I deleted about 3 hours worth of work. Right before we were to present our work. To an industry professional. This is the point in the semester that I realise I was always meant to be a rodeo clown because saving my work occasionally is apparently too difficult a concept for me to grasp.
So we threw together the most bare-bones version of that work, and the other work I’d done in the same session, and presented to Catherine, and here’s what she had to say…
-Our opening vox pox’s are funny, good way to start the piece, let’s the audience know what to expect
-Our second draft opening is good, but doesn’t fit the overall tone, is too dark for the beginning and should maybe be used later on
-Interview with Hannah is really good, interview with Carter’s audio quality isn’t great, rerecord if possible
-In editing the interviews, maybe don’t cut between them so much
-Try to get more ‘story’ out of Carter
-Find some links to connect all the pieces
After this session, I booked another interview with Carter, so that we can record in a studio rather than a cafe, and our group is looking at our structure again to ensure that we can use what we’ve found. We are also going to work more on the history side of the piece, with the KKK, Bill Clinton, feminism, and Black Lives Matter all impacting our story.
This week we took our recorders to the street to begin learning about editing sound. Our group decided to combine with another group, because they were missing a group member, to make one awesome super group! Our topic was the attention young people pay to their media devices.
I found editing this audio to be really quite fun. We had a lot of content, because we understood that everyone would want to go in different directions when editing, but we made sure that all of the audio related to the story that we wanted to tell.
I decided to take a comedic approach, mostly because of the music I found. I also find it difficult to hear my recorded voice so making it more comedic made sense in my mind. The story of ‘Young People and their Media Devices, Grrr’ is so played out at this point that it’s difficult to take it seriously, especially when you are one of the young people. I was quite surprised with how quickly I was able to edit it together. I assumed it would take a long time, but it only took about 30 minutes. While it’s slightly disjointed, I think that that works in it’s favor, helping to play up the comedy aspects while still telling two stories of mobile devices causing issues within society. I may be seeing this through rose-tinted glasses, though, because I found it so much fun to make.
And I used to hate audio editing. It’s amazing how much changes in a year.
We got the opportunity to analyse an audio documentary called My Lobotomy. This was not something I was expecting.
My expectations were that the person who had the lobotomy would not be narrating (despite the title of the piece). The general perception of lobotomies is quite accurate, in that many victims have lost their former abilities, such as speech, motor skills, and intellectual capacity. Some, we assume, would have lost their life. Hearing a coherent, ‘complete’ person speaking about their own lobotomy was definitely a shock.
A majority of the audio was interviews, narration, and archived sounds. The editing style was definitely different to anything I’d heard before, where the narrator would fade out what an interviewee was saying to give exposition over the top. I honestly wasn’t too big a fan of this style, as I wanted to hear what the source had to say. However where the production shined was in the building of the story. The ordering of clips, and having us hear another lobotomy victim who was not as lucky as our narrator at the end really helped the audience feel the pain of the narrator, and those affected by lobotomies. There was also a gradual reveal of critical information. We learned early on that the narrator’s step mother was the one who was meeting with the doctor, but we don’t learn the truth (or as close as we could get to the truth) until towards the end.
After this, we got into our groups to delegate jobs and do more work on our projects. We have a more clear idea as to what we’re working towards now, and all three of us will be sourcing interviews (myself with a younger generation cosplayer, Patrick with a ‘comic book expert’, and Amber with a man who dislikes a lot of what superhero culture has become) and different types of audio from radio shows, conventions, and tv shows/films.
We were assigned our groups this week and I could not be happier than if Beyonce herself suddenly gained 40+ years of audio essay/documentary/thing production and personally chose me to be in her group!
I was lucky in the sense that when groups were assigned, people were turning to me, asking me to point out who they were working with. This is not the ideal way to start a group project. I have previously worked with both Patrick and Amber, and get along with both very well, so I think this task will go well!
We decide that, for our project, we will be looking at the superhero fandom, with a focus on (although not limited to) Superman, and how political and social change in the world impacted on the fandom demographic and the superhero stories themselves.
We also completed a SWOT evaluation which read as follows…
PATRICK Strengths: Leadership, organisation, project management Weaknesses: Stress, technical ability, formal writing Opportunity: Creating schedules, making sure everyone knows what they’re doing, chairing meetings, etc Threats: (We had to start the next task by the time we got to threats) AMBER Strengths: Creative vision, good eye (ear?) for detail, interview/talking skills Weaknesses: Lack of confidence, formal writing, research abilities Opportunity: finding/interviewing people, putting together creative/out of the box designs, polishing work, etc Threats: (We had to start the next task by the time we got to threats) BRIDIE Strengths: Formal writing, research abilities, previous sound editing experience Weaknesses: Stress x3, time management, I’m an Aquarius so I have a God complex and take issue with having to identify my weaknesses (or ‘taking criticism personally’) Opportunity: Writing/editing formal documents, finding information on topic, etc Threats: (We had to start the next task by the time we got to threats)
We then started an audio task to get us familiar with the recording device, although I have a feeling that we won’t be doing the editing task next week (because I am writing this a month in the future. One of my issues is time management.). The most helpful thing I learned was how to connect the recorder to the computer, a task that is far too difficult for something that basic.
Some of the feedback I got for my rough cut included…
-Blur the shot at the beginning when the title shows to put more focus on the title and help cut between shots
-Get more diverse cut-away’s (images, video from different time)
-Music isn’t right
-Colour is very cold, add more ‘life’ to the video with colour
I’m pretty happy with this feedback, as I was having a mini-freak out that there wasn’t enough of a story for me to put up my work. I still think that, due to the content of the interview, I won’t get a great grade, but I’m pretty sure I’ll pass and people keep on telling me that ‘P’s Get Degrees’.
This week we created short films about a persuit that could have multiple shots, but couldn’t be edited in any way. Basically: watchable in camera. And we were to do this in *insert dramatic music* RANDOMLY ASSIGNED GROUPS!!!!!!!!…
…which really wasn’t bad at all. It was interesting to see how people outside of my regular table worked.
Storyboarding was very important in this process, as we couldn’t edit so there was no room for failure. It helped us remember what we were meant to be doing. I’m super proud to say that this was my artwork.
We hit a few issues in filming. Knowing when to cut was difficult in some of the opening shots because there was no obvious cutting point, and we couldn’t edit out anything if we went over. There was also the camera’s actual ability, which I personally greatly overestimated. It was difficult to get some of the cool angles we were hoping for. Space was another issue, as we didn’t have an actual gym.
This is the part in which I give a massive shout out to Lyreca, the main actor. She sold EVERYTHING to the point where you didn’t even notice that we weren’t in a real gym. The true MVP of the week!
We ended up accidentally cutting a shot that we couldn’t get back, so the end result didn’t fully fit what we originally planned, I think it came out even better.
What I learned is that when working with a new group of people, communication is going to be a little bit difficult. But, as we progress through the course, these issues are getting sorted out quicker and quicker. From what I can tell, everyone was happy with the end results.
For this weeks tutorial, we were to make a one shot film that told a story about a misunderstanding.
Our group this week really took the time to understand and plan what we were going to do. We came up with an idea about someone accidentally going to the wrong place and slowly morphed it into what we have above, which is a misunderstanding of body language.
We made a story board of what we wanted to get, which we used as a guide when we started filming. When we got on set, there was a disagreement about how to end the film. Nearly everyone in the group wanted to go down the ‘easy camera movement’ direction which would make the camera persons job easier but essentially lacked depth. One person argued very strongly for the version we ended up using, which had more dynamic shots and told the story better. We decided to film both, and after deciding on the second option, spent a lot of time perfecting that.
In terms of things we could have improved on: I was meant to provide our actor with a piece of paper before each take so that she’d have something to write on. I forgot to do that this take, so I could work on organisation. I personally think that we should’ve got a shot of the phone number she wrote down, either within the bin or when she first hands it to him, but the film still works without it.
I think this is one of the most successful projects I’ve been a part of thus far. It was fun and told a good story, and everyone’s voice was heard. We all put in the same amount of work and it was a very equal project.
I’m sad to say that I didn’t complete the task assigned to us this week.
We were to conduct an interview about the first six weeks of university. We were meant to interview two different people, and have multiple different types of shots including establishing shots and action shots.
I feel that where our group went wrong was in the planning stage. Rather than sitting down and figuring out what we wanted, we instead ran straight into the filming process and got muddled along the way. We wanted to take a comedy route, but lacked the planning for getting the answers we needed in order to take this spin.
There were also communication difficulties. We would ask a specific question and rather than answering it, we would talk about the overall concept again. This lead to a lot of confusion when shooting.
Although other members of our group were able to edit the footage together, I was unable to find a way to edit the footage and have a coherent story, or even the story we were originally trying to tell. This class taught me a lot about working in groups, and especially working with people you don’t know too well (as would be the case on most shoots). Hopefully on the next shoot, we take more time to plan out what we are going to capture.
We spent a brief moment at the beginning of the workshop discussing this week (and last week’s) readings, but a majority of this workshop working on our project brief 2 videos. We first showed our videos to our table to get feedback.
For me, this exercise didn’t really do anything, because I didn’t really get any feedback. It just devolved into a discussion about how hard it was to give feedback which was frustrating because that isn’t feedback, and as my project is less obvious, it would have helped to hear whether it makes sense or not.
There’s not a whole lot else I can say about this workshop. It was a doing work workshop.
We worked more on our haiku’s briefly this week and I think I found my calling: I give good feedback!! I’m not sure how to make money off this discovery but I’m sure there’s a way! However after I gave a bit of black hat feedback I was told be the creator that I wasn’t listening, which absolutely crushed my spirit, especially when I heard what they were referring to on the next listen. I have to work on not taking negative critique personally, even though that specific critique wasn’t about my work.
We also looked at past student’s self portrait videos which further cemented that perhaps I should not be an editor. I have past editing experience, so I expected coming into this that the editing portion would be a breeze, but I’m really struggling with finding a flow. My editing seems to be very stagnant and cold. This is perhaps because I can’t find a specific story within my self portrait. I have concepts and ideas, but it has been difficult for me to form these into a coherent (or incoherent) story. I find myself getting bored watching my work, even though the pieces by themselves are good (or, at least, I think so).
My previous editing work has been on projects that I spent months (or years) developing. The concept for my last video (completed in October 2016) was something that I began planning as far back as 2013, even though the actual pre-/post-/production took place over two months. I have been developing another idea since 2012, and only now am I able to find shape and story in it. Time management is something I will also have to work on, and the fact that I am posting this blog right before week 4 begins shows that.
Many people in my class seem to be naturals. We watched one girl’s haiku and it was honestly stunning. The way that she found relationships between seemingly unrelated objects was so beautiful. I’m just going to have to work super hard to get to the same level.
