To Odeon and Beyond

Tomorrow is the day that will see Beautiful Waste screened in the Odeon cinema. Its been a long journey to this point but we are finally here and I am very excited to see my work on the big screen. Often I am asked what would I change and I can say that I wouldn't chance a thing, the film is what was wanted to achieve. 

Joe and Steven told me a bit about the test screening and that there was a few problems. In Beautiful Waste there was a bit of pixelation in the first 30seconds. Steven believes that the reason for this is the fact that the film was burnt onto a disc. We have now came to a solution that the films are going to be played through my MacBook Pro so all the films will have a higher quality and will not have any problems. (Although Joy is still freaking out) 

Tomorrow Thursday 6th of June the screening will be happening at 6.30pm in Victoria Square Belfast. I want to say a big thank you to you all whole have been on this journey with me and what a roller coaster it has been. 

Splendid!!! We Have A Film!!!!

Well guys as you could of guessed from the last post we have a FILM!!! Oush! 

I am very proud to announce this to the rest of the world and what we have created is very clear and clever creative piece of cinematography. the test screening is tomorrow although we cannot go to Im hoping Sharon and Joe will come back with fantastic new that nothing is wrong sound or picture wise. ( Or we will be bricking it) 

Here is just a sneak peek into the inside of our film below.

Just a wee taste of whats to come. 

Waiting For The Drum Rolls

After fixing all the corrections Sharon had talked to us about she told us to show it to Joe. Sharon had confidence in us that we would have the film done and that she would look at the final edit on Thursday 30th May which is the final hand in date.

When Joe watched what we thought was the final cut he said that the noise at the end of the city wasn't in your face enough. I had a conversation with Joy about this and we decided that we didn't want to take away from what we've got, when I went to check the levels I notice that they were up as far as they could go at the end of the day its our film and we are a small fish being thrown in to the world and we will have to make our own decisions.

Do we have a final cut of the film? Find out next time on Blogger (class theme tune playing in your head)

The Lengths You Go To For Feedback

As Sharon is only in once during the week we needed to find a away in which Sharon could see the edit and give us feedback. To do this i had to export the video in quicktime and up load it to You Tube. I made the video private so only Sharon would be able to see the latest edit. This helped a lot because once we knew what was needed to change I could get straight onto the edit. Over all I had to do this three times and it was very helpful constructive feedback.

When receiving feedback from Sharon there was a recurring theme of what needed to be fixed and this was the sound. There was a few bits of footage that just needed trimmed a wee bit and tided up and we will have the image of the film completed. However an image isn't complete until the sound is completed and flows nicely with the images.

A few problems that Sharon had with the sound that it was to tweety, it worked the first time but after a few watches it was just to repetitive. This isn't just a film we want the viewer to watch once, we want them to question themselves and watch it again.

After we fix these changes we should have a film.

Progress With The Edit

The transition from Final Cut to Premier wasn't that much of scary transition, the key tools are exactly the same as Final Cut. I found premier easy to work with but I was have difficulties with the sound edit,  as I didn't know how to change the levels of a single cut of footage it seemed to chance the levels for the whole video. Once I talked to Keith who is a wizz kid with Premier he showed me how to change an individual clip level.

After talking to Keith I have learnt how to control the levels on Premier, its a lot like Final Cut Pro but you have to unlock the sound bar to alter the sound. I have went from what was a roaring river to a clam steam and from a zoo to a tranquil forest.

For me learning premier has given me more skills as an editor I am confident in both Final Cut and Premier editing systems and this will be a brilliant point on my CV. Now just Avid to accomplish to be the next Walter Murch.

When You Thought There Was Light At The End Of The Tunnel. Oh Wait! There Isn't in Filming.

After a long week it took 2 days to convert the footage from the Cannon FX100 into final cut pro. Joy and I then sat down and watched the rushes of every shot. We then time coded everything from shots that were useless to the most perfect cinematography shots because Ive learnt from an editors point of view that you'll never know what footage you will use with in the edit.

When we started to do the edit on final cut we noticed that each time the footage jumped at each cut as it transitioned. To rectify this we had to put the footage on to premier this is an adobe version of final cut which meant another day of editing gone. This meant that we were able to work with the un-exported footage and had the fantastic quality that we originally had while filming.

We were also put on the spot to come up with a title because designers came into design a poster. to come up with this title we thought back to the day of shooting and we came up with loads of ideas but none of them worked, the thing I remember most about shooting that there was hardly anybody in it except the few people walking there dogs and it reminded me that its such a beautiful waste.

I Hope They Have A Red Carpet For Me :-\

On Wednesday 15th of May are teacher joe told us the screening dates for the Odeon. The date is the 6th of June which isn't to long away, Joe requires somethings of us, some people say magic has a price and that is the deadlines which for the Odeon screen test is the 29th of May but if the film isn't in for that date the film doesn't get shown, this is the deadline we have to meet if we cant meet this deadline how are we going to make deadlines in future productions.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this film on the big screen as our film is unique to any other in the class. This film doesn't have a narrative it is a piece of art in which cinematography takes its purest form. After film Joy was being a bit of a worrier as she doesn't think we have enough footage for a three minute piece, when in fact we had over 4 hours worth of footage to make a dozens of wee pieces.

From experience I have learn that zooming is a big no no especially from an editors point of view. I have learnt a lot from editing bad footage and that you can only work with what you've got. The directors sometimes get disappointed because the footage they wanted is damaged from zooming. I've learnt a lot form working with bad footage and will bring this into this production by taking still beautiful images from a tripod of steadicam.

Heres hoping that the film will as good as I know it can be :)