What could i have done differently?

I could have easily spent another week on the film constantly going over the film many times, to make sure everything was absolutely fine. I feel i did this well enough but i had other work commitments and after a long edit process (over 3 weeks) i felt i had come to the end, and could no longer work on this without bringing myself to complete exhaustion, and therefore no time to revise for my exams.

What could i have done differently? The film had taken many changes over the course of its pre production but still ended up very much as i had envisaged the film, i guess mainly from the editing that i had done to make it so.

There were a few parts that looking back with Maria, my tutor i could have changed. With the FIFA scene she said she wasn't too sure on what the game is and i could have included some shots of this. To be honest i hadn't tried, as out of experience the shot has waves rippling across the screen. I could have changed this easily but the edit was too far in.

I think with an extra five minutes of film time it could have been made a lot clearer in parts and more informative with narrative and interviews, but obviously there was a time restriction so i made best what i could do.

On my original edit the scavenge and hunt had been over 4 minutes each so this was cut down a lot. I could have spent a long long time deliberating what to leave and out, a process which could have taken many days, but i was quite brutal on my approach to it and if something didn't work so well then it was cut.

The only few mistakes i found within the film were a few very subtle bits of continuity, notably there s one occasion were for a brief second one can see i am wearing different trousers and at the hunt scene one can see the beer levels fluctuate a bit as it was done over the course of 2 hours, and for the tribe the beer was flowing.

I had until the end been keen to record the didgeridoo and djembe for the opening sequence and credits. However using the equipment i had i felt the sound quality was not as good as it could be. The didgeridoo emits huge low frequency waves and a massive wall of bass tone which either completely override the equipment, so one gets this huge wall of sound, or if one is further away there are two many background noises. I needed to go to a music studio, and these were close for easter. A bit disappointing as i was looking forward to doing it but a minor blip really. My friend Jess downloaded a plethora of digeridoo recordings and i chose a suitable one, to exoticise the tribe. The track uses at the start was a low drone which gave the opening sequence an air of mystery and the end was more lively...more "allegro" as you wish to give the ending, though the presenter is dispirited, a jovial esque edning

Other then that i was very happy with the outcome.The pilot had been a bit disappointing as the color was exported badly and was a bit haphazard, though this was to engage in understanding the technique of how my final film would be made. The film had been a stressful process to film, but once i was hocked up in the edit suite i found much of the process very relaxing

Exporting

Upon exporting the project i was able to watch it back for the first time as a file format, that wasn't affected by the editing program. I was able to see if their were any minor mistakes in the film much better then through premier pro.

Upon the first export i realized that some of the settings were not configured correctly meaning the film was stuterry and sluggish in some parts.

The second export i followed Cluna's handout to make the export play smoothly realized that of the sound was slightly louder at the part where the tribe goes on a hunt so i went over it and leveled out the sound to fit in with the rest of the film, which was an easy task to manage.

Also i had spelt my mates name wrong in the credits, so went back over this  and added a credit still at the end of the rolling credits.

Finishing the Project

The final tweaks to the film where done today. I played back the film to a few friends who gave me advice on what i could do do amend any small errors. In theory i could spend another week getting the film completely tweaked but i was running out of time for other university commitments and had given this project precedence over anything else.

I was happy with the project. After the shambles of the pilot and difficulties encountered in making the project (mainly organization) i never expected it to turn it this well. Though there were a few minor things that could be amended i was happy and if i had the time could possibly go back and do a bit more fine tuning if i had time.

A major relief and another thing to tick of the list that has been on my bedroom wall since september....

Colour Correcting

One of the main problems i encountered during the edit was the coloring of some of the footage, for the "hunt" scene we used my panasonic sd900 and Jess's Canon (......). Both cameras took the light in differently, mine more blue tones and Jess's took in warmer colors.
There was a dramatic difference in the tones and i needed to colour correct this. No really having much of a clue what i was doing a drafted one of the technicians, Patricia in to help and she showed me the process which gave the shots as much a continuity of vision as they could.

Definition of Tribe to Sideways Looks Exhibition

My Final Year Film Title: "The Tribe: A Student Experience"

Description: Inspired by Bruce Parry's series "The Tribe: A Student Experience", is an anthropological film following "tribal" student social life. The presenter stays with a tribe of students for a short period of time and learns about the rituals, explores the unique ways of life and learns of the trials that the tribe face in everyday life.

The Photos. A thought....

While creating screen shots of the film i realise that for the first time in my life i had taken an album of photos of moving life.. I realised with taking stills of film you get the best representation of real life becasue no one is really posing for the duration.Some of these photos were acting and others where from general improvisation which the camera caught at its best

I think the one of Lloyd holding the tea box (all 5 of the scavnegers) and Wil and Chris by the fire are the best as they capture a true essence of reality.

I apologise for the simplistic discriptions, i think a few words and then to leave the rest for the film!

Film Stills-

Meeting the Tribe

Walking to the Tribe Finian and his support crew

Sat by the bonfire

Raggy tries his luck

An ususual farewell

After the scavenge

Bonfire

The End

Bonfire

Leaving the tribe

The hangover

On the way to the tribe

Kicking the esteemed pressenter

First glimpse of tribal members

The Hunt

The scavenge

Disregarding of the UWE hoody in disgust of the most grevious graffiting of his face.

Post Hunt

Meeting the Tribe

Fifa Addicted member of the tribe

Unsuccesful Scavenge

The Hunt

The marker pen attack.

Walking home

.....

Winning Fifa

The scavenge

Sound

Today i was editing the sound, which i found very enjoyable. I personally think sound is crucial to a film and thus will spend as much time as i can to get it right:

I was merging in the sounds of the various cuts to give the film more flow. Fading conversations out over narrative and into over shots was another edit for continuity and flow i did.

I added background noises,to give continuity and to help set the scene in more of a wilder exotic place, birds chirping  crickets and the music.. I already at a bit of fire sound in the background but this was broken up with other sound. I wanted a sound that wasn't too sharp in the background when the narrative was playing. Finding these sounds was quite easy though i did struggle with the fire. I wanted the sound to be true to its nature, burning twigs and scrub sound different to the chairs bed and other unusual items acquired for the bonfire. The former is a more crackly sound whereas the MDF planks of the bed and chair etc sounded heavy and dull.I couldn't find this after looking through a load of you tube effects unfortunately so used a crackly sound. I'm probably being too fickle....

Originally in the hunt scene i had envision it in a field. But then on actually doing an anthropological study i realize this was quite out of place and changed the setting. in the original shoot i wanted to do the sound for it using didgeridoos and djembes but i did not think this would suit the new setting. I will layer the track for the credits tomorrow morning  using these instruments

For the Hunt in the bar i contemplated using contemporary music for backing, something along the lines of what we listen to more often then not in bars etc etc.

However i thought that using some different music from what one would expect in a bar one you exoticise the tribe somewhat which anthropological film makers have often been criticized for doing. 

I used some of the music me and my friends had been playing and recording during the summer of last year, during weeks of idleness. We did a few Hispanic and flamenco inspired recordings. One of the songs is a polka beat mariachi song called "My Love" which used a variety of colorful instruments and the other which was a loose cover of Buena Vista Social Clubs "Chan Chan" which followed the progression but and used Phrygian scales over the rhythmn. Phrygian scales are dominant in flamenco, gypsy and Arabic music. The music  to symbolizes the exotic heightens the juxtaposition of the ordinary nature of what your showing in the context of the satirical film. 

Also it was a nice touch to the film to be able to music crafted from your own instruments.

A hark to Jean Rouche

Jean Rouch declared that




“Personally. I am violently oppresses to film crews. My reasons are several. The sound engineer must fully understand the language of the people he is recording. It is thus indispensable that he belong to ethno group being filmed and that he be trained in the details of his job




I have essentially taken this as an approach to my film, i am part of this "Tribe" and social group though i have evidently distance myself as portraying myself as wrongly coming in as an outsider, yet knowing what parts of life as a student would work well in an ethnographical film.Mind games.

The Voice Over

The voice over was what i was going to be saving last, after i had the edit and knew how long i would have to do my dialogue. I would like to think sound is one of my stronger points but this is from experience with music recording which is a bit different to voice overs, something i have done comparatively little of.
I had a fairly good idea of what i was going to say throughout the planning and adapted this to the film content, taking bits of the interviews i could not include in the film to give the narrative valid information to my film as well as content.
The introduction was practically taken word for word to what Bruce Parry says at the start, slightly adapted to suit the film. I had already done a test introduction, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N360sRhSWf4 using a condenser mic and soundboard usually used for music recordings of vocals and un-amplified musically equipment.The one advantage of using this was that i could put it into sound editing programs which i am more familiar with and edit it at ease. However i had difficulty getting the converted soundfiles to be edited in premier pro. Regardless i didn't take the problem much further as unfortunately i didn't have a pop filter so this picked up literally everything including some very faint wind chimes and some dastardly pigeon cooing in the tree.
Instead I used my HDC SD900 camera for memory and Jess's "Roede" shotgun mic to recorded the sound, which made it far better then previous attempts.The first round of takes i did was for the introduction, the fire scene and the FIFA scene. I did this in M16, but upon  to hearing the sound quality it was too echoic and so resolved to go back and re-do this, as personally audio quality has been the most important thing in a film.
I waited till midnight and recorded in my bedroom which had a softer surfaces for the waves to bounce. The dead of night was good as there wasn't any inept housemates galloping up and down the stairs in my house.
 I did it fairly efficiently but as usual red light syndrome (wherein in practicing you will do fine but as soon as the record button goes on you screw up) meant that i tongue twisted my words and had to do many takes on one or two of the paragraphs.
I have been i tend to have a slight slur on my speech down to my accent so i really made sure that i pronounced my words properly and clearly and didn't fall into some gibberish Welsh Marches tongue.
Now the voice over is done the film will, upon adding it tomorrow feel far more completed and a huge step in progress.

Editing

Editing has gone well, though i did lose a considerable amount of edited footage when the idiot i am forgot to disconnect my hard drive. Initially annoyed i realized after talking to Maria the scenes would need to be cut right down to fit the required length, so in a way this was a good thing.
The filming was immensely hard and now i can laze back and edit at ease, which has been great fun to see what i have had planned all year come to fruition.
I choose to use premier pro as final cut gave me so much grief last term. So far no problems have occurred much unlike my trip to hell with final cut and i am confident to finish by the end of the week!

Concerning the role of Finian Pye

As i embarked to become the role of the intrepid adventurer and explorer i constantly had to mentally distance myself from what my friends were doing on shoot, so i tried to act as naive as i could so it wouldn't seem that these were people i knew.

I've never had any professional acting experience though have been complimented on my role in other films so gritted my teeth (its always so cringing watching oneself back).

As the filming progresses and i tried to disengage my self from my mates, asking what FIFA is is a very big lie, i know damn well what it is :(  i realized my character was pretty wimpy and the fact i get told i cant play fifa attests to this.

As we did the last few shoots i asked for the tribe to subtly perceive me as a nuisance and a burden to the tribe which i had asked not to be at the start of the film.

This will be evident in the last scence

Subtitles

The topic of language has always been a source of constant change within my film. I talked to Cluna today regarding how the subtitles would work and decided that actually the subtitles wouldn’t really help the films that much. The main task of the subtitles was to show the language barrier and subvert the messages however as the film has evolved it has become apparent that it would not work so well.

·         I felt the subtitles would distract the viewer from what is being said,

·         The language barrier is already given in a lot of linguistics when used with common language gives the viewer and understanding but at the same time a distance from the “Tribe”

·         Subversion of what they are doing come with the narrative I give, and how I have portrayed the tribe in the first place. Firstly for instance in the FIFA dispute I critique the game (which in real life is pretty lame and I don’t get why a good half of my mates play it) and say how bored I am watching it.

·         I have essentially subverted the tribe in my filming. All the scenes are essentially things we do but through the filming have been shpwn to be far more extreme.. For instance we scavenge (for firewood, we found an old chair for the garden,) but not to this level. In the hunt again we are  sat round the SU as we so often have done over the last few years but it has been warped, or with the FIFA game which is often the cuase of disputes!!!

The Fire Scene 11th April 2012

Today I did a few extra shots for what I needed on top of what we already had and any shoots I felt I had left out or were needed to help the narrative. Then later on that evening the last scene of the film was filmed with the main cast assembled.

We literally scavenged the Neighbourhood for firewood (which is where I had originally got the idea of the scavenge from) and may have disassembled from a dodgy chair from my kitchen.

We brought the sofas out in the garden, grilled some food and got a few beers down us, and got the guitars which are one of our pastimes in the summer-ish days we occasionally get in England, to get ourselves in the state of mind for the final scene.

I have always loved fire as lighting, and always wanted to have a scene which had fire as the lighting really brings out dominant shadowing and gives a warm light to the footage. I have always had a nostalgia to my childhood and teenage years sat around campfires so felt this needed to be attributed to the film

The shoot went well and was done within an hour, Looking back at the footage I had a ridiculous amount of shots from which I could have potentially made a film in its own with. I had a good pool of resources to make this scene work now.

All of us were pretty tired after a long week of uni work in the day and beers in the evening, which I reflected on in the narrative. We were all quite content watching the fire on full stomachs and topping ourselves with more beer

After the scene was done we cracked open a few more cans in celebration and a slightly groggy but content head the next morning.

Project so far.

So most of the filming has been done and it is now to shack up in the editing studio to get on the edit. There are one or two more bits that need doing but it is looking to run smooth.

The film has evolved and changed alot since the idea first came to fruition.

-I have used real time events with the people involved which has influenced certain minor detail of the film.

-Scenes have been dropped and others added to go with how i feel the narrative with flow best.

-The language of the film has remained english, and i have now thought that only certain bits of the film should be subverted with the subtitles, as i dont think it would work if the whole film was subverted which would make it far too confusing for the audience to follow and lose attention to other detail in the film

-At first i was wary about the amount of swearing, should i pluck up the courage to show the film to grandma but then i realized that it is part of the language of the culture. Though in another way surely the supression of swearing would be a subversion of the tribe???

- Orginally much of the project was scripted. However myself and none of the participants are actors so we changed it to a loose strcuture wherein we could all improvise. This made it far more natural and less rigid in appreance like the pilot had

The Scavenge

Today a group of us set off for the scavenge, wherein the tribe are looking for bits an bobs to collect to supplement their diet/income. A lengthy interview with two of my friends gave me not only descent material for the interview but material to work from for my voice over which i will be using to weave together the film.

The shots we got for the scanevnge were consistent and upon editing work well.

No problems were encountered really though on one of the interview shots the background became really bleached which meant when i came to editing the footage i did not want to use as much as i would have liked.

A little touch i did at the end was getting my mate to waddle like the rhino out of jumangi i just think its little thing like this that no one else will really get that makes a film ones own.

The Hunt Scene Continued

The hunt scene went very well, instilling a confidence that made me realise that this difficult project would take a shape now.
For the hunt we used two cameras my HDC SD900 which is good a low light, which we used for the outside scenes  alot and my friend Jess's Canon (something something, in any case a good camera!!) so that when we did interviews etc we got the same footage from different angles.

The one problem with using two different types of camera, mine picks up a more bluey darker tone and Jess's camera takes in very warm colours so i will be colour correcting the differences in Premier Pro.

There were no problems encountered and my actors improvised very well. Afterwards a few beers were in order