Editing Review

 Review overall

With the end of the units I feel that it's important to cover everything that I have done that involves editing, from things I've made to assessing other works.

Starting with how I have assessed other works, when I looked at Jaws I assessed how the edits were put together in order to give greater meaning for the scenes. I felt that I covered this area well, I covered all the camera shots alongside how they were edited in place in order to seem sequential or how those edits created meaning. An example of this is found when I covered the edits between the characters talking and how the edit of jumpcutting to the protagonist showed the isolation compared to his peers.

Now this is not to say that I couldn't improve, for example I could have gone into more detail about why there was such little editing within that scene and how that helped to boost the impact of the scene as there was a primay focus on the two around the table or how the simple cuts were used more than others that were too.

Easy Rider was a less than strong argument about how editing was used. For a start there was little to no assessing of the actual edits themselves but more of a recap in what was used, I also only referenced them in a proper light when refereeing to them in the context of other pieces of the scene meaning that there was no cohesion in how I looked at the topic.

For next time when I look at this idea, I should have more dedicated to the editing techniques, what they are, how effectively they're used but most importantly the impact they have on the scene and the audience overall as this will give me not only better detail when assessing these edits but gives me more of an idea of how that could impact the scene later on.

When I discussed the rules of cinematography in talking about shots, I mentioned how these were edited together (should they need it) in order to create a strong scene. As this mention was only breif however I feel that I gave the detail necessary to be understood about how it relates to the largeer set as a whole.

I could have given more detail about why these shots needed to be edited together for the scenes to achieve their effect, for example in the shot reverse shot, which would have made my point on why its important to the set-up stronger but I feel that I achieved what I needed to for this are despite this.

For the music videos I'll give a brief summary of each below:

In the Katy Perry video I covered the impact some of the chosen edits had on the video as a whole and more importantly how that gave an extra layer of meaning and depth to the song overall. I feel that my coverage explained how impactful these edits were to a basic level and gave a brief explanation as to why it had this impact.

I could have given some better inclusion to these edits and talked about them in more detail such as explaining an idea of why certain ones are used the way they are. I also didn't cover them in the right way, it was in the context of talking about the narrative of the video itself rather than dedicating its own section to make my points clear and just giving the context of the shot.

For the Tenacious D video I briefly go over what's needed but it's in no way detailed and barely covers what happens in the video for the edits to be effective enough to cover the true effect of the edits within the video itself and therefore any detailed analysis or results that I could have gained from it which would impact my own work.

In future I should remember to give explicit details about the editing as a whole and relate it back to my own work to assess the impact it could have on my own production.

Onto my own productions:

The first is my new wave film. Within this I feel that I managed to achieve some goals, for example I gained meaning from edits by having them demonstrate certain effects and impacts that I wanted my production to have, for example using a disorientating transition in order to demonstrate a passage of time but also to show the characters dizziness and confusion in a literal sense but using this method also gave the audience the same feeling of confusion. The sequence in which its edited together does show a clear story narrative in a focused order and everything was put into the place for it and worked well with each piece within it.

Improvements I could have made are to maybe make it a bit more clear about the story arc or given it a bit more of a clear focus to the actual thing itself. The transitions could've been a lot smoother too between scenes and making sure that each one had a clear purpose for being used.

For next time I think stronger plannign would give me a better result and clearer focus and structure to what I had to make, but it would also give me something to proof my final product against to see how it compares to what I had envisioned over a guide of what I want done.

The last is the music video. This was my worst, the edits emphasized the idea I wanted but were sloppy in use and placement, contrary to typical music videos the edits that I used here did nothing to amplify the lyrics of the song or the visuals themselves of the video. The use of them was bad too, it seemed to be just for the use of that changing from one scene to the next.

In  future I need a better dedicated structure for what I want to get out of the video and how well what I've chosen to do goes with the lyrics of the song which gives strong amplification of the song used in order to hghlight more meaning to it. 

The Evaluation 2-The Video

 

 Here we go the be all end all. The fruits of my labors and I have to say that it's rather plain and a bit dull.

So before I get into what went horribly wrong lets go through what was actually okay. For a start I felt that the transitions were okay, they worked well with the effect theme that I was going for in terms of a VHS style by using static to signify the change in what the primary visual is on the screen. On this area I like the overlay that I managed to put together for this as it helped to achieve the goal of home made that I wanted to achieve when planning out this video. There's not much to break down for the audio so I won't cover it as it's just the unedited band audio.

Back to the video and I think that the live video shots were alright. They weren't perfect or what I thought I could get out of it but for the purposes that I needed it worked well.

Now we get to the worst and where it went bad boogle, starting with where I left off above with the real time cinematography. The quality of the recordings was awful, the lighting wasn't anywhere near as consistent or developed as it should have been and the angle wasn't symmetric enough for the effect to fully work, now what was captured failed as well as the video files weren't originally compatible with what I was doing so there was no proofing on what settings the camera therefore it made an inferior product.

The synchronicity of how the visuals were aligned is really off as well, when you look at a typical music video you look at one of the examples that we've used for this area ordinarily the artist pre-records the audio then the visuals are aligned in time with the right balance between the audio and what's being shown on screen to get the full effect of the song as it were. It's not just this that caused big problems but matching the beat is way off too. Generally using the beat to mark where certain points go is vital as it can make or break the flow and unfortunately that's where I dropped the obvious ball for this area. 

Another point is that there's no general story or narrative behind the images I've used in order to reach any of the two ideas that I have discussed previously or the theory behind the original video that made it so successful.

Music Video Analysis 3-Human by Rag'n'Bone Man

What's Over Here?

 Alright now we come to a more recent number in that it was produced in 2016 and breaks up what we've seen so far in quite a few ways. In the past few posts we've spoken about star iconography and how this is used to sell the song more than the song itself and how its the brand of what the celebrity is sells the song. 

So if we look at this first there's a bit of it but it's not as explicit and in your face as some of the other songs that we've looked at so far it's just the artist stood however its more of a narrative message than any of the other videos we've seen. It's equality. Think about the lyrics and the visuals that accompany them, "I'm only human after all." followed by a blur shot of various different people and singular focus before going back to the artist once again which demonstrates a deeper meaning behind the visuals of the video itself.

This video works on a deep level as it tries to demonstrate an idea that we're all people and it uses interesting techniques to make sure that we understand this, I have spoken about Illustration before in this area and it does apply here as it does show a true visual of the lyrics but it has more of an impact behind it as it accompanies what's being said.

This does help to become further impacted by the environment brought by seemingly filmed in location at an abandoned warehouse helping to give this idea that we are all one in the same but isolated giving the song extra layers of depth and meaning.

Looking at this we can see a lot of inspiration from the ideas of Andrew Goodwin, in short one of his ideas comes from the thought of the visuals are more important than the audio of the song and that it should appeal to everyone and this is an idea that's represented within the video itself. The visuals are more definite to see this idea forward by having the main visual of the video being the change of person with certain audio cues.  

Music Video Analysis 2-Tribute by Tenacious D

Who and the what? 

So far we've seen Katy Perry and looked at what genres that her video would fit into so what about this song? Well for a start this isn't a typical music video and more to the pioint its not a normal song as it has to follow its own narrative structure.

When looking at this video a few things are identifyable easily, the first thing being a studio performance. We literally see them walking into a studio for most parts of the song, however this is not the only indication fo this idea, if we look at later in the song when they talk about the demon it's on a greenscreen with flooring to match the setting meaning that mosty things we would normally consider when looking at these songs wouldn't be as effective to apply here.

Going back to the idea of the video itself, trying to identify the genre is again quite easily identifiable and is seemingly related to Roar, it follows a narrative granted its preset and embedded into the song itself. So what makes this structure significant compared to another song liek Roar and more importantly why would this way be different to Roar? Well lets look at the video again, throughout we can see a lot of Artists Close-Ups the idea came from a man called Andrew Goodwin (who will be covered in a seperate post) who observed that any music video should several close ups of the artist(s) in the video itself in order to properly succeed in what it attepmts to do. There's an awful lot in this clip of that very idea whether it be in the booth, on the road or out in what we can assume is a shop and this brings us to a new idea.

Its something that companies all over the world use and that's selling the brand. It's not the product that they want to sell you but the brand which is exactly what's done here, now I'm not just singling out thgis video for it but this video does show the point pretty clearly by making sure that the more iconic member of the group (Jack Black) is always in the front of the shot set-up and the guitarist (Kyle Gass) still within the frame but in a not too prominent position compared to his co-star making it easy to identify who is meant to be used to sell the band through two ideas within the close up and that's the Branding and the Vulture of celebrities.   

Music Video Analysis 1-Roar by Katy Perry

 What's here?

So in music videos we see an awful lot of stuff but what does it all have to do with the lyrics we can hear behind them,  and more to the point why are most of them so gripping?

Well that all comes from the idea of the emphasis. Most of the time there are certain aspects of either the artist or the song itself, Katy Perry is a good way to show off this idea. One thing that's prominent throughout the video is the artist herself and that comes from the idea of star iconography where the artist shows in the video in order to sell the artist themselves as well as the song in order to generate traffic and profits .

 In this video there's a lot of visuals to do with the jungle which reinforces the visuals of the actual lyrics themselves. This comes from the idea of Illustration which plays a big part in the what I have called "The Big 3" of music video production where you make a choice while making the visuals to go alongside the song, the more general one is called Illustration that I have mentioned earlier where you do roughly no more than show a visual interpretation of the lyrics to the song. This can help in planning as you can make a better structure as you have clear point of reference when creating as you can match a change in scene to the beat.

Now as I mentioned earlier there is a big thing in this type of video called star iconography but this idea plays into a bigger one that's used an awful lot with femlae artists called the male gaze, I think I have spoken about it in a previous post (Mulvey And The Media) but I'll give a quick summary, its the basic idea that showing women in suggestive positions gives more attention to the piece being viewed.

Here may not be an obvious example of the idea of the male gaze but it does give a good look at what I mean, now at first the idea looks to be drawing attention to the monkey holding the piece of fruit but that's before the artist comes on screen.

The POV of the shot is the tiger which gives us further emphaisis that who weire meant to be looking st is the artist herself, one of the signature parts of a woman that men look at is their legs. This has been portrayed in the media to a large amount but it leads to a good point hat while we exepect that there's a lot of revealing clothing but this seems to follow more the actual tracking of the gaze itself rather than the simple stereotype of the idea.

Now there's not just theories behind the idea but genres too, and for this there could be a few that you might think of but for music videos the idea is different, you apply it more in terms for a music artist so if you think it could be a stadium for a concert that gets used or it could be on location such as a performance on the Empire Stadium. Following that we can tell that ebyond the song there's actually a story behind what we can see therefore this video becomes a narrative, which emans that while we can get the base enjoyment of the fun of the video there's also a clear structure that helps to connect the visuals on screen to the audience as they then subtly become invested behinf the story that the cideo is telling.

There's more surrounding the video itself and that's a narrative, specifically a performance narrative. This tells a story through the performance of the artist, if you listen to the lyrics there's a contrast between the performance of the star and the actual song itself. Using this in the video is a way of amplifying the lyrics in a different method as having the star acting brings your attention to certain points of the song. This links into a further amplification of the songs lyrics through having the artists face open at all times so we can see the lip sync which helps to give the song a strong point, this use of emphasis is reinforced by the use of edits between scenes.

There are parts of this video too that show exploration and have both characters in the beginning dressed is a stereotype explorer outfit while they move through the jungle exploring, this could be an intertextual reference to Indiana Jones. Looking at the male character seen on the screenshot to the left bares a resembelence to the popular character in his costume style and the environment around Katy Perry as the video goes on and she begins to discover more and more about where she is. However as much as there's an intertextual reference to the character Indiana Jones during the start of the video sequence the rest of the video has a similar thread to Lara Croft for the lead, her outfit and overall personality are similar to that of the character which help to bring together the idea of the cideo being about exploration and survival.

My New Wave Film

 

 Here is a clip from my interpretation of a new wave film that features monochrome/black & white main images, emphasis on sounds like the music and extended shots with seemingly invisible cuts.

The basic idea behind this was to take some of the shots/pieces that are seen in the American new wave and its influence (political commentary and French new wave) and make it about how life almost has gone backwards with lockdown in effect whilst promoting safety within the current climate. As you can tell by the footage it's all handheld with minimum stability with the movements of the scene as I move.

The thought process was that the American New Wave made commentaries on the scenes or trends within current politics, as we know COVID is the biggest influence and news of this year and it can feel isolating and to some almost like they're going backwards.

Hence some of the shots having almost no one in them highlighting the isolation with the homes and quarantine, then the actual story line of the story seemingly going backwards in time.

So on to the critique of the work, overall I feel that I achieved my goal of making a comment on the impact of the current environment that the government has shown meeting the general type of film made within the 1960's-70's America at the time, it was also low-budget just me, my phone and some help from the internet for sounds further reflecting on the statistical side of the New Wave development. Enough about the theory and backing what about the clip itself and well I feel like I captured a number of points and edits in the piece, for example the sound and visual alignment towards the end of the clip builds scale and emotion around the environment of the character and what's happening to them. The transitions between them help to keep the flow running smoothly and not breaking the audience out of the experience. Another is the overlay on top of the scenes, having the low opacity of the images and clips on top of the video help to build an ominous feel whilst giving reminders of the government impact on the character (which explains the flashes of Boris on the overlay).

Now where did it go wrong? Well from the top there were a few health and safety issues along with privacy problems too, such as for the reverse walking scene I had to keep an eye out behind me whilst walking which limits my visibility and also makes the possibility of capturing something whilst filming with the camera facing the opposite direction. The next health and safety issue was that whilst walking my feet weren't stable at the angle of walking for the shot making it a risk of falling and damaging me or the equipment. As I mentioned earlier there was also a privacy risk and that was similar to what I mentioned earlier about not being able to see the camera whilst walking backwards so if someone or something got into frame that wasn't supposed to be there then that could  cause a lot of issues further down the pipeline.

Other than the issues filming lets go to the editing, going back over the footage captured within the clip did make a few problems like trying to align audio to fit clips and where there's edits in trying to blend them to ensure that the transitions seem more real and like a sequence rather than having it as a series of individual clips. The other one was trying to make sure that video clarity was still good and strong when putting in the black & white filters and overlays on top of the raw video files and having the transition effects at the right points to reflect the general theme of the clip.

To sum up from the review, overall I feel as though I achieved what I set out to do but in future I need to reflect on the problems and issues that I brought up for the next project.

Meanings in Jaws

Scars and Edits

When editing you always have to think about the rules, this then gives you the guide for what you can break when doing your next piece of editing. This comes under what's known as the Rule of 6 and these are the general rules that you should follow or think about while making your story, normally above all story is what you'd expect to be the key thing to think about or focus on but actually this isn't true. While the story of a scene is important emotion always comes first when bringing together a scene, this helps to get an audience reaction but more importantly sell your scene.

Now onto the film of choice for today, we're looking at the scar scene this helps us to connect with the characters on screen and give more meaning behind the story and their connections to it.

Now in the editing for this scene we see two opposing characters bonding with the protagonist seeming to be on the outside of the two.

In these two frames we see the lighting is dark around everywhere but the center of the table which they're on. This helps to draw the viewers to focus on that point making their actions more meaningful as they're paying attention to that point.

It also helps to follow the 180 degree as they have a reference point to use but also a singular point of focus where they can now draw meaning from their text.

However lighting and mis-en-scene aren't all that's used to give the text meaning but the type of shot as well. It's a very close-up shot giving little of the surroundings away making the audiences eyes zoom in on the scene before them. It's not just what's not around them but the length too, this scene is almost a three minute long shot of these two characters interacting.

This is all helping to establish the characters with their experiences and allowing us to bond with them much deeper than at just face value, as we can see it seems to be mainly focused on two characters who aren't even technically the protagonist which links back to the rule of six that I mentioned earlier where you draw on emotions for meaning before story. Which if you think about it makes sense to the scene, ordinarily this would be almost contextual but for the emotion of the moment and the characters in it this has been included but in one long cut too making the emphasis that this more important to the characters and the emotional link rather than any full impact to the story itself.

Another thing which is key throughout all of these scenes is that the two characters on screen are almost constantly getting closer to each other making it seem more and more like there's a connection between them.

We see that the camera still hasn't moved or followed any of the usual rules that we know for cinematography which can normally mean that the emphasis is on the environment like an establishing shot for the surroundings rather than character focus.

However this scene goes against the norm by having its focus be how close the characters are getting (symbolising the new unity from their shared experiences) whilst highlighting that all we've seen of these two is how different they are from each other but in actuality probably have more in common.

Again we see that the lighting is consistent in highlighting what the scene needs the focus on at that moment bringing the audiences focus to it and therefore drawing their attention away from anything else. The way that the camera is angled to almost reflect off the fact that these two are sharing a wide range of experiences and emotions, almost makes it seem like an outsiders point of view where only the characters on screen know the true depth behind each mark. 

This POV turns out to be a strong one as when the camera next cuts it's to the main character watching from the side out of the light and the main focus of the scene almost pushed aside, like an outsider. Having this cut in the place that it is gives an important emphasis to the characters themselves and their emotions, for example like here we see Roy Scheider's character looks almost uncomfortable to go and join them in the main part of this scene.  

Then as we see by this shot we can see why he's on the outside, the only scar he has is from an operation not any sort of experience with a shark or some other form of creature.

One really important thing of note here is that the shots are identical but the light that just highlighted his face has more emphasis and has moved lower to the part that's exposed to the camera drawing the audiences eye to what's changed and maybe why he's not joined them. 

A potential reason why the editor chooses to cut away only once they almost get to the end of the scar show-off as it were could be that there was to be a specific emphasis on the effect that each has on the story, listing off each one with a how gives the audience a sense of direction. That instead of the protagonist taking charge as is the norm in film they instead choose two characters that were only introduced mere moments ago contrasting the usual etiquette and structure of films, however it's not just the switch between them that gives a purpose but the length.

Having the two secondary protagonists who don't really relate to the story with more screen time than the main protag shows the style of the editor and DP, it shows us that they wanted to give everything they could a meaning behind it like for example to characters who act as opposites bonding over shared experiences or how isolated the main seems because he hasn't had the same as the others.

In summary it's like I stated before the editor chooses cuts and shots to create meaning behind the text that they're presenting and certainly in this case they've kept to the structure we know and placed emotion before story whilst making sure they connect.

Hopefully this has given you a better insight into how editors give different or specific meanings in the texts that they create.

Have a great day!

Rules of Shots in Cinematography

What's What

In this post I will be breaking down the types and styles of different shots throughout film and TV talking about the technique, how effective they are as well as some of my own shots. Hopefully it will teach you something new.

Anyways enjoy!

Shot/Reverse- Toby Maguire's Spider-man  So in this shot you can see a character having a conversation in the mirror with two opposing characteristics, one being happy and manic and the other being down and confused. The way that this shot works is that when there's one shot after there's a similar shot but at a reversed angle to show the flip of the scene hence showing the duality of the character. This type of shot is more generally used for conversations between characters as it gives the impression that both pieces of dialogue are happening at the same time, like the one in the clip above.                     

 Here's my interpretation of the shot reverse technique with the two splits of the same character interacting together and the jumps showing that it's at the same time but the outcome is almost completely different to what's expected. Overall I fell that we demonstrated and captured this rule well as it shows what it is and what it can do along with the effect it can have when used effectively.

180 Degree Rule- The Dark Knight  Here we have a scene which is another dialogue section but the rule still applies, basically when the camera moves in this section it's only allowed 180 degrees movement within the area of the scene. Here in the scene between Batman and Joker the cameras that switch views between them have a cut but that's just for between the characters where as if you look at the actual movement then it follows this rule and actually loops back while the conversation carries on. Generally when using this the characters tend to show more of a body to what ever side the camera on but when you have multiple so long as you have a bit of room the effect will be the same.

Here's my interpretation of this rule:

 Here there isn't as much camera movement and that's probably one of the biggest downfalls of the piece example but the basics are all still the same where the characters are leaning more towards the side with the camera and generally working in that direction showing off the rule just as well. This demonstration has worked well because it shows off the rule and how it might be edited but on the other hand there's very little camera movement so it's less accurate then it would be other wise.

30 Degree Rule- Various  This type of angle is much tighter than normal, as you can see if the camera does move then it doesn't move very far or at that much wider either but it's mainly used to highlighted certain characters or features within a scene. As you can see in the video above there's a few different scenes where this is used but they're not as wide ranging in what they cover making the audiences eyes focus on the thing that's in focus right in front of them in the scene. 

Here's my interpretation of the rule:

 So as you can see we've narrowed the scope but kept the scene similar to the last one to show that you can still have a similar type of scene but you have to be careful in what you include to this so that it's not too crowded and makes the audience loose immersion within the scene, having the rule as well allowed us to give focus or highlight one character within the scene. Now issues with this shot is similar to the last where we really didn't demonstrate any real movement of the camera to show off what the angle is or how impactful it can be.

Cutting On Action- Unknown  This one is just a brief note as it's used more by TV channels for their shows for adverts, so they can keep their audience hooked on what's going to happen when it cuts back to them. However this doesn't mean that it's only television that can use this rule, some films do this too where they cutaway from a piece of action to a different scene for other characters, it's a good one to consider for some light tension building or comedic effect but isn't really one of the best to use a lot.

Crosscutting- Inception  Now this is an interesting technique because of what it can do to a scene, as you can see in this scene there are times where it cuts away and back quite frequently but why? Well that's because this rule tries to make multiple things happen within the same space, almost like they're going on at the same time. This is the effect that it creates having a cut that's quick enough and close enough to the last creates this feeling that both things are happening within the same time making each cut or change synch together like in the scene above.

Here's my interpretation of this:

 This isn't as much a cinematic or big example as the one above but it still demonstrates the rule well, having these things edited so quick and close together with n invisible cut helps to create that sense of both have happened within the same time frame. The big thing though is that this looks similar to a shot/reverse shot but it's not as the shot/reverse shot is more to do with characters interacting and dialogue whereas this is more built for sequences like the scene above.

The actual footage itself I feel works well to demonstrate this rule but I feel like if we had worked a bit more to tackle the seemingly synchronicity of the technique then it would have had a much clearer display but this works well as an active example of the technique.

Establishing Shot- Harry Potter  Well we all know this one, almost every film has them and always look really pretty. Establishing shots. They are all about one thing, setting a scene of a location where your characters are based such as the Harry Potter example above, there's little to add here but how they're taken now that can change from a camera on a track to a drone flying over head with the camera angled face down.

Here's my interpretation:

 As I said earlier there really isn't a whole lot to do with this one other than camera stability and time, too long and it'll be boring too short and well it can throw the audience out of the moment when the scene changes so overall I'm happy with the outcome of this as a demonstration into what an establishing shot looks like.

Match On Match Action- Friends  Now this is an interesting one, this involves a multi-camera set up and more close editing to get right. So as you can see by the clip basically this rule is where you have one shot with the character doing the action (like opening a door and walking into the room) and then the next shot is them continuing where the camera left off. Friends is iconic for this type of shot as that's primarily the type that's featured within the show.

Here's my interpretation:

 As you can see this is a similar format but with less on screen so you can clearly see the effect as the clip goes, the cut between entering the door and the camera changing to inside the room is clear so that you can see what we're matching with the door. This I feel works well as a demonstration although it would work better if the clip ran a little bit smoother in-between shots of the scene.

Temporal Overlap- Family Guy  Ah the heart of any good action film multiple shots of the same explosion, also called temporal overlap. Now this is where there are multiple almost quick shots of the same explosion some even going back before and then replaying but with how quick the edits are within this and how the sequence is put together it almost doesn't matter because it all looks as though its at the same time. Now could this be confused with the Crosscutting shot? Possibly as both follow a similar format to one another but thing is the crosscutting is of different things happening at once whereas this is more like multiple cuts of one sequence.

Kuleshov Effect- The Dark Knight Rises  Now this one is interesting because it's one that we see but never really pay attention to as it just fits in all the right ways. This rule (or effect) is from two shots like crosscutting but is more to do with emotions than the actual sequence itself, it's where we derive meaning from two shots that work in sequence with each other and then the audience gains meaning from that. So in this example between the fight with Bane and Batman we see cuts back to Catwoman who's emotions are on full display for us to see about the choice that she made. This then connects with the audience and makes them emotional too as it's almost like its a comment on how helpless they are for the situation at hand like she feels.

Montage- Hot Fuzz  Here we are the final technique or rule, The Montage. Now this came from the Soviets who seemingly managed to bend the laws of time and space to get a sequence of shots from point A to point B while creating meaning and giving the audience the needed information on what was happening. Hence why Hot Fuzz is a good example of this as it has this sequence of shots for the first five minutes with the protagonist narration to guide the audience through what's being played to make sure that they don't get lost in what's happening in between.

Hopefully this has given you an insight into what some of the rules are and how they can impact what you're creating if used right.

 

Premire Pro Editing

Editing Basics

So, with all the stuff to cover about media development as a whole I thought I'd go over some of the tutorials from Premier Pro and what some of the take-away's are from each section.

We begin with the basics of editing, sequencing clips. Obviously this seems easy but it's actual more complex in the breakdown, this doesn't come from the action of the putting them on the timeline (lower right box) but rather their order and making sure that you keep the right audio files with the right clips otherwise it begins to be thrown off.

Now we come to the end of the aligning and functions area. In this section we covered how to move both audio and video to ensure good placement and quality.

Some of the take-away's from this are:

-Take care when you use the timeline, where you have stuff in sequence will affect the video playback

-Audio is linked to video, which means that you need to lock one of them in place if you begin to edit the other

-Having the preview window at a decent size goes miles to helping with edits, this will show you a preview of the final product and where you need to improve

Just to round off the basics of introductions to editing, we have overlaying on top of videos and bringing in different effects and bringing them together with the project to add more depth to the project and bring it together.

Some of the take-away's from this are:

- Using video effects and transitions can add another layer to your project, having these effects can improve the flow from a jumpcut so it's worth while to give it more consideration

-Always plan what you want from it, this seems obvious but having a list of what you want where will go miles in helping you keep structure when editing and it means that the project will meet what you wanted it to be rather than looking like a quickly pieced together jumpcuts and footage

-Organise your resources, keep what you want to use in the order that you'll need it with possible notes for the clip so that you can keep track of your video development and ensure you know how to best merge it together.

Well now we've reached the end of the editing cycle, the 'final phase' such as colour grading and enhancements to highlights and shadows to make it like a ore standard profession style of clip.

Here are some final thoughts from learning editing and some final take-away's:

-Use the blue arrow to move along your timeline to keep an eye on your project window, it gives you the opportunity to preview what your final product will be

-The timeline is a vital tool for your success, it gives you the chance to layer images and other videos to create all manner of things including a split-screen

-Colours are a near essential tool in order to make sure that you get the right tone or message to the audience as the wrong type of message can give an entirely different tone to the production.

Hopefully this has given you some insight and maybe a different perspective into what is done during the production of TV/Film. 

The Development Of Editing In The Industry

History and Development Of Editing

Now obviously there has been a significant increase in the power that editing software has, but where did it start and how did it get as strong as it is now? Well hopefully by the end of this you'll have gained a better understanding of editing in the industry and how it has grown to the powerhouse of today. (All evidence and links where I have found my information is at the end of this article)

We start with the earliest process back when film was actually on rolls and sectioned like a disposable camera, but before all of this modern technology films as I mentioned used to be physically cutting reels and sticking them back together with tape and then later would be glued, obviously a process like this is a very precise piece of work to avoid having to dip further into the budget in order to get it reprocessed in order to get the tape back. This would then provide the jumps helpful to boost along the story and act as almost an early version of a jumpcut.

This method obviously wasn't exactly a great thing for efficiency or timings but it was part of the ground breaking moment for the industry and the first instances for film making and moving pictures for wider audiences so of course it would then end up becoming almost the only way of making films.

Don't be alarmed or worried by this weird machine in front of you, it's actually the next step in movie editing. To give a brief kind of overview of it, it allows the editor to watch the project and then decide what edits need to go where etc. It rose to it's position during the 1930's when propaganda films were running at an all time high as it was during the build-up of and the start of World War 2.

However what makes the Moviola (the thing above) particularly unique is that it wasn't exactly as widely used as you might think on the surface. During this period of the editing there wasn't that many countries who used them, the most notable people would be the USSR, Germany and the US from which we can assume their allies too. All apart from Britain who instead used something different that was soon adopted by everyone.

While this next bit of machinery may look like the first version of a pre-historic DJ it's actually the next step in editing around the world but it actually starts in Europe. See during the 1930's when most of pretty much everywhere else was enamoured with what the Moviola could do, Europe moved on and started using the Flatbed (seen above) as their primary editing powerhouse.

What made this so great was it's almost full modern capabilities, such as being able to chop and link sequences back together and viewing the film and getting audio synced with it too as it allowed for magnetic audio (made by Germany in 1928 for recording sound that wasn't discovered by the Allies until they beat the Germans) to be played alongside making it one of the most significant developments in the media industry.

Now we get close to things of today starting with linear and nonlinear editing techniques, but what do I mean? Well on the face of it, the process is almost the same but what you use is different. It's the 1990's and everything is moving along quite rapidly including how we edit film but there are different ways and methods for doing so. In this case linear still uses tapes and cutting, keeping it in that straight line order and it's all linked from one thing to the next and if you want to change something then you have to be careful in how in case it gets damaged.

In contrast to this we have the similar albeit more modern choice of nonlinear editing which is all done digital, such as full digital recordings, editing on a computer etc., this is a more familiar version as now we have things such as Adobe which can sequence video captured.

It's time for a bit of logistics, by now almost all editing has moved to digital but linear and nonlinear still hold as an idea for editing sequences. The main thing that's changed is the steps, now called Online and Offline which doesn't have anything to do with the internet but rather the steps taken to get the process done, beginning with Offline. Offline is the initial step, making a rough draft of what the final product should and could look like for main editors and directors, this is never clean or in any sort of high definition because it's used for proof of concept or to help give ideas. It's also used to make an Editing Decision List (EDL) for the main editors who them work on increasing the definition, colour grading, implementing the list etc.

Online editing is where the main group sits, using high definition material to make the product using the EDL given by the offline editors, as mentioned before they do colourings (mainly corrections) but also add things like visual effects (possibly CGI) and other things too. It's easy to see why I called them the main group as they are responsible for the full making of the end product with assistance from the offline editors who help to provide the information and the baseline.

Here we are, modern era editing, from the starting points of things like the CMX keyboards which boosted nonlinear editing to an entirely different level to where it was at the beginning to Avid 1 which was designed in similar fashion to the Apple Macintosh II and boosted nonlinear editing even further and helped the design and software of what they were get boosted to today's places.

Now we don't have separate pieces of hardware for editing, it's all available to download from the internet but they all had those as a baseline and you can still see it, in Adobe and Final Cut Pro being able to take nonlinear scenes and moments and make them into a continuous flowing film. Being able to take audio and sync it with the images being played, then being able to watch the finished product which is reminiscent of where it all started.

Well that about covers it, hopefully now you know more about how much the industry has grown than when you started.

Have a great day!

Research credits:

https://www.sutori.com/story/the-history-of-editing-in-film--QJpt1BGzfkapALSCe9af3Upx

http://jholmeshnc.blogspot.com/2015/06/developments-in-editing-technology.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe7lssLns9Q&t=80s

Easy Rider Breakdown

Contextual Analysis:

I was watching easy rider the other day and while I was enjoying it I realised that maybe a lot of the meanings behind what was going would be missed by a standard movie goer, so I thought I breakdown one scene to help you figure out some of the deeper meaning behind what's going on.So let's get to it, the scene that I'll be analysing is the Cemetery Acid Trip scene

Right away we see and hear a lot so let's go through this first piece, in this introduction we see the four main characters in what would be considered unusual clothing. This helps us get a time period for this film, based on other factors around them like a lot of grass (which could be symbolic of later on in the piece) and the sounds of almost industrial mining equipment we can tell that the period is very early possible seventies or eighties going from rough eyeballing of the characters looks.

This is also re almost confirmed with their actions during this short dialogue free stretch, the way that they're just openly drinking in public and showing near constant affection most of the time in a more modern film there wouldn't be this level of affection between any character (except when following the trope of the genre; for example action would be after the catastrophe has been resolved) which helps us to confirm this date theory.

The type of camera shot in this scene is interesting too, it's almost between a medium and a wide shot giving us enough detail for the characters and the environment around them, making it the perfect type of shot for setting the scene with some foreshadowing whilst still being enigmatic about where they are and why they're there (which we then later learn is to take drugs) causing the start of this scene to be curious but also relaxed as there no fast-paced edits making action or quick changes to the angle and type of shot making it appear to the audience as a break almost from the main bulk.

This changes when they then take the drugs and it has some rapid changes and moves which highlights the chaos of the scene and probably the experiences that the characters have in that moment. Linking that to the hue over the entire scene (light sepia over it to add to the old feeling and an altered state that the characters enter) and the non-diegetic mix (between dialogue and the repeated sound of something banging in the background throughout the whole scene), which is a stark contrast to the relative calm of the previous scene where there was just ambience and quiet dialogue, we can tell that what happened to these characters wasn't exactly normal or what we would consider sane behaviour.

As previously mentioned there's a lot of sounds that happen all within that clip but the only bits that are non-diegetic are the ones that have been added in post (like the narration over other images linking to the person reading, or the banging continuing over everything) but it seems to rely heavily on diegetic making it more of a in the moment type of scene which further adds to the period set and made.

It looks as though it's both made and set in the late sixties/early seventies which would make sense given the grain over the film, the almost reliant use of diegetic sound that's carried throughout the entire clip to help it establish that they had to almost fully rely on what was captured in the moment rather than being able to add or change things in post as well as they are now. It helps to create atmosphere and immersion within the surroundings as it comes from the actual scene itself, almost like an audio mis-en-scene as well as a visual one too.

Lighting was another overarching theme throughout too, having a slightly sepia filter over the scene where they're sat before doing drugs helps to reinforce this sort of calm given from the scene, it has a warm kind of glow to it helping for this appealing yet calm feel at the beginning when they're establishing the acid drop where the filter has gone and it all seems to drop a shade or two in colour grading; maybe hinting at an almost dark decent once it started.

Hopefully this has given you a better idea of some of the things to keep an eye out for when watching a film and what they mean when you spot them!

Have a great day!