Week Ten.

I found a big issue with my audio this week. Because you have to plug the microphone into either the left or right channel, and use the camera microphone for the other, it creates a very unbalanced sound, having one output record very loud and clear and the other only picking up fragments of the audio. As my film's key element is sound this couldn't do and so I needed a way to fix this. How I went around doing this was to 'render and replace' each sound file on Adobe Premiere to Adobe Soundbooth CS5, and it came up like this:



As you can see, the sound has been picked up perfectly on the left channel but only fractionally on the right. To fix this problem firstly was to turn the audio into one mono track, so both left and right would be merged into one. This looked as so:



Now the audio is even but only coming through one track, which is not right for film, audio for film needs to be in stereo, so to solve this I had to save the file and convert it to stereo so it finally ended up looking like this:



Now the transition is complete and the audio is both stereo and even, now it can be put back into Premiere and then later on edited through Logic to create my fictional hearing. I had to do this for every clip on my film, but now the problem is sorted.

Furthermore I gathered a few more shots over the weekend and now my film looks ready to complete the structure and start sound editing. I may need to grab a few more shots over the next few days to pad the film out but other then that the filming's done. The duration is only seven and a half minutes long, it may be eight by the time I add a few more scenes though. Its not quite ten but I feel its more effective this way, I think it might of dragged on a bit to long if it was the full ten minutes and I feel my point is made in the space of time I've used.

Week Nine.

Over the past two weeks I have really got on with both production and post production so get this film into motion. To start with I done some post production work on the shots I had already filmed (see the edit preview) to see what I had done so far and what more I needed to film. I found I had mainly collected most of the middle montage shots which connect the film together but not much of the main content that when edited with sound, would be the interesting parts of the film. To solve this I went out onto fishponds high street with a camera to film some building works for the climax to the outdoors section. I had a few problems while conducting this shoot.  Firstly both the camera and tripod I rented had faults, mainly the tripod's spirit level was broken which meant we had to line it up by eye which wasn't perfect. Also the builders I went to film where being typically British and not working much. Which meant I had to spend a long type collecting a range of mundane short clips to put together and then in post production, include some added sound to make it more interesting.

       Another important scene I filmed was the concluding light scene for the end of the film. For this I used a special light which displays a constantly changing stream of red and blue lights across the room. With myself sitting in the corner of the shot, looking out onto the light, I placed a a backlight behind me which created a nice shadow of myself on the wall, placed on the other side of the screen, fitting into the rule of thirds nicely. Problems I found filming this were that the light I was using wasn't as bright as I hoped, and I couldn't make the background light to strong otherwise it would over power it completely, so the shot looks slightly grainy. I'm going to have to spend a while tweaking the colour and contrast in post production which will hopefully sort this problem out slightly.

     So I almost got all the shots I need now. Most of the introduction, outside section and the conclusion are complete. I'll be having another filming session over the weekend to get the last ones, mostly indoor shots of appliances and other loud objects, for the indoor section. This should be able to be filmed without to many problems.

As my film relies on the power of montage for it's visual shots, I researched around montage to gain a better understanding. One example is from Sergei Eisenstein (considered a forefather of montage) in his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin and one scene in particular, the Odessa Steps Sequence. Throughout this scene Eisenstein uses a fast edited range of shots from long establishing shots which set the scene and capture the size of the action. Combined with lots of close ups displaying the people's emotions as they run for safety and deal with the death that surrounds them. This is also all done without speech and so the power of the scene is told through the music, a very select number of subtitles and a very well put together montage. As my film will also not include speech, this is a great example to watch so gather ideas for my own film and how to express emotion without any script.

This is the clip.

Edit Preview.

Heres a preview of the editing for one of the first sequences to introduce the character. This is still a rough edit and needs some tightening up plus some work on the quality and edits themselves. There is also no sound yet because that is still a work in progress.

Test Edit.

Heres a test edit for how I think I'll be creating the sound and displaying the text creatively. I choose to use the basic scene of the kettle boiling to see how much more interesting I could make. This is it:


Untitled from Peter Bailey on Vimeo.

Week Seven

This weeks been all about filming, I rented out the camera for a few days and got a lot of shooting done. Firstly on my own, I shot a series of short clips of myself getting ready for an average day. These will be used to create a montage at the beginning of the film to introduce the character, also displaying a series of text to describe his story. I also shot a a few scenes containing household items which produce noise to see how I can manipulate the sound and include it in the film. While doing this, I attempted to create some depth of field while shooting the kettle but I couldn't grasp it enough to use, the background was blurred but the kettle still wasn't perfectly in focus, I may try this again later in the week.  Furthermore I tried to get a couple of shots focusing on the cats to add a bit more flavour, but animals are very hard to work with. I succeeded to get a few interesting shots but I'll probably need a few more if I want to use them use them.

     On Friday, with the help of John Howell we went down and filmed along Gloucester Road. The purpose of this was to create another sound montage of the outside world, showing how with this hearing disorder the world can sound really hectic as there's so much going on at one time. The text will describe how he was able to overcome it and deals with it now but it was hard for him as a child. We managed to get a range of successful shots before sadly, the rain stopped us,  these focused on myself in the outside world, traffic and other loud objects. Hopefully these will be enough to create a smooth a continuous montage.

     I came into a bit of luck while having the camera over fireworks night. Without knowing, the school next door put on a big fireworks display for all the locals and school goers and I managed to get some amazing shots out of our top window looking out to them. I thought I could easily find somewhere to add these, as the films all to do with sound I think I could make fireworks sound quite intense and extraordinary. Plus they look great visually to, with big bold colours on a night sky. Heres one of the shots I managed to capture:

      Finally I am still having trouble finding relevant theory for my film. As its just a made up symtom that I've created, I'm not to sure about what Im challenging theoretically. At the moment I have to concentrate on both filming and starting the post production phase to get this film in motion. When I start to get a little more time, I'll do some more research into this and gather some relevant sources.

Week Six.

This week I've done some more test shooting and also done a lot more storyboarding and shot planning to give me a better understanding of how I will put this film together and visualise what the finished product could look like.

     Firstly I did some test shots of the kettle, I started with something basic to get used to using the camera again. What struct me first was how much harder and longer the process is when trying to film on your own. Previously all my projects have been made in groups and so you delegate different jobs to each member to help the process run smoothly, get the best qualitiy out of each shot and also get the most out of your time spent shooting. Being on your own I've found its hard to even get half the amount of shots you planned to achive in the time planned as everything takes a lot longer then expected. Learning from this now, I am going to have to allow myself more time for each shot and plan to rent the cameras out more then I expected. I will also have to ask other members of the class to help out with some scenes to make sure they are filmed to the best that they can be.

 I then took the footage and feed the audio into Logic to try out some test audio bits for my fictional hearing. This screen shot displays the audio from the kettle in Logic. It wouldn't let me take a screen shot with all the effects up too but what I've done is run a filter, a flanger on it, tweaked the EQ and added both a compressor and limter to control the effects. I found that just adding lots of different effects but only using each one a very little bit worked very well, distorting the sound out of recognition.

 

     I also had problems at home converting the files and spent a good few hours trying to convert to .avi without watermarks and in the best quality. I have now found the best codec to use in which to get my files sorted. So this week has not been as productive as I had planned but it has helped me to iron out any problems and get me on the right track so from here on in I know what I'm doing.

     Furthermore I have now got a more descriptive and planned out shot list for my film, so I have some sort of vision to how the who piece should look once completed. I have found that a lot of my shots will be a bit mundane, but included with the text to tell the story and all the post production work needed to create the soundscape, that should be what will make this film interesting and engaging to view. My shot plans cover the whole film but are still a bit rough, I'll post up some examples next week when they have been written out a bit more fluently. Next week I'll be doing this plus getting on with production, shooting my household shots, my streets shots and hopefully some which also experiment with lighting.

Week Five.

This weeks I've taken comments on board and had more thoughts and slightly changed the direction of my film to allow more freedom and expression while making more original. I've also done some test shots and test sound edits to hear what I can create.

     Firstly I have decided to get rid of the documentary style, and with that the interviews and voice overs. This may have given the film a bit of a generic feel and make it not very original, this is turn could make the film a bit boring. It would have also hindered the creativity throughout the production process. I have now decided to go with any idea which is closer to my original thoughts and make the film as a home movie main by the main character, about himself and his condition. This now allows the soundscape to run through the whole film but also means there will be no speech throughout, though this could create an interesting effect. The characters story and comments will be displayed in text on the screen as we travel through the film, in hopefully a cleverly edit way. One problem I am having is coming up with a substantial amount of visually interesting content. As there will be no speech the sound must be gripping and there must be enough going on to keep the viewer engaged through the whole film. I guess more planning will have to be done to make sure there is as much content as possible.

     Furthermore I did some test shots for my 'introducing the character' montage and also tried some to test audio edits. The filming came out okay but I had a problem converting the files and couldn't get rid of the 'divx' watermark in the bottom corner so I'm going to have to convert my files in class then bring them home to edit. But I did lay some of the sound down in Logic Pro and started adding some filters and EQ effects to see what my soundscape will sound like. Its going to need a lot more work and certain specifics will need to be changed for certain sounds. But overall it sounds like it could turn out quite interesting.

     Next week i'll be doing some more filming and compiling a explicit shot plan/ storyboard so I can use my production time as productively as possible. I'll also convert my first test shots at university and start to edit the montage together.

      Finally I found a great little video on ubu.com/film by a film maker named Luke Fowler entitled Three Minute Wonders: Anna (2009). This is one of four videos which were included in channel 4's 3 Minute Wonder series and showcases a great use of both montage and musical script.


The video can be found here:
Luke Fowler - Three Minute Wonders: Anna (2009)

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