'See Without Sight' long shot drama

For our final exercise of the year we had to create a short film drama between 3 and 5 minutes long with a minimum of a moving 'long shot' lasting between 90 and 120 seconds. I worked with Jess Remnant, Liam Joyce, Yasmin Amey and Luke Duverney-Ruse. Liam and Jess both live in Surrey and we were planning to use the drone as Liam has only got permission to use it in certain places in Surrey. So we all made our way to Surrey apart from Luke, as he couldn't take time off work. He was the director for the group but instead for the two days of filming, Yasmin and Liam jumped in, directing one day each. Our drama was about a 23 year old male who got his sight back after being blind since birth, this beautiful short film shows him exploring Surrey on a beautiful park, that consisted of a small beach and a lake, where he first laid eyes on his girlfriend for the first time ever.

I was watching the music channel at the top charts and a recent music video came on called Hideaway by Kiesza and whilst watching it, I noticed that the whole video of 4 minutes and 34 seconds was shot all in one long take, which was pretty impressive as they only did the shot twice! 

"Shooting the video seemed impossible," Kiesza tells Rolling Stone. "I had less than three days to learn five completely new dance styles. Almost everyone told me that we couldn't do it. Then to top things off, on the day of the shoot, I broke a rib. I did the video in two takes and couldn't move for an entire month afterward, but I pulled it off." (Wenner, 2014)

My role in this drama was sound operator, as I have been the sound operator for a few location shoots, I now know what to prepare for: having plenty of batteries, remembering to bring SD cards, double checking everything is in working condition. I used the usual boom pole microphone and the zoom microphone recorder. We had to pay for the actors and actress' travel, accommodation and food which we all split it equally between us.

Overall, I think that we had a strong crew, Jess had to take over the 'long shot' shot for the first time as Liam had to work as well but joined us the next day to film the car scene; Jess worked pretty well considering it was her first time using a steadicam. Liam came up with the idea of a blind man who gained his sight back at the age of 23 and Yasmin wrote the script for the drama with a few tweaks and changes by the actors and actress. We found our cast from 'The Studio' when Jess, Liam and Yasmin worked alongside them, which was great because they had already built a relationship with each other and also with the majority of our crew. Dean Kilbey played the father, Tom Windsor played the guy who gained his sight back and Charlie Olivia who played the girlfriend; they all suited each of their character's roles that they played.

The advantages of this short film for us is that we had a great crew, we have worked as a great team throughout the year and the projects that we have all been together in and also already knowing the actors and the actress was also a bonus as they were reliable and easy to work with. The only down fall to the film was the flexibility of a few of our crew as Luke was meant to be directing for the show but instead Yasmin and Liam took turns in directing the two days, Luke booked two days off work before without consulting the actors and actress and after confirming the dates that all three of the cast members were available they weren't able to match the days that Luke had booked off, which was a pain and Luke found someone to cover him but unfortunately he was not feeling very well. 

Wenner, J. S. (2014, February 13). Rolling Stone Videos. Retrieved May 07, 2014, from Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/kiesza-barrels-through-the-pain-in-hideaway-video-premiere-20140213

Avid Media Composer Exercises

For Catalin's post-production module we had to get into pairs and work on three edit exercises on Avid Media Composer. The three exercises were Trauma Room, Car Theft and lastly Gaffer's delight; all of them were completely different two of them were short dramas where as the other one was a short documentary.

"Editing may be thought of as the coordination of one shot with the next. As we have seen, in film production a shot is one of more exposed frames in a series on a continuous length of film stock. The film editor eliminates unwanted footage, usually by discarding all but the best take." (Bordwell, D; Thompson K, 2010).

Trauma Room:

This is the first editing exercise we got set to do for Catalin's module for second year, whilst editing Trauma Room, we learnt the basics of using Avid using the keyboard to use different shortcuts like going a frame forward or backwards, marking in and marking out and many other shortcuts and you can customise your keyboard with different keys to do different commands. Also learning how to import and start on a new project.

Car Theft:

Editing Car Theft was different as it was like a short documentary but again we were learning the basics of how to use Avid, montage editing, putting in a voice over, putting in an interview and also using cutaways. This is our second time using Avid, at first I didn't like it but now I'm really getting the hang of it and I love editing on it. Catalin taught us how to create freeze frames, blur it out and then have text scrolling on top. This was difficult at first but with the help of Catalin, it brought me to understand how to do it. We had to duplicate sequences after each one; so we had the first sequence of assembly which was just a rough structure to see how it flows, then it was the rough cut assembling it shot by shot and then finally the fine cut where we finalise the cuts, trimming down the unnecessary frames.

Gaffer's Delight:

The last exercise of the year was Gaffer's Delight, this exercise was different as we had to introduce the two characters and identify them with dialogue editing and emotional mediation. Importing, organising and backing up Gaffer's Delight before making our sequences. During the fine cut we had to use J-L cuts showing reaction shots whilst the other character was talking and afterwards we would add transitions and edit the audio as the audio was different in every clip.

These three Avid exercises have given me the chance the experience, experiment and learn the ways of Avid Media Composer, giving us an insight on a different editing software. In these exercises I was working with Luke Duverney-Ruse and he was great to work with despite the fact I had to edit the most of exercises and export them all on my own because he had been feeling very poorly this year due to his operation. 

Bordwell, D; Thompson K (2010). Film Art: An Introduction. 9th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 223.