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Been set a new project!

With the completion of our individual projects, it was now on to creating group projects for a selected client. We were set the task of making this short film around 8 minutes long and to match a clients brief.
After a brainstorming session within our group of me, Ved Gobin and Balvinder Bains, we decided to base our project closely related to one of us. That would be that Balve had been trying to set up a radio station for Bath Spa University but was not given the go-ahead. He then applied to Bath Uni's station (URB) for his own slot, and our film would follow him from getting denied at Bath Spa to getting his slot there.
We would be needing two or three interviews with various people regarding his journey to getting on the radio, as well as Balve himself that we would utilise as a presenter.

End Result of my Documentary

With the completion of my documentary I was very happy with the end result, although there was one or two different problems I encountered.
One of the first problems I had is while filming, due to the fact that I was not allowed to be using a tripod within the Baths as I may be getting in peoples way. This lead to a few shaky shots but as a whole my hand was pretty steady with the camera.
This was the same with some of the sound because I could not use a boom microphone, so I had to use the cameras onboard mic. I feel that this ruined some of my bestshots because of various background noise happening around me.
While I was editing it took me hours to try and find the right place for various clips, but then I found that as soon as I added my music track (Zero 7) the whole piece came to life and within minutes I had my rough cut.

Other Documentaries

Documentaries

I started to search through some other students' short documentaries on Youtube, and here are a few examples of what I had found.

Individual Project - Brainstorming and Decisions

With the start of our new individual project, it was decided that we should make a short documentary.
The first hurdle in this was deciding what sort of documentary to make and what I should be basing it on. During my brainstorming I decided to base it on something to do with where I lived (Bath) and maybe show a bit of the culture and history of bath.
Eventually I came to the decision to base it on the Roman Baths, as it what comes first to mind when you think of Bath, in my opinion anyway. What I had to do next is phone up the baths and let them know I would be filming, and what would be allowed. They said I could not use big cameras or a tripod as they would get in the way, they also said that they would provide me with a guide that I could film to talk about some of the various facts around the baths.

End result of my montage

For my montage I ended up filming the lake at Bath Spa, with various footage of the lake, steams, animals and plants. I thought that it would be nice to have footage with the camera slowly moving up a tree and cut in scenes from around the lake as it moves further up the tree.
I was really happy with the end result, although for a future montage I think that I will take more of a narrative driven structure and tell a small story within it.

Student Montage I found on Youtube

I found this montage made by Shaun Hillman on youtube and really liked it.

Back to the blog - Montages!

Earlier this year I made a short film montage, and have decided to look into a short history of montages and find some examples myself.
From what I found, a montage is a short clip of a certain subject including various different shots of the same subject.

I also read into Soviet and Eisensteins montages and found that:

“In formal terms, this style of editing offers discontinuity in graphic qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and the creation of impossible spatial matches. It is not concerned with the depiction of a comprehensible spatial or temporal continuity as is found in the classical Hollywood continuity system. It draws attention to temporal ellipses because changes between shots are obvious, less fluid, and non-seamless. “ - Wikipedia.

I also found this nice table describing the various forms of Montage:

Methods of montage

1. Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.

   • Metric montage example from Eisenstein's October.

2. Rhythmic - includes cutting based on time, but using the visual composition of the shots -- along with a change in the speed of the metric cuts -- to induce more complex meanings than what is possible with metric montage. Once sound was introduced, rhythmic montage also included audial elements (music, dialogue, sounds).

   • Rhythmic montage example from Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo where the protagonist and the two antagonists face off in a three-way duel

   • century.rojects/98-99/9505060m/sounds/steps.mov Another rhythmic montage example from The Battleship Potemkin's "Odessa steps" sequence.

3. Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots -- not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics -- to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation.

   • Tonal example from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. This is the clip following the death of the revolutionary sailor Vakulinchuk, a martyr for sailors and workers.

4. Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.

   • Overtonal example from Pudovkin's Mother. In this clip, the men are workers walking towards a confrontation at their factory, and later in the movie, the protagonist uses ice as a means of escape.[1].

5. Intellectual - uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning.[2]

   • Intellectual montage examples from Eisenstein's October and Strike. In Strike, a shot of striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film metaphor suggesting that the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not exist in the individual shots; it only arises when they are juxtaposed.

   • Some contemporary examples of intellectual montage:

     • In The Godfather, during Michael's nephew's baptism, the priest performs the sacrament of baptism while we see killings ordered by Michael take place elsewhere. The murders thus "baptize" Michael into a life of crime.

     • At the end of Apocalypse Now the execution of Colonel Kurtz is juxtaposed with the villagers' slaughter of a water buffalo.

     • In Boogie Nights, Dirk Diggler announces at the conclusion of filming a pornographic scene that he can "do it again". There is then a quick cut to a champagne bottle uncorking at a post-shoot party, representing both ejaculation and Dirk's celebratory initiation into the world of porn.

-Wikipedia.

Overview of this Semster!

Over this last semester we have been focusing on sound and the various techniques used to record and edit previously recorded material. The project I enjoyed most out of this was the soundscape, as I found it really fun recording various sounds and editing them into a clip in order to make it sound like a melodic audio track. For this project I had to learn how to operate a boom mic, as well as use Soundtrack Pro in order to edit the sounds together and add various effects and Eq changes.

The second project we did was a 15 minute radio show based on unsigned bands, I found the production of this project really fun, as I got to record my friend on guitar and make it sound as if he was in the studio, as well as making a competition to slot in halfway through the show. For the recordings I had to learn how to use a Eridol R-09 recorder, which worked really well. The main problem with this show, I feel is that it came off slightly short (13 mins) as we had to cut one of the interviews out, which left us short of material.

The part of this project I did not enjoy was the pre-production paperwork, mainly because I just hate paperwork!

Another project had us editing together the sound for a short film called Bodil, which we were given the scrambled sounds which had been recorded and we had to edit it to fit the movie, for this we had to learn how to sync up sounds and how to nudge the sound buy minute amounts.

Overall I have really enjoyed this side of the course, and it has opened my eyes to sound editing and recording but I am really looking forward to getting involved with video next semester!

Myspace Celebrity - Newsdesk (Chris)

Myspace is broadening it’s horizon by introducing a brand new service dedicated to celebrities. This new step will allow users to connect to their favourite celebrities through messages, videos and blogs.
It also allows the user to know that they are messaging the actual famous person, as there are many fake profiles set up by other users claiming to be these celebrities.
Famous people already registered with this new service include Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton and Vince Vaughn. This helps the celebrities as they will then have control over their image as the many ‘fakers’ may not be portraying them as they should be.
Myspace already gives this opportunity to connect their users with their favourite musicians through myspace music.
With all these new extensions it appears as if Myspace is trying to broaden their horizons, they already have a political channel called Impact and a gaming portal in production.
This new service will be called Myspace Celebrity, and will offer the public a wide range of information about their favourite celebrities; such as daily blogs, behind the scenes footage, and various images supplied by Getty Images.
To me it seems as if Myspace is trying to expand and keep up with the ever growing and increasingly popular Facebook.

Article from the Guardian Media.