The film ‘Attention’ by my group ‘Deaf Defying Productions' was a relative success. There is a lot about the film I like and some things I dislike. The whole process was an enjoyable one and I feel like the rest of my group and I have learnt a lot from this experience. The film was a lot more ambitious than our previous film, ‘Exits’. ‘Exits’ was a massive learning experience with most of the emphasis being on learning the processes of making a short film. The film was a moderate success but the skills we learnt were invaluable and set us up to make our main film, ‘Attention’.
My role, as in ‘Exits’, was editor. I feel like I choose to do this more because I felt comfortable doing it rather than because I was particularly passionate about it. On reflection I would have really enjoyed and benefited from having a crack at directing but I instead took myself out of the reckoning for the role, reasoning that the film would benefit from a more experienced editor. This left me with a limited role pre production and on set but with a shed load to do in post production.
My role in pre production pretty much boiled down to technical input. The rest of the group focused on the creative writing and story telling side of things and I preached about the practicality of there ideas and what it would take to make them happen. Also, since I was the only member of the group that drove, a lot of driving around was involved. I attend group meetings to give feedback in ideas but at the point I was really a bit of a back bencher.
As the first day of filming drew closer tensions began to rise about the script and shot list. For some reason we choose to have a director and assistant director, which I believe was a really unnecessary source of friction. The problem was the assistant director’s role wasn’t very well defined and as such turned into more of a co-director position. A classic example of too many chefs broke out and the friction between the two lasted the remainder of the production. I’m not by any means saying that either party weren’t brilliant but I think the film might have benefited more from a singular vision.
During filming I started to feel like I should have taken a more creative role. Because of the friction between the two directors it became impossible to input ideas as this would just make a difficult situation even worse. As such I stuck to the technical side of things such as checking the equipment, set design and lightning. I also recorded sound for a couple of scenes and filmed a couple of scenes. I enjoyed filming the scenes, as I hadn’t been filming all production so I felt fresh and like I brought a rejuvenated input to the film. One of the scenes I shot was a fight so I felt like id been given the juiciest bit of action in the whole script to work with. I’m very pleased with the shots. Which I mostly choose, and apart from the storytelling aspect of the scene (there was some uncertainty around why the fight broke out) I thought the actor’s performances were good.
Once the shoot was done it was really my turn to step up to the plate as editor. I’d researched some films with similar themes and also attended an advanced editing workshop so to keep myself fresh and up to date. The advanced editing workshop in particular was very interesting as it was more about the technique of editing and the various different styles rather than just about literally what each button does. One style really caught my eye and this was three point editing. It just seemed to really shave off massive amounts of time and also helped to refine and focus an edit from a story telling point of view. I was more than pleased that I attended and really brought the styles and techniques I had learnt into the edit suite with me and I really think this helped improve the film and give a pacier feel to the story.
The edit started well with logging and capturing being a complete breeze. I had a lot of help from the rest of the group on this and I was pleased to see that they understood the scale of work that I’d have to do if I was left completely on my own to do it. Two out of four days a week I’d have someone working with me, usually Lucy baker whom worked with me on the last films edit.
As I threw together a rough edit alarm bells started to ring about the footage quality. Some key shots were missing, there were continuity problems and a major scene was heavily over exposed for the time of day it was meant to be set. This actually lead to a re shoot of the scene which greatly helped to make my job less o0f a nightmare. The continuity problems proved to be the most irritating to me. I started to see problems in every shot and the party scene became a minefield of issues in my eyes. I think I became to hung up on the small things such as extras exact positioning between cuts and though this helped keep the film looking technically good I think it used up to much of the time I should have spent focusing on the story telling aspect of the edit. It took a discussion with my lecturer, Mike Johnston, for me to realise this and as a result of the discussion I really began to hit my stride with the edit and things began to fall into place a lot more quickly.
There was a lot to think about with regards to the style of the edit. I was toying with the idea of adding effects to the movie to give it a bit more character that I felt like it was lacking, but after some experiments I found that though it looked good in some parts it was a bit forced or even pointless in others. I scrapped the idea and instead decided to use quick cuts to give it a signature look, keep up the speed and keep the audience attentions for the duration. This conclusion was reached after some feedback with the rest of the group. I was really pleased with the results especially the introductory scene in the bathroom which I feel is brilliantly cut to the music and really fits the feel of the movie and introduces the plight of the lead character perfectly. It also sets the tone for the rest of the film.
As for music this was a bit of a grey area for me. Technically speaking it wasn’t part of my role to choose or write the music but I like to have the components of the edit to hand while I work but the musician insisted on writing the music to the rough edit. This isn’t how I usually like to work; I enjoy cutting to the music and working it in as an integral piece of the film instead of just having it as an after thought. To compromise this a found music with a creative commons license to use over a couple of scenes and the credits and George Turner the musician wrote music for other scenes. I like the music and feel it works really well in some scenes. The credits work really well and the music is a lot to do with that.
There are many parts of the film I am pleased with; I like the introduction with the title growing on the screen to fit with the fight, also the fight scene itself I’m proud of, having filmed and edited it, I feel it is the second most engaging section behind the bathroom scene. The problem with this film however is the acting. The performances of the actors were inconsistent. Often the actors were good but some of them were guilty of ‘over acting’ in some scenes. I feel like it’s a bit of a failure on my party for not editing down their performances more by cutting away from poor moments.
Taking everything into account I’m pretty pleased with the film. My group worked really well together and there weren’t really any problems that a bit more experience wouldn’t sort out. The shoot went well and there were no major technically problems in the edit, which is a first for me. Personally I wish I’d taken a more hands on approach to the creative side of the film. I kind of felt like as a creative media practice student that I should leave the story writing up to the creative writing students. I think I may have sold myself a little short. However I am pleased with my work on the edit and the final result.
