Blame it on Bolivia Music in Rough/Mood board

Here's a rough version of the music I'll be making for my film. This is a bit like a mood board really. It's not properly mixed and lot of the sounds are only rough sketches but this should still give you a bit of a feel for the kind of music that'll be accompanying the visuals.

Blame it on Bolivia in rough

O.K so I've finally done a rough cut of the film that I shot in Bolivia. I would say that as far as the video side of things goes I'm probably about 60-70 percent done as although this is a rough cut a tremendous amount of effort has already been spent simply just getting rid of all the rubbish. Now I need to get a rough version of my audio...

Dalston Days Final Cut

The editing didn't take too long either. We started doing a few things in rough after the first day of filming and after the second (and final) day we pretty much knew what we wanted and what was rubbish. Luis and I did a joint effort on the editing which was pretty straight forward as we agreed on most things. However it kind of felt like being up against a brick wall when things came up that we didn't agree on so in places we just had to make compromises. Anyway I'm still pleased with the result and am now very excited about the prospect of making more documentaries.

Here's the final cut

Dalston Days

Well this was a nice surprise. The other day my friend Luis (also a film student) said he needed some help making his documentary on the area where he lives, Dalston. I had always had documentary film in the back of my mind-if you remember correctly from previous posts-and so I was more than happy to lend a hand.

The plan was pretty simple; with Luis holding the camera and me holding the microphone we waltzed around Dalston for a couple of days asking to talk to anyone who looked interesting. I know that seems rather vague and I guess it kind of was seeing as we didn't really have any hypothesis or specific matter to investigate but we felt that we'd just go out and see what happened and hopefully we'd be able to drag some decent footage out of the editing.


Our results felt pretty good after whaking everything in Final Cut. We came across quite a few characters who gave us a lot of lovely bits and bobs about the area however we did have a small set of questions to begin with these were.

1. If you were mayor of London what would you do to the area?

2. Dalston in three words?

3. What gives Dalston its character?

4. How has Dalston changed over the years?

We rarely asked one person all the questions as usually various other good questions would spring up as we went.

South America on Film, and First Musical Thoughts

Now I've just got back from South America and I thought I'd do a little filming out there. Admittedly it was only on a little point and shoot pocket camera but baring in mind what I've filmed I think that grainy vibe will go well with the guerilla style that I employed. I filmed things wherever I went, various Argentinean towns/cities bits of Bolivia and the Andes in all it's glory. So, I guess I've got a lot of editing to be getting on with!

As for the Music this is the first track that came into my head and I've been scratching my noodle and searching but I can't really find any other track that is any closer to the kind of sound I want. Although I want the tune to lead the way and to fit the pictures to it, the final film will be a 50/50 audio visual experience.

I'm back, and there's one thing on my mind....

So it's summer blockbuster time. Time for that film that you ask your mate if they've seen yet or that you overhear people talking on the bus about, to have it's metal tried and tested with the upmost of raised eyebrows and stroked chins. This summer we have our old friend Christopher-candonowrong-Nolan offering up the goods with his intriguing (from the title alone) Inception.

Now I'd heard from a number of sources that this film had been a pipe dream of Mr Nolan's since 2000 and that he'd been caressing the screenplay ever since. At the time of Inception's errr... inception, Mr Nolan and Warner Brothers had come to the agreement that he needed a little more experience-and probably as far as Warner Brothers was concerned success-with "big" films. With this back story in mind Inception was always going to be a big fat ego trip, which can for the movie goer result in a dire final product, think Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Fortunately though this flick is nothing of the sort. To start with the basics it's got incredible performances from everyone-apart from the Japanese bloke who on occasion I couldn't understand-and a nice hefty load of part matrix, part layer cake action sequences that make John McClane look like a morris dancer. Add that to the film's exemplary production design and special effects, you already have the foundations of a very solid Blockbuster. All this still pales in comparison to the marvel that is the overall concept behind Inception. I'm not even going to begin to describe all the brilliant ways in which this concept wows the viewer, mostly because I feel that a lot of the concept's appeal acts on numerous levels of the subconscious. Still a short explanation combined with a few pointers won't go amiss. As you may have heard already this film is about a bloke who, along with his compatriots, enters peoples' subconscious (using rather dubious technology) in oder to steel information from their minds whilst both he, his gang and the victim are all asleep. This involves all the respective characters being transported into a fancy alternate reality with loads of space for matrix-esque environment manipulation and that lovely feeling of questioning reality. Pretty much all of the film is however focused around one mission of epic proportions where the gang must go deeper than ever into the depths of one man's subconscious to plant information. So..... this is where it all gets interesting. To go deeper they must construct a series of alternate realities; dreams within dreams, so that the idea sticks within the victims brain. We also hear early on that within dreams time flows many times slower than reality and even slower as one goes deeper into the subconscious. So try picturing this; one epic mission where its events are spread across multiple realties, each one in some way influencing the next, all with their own relative time frames. For example there is one instance where the environment that the protagonists are in in one reality causes a complete upheaval of the physics in its subordinate reality, however the causes in the first reality (which only last a few seconds) cause effects with a feeling many times longer in the subordinate reality. The result is an epic point in the film (one of many) where we are being cut back and forth between action that is occurring simultaneously, involving a van falling in slow motion with the characters asleep within and on the other side a matrix like action sequence with a much larger time frame. You follow? If not don't fret, even with the film before your very eyes it can be hard. Either that or I'm rubbish at explaining things.

I do have one slight niggle about this film there are quite a few instances where Mr Nolan as used a little careless artistic licensee or overlooked a few things. Fortunately the film has such a wow factor, one doesn't notice them (first time round) but they certainly are reasons for lack of Oscars come the new year. There's no point going into all of them because-amongst other reasons-I feel that they are all encapsulated in the below video, enjoy.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Crewing 3

For my third bit of crewing I helped my friend Dave out with his sound design. He said he wanted something nice and upbeat to go along with a skater reminiscing about a time he skated. The sun is out and there's a smile on his face. Seeing as we had to use royalty free music and dave said he wanted something akin to an ITV1 ident with well composed music, I thought I'd go straight to garage band. After sifting though plenty of loops I came across a bunch that had a nice shuffle and a jazzy feel.

The one, the only the final cut for my first one minute film.

It's here! It's done. My one minute film in all its glory.

Crewing 2

My second bit of crewing was pretty similar to the first; I was an extra pair of hands. Here I help set up the green screen, tape down the tarpaulin and mix the custard. Yeah that was the fun part! This shoot involved one of our classmates being covered in watered down custard, with black food dye in it; intending to look like oil. Mixing over a dozen tins of custard was worth it for the smell alone.

Better Cut

After I did the rough cut I chopped away all but what I knew was really nice. This left something that was pretty close to the final cut. The final cut will be this cut edited a little more + sound + effects + stabilization.

N.B the better cut finishes after about a minute. Everything else are the bits and bobs left over that I want to leave there just in case I feel like considering them for the final cut.

It just works!

This video's a perfect example of what can be done with minimal kit but good ideas. A friend of mine (who's definately worth following at jayhawleyphotography.blogspot.com) sat me down and told me to "just pay close attention". This music video can't have cost too much to make, and what's more it manages to incorporate a highly engaging story instead of just being a series of consecutive pretty images set to music. The director Saman Keshavarz hasn't done much else, his only other video on his Vimeo account is an advert by him, but I can imagine seeing a lot more of him, what with the amount of views the above video has!

http://vimeo.com/samankeshavarz/videos

My improved storyboard

Here's my new improved storyboard. Yeah I know it's a bit late, been buried under bits and bobs for a while without me knowing.

Final 1 Minute Film; Rough Cut.

Here's the rough cut, please excuse the poor quality and two parts.

Bad is the new good

I saw a trailer for this film a couple of months back and at the time I thought it would be the best psychedelic roller-coaster since Fear and Loathing. Oh how wrong I was. This film stunk like a humid Pacific island plastered in cat food. I can also say that it was a very educating experience and I'm thoroughly glad I saw it...

You know when you see a trailer for a movie and you think "yeah that looks great" and you usually don't really know what the film's about in its entirety but nevertheless some clever dude as done a great job of pasting together all the cool bits to create an in your face incomprehensible taster. Now try and imagine that trailer being 90 minutes long.

The formula is great when you think about it, a modern take on Alice in Wonderland, set in London with loads of English actors giving a gritty angle to the classic characters. Plus the entire movie looks wonderful. Full of arty angles and interesting shots complete with some lovely colour grading. Unfortunately the entire film makes so many basic errors all of the above is irrelevant. Everything happens far too quickly with so many events happening within minutes of each other. Therefore there is no tension, no suspense, no release of tension. One just goes from one incomprehensible run in with a bizarre character to another. Secondly (and this is exacerbated by the rushed nature) one doesn't really know what's going on! The script is so all over the place and in places confusingly poetic that the story you're meant to be following goes way over your head! Finally the actors in it are all pretty dire-one of them being Danny Dyer-apart from a little help from Paul Kaye and Matt King, whom we see very little of.

And so the whole thing just felt like a long trailer very pretty but I had no idea what happened. Yet thanks to this film I've been shown exactly how not to make a film. In my short time learning this craft I have learnt one thing in particular and that's the fact that making films is more about not messing things up rather than showing off. It's a bit like grammar; you only notice it when it's done badly.

I recommend any budding filmmaker see as many rubbish films as they possibly can!

Crewing 1

Here's the little bit of crewing I did the other day on my friend's shoot. Everything was pretty straight forward, I was just a general handyman; moving lights, moving props, waving my hand in front of the camera in order to mark the different clips. I think I should be doing some more crewing on this project in the sound department as-well.....

Held to together by gimmicks and shock tactics

I started watching Nip Tuck when I was about 15 and back then it was the best thing since sliced bread. Womanizing plastic surgeons, Columbian gangsters and transexuals engaging in incest are always going to make a teenager's jaw drop. I stopped watching it after about a year or so after the guy who downloaded me the episodes left our school and for quite some time the surgically enhanced world of Miami was but a distant memory....

Then a few years later, thanks to the amazing power of side reel I decided to start again where I left off. And I must say the series was still pretty sharp.... for a couple of episodes. I soon noticed Nip Tuck's biggest strength and at the same time, its biggest weakness. Every episode a new character is introduced for plastic surgery and in that very same episode we usually see the back of them for good. They always have some kind of a back story and they usually have some kind of idiosyncrasy about them. The point is that despite there being an underlying plot every episode tries to build up tension with a new character every single time. This might keep someone with the attention span of a gnat with A.D.D happy for a bit but when you're hit with too many things at once, their gravitas is seriously compromised. However at the same time the myriad of characters and other gimmicks that hit you, are always keep you on your toes especially when they do their "alternative" episodes. This is something that Nip Tuck excels at. Every know and again, instead of having the standard depiction of the antics of Miami's elite they throw the viewer a curveball. Everything from alternate realities, to future projections to views through the eye of a reality T.V show give this series a nice bit of quirkiness and along with the interesting production design and (in places) reasonable acting, this show is saved from being your typical lowest common denominator.

Replace and multiclip editing

Slip Tool

This is a very nice and simple tool for selecting a portion of footage of predetermined length from a clip. Once you have cut your clip down to size simply click and drag the roll tool left and right over the cut down clip. The clip will roll left and right over the footage that you'll have previously cut away, acting as a window if you like into a much longer clip. This tool is great say if you have an exact window that you know you want to fill with a certain clip but your not sure which bit of that clip you want to use.

Replace Editing

You'd use this when you want to replace a clip on your timeline with another clip that's in your viewer and yet still keep the clip that is doing the replacing, the same length as the clip that is being replaced. Firstly you need to pick the frame on the timeline that you want to correspond with the clip doing the replacing, the frame on the clip in the viewer, i.e make sure that the playhead on both the viewer and the time line are where you want the new clip to be in relation to your sequence as a whole. Secondly the length to the left and to the right of the playhead in the viewer has to be equal to or greater than the length of the clip on the left and right of the playhead on timeline that is being replaced. When you've ensured this it's as simple as dragging the clip in the viewer over to the right and into the "replace edit" box. It is important to note that when doing replace edits, in and out points on the viewer are irrelevant as replace editing creates its own in and out points.

Multi-clip Editing

This is used when you are editing shots from two cameras or more i.e when you have a number of different angles that you are considering. Firstly you will need to make sure that all the clips are synced: both the audio and the video from all the clips appear in sync all the way through-you'll know the audio is synced if you don't hear any echo like sound when you hit play. In order to do this you make sure that that a marker marks the same point of action in all your clips. Then one simply places all the clips on the timeline, making sure their markers line up. I also might need to drag the starts of some clips so that they all start simultaneously. Next they need to be separated by right clicking on them and selecting make independent clip. Now I'm ready to make a multi-clip. I go into my browser, create a new bin and then drag my independent clips from the timeline into my bin. With both clips in the bin selected I then right click on one of the them, select create multi-clip and then depending on how I've synced them I will choose in points, out points or timecode. Then I have a multi-clip that I can drag onto my timeline. I make sure that open is selected from the sync drop down menu on the viewer and then I can make edits on the fly simply by selecting which of the angles I want as the multi-clip is playing. For even more control, when paused I can select any clip on the timeline and then click in a different angle in the viewer and that entire clip changes to that different angle! And also now that the timeline is paused I can drag clips's ins and outs left and right, ad cross dissolves e.t.c.

Below is nice little image of what things should look like. Sadly I stupidly forgot to take my own screenshot so this is straight of Google.

Location, Location, Location. 3

Here's the final house and final route, many thanks to my friend Louise and her friend (I'm very sorry I can't remember your name) for letting me snap their house. You have of course both been acknowledged via the photos and you will of course receive recognition in the credits.

Now that I've got these three locations in mind and therefore know what I could be filming, I can do a proper storyboard.