewer that we are looking at cattle in the woods. Whilst i might get away with it in this, short, film, it is definitely missing.

The opening shot, close up, talking to the camera, should not move as much as it does. I think this should just be one shot (instead of the two i am currently using). Less is more and all that jazz?

“But change is difficult, its risky” – I thought cutting back to the car park would work for this. It doesn’t. I need a different shot to represent this narrative and i am struggling.

I had thought that I wanted a music track to underpin the video, reaching a crescendo at the end. Not sure I do now. Will perhaps try it and see although I like the birdsong at the end