The film we produced, Plunge, was, in my opinion, a huge success. The original idea came from a screenplay that our director/ writer (Jeff) wrote prior to the project. We went over it in class as a group, but to be honest it was pretty much a complete script unto itself. We altered a few things in class, such as taking out some of the swearing and changing some of the phrasing, but Julien did the proper editing himself at home. As editor, there was no real contribution I could make, other than take note of how the film would actually be played out and what transitions could be used as well as how I could adapt scenes to make the whole thing more film noir-esque.
Our planning and production period were mingled, as we planned certain scenes at a time, then filmed, then planned the next scenes, then filmed, rather than planning the whole film first. During the planning that we did, I did not really have a job to do other than to stay aware of the shots that were being story boarded and how the film would be played out. This was quite difficult though, as our cinematographer only really story boarded the first scene (the rest was planned purely in his mind). To stay useful, I was put in charge of planning our filming time (deciding what our time frame would be to ensure we had enough time – see below for example) and I wrote out the shot list. I tried to make myself available for whatever anyone needed doing, so I ended up being the person who got the lights from Mr.Wong and mixing up a concoction to look like blood.
First filming day:
People: Jeff, Chris, Julien, Raphael
Equipment: HD camera, Tripod (with dolly legs), Boom microphone, bounce card, searchlights, big lights
6:00 - Everyone meets at Julien's house
6:30 - Start filming house scene
7:30 - Eat dinner
8:00 - Go down to waterfront
8:15 - Rehearse waterfront scene and run through camera angles
9:00 - Start filming waterfront scene
11:00 - End
During the actual production stage I did not have a particular job, but I showed up for filming anyway. I started out doing the shot logging but that stopped being useful after we filmed over some footage and the list no longer made sense. I also helped out with odd jobs, such as holding the bounce card when our lighting man was in the scene (Chris was an actor in our film as well as the lighting man) and holding the boom microphone while our sound man was otherwise engaged (which was actually quite a lot of the time). I also gave some advice on shots and angles. The scene on the roof, for example, includes one extra angle that has not previously been planned (see below). I also, as aforementioned, was in charge of making the blood, which I did by making gravy, then sieving it, then adding loads of red food coloring. A problem we had was with timing. Although we made time plans (or rather, I made time plans) it was always really hard to stick to them, as filming always took longer than we anticipated due to the lack of preparation. We overcame this by filming on more nights. We originally planned to do it in 2 nights, as we wanted to have it done before Julien went away to Japan (our cinematographer and lead actor) but we ended up doing it in 4 nights instead. This was decided very much against our director's wishes, who would rather stay out really late filming and finish (so that we would have more time to edit) than do it on more days. But we all agreed and managed to talk him round. Jeff is very brilliant, but he is also very stubborn. Luckily our teamwork paid off and we compromised. Our last film day did go on until 12 at night though, but that was unavoidable.
The post-production was the portion where I feel I did the most work, and understandably, as I was the editor. Although I did actually do a lot of editing, I think that Jeff probably did more. I was always present though, it's just sometimes he liked to be in charge of the mouse. He never let me edit it without him there, which I understand (he is a perfectionist after all), but I think I should have argued more for my rights as editor. I learnt so much about editing in the process though.
Some notes on what I learned:
Press N to turn on/off snapping
You can add tracks
You can edit clips before inputting them into the timeline
Clips can be either inserted or overwritten into the timeline
You can mute certain tracks
Sound can be turned up or down by altering the decibel level
'Slugs' can be inputted, putting in a black scene
Even though Jeff did a lot of editing, I always gave my advice, especially when I didn’t agree with what he was doing. This worked well, and we managed to compromise a lot on what should be done. We agreed at the start not to argue (as we are both strongly opinionated) and that seemed to work our quite well. Jeff ended up doing loads though, especially as our sound person pretty much did nothing, so Jeff ended up working on the sound too. I was mostly present for that too, and I found that very educational as well. However I feel that Jeff kind of went overboard sometimes. He insisted on, after we thought we were done, moving the sound files onto the sound system Sound Cut Pro, which I thought was completely unnecessary. We managed to finish on time though, and I have to say I was quite happy with the result.
Our final product, which was supposed to be a two-person dialogue scene, ended up being an 11-minute short film. That said, I am still extremely happy with it. I would say our initial goal of creating a film noir piece was definitely achieved. Our group worked well together, though some people were not as focused as they could have been, which may have slowed us down a bit. Although Jeff did a lot of the editing, I feel I played my role in the group well. I was always there and on task during the editing; just sometimes Jeff wanted it to be done in a particular way that I did not know how to do. I learnt a lot though, and I got to exercise my newly learned skills (because I did edit myself as well – with Jeff’s guidance). We have not received much feedback yet, but when we do I shall post it on my blog. If we could improve our job in any way, I think it would have been beneficial if everyone had done more research at home, including me. I should have taken some kind of Final Cut Pro tutorial. Also, in terms of how we could have improved as a group, we should have been more on task during our filming and class sessions. We could have been more focused if one of us simply took the initiative to tell everyone off. Other than this though, I think our work on this project was good, and we managed to finish on time despite our shortcomings.
During this project I was definitely an ‘inquirer’ (according to the IB learner profile). I was always interested in the different aspects of the film process and I tried to give my input wherever I could. Even though I had to sit through hours of Jeff editing/ working on sound on the computer, I was actively engaged and paying attention. I actually enjoyed learning about Final Cut Pro, and I hope to be able to use my new skills on a later project.
