Influence 3 - Wild Bill by Dexter Fletcher

My third influence is what immediately came to mind when looking at the script and when making the narrative with the group for our drama and I will explain the reason for this.

Having spent 8 years in prison Bill Hayward returns home to find both his sons (11 and 15 years old) abandoned by their mother and unwilling to play Dad Bill looks to revive his life elseware, Dean the older brother has found himself a job and does what he can to look after the younger brother Jimmy. With the arrival of Bill it buys the attention of social services and in the end Bill has to prove to them that he can be a reliable father of the two boys and the story is really about how Bill changes in his life and how he tries to gain back the love from his two sons.

The reason I have chosen this film is because of its washed urban feel and how the editor has really tried to enhance this to the audience. Similar to my first influence of Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, the washed out color tone of the buildings and happenings around them give the piece a street feel and vibe to the film. I want to emulate this in our Drama film but at the same time will have to be weary of not over coloring the piece so that the characters in the film look right and it flows from scene to scene.

Again in Wild Bill the film is allowed to flow with the use of location shots as well as sequences where the lighting / contrast and saturation has been changed in order to allow it to flow such as the bar fight show bellow.

Influence 2 - Gasman - Lynne Ramsey

The 1997 film Gasman by Lynne Ramsey  follows a family and family friends in the struggle with money and the area in Glasgow with many families having the same problem and is probably based around East end Glasgow in the late 1970's / early 1980's. The main reason  have chosen this film to look at is no just the way it is edited but the way the audience feels emotion from the film through the use of the editing techniques. .

The first element of the editing that I would like to talk about is the use of the images and sound, in the party scene there was no dialogue for a long time and the scene was just allowed to flow due to the interesting shots being edited together such as close ups with focus pulls as well as pans and tilts closely being edited to make a sequence that flows and allows the film to take us into the next scene with the 2 girls fighting.

Not only this but the second element I noticed through editing was the way the film took us into each of the scenes. I would like to ask the cinematographer for the project (Heather H) if she could take some cut away shots at each of the scenes as well as a location shot so when it comes to the edit I have something to cut to in between shots as well as allowing the audience to realize where the action is taking place and this is what the film Gasman achieves as although there are as little as 4 locations in the space of 15 minuets each of them are linked in with the story and the characters are able to move about as well as keeping the time ticking over a long time space.    

Influence 1 - Love Me Or Leave Me Alone - Duane Hopkins

My first influence towards how I wanted to edit the piece and to get the sort of feel tat this film was similar to was a short film by Duane Hopkins called 'Love Me Or Leave Me Alone'. The film follows an average teenage relationship and the problems and delights that the couple go through. The film is set in a small rural village but ha a real urban feel to the piece. The film really hammers home all the emotions someone goes through during their first love and how one another have feelings for each other as well as like I said the negatives. The film is part of the BBC film network and was nominated for a number of festivals including the Edinburgh Short Film Festival and the International Short Film Festival. 

I wanted to concentrate on the editing side of the film and their were a few immediate elements that I had picked up within the short film. The first was the use of pace throughout the different scenes, not just the fast pace to stop the editor getting bored but also the very slow paced first scene of the two having the argument. This had the same effect as a fast pace edit would have and I thought that it was engaging to watch from start to finish. I can take into consideration that each shot has to have its own dedicated amount of time on screen not just to look good but foe the audience to feel the emotion that the film script and director wanted it too and this was up to the editor to get this across when editing the film.

Not just the pace but the color scheme of the whole film was really nicely kept the same to allow the film to flow. When it comes to editing my own film I would like to add some color grading as well as some effective effects such as saturation, brightness and contrast into the image to really get the dark urban feel across to the audience. With 'Love Me Or Leave Me Alone' and the color scheme they use of the blandness but interesting sort of washed out color it tells the audience a story itself by showing what type of people the young couple are as well as linking it with the pace made for a very effective film.    

News Report Editing

So being the editor I set to work the evening of the filming so I could get this green screen news report edited and onto a disk for the next scene to be filmed. The first things we did was to record the footage of the mini-dv tape as the camera we were using had this format and was the only camera of its sort. Having done this the best clip for each of the 3 sections was put together and copied into final cut pro. Having done this the 3 sections were then imported into final cut pro and put next to each other.

I was then ready to start the green screen editing and I firstly added a color smoothing 4.1.1 to the image which helps get rid of the jagged image around the anchor. Filters will then be applied from descending order from the color smoothing. I then added a chroma Key filter and selected the green behind the anchor in a flat area and it selected it so all the green around the subject matter was turned into black. Finally I added a feather around the subject matter so elements such as hair was softened.  

Finally the background image was place underneath the subject matter and cropped in behind him so that the subject matter was on top of the background and having done this I spent a little more time going back and changing the interface settings such as the chroma key and smoothening the feather brush which allowed all the green to be taken away on the image. The one problem I faced was the sleeves of the subject matter but I did the best I could seeing as he was wearing a white shirt but as picky as I am this was only a very small default in a very successful idea from the team. 

News Report Filming

First of we met our actor Johnny who was going to play the news anchor and then collected the equipment from stores. The camera we used we were able to place LED green lights around the front of the lens which allowed us to place a chroma key fabric circle behind Johnny which reflected the green lights so when in editing we can edit out the background. Myself and Heather Hall also went and filmed the train station and Park Hill as the deep background from the showroom for a news broadcast background to put behind Johnny after we had filmed the green screen process. We also used a three light set up to light the anchor so there was barely any shadow left around the desk or Johnny himself. Johnny was good for the part as his acting was very much real and he read the lines exactly how we would have wanted him to acting and sounding like a news anchor. 

News Report Script

The first draft of our news report script

Updated News Script

News Anchor 

Yesterday Russian state media declared the region Donetsk as part of Novorossiya as they held another referendum that has been condemned by the international community. This news comes just after members of the previous Crimian parliament claimed they were forced to sign the first of Putin’s referendum’s in March. In retaliation to this, President Barack Obama gave a speech outside the White House stating that the US will continue to place further sanctions on prominent citizens of Russia who are linked with this gross breech of civil rights .

There has still been no sightings of Pavlo Petrenko, Ukraines Justice minister, for over three weeks now, he is missing presumed dead. His family haven’t been seen since the 5th of June and police are appealing to anyone with information to come forward.In other news, when David Cameron was questioned in Paliment earlier today whether the UK would support Kiev with troops after Oleksandr Turchynov's appeal for the international community for help he stated 'the US and UK will intervene with this attack on the freedom of Ukrainan Citizens and that G7 summit  taking place in Spain tomorrow will discuss what further action to take to support Kiev.

Russia has officially been removed from the international bodies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. George Osborne has expressed fears over the £11.5 billion  Russia is in dept to the UK but said the EU's sanctions were a necessary measure . Geramnys finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble seconded Osborns opinion but expressed Germanys economy would take a considerable hit as many companies terminate their exportation contracts with Russia. 

Pitch and Feedback Session

We presented the Idea to Dom and the class and overall they seemed impressed with the idea but there was a few room for improvement. One of the comments is that they just wanted more clarification of the narrative other than the war situation between Ukraine and Russia. So having looked back upon this in the next meeting we wanted the firing scene between Larry and his boss. We started with writing the script and seeing where we would get to in the story and having written the first scene we came across the boss scene that had been the topic in the crit session, We all decided it would be more effective if there was no sound of the dialogue in it but instead a ambient sound that would play over the top of the scene and this would be much more effective, the audience would understand what was going on as well as it being quite uncomfortable to watch or letting them feel emotion towards Larry.

Some of the positives that did come out of the session tho was this contradiction and juxta-position between the two stories and having one of them playing in the background as a news report we could create a whole different effect.

So just clearing up the narrative was the main point we got from the crit session as well as making the most of the chance we have to use the news story as an effective and emotional tool.