Editing Progress

In response to the feedback which we received after the mock crit., a few changes have been made to the edit, in order to make our piece more believable and consistent. One of the main pieces of feedback we wanted to work upon was the mixed comments that we received relating to our choice to include a voiceover throughout the piece. After watching back the film several times and discussing how this fit into our concept further, we decided to not fully extract the entire voiceover, but instead just use key words and phrases which would connect to our overall concept in a clearer way. Choosing to just include these, as opposed to a more  consistent running voiceover narrative throughout further helps our film to convey the background theme of memory loss to viewers, as often words or phrases can be repeated during this. We also added a few fades to the sound edit, as well as increasing the volume of the ongoing ticking clock noise which runs all the way through as a background track. This was because this did not come through clear enough in our mock presentation, and it was a key element to our idea associated with the strong connection between the passing of time and memory. In terms of further visual changes, we also increased the shot lengths of some of the shots that we felt were the most powerful in the piece, such as the out of focus lighting shots. This was due to receiving positive feedback about the length of the shots that we used during the presentation, and us wanting to incorporate these further into more of the shots used throughout our film, in order to strengthen it as a full piece.
   

Respose to mock crit. Feedback (12/12/13).

 

Last week’s (12/12/13) mock crit. session was really useful, as the feedback and comments that we received have helped us to establish the stage in which we are at with the production process. It has also been useful in making us aware of how different audience members perceive the film as well as what they take away from it and how they interpret it. Before showing the film, Sarah and I felt a bit uneasy about presenting it, as we weren’t too sure if our idea came across strongly enough or if the footage we had gathered made the film look too busy in places. However, after showing the film, we were pleased to hear that a lot of people actually understood the basic concept behind our film and they interpreted the sense of place as we intended; not to be a physical place but as more of a sense of time, character and memory.

 

Some key pieces of feedback that we received during this session are below:

 

· Most people understood the sense of place as being not physical - instead of using a literal location we chose to try and portay the notion of time moving on, and memories fading away alongside this. People grasped this idea well and overall they generally liked the concept.

· Some people commented on the use of voiceover - they weren't sure whether this flowed well enough or if it sounded a bit too firmly scripted at times as opposed to natural. We were made aware of this and this was an area which we too were unsure about . One person in the group suggested the use of an older person as the voiceover, as they did not feel much realism to the idea – especially during the way the scene change between the child and teenager is introduced.

· Another useful suggestion was to experiment with adapting the colour grading as the person grows older throughout the different stages of the film.

· The use of the frame gained mixed reviews. A useful comment was made about whether or not different aged people should hold the frame throughout the different visual stages of growing up shown. If we have the time to complete this, this is an interesting idea to consider exploring.

· Most people in the group gave positive feedback regarding the focus pulls used within our piece. The original meaning of these was intended to be surrounding a theme of memory loss – only a few people got this, but one comment which stood out in particular made by a member of the group was that maybe we should have this as an ongoing, running theme throughout the piece, as opposed to just key parts of it being out of focus.

· We received positive comments about the lighting and length of the shots - how we held onto this for a long amount of time was mentioned in a positive way- this could be applied to other shots within the piece to create further effect.

· people recognised a sense of nostalgia within the childhood scenes. A key scene that people mentioned was the birthday cake sequence, and particularly the timing of the candles blowing out and the transition between this stage and the teenage stage worked well.

Next steps:

 

· Make sounds smoother - sort transitions out.

· Revisit the voiceover - listen back to it as a standalone piece, then together with footage and see if instead of fully removing it if we could take some parts out - instead of a running paragraph or sentence have a few key words instead  and focus on making the natural sounds sharper instead.

Filming update (10/12/13)

On Tuesday (10/12/13), we went out to film a few more of the framed scenes at Endcliffe Park. We did encounter a few problems surrounding this - one of which was that the park we intended to film was occupied, so we could not film the original shots that we had previously planned. However, we still managed to make use of the location by gathering some general location footage, and ended up setting up the camera from the angle shown below in front of a row of houses, which we think fits well within the idea of showing perspective, possibly towards the end of the film as the focus could be symbolic of an unclear memory:

We did manage after some time to get a few close up shots of items within the park area, which we could end up using briefly within the childhood scenes:

 

By the time we were due to finish filming it was starting to get dark, but we used this as an opportunity to gather a range of different shots focusing on blurred out lights within street and lit up building scenes, as shown within the still images above. This gave us more to work with within the edit, as some of these could double up and be used either for childhood memories (being in the context of a reflection of the street where the subject grew up) or elderly memories (lights going in and out of focus representing searching for a memory that is becoming unclear and almost, but not quite forgotten. 

 

We also used this as an opportunity to experiment with using the frame at different times of the day. We now have three framed shots, one for each of the progressive stages of growing up that are shown in our film, apart from the end, elderly memory loss scenes. This is because we wanted to keep these as simple as possible, and let the final few clips, which purely show lights going in and out of focus from a window visually show the narrative and memory searching theme by themselves, as opposed to the frame directing the viewer's eyeline to a particular area (inside the frame).

These are the final shots that we intend to use, showing rain and lights out of focus from the perspective of inside looking out of a window. These will be used to lower the tone of the piece and create a sad atmosphere:
  

 

Connecting the sequences together - showing the progressive passing of time

 We needed to come up with an idea of how to show the passing of time in between each growing up stage of our film. We thought about the change in tone that the film has, and experimenting with the time of day, to allow the audience to make the connection between the progressive different stages of our film. For the opening sequence, we discovered that if the camera was set up for around 20 minutes towards the early evening, the sky progressively changed and could work if we sped this up in post production. This works particularly well alongside the sound of the clock ticking, which we are going to be using running throughout the film, as a background soundtrack alongside the memory sounds. We discovered that this would also work well towards the end of our film, and thought about the possibility of having the end connecting back to the start. This would also fit within our theme of fragments of memory, as pieces of memory could be shown from throughout the various stages of the subject's life, and wouldn't have to necessarily be shown in chronological order. This could work especially well towards the end of the film within the blurred out sequences which represent vaguer, almost forgotten memories.

 

 

 

Audio piece (use of voiceover)

 

To strengthen our audio piece, and to focus it more towards the progressive memory loss idea towards the end of our piece, we have decided to include parts of voiceover within our audio soundtrack piece. However, instead of including a standard running length voiceover to soundtrack the whole visual piece, we have decided to stick with a few key phrases and words that will run at various times throughout the film. I have created the following script, based on the list of memories that was previously created, as well as the footage that we have shot so far and a bit of background research on speech within memory loss.

 

Childhood sequence
 

Memories starting to fade

Artist Influence - John Baldessari

Because we have previously been struggling to decide whether or not to show our hands with the frame in shot and how we can use the frame to our advantage, by ensuring it adds something to the background already, I have been researching how other filmmakers and artists have achieved a similar concept.

One artist that uses his hands visually in shot to create new meanings within his photographic art work is John Baldessari. Even though the images are stills, viewing a selection of his different work has helped me to visualise how adding something like this to a shot can be visually pleasing as well as create new meaning, and made me think of new ideas of how we could use our hands holding the frame in shot to convey a new meaning to the viewer in terms of our overall theme of memory.

This has influenced our idea, as after viewing how adding a separate frame into shot can add extra layers of meaning to visuals, and can be used to direct the viewers eyeline to a particular area inside part of a larger overall scene or image, it has inspired me to experiment more with taking the frame out to different locations and also at different times throughout the day, to see how this concept can be used within our fragments of memory theme. Adding the use of the frame within the visuals works well to make scenes look less busy, and instead let the viewer focus on one area of the scene, which will work well alongside the overall memory theme that we have running across our piece.

Based upon this, I have come up with a list of ideas that could be visually achieved in order to connect the frame to the idea of progressive memory loss:

Some memory loss ideas (with using frame in shot)

·   Having the frame progressively getting closer to the camera/further away as memories become more vague and less focused.

·  Having objects/items moving in and out or even through the frame, to create the meaning of memories flashing by/searching for a memory within fast paced background visuals - the contrast between the frame being the part of the memory that is left, and the busy fast moving environment that is happening alongside this, not from the subject's perspective.

·  Some shots include the frame, some don't necessarily have to. The framed scenes could be the bigger picture; the location scenes. The ones which don't contain the frame could contain the finer details that may spark a key memory from a larger scene e.g. items from childhood. This also links well within our title for the piece; 'Fragments'.

Hands framing New York Harbor - John Baldessari (http://jpgmag.com/news/2010/10/museum-watch-john-baldessari-pure-beauty.html last accessed: 11/12/13)

One of our framed shots in the evening - Traffic moving through the frame.

Experimentation with editing and further content to film

 

Editing Progress

Yesterday evening we spent some time putting together the footage that we had gathered to see how it flowed to create a memory themed sequence. We decided to focus more on the visuals at this point, as we intend to record a larger range of audio over the weekend and lay sounds over the visuals that are different to the ones caught on the original recordings.

The shots that we particularly like at this stage are the opening eye sequence along with the title appearing, as we feel that this represents our idea well from the beginning.

We also like the shots that we have managed to get where the frame is shown being held within the larger shot; a frame within a frame. We prefer the city shot taken at Norfolk Park out of the two different location shots shown below; we like how the hands are shown within the frame, as well as the separation between different layers that can be seen within the out of focus background location and different layers of colour within the background scenery.

 

  

We did experiment a little with the audio, by placing some already recorded basic sounds underneath the footage to see at which moments in time within the visuals they best fit and where we felt like the narrative and memory theme was coming across at most strongly. We discovered that the repetitive sound of the clock ticking provided a pleasant and relevant background track to most of our footage, and we think this will work particularly well alongside a simple, limited voiceover within the first few moments within the film as shown below: