MY EDIT:
So, I don’t know exactly what happened to the footage, but there is definitely something very wrong with it. The files are corrupted or something. It might have somehow been the (very, very) dodgy USB that I used to transfer them…? I don’t know. Anyhow, I still worked with it and attempted to make a scene out the footage.
The corrupted files actually add an effect that’s appropriate for the story. It works with the dialogue (“the system is playing up”). Let’s just call this edit a reflexive approach to the scene. Self-conscious filmmaking. It’s avant-garde, everyone. Shh. I’m encouraging the audience to empathise with the characters’ frustration, concern, and anxiety. Yes, that’s exactly it.
You can’t really tell where my cuts are – since the visuals go nuts and jump between frames and shots and then go static – but I’ll try to clarify:
- LA CU Angus at desk
- CU Angus fingers on keyboard
- Angus left OTS
- HA WS as Alex enters room (Angus: “The system’s {CUT} playing up.”)
- EL WS front-on Angus at desk with Alex’s hands frame left (starts on Angus: “-playing up. Big time.”; Alex: “It’s more than playing up.” *drops folders*)
- LA CU Angus at desk (Angus: “Yeah, dying.”)
- LA Angus’ fingers on keyboard in foreground and Alex looking at phone in background (Angus: “Told you they shouldn’t have put all their eggs in one basket.”)
- EL WS front-on Angus with Alex’s hands (scrolling through phone) frame left (Alex: “It’s cascading. Going down suburb {CUT} by suburb.”)
- Angus left OTS – Alex in background (Alex: “-by suburb.”)
- LA CU Angus at desk (Angus: “Have you contacted your parents?”)
- Angus left OTS – Alex in background (Alex: “Uncontactable.”; Angus: “Oh.”)
- EL WS front-on Angus at desk (Angus gets up and then hesitates)
- LA CU Angus at desk (empty desk until Angus returns to seat and continues to work)
This time, I wanted to put more cuts within the scene. I wanted it to be cheesy, dramatic and relatively fast-pace. I didn’t want to linger too long on shots. The only shot that I linger on is the EL WS front-on of Angus as he gets up from the desk and thinks about going to comfort Alex. I’m not sure if that shot/cut actually fits that well with the style that I’m going for in this edit, but I had difficulty matching/cutting between other shots to create that moment in the script, so I used a large part of that shot instead. I also quite liked that shot in itself. So, it may not have been the best decision in terms of maintaining the style of the scene, but it was a decision where the shot alone won out despite the scene’s interests.
What I like about my edit are the cuts during dialogue. I feel like this works so much better than waiting for the end of a sentence or a pause to cut. The shots flow better.
The sound is a bit iffy in my edit. (This isn’t just because of the jarring static sound that decides to pop up every so often.) It’s not the cleanest sound design. I removed the sound on the keyboard-typing shot and failed to find a sound effect replacement. There are gaps without sound – places where I cut bits and didn’t substitute an atmos track.
However, I added two music tracks which compensate for this. They disguise weak areas in the sync sound track. I like the two music tracks. One of them is sort of a suspenseful heart-beat-type music track, and the other is more electronic drama/thriller/suspense music. They work really well when layered. It was difficult, however, weaving the volumes in and out of each other as well as the dialogue track. I had to make sure that the music track wasn’t going to overwhelm the sync sound and distract from what was happening.
Scene edit: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1L4VsojczZFU0VLTzVGOEVfWkU&authuser=0
WATCHING OTHERS’ EDITS IN WEDNESDAY’S CLASS:
Everyone’s edit of our scene was pretty good. A lot were similar. Also, kudos to Angus on his strong acting.
I noticed that no one put a cut during the dialogue. I guess that might be related to the way we usually shoot. We condense a section of the script – a section of the dialogue – to a single shot. We’re accustomed to devoting shots to full lines of dialogue. So, it’s not really second-nature to be like, “Hey, I’m going to interrupt this line by moving to this shot”. But what I noticed is that that kind of cut doesn’t interrupt the dialogue/action/happenings. It’s a quiet cut. It might even be overlooked. It flows.
THE OTHER CLASS’S EDIT:
I was surprised to see how different the other class’s take on this exercise was. They were quite imaginative with theirs. Our class is realistically-inclined. The other class went all-out – with one actor unselfconsciously dressing up as a robot and doing robot actions and delivering dialogue in monotone. It was refreshing to see this. It was refreshing to see that the limits that we think we have to perform within aren’t actually there. We aren’t obliged to make things naturalistic. We can experiment. We can look ridiculous. We can practice extending ourselves, rather than working within an imagined set of parameters. We’ll probably learn more and go further.