Animation update

We have yet to team up for our graduation fiction films, got documentary finally sorted at the start of the week (hopefully I'll be getting some rushes on Monday for that)... but animation's been in the works for a while now, so I thought I'd write a bit about that.

Wednesday is our 'final' board meeting, by which point the storyboard should be completely sorted. The editors have only actually had the last 5 days to be working full time with the animators - it's been a moment here and there stolen from another project before now. So essentially that's 7 days to get the animatic sorted and sort out the angles, plot holes, ordering, trimming of redundancies.... theoretically all possible. Except every time you request a new angle or additional drawing to fill in either information in the current angle or a new one, the animator has to go and draw that, as well as scan it!

Once all of the frames from the original storyboard had been scanned and put in order, we basically started working in a system where I played around with timings and made a wish list of extra shots/ points to raise while Hye-Bin (my director) was working on some new frames. We meet up when she's done with that. We quickly insert the frames in to where they were meant to be, I go through my new list with her, we discuss some of the plot points and/or pacing issues that are emerging from the present version, then I go and trim the frames we'd just inserted and look through it some more whilst she goes and draws the solutions we think of during our chat. And repeat.

It's a process not without difficulties. The main point at the moment is making sure that an audience understands what's going on - especially since there's going to be very little intelligible dialogue even when the film's been finished. For this film we should initally be aiming for an animatic completely without sound, any points which motivate action (e.g. a doorbell) should be drawn on to the frame at the appropriate point or added in FCP. Looking over the current film this weekend I'm considering suggesting the removal of a scene which I think isn't adding much to the film - however nice it is and how much we've worked on it, it's sometimes a decision you have to make. And the ending's something that neither of us are yet completely satisfied with - but we're sort of hoping for inspiration to strike!

Screening of work in progress

Inspired by a comment by beowulf.grimbly:

As part of the film school process, we constantly have reviews of the film as we're working on the edit so that the tutors can advise when something doesn't seem to be working out, ask the right sorts of questions about how necessary certain scenes are or the ordering of the ones we have.... etc etc. But at the start it was difficult to get used to it (despite having been part of the selection process for admittance to the school - 11 people took a 5 day course at the school for the 6 places). Screenings, no matter how late in the edit, were inevitably accompanied by some form of disclaimer on how there hadn't been time to do one bit, how it wasn't yet close to what we were actually going for because we hadn't had time to physically and/ or technically achieve that, or how it wasn't quite along the right lines corresponding to the director's vision once we started learning to work with directors and needed our own time to find the film....

But for the most part we've learnt to get past that now. Whether it's the self-confidence that we know that it's not the final edit and will hopefully be able to persuade anyone who asks of that fact now that we've had a bit of experience, or that we've grown used to the process, or just that it's too valuable whilst at Film School to not get every ounce of opinion that you can on your film (even if the suggestions profferred aren't ultimately taken up and a different solution is tried), it's something that I hadn't really noticed until working with the composer on the short I've been cutting for the last 3 weeks. Until now they've been used to working primarily with picture locks, but we really wanted to see how much some original music could set the tone and move the film on a bit so we brought it in fairly early in the edit. And all of the old discussions about screening rough cuts came back to me. Back when we used to work on the same rushes for exercises, and had screenings every few days so that we could see what everyone else was doing with the same material. And funnily enough, though we may have 'borrowed' ideas from another cut we still never ended up with even two films vaguely alike. Seeing the different stories you could tell by choosing different shots at different moments was possibly one of the most pivotal moments of my first term at Film School, and if I'd been hiding behind my seat from the shame of having to show my unfinished work to other people I think I'd have missed a lot. And I suppose that that would always hold true whilst you still consider yourself to be learning a craft - i.e. for as long as you continue to do it.

What I guess I've really learnt out of the experience is how to make the most of the early days - to make a proper rough representation of how a film will be, with the majority appropriate shots in the right place. Early edits can be fairly demoralising when cuts don't seem to flow or characters aren't really coming alive. But finding the bits which aren't working can really help on the way to getting a respectable cut, especially when you get that first onscreen insight into what makes your character tick. And if it's all been a struggle and things still aren't working, an outside perspective on the world you think you've been trying to create can really help to just plant a new idea in there. Just for now, I'm trying not to discount anything which may ultimately be of benefit to the film, and the comments made always help to remind me what I should be looking out for as an editor.

Vantage Point

Earlier today I went to see Vantage Point. I'd already earmarked the film from the previews as being something worth seeing from an editing point of view, but off the top of my head I couldn't think of a better example to show people what editing is.

Certain elements of plot are given away below, so don't read if you're spoiler-sensitive.

ShuttlePRO v.2

This is my latest toy.  It's a Contour ShuttlePRO v.2, USB interface, 15 customisable buttons (plus jog/shuttle), a shed load of application pre-loads, plus import/export on your custom settings whenever you take it anywhere else.

In Avid, the inner dial will move your playhead along one frame at a time (at just the right sensitivity), and the outer will play your video at normal speed, increased speed, reverse speed.... basically the same as tapping the J and L keys multiple times, but in a far more ergonomic and inutitive way. One minor grumble that there's no lock to keep the video playing at normal speed as you'd get on a Steenbeck or a Lightworks console, but it's easy enough to adjust your hand and/or map a button or two to the relevant function.

I've put it on the left of the keyboard so that I can simultaneously use the shuttlepro and the mouse, though I'm not sure it's possible to entirely omit the need for the keyboard - I have settings for digitising, assembling/ editing and trimming (see below the cut), and rather than go up to the drop down menu to select the exact setting I need for a certain splice, it's easier to just press the corresponding key.

I'm still changing some of the settings and buttons since I got it a fortnight or so ago to find the best positions and keystroke replacements, but so long as I remember it's there I've found that my editing speed has significantly increased as I've become more used to the shuttlepro interface.  I'd definitely recommend it - and for video editing, the 15 button shuttlePRO is a must - its smaller cousin the ShuttleXpress has just 5 buttons in addition to the jog/ shuttle wheel, and finding your way around the larger version isn't as intimidating as it may look at first.

Hello, wordpress

I've just migrated my blog from movable type to wordpress. Whilst I do enjoy learning new programming languages (ish) and being able to customise to my heart's content, movable type was just a little too advanced for me and most of the time I had no idea what had gone wrong whenever something didn't appear right, or hadn't logged in correctly. There are some features I miss, and I haven't had a proper play yet... but ease of use is a pretty big thing for me, and wordpress just slid right on. Links should have been redirected, new RSS feed.

So here's the new blog, which I can also update from school - which may be slightly dangerous. In any case, I'm currently officially half-way through my winter fiction edit (last fiction before the graduation films) - though only just past the first cut stage because of spending the first week waiting for the year above's grad films to play out on the HDCAM deck I needed,  then sorting through the rushes once I'd digitised them. But it's now resembling a film, however lumpy.

I've now teamed up for my graduation animation film. I'm working with Hye Bin Lee, who I'm really happy to be working with again after an excercise last year, and Michelle 'BAFTA nominated' Eastwood. As some called her at the time. We're getting our documentary pitches later this week, then fiction after our Easter break. Presumably once we've finished editing the current project and the directors have had time to properly think about their films.

Oh, and Walter Murch visited the school for a day. Weird guy, but great. Covered a lot of the stuff that's in In the Blink of an Eye, but also had some very entertaining images and techniques. And my fellow editors at school no longer see me as hyper-organised, relatively speaking (though they still mock my colour scheming). But he's very careful to stress that these things are what works for him - different people may find different styles. Just because he likes to wear the same jumper when sound-mixing, and take photos of the buildings where he's edited (with his window circled) he's not suggesting that we all do!

Except you should always stand up - he’s quite clear on that. Good old Walter.

3D - a technological breakthrough or major threat to filmmaking as we know it?

Picture this:

Ever since you first got into music, you’ve been waiting for one of the world’s biggest bands, U2, to play a live gig that you can get to. Finally, they announce their tour. You buy your ticket, you take some holiday time away from work, you drive down to the venue, you queue for 3 days. When they finally open the gates, you run to the very front barrier as fast as you can. This is your chance to be the closest you will ever be to the greatest band in your world. You get to the front…. And find that just in front of the barrier you’re heading towards is a rather large camera crane. With TWO cameras mounted, and a larger than normal crew. All inbetween you and the stage.

The reason? U2 3D. Now in cinemas nationwide.

Last Friday 22nd February, through the NFTS, I was able to go to a Masterclass in the Cineworld at Shaftesbury Avenue (currently showing the film) which was hosted by the UK Film Council, and had a panel of people who’d been involved in the film and the technology involved from the start.

Things have come on a long way from the red/blue glasses and headaches usually associated with 3D. Polarisation has been around for a while now, but the ultimate application that they’re heading for is home viewing of sports without the need for eyewear at all (via hi-res lenticular screens… apparently already working on a small scale). But they decided to build the technology on the most complex thing they could think of - a 9 camera position (18 altogether, given the need for two cameras to function together as human eyes would to provide a natural 3D effect), multiple venue, 14 song live music tour of South America. In natural lighting. We didn’t actually get to see any of the final film because of time issues, but you start to get the idea of the scale of the project when you learn that they were in post for one year (including R&D).

They actually did the basic edit in 2D on an Avid. But had to think differently from the outset. For a start, fast cuts of the type usually associated with live concert footage were right out if the film was to be released in 3D. In their place, layering effects were utilised, and cuts made only when the drama of the shot naturally took you to a different angle. Balancing the depth of the 3D between one shot and the next was vital in order to avoid rapid eye fatigue from constant refocusing, and recreation of shots where the cameras weren’t working perfectly together (through tape change, lens issues, foreground objects, or any other number of reasons) had to be done to the pixel. An IMAX grade had to be performed separately because of the necessity of printing onto film rather than distributing digitally - and the 3D had to be imagined on that scale as well when deciding how extensive it should be.

In this film the 3D wasn’t to be used as a gimmick - it was a means of immersing an audience within a scene, rather than relying on things flying out of the screen at them. And it seems to be fairly appropriate. But the claim put forward that this is as big a technological step as going from silent to talkies seems a little far-fetched. Dreamworks’ plans to go entirely 3D starting 2009 as opposed to adding 3D elements to a finished 2D film sounds exciting, but certain film genres will never lend themselves to 3D. The limit on the speed of cuts will surely be a major sticking point in narrative film, and it seems possible to me that it will be pushing a bit too hard on the suspension of experience which allows editing to work in the first place - to view a 2D image jumping across to the other side of a room isn’t intuitive to the human eye and personal experience - but it still works. To effectively place someone in a room, then have them jump around within it, to another scene in a different location, back to that room… physically it seems disruptive, psychologically invasive and voyeuristic, and generally uncomfortable. You learn fairly early on that there are more important aspects of a cut than continuity on the screen or within the frame - but along this ‘z’ axis out of the screen, continuity will be key if people aren’t to reject the images because their eyes are constantly refocusing. The 3D elements invoking a very specific point in the overall image that an audience should be looking at - leaving open a massive space for action to be missed, and trust to be lost if that space is exploited. Once that trust is lost, we may as well all give up.

It sounds like a great tool, and it’s clear that a massive amount of thought, time and skill has gone into the development even in these relatively early days - but as things stand, I don’t see a major place for it in the non-specialised filmmaking process.

http://www.reald.com/
http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/13641

Dead is the king.

Our Richard III exercise is over. It was pretty enlightening, and we had some great tutors - namely Alex Mackie and Roger Crittenden. They were totally supportive, whilst pointing out possible weaknesses and parts which just didn’t really flow - right up to the very last moment. Literally. On the morning of the slightly flexible 12 noon deadline, the first part of my section (part two of six) was running ABCDEF. By 12.45 it was exported for joining up to the rest as ACBEDF. Via a few different permutations including the attempted removal of a scene which I was glad stayed in when I saw all the parts together. Slightly nerve-wracking, especially as I was trimming the 5 new scene transitions that the re-organisation created right up to the last possible minute.

Still, the result cleared up a major plot point which had never really come across as well as it could have. The screenplay had already reorganised Will Shakespeare’s scenes (logical in theatre, potentially section-after-section in modern day film terms), so I can’t really feel too bad about my last minute shuffling. My most recent documentary edit utilised the scene rearrangement method from a very early stage, but this is the first time I’ve extensively reshaped in fiction in this style - our short films at the school don't lend themselves open to much of that sort of thing. But having seen how effective it was, my mind feels blown open for future edits in all projects.

You really can read all of the books that you want on the theory of editing - but you just can't learn how to edit from them. Because editing has to be instinctive, it has to be natural, you have to feel it… and even the most poetic instruction manual is still an instruction manual.

Job satisfaction

There's something vaguely depressing in studying editing (and indeed working as an editor), in that the only cuts that people will tend to comment on are the bad ones. Most of the job is making the entire film look as if it flows naturally - sentences into one another (even if spoken days apart when filming), a character's actions and reactions making logical sense as the cause and effect of another's, giving moments of significance the exact emphasis they need without signalling to all far and wide "HEY, LOOK AT THIS" (though this can be unavoidable with a learned audience who know the tricks, and all you can hope for is to be subtle with it even on that level), turning 360 degree camera angles around a table in a dinner scene into a conversation where everyone's looking where they should be irrespective of the fact that half of the actors may have gone off to the lunchtime grazing tables, giving all necessary information but not dragging it out in the telling... the editing should stay invisible, in much the same way as the majority of editors seem content to sit back and watch as the cinematographers are credited for the length and timing of shots*, the director and writer for the storytelling, and the actors for the sound effects added in post.

So really, the greatest compliment one can receive at the end of a scene is a comment on the story itself - an "oooh, that's not going to last long" in reference to the newly formed relationship between two key characters or an "oh my god, he's mad" after a key incident with a character (assuming of course that that was the impression you intended to convey) is praise of the highest order. It's also an opportunity to discuss those strange people who have numerous issues that you’ve been getting to know recently. And just being able to do that makes any other potential gripes about the job disappear.

*This does happen. Though like the directors and writers, they’re also often blamed when it doesn’t work.

Murder, mayhem and moggies

The first excercise of the second year editing course at the NFTS is Richard III. We get the rushes from the 1995 feature film directed by Richard Loncraine and starring Sir Ian McKellen, and each of the six students on the course edit a section. All of the parts are put together at the end of the 2 1/2 weeks editing, and most of the school (barring the first year editors and composers who'll be doing the project this time next year) will be invited to see the end product... the trick is to get it past the 'spot the join' stage, which may well be interesting given our fairly different editing styles.

I have to say, it's rather nice to be able to really work with something which has been professionally made, budgeted, acted... all of that. Nothing against the school productions - the production designers always do a magnificent job with the briefs they're given, and it's very possible to get a great short film out of the projects we do - but the fact is that we're all still learning, and not having massive amounts of money to spend on crew, cast, facilities etc does show when you compare it to an actual feature film. And of course, it's a completely different way of telling a story to what we've done so far - not just longer overall, but with entire scenes relating to each other (many to a scene which is being cut by someone else) instead of mere moments of fore-shadowing within scenes which have to have a greater overall and necessary function. That we don't really have to worry about the structure of the story either is also quite useful - not necessarily relevant unless we plan to cut films based on the writings of major authors for the rest of our careers, but certainly helpful in being able to focus on refining our skills in scene cutting.

To distract myself from all of the scheming, treachery, murder, and other things that go into a decent Shakespeare story (I'm not a huge fan of the comedies, I have to admit), I'm also cutting a commercial for an advertising competition which has been performed by some dancers from the London International School of Performing Arts. It's for Whiskas cat food, and the cast are all dressed as cats. The director's made all of the costumes herself and done an absolutely amazing job with them. So a typical day at the moment involves selecting takes of Nigel Hawthorne getting rained on/ executed in a bathtub/ generally going with the whole watery theme, and then cutting together some people dressed and moving as cats generally gyrating around things and fighting. Can't really complain about a lack of variety. Although if I don't get to watch the first episode of Ashes to Ashes soon, I may have to rethink the 'no complaints' thing.

Back to school

The new school year at the NFTS begins tomorrow. Of course, I've been back since Wednesday 16th, but that's generally the lot of the editing students. One of us came back on the 2nd, but he's mad (and was doing a few exciting extra-curricular projects).

Personally, I was quite content to take the opportunity to take an entire four weeks of not doing anything whilst not experiencing "the fear". The next time I spend a month at my parents' house, I'll be growing ever more concerned about the fact that I seem not to have worked for an ever-increasing amount of time... but hey, I've got a whole year before worrying about that, right?

Anyway, it was definitely worth coming back early - Lucy Kaye's documentary "Davey's Last Order" was generally well-received. We have a few points to look at next week before we start all of the exports, but it's more of a perfectionism/ knowing what's actually in the rushes which could add to the film thing rather than having to fill in any gaps. Taking that month off for Christmas once we had a mostly complete rough cut actually proved invaluable (it wasn't just me - she went off to Senegal for the entire month!), and we found it so much more easy to find the focus of our film and to excise any unneeded material. Going back to the rushes also wasn't as painful as it can be, having had the gap. Sadly, I'd imagine it's rarely if ever practical to cut that way... but perhaps you just need to find that state of mind once before being able to return to it again. It's often the way, and a pretty good example of why I'm glad I decided to come to film school - to have the chance to try out different things (whether intentional or by circumstance), and just see what happens. Great things have come of similar techniques in the past, after all!