Edit Workshop Evaluation of 'The Encounter'

I have now finished my project 'The Encounter' and this is my evaluation of my edit workshop which includes any techniques I used, challenges I faced during production and post-production, overall strengths and weaknesses and any improvements I would make to my work.

I kept to the 180 degree rule throughout the entire production, this was so my work was clear and there was no confusion from the audience. If the rule is broken people appear as if they are moving/switching sides when in reality they are remaining stationary. This rule is very important and is one of the basic rules of filming. I kept to this rule as I kept Sam on the right of the camera and Bailey on the left at all times. The two shots below show how I kept to the 180 degree rule, in the first shot you can see that Sam is on the right of the camera as Bailey's hand is in frame on the left, the second shot shows an over the shoulder where Bailey is on Sam's left side which supports this. I kept to the rule by only filming on one side and not switching sides.

 Another rule I kept to was the rule of thirds, all of our shots had people in them so we shot them with the eyes on the top third line, this is to make sure everyone looks the same height/age and it also makes the work a lot smoother, here are some examples of where we kept to the rule of thirds, I also made sure I kept to the rule when the angle was not a straight on, the first shot is a straight on but the second is a high angle. The high angle connotes that Bailey is weak/innocent/vulnerable.

I used match on action twice in my work, the first time was to show a paper being turned over two shots and the second is booking falling which cause a girl to fall over, the second one was very hard but eventually I did reach the point I was happy with.

This first example is of Sam flicking through Bailey's work notes she has brought with her, the action is very smooth as I used the precision editor and I think that it is unnoticeable which makes it a good edit. The second match on action is when the books are thrown and Bailey has to jump to catch them but ends up falling over in a mess. These two shots are very quick so I think that the match on action is not very easy to notice but this is also good because it doesn't look fake-it looks like there were actually two cameras recording the same event from two different angles.

During production we did face some problems, in our storyboard we had planned to have a two-shot in our work but this did not work out as we were unable to fit both of the characters in the shot unless we had them sitting very closely which looked weird as the personal space of each character would be invaded and the space between them would connote that maybe there was another type of relationship and this is not the case. This problem then led us to change our shot decision to a more suitable one which we could conduct-we chose an over the shoulder. Although this problem was not major it was a problem which we managed to solve quickly and effectively. If we were to film this again we would choose a bigger room which allows us to stand further back so we are able to get a two-shot as I think it is a very good shot to show both people and their facial expressions at the same time. The last problem during production was keeping the camera very steady when Bailey fell over, this was a problem as when we had it on a tripod it would shake a lot, to solve this problem we filmed free hand and locked our arms to ensure the camera was not shaky at all.

This is an example of a two-shot

Filming falling Bailey without tripod

During post production we did not face many problems but the ones we did face were very frustrating. Whilst editing we had realised that Bailey was talking in our first shot of our match on action and not in the second-this meant that once we edited the match on action to match visually her audio got cut out-to solve this problem we separated the audio from the clip and ran it over both clips, this problem was resolved in the end but did cause some confusion for me. Another problem we had was with the second match on action where Bailey falls over, the shots did not match as the second shot showed just books falling and Bailey was not in it, this did not match so we had to re-film the books falling with Bailey too. This was very important as this task is all about continuity editing and the next shot showed Bailey laying on the ground-without the middle one it would not have made sense as time would have passed. If I were to edit again I would make sure I am very clear on my match on action and planned it out before hand so I wont need to re film any moments I forgot about.

Shot of Bailey on the floor with scattered books

I think that a strength of my work is that the idea is my creativity because my idea is very unique, it is comedic and light hearted comedy and the characters are so stereotypical it is funny. The brief given was very vague and I think that my creativity skills were shown very well as I got a funny idea from such a vague brief. I also think that it is successful because I successfully used some very good techniques such as match on action, these helped to make my story look more interesting and I like how I used a range of shots to keep the audience hooked and interested, I had closeups, long-shots, mid-shots and I also varied my angles which were straight on, high angle and low angle. I think these are all very important as they make the footage much more interesting and easier on the eye. The angle also conveys meaning on who is in power and who is vulnerable.

Funny close up of Sam

High angle of Bailey to keep audience interested

The planning of my work was also done very well and me and my partner spoke regularly on where to film and what time which helped us quickly do our work, my storyboard was also very clear and made sense, all of the writing needed was included and made planning one of my strongest points. My strengths with digital technology were that I had used these cameras several times before which meant I was aware of all the functions and I could quickly transfer the memory card etc. My post production was successful as we were able to film most of our shots quickly so the lighting would not change, this was one of my main worries as the majority of the work was in one room, but we were able to film it all without any lighting problems.

I think that the weaknesses of my work are that some of the acting is not as great as it could have been, one of the closeups of Bailey is poorly acted which if I could I would re-film again, we were unable to re-film this as we filmed this shot last minute as I needed a reaction shot from Bailey and I did not have any more time to film again. 

Shot of Bailey I would like to re-film

The other weakness I have noticed is that my audio is slightly louder when Bailey speaks at one moment compared to the rest of it and this does not sound right, if I could change this I would look again at the audio settings in iMovie and alter this so it fits in well with the rest of the work. I do not think there are any weaknesses in the creativity aspect of my work-I believe it is a very unique idea and the characters although are stereotypical they do not lack any creativity. The planning and research was done very well for this project as I worked with my partner Paman Uppal and I think that we made a very good team, the only weakness I think there was to do with planning was that we did not look at the room size and figure out that it is too small for  a two-shot, we only noticed this on the day of filming. 

Over the shoulder shot used instead of two shot

We did have one problem related to digital technology on the first day of filming where we needed to do a shot of Bailey which was a tilt but also on a dolly moving backwards. We found it difficult for a while to control the camera and make sure Bailey was still in shot but in the end we managed to film it with two people guiding the dolly and one person guiding the camera to tilt upwards to reveal her outfit. During post production the weakness we had was getting the match on action sorted for the falling books, this was very hard as each shot was a little different as they were filmed on different days, the solution of this was just to get them as close as possible to match and in the end I did overcome this problem it just took a lot of re-filming and very precise editing.

Overall, if I was able to make any improvements to my work I would get a bigger office in which we could decorate it more with fashion related items for mise-en-scene, I think this would make it more interesting and the bigger room would also allow the two shot to occur. I would also maybe like to make my own music but for this production I did not have enough time and we were able to use music from YouTube-; I think it would have been fun to make my own music and have specific moments in the music where the tone changes to match the story-line of my work. Instead the music we used was 'Jason Mraz - Geek In The Pink'. The last improvement I would make to my work is to re film some of my shots which I think could have better acting skills, I think these shots don't have great acting skill like the others because we were filming very close to the deadline and worried about finishing our work on time.