Transition Unit - Project Evaluation
Project Evaluation
Throughout this post I will detail the journey that has been the transition unit. It was somewhat tricky to know what to expect starting the unit a mere 3 and a half weeks ago, however I've found myself taking away quite a lot from the experience. Experience in which I intend to detail extensively within this blog post.
Overall though I would say the project was very successful and to be honest fairly seamless. Fortunately there haven't been as many issues during this project as there have been in previous projects. Perhaps this is to do with the independence/freedom we were given in coming up with something unique and interesting, in which case this probably bodes well for our upcoming major projects starting in the back-end of 2018. Let's begin with the good shall we?
What Went Well?
As previously stated, a lot of the project worked fairly fluidly. Myself and Alex decided to work as a two on the project, despite the fact we knew that our idea would be an ambitious undertaking given the time we had to do it - there was a mutual acceptance within us both that spurred us to rise to the challenge. Given what we were able to produce in the time that we had to do it, I'd say we did a pretty remarkable job considering that most other groups on the course consisted of teams of 4-5 people.
The scriptwriting was handled by myself mainly, with all of the dialogue being written by me. We found this to be the best choice out of us both as I always did exceptionally well in English subjects during my time in mandatory education. This worked out well as we were able to collaborate via google document and discuss, adapt and cut the script as need be, throughout the entire pre-production process. Google Doc's also allows you to download the document in a '.docx' format, allowing for viewing and editing in Microsoft Office - This made it easy to send continually updated versions of the script to our presenter Louis Rayneau, who we've been in contact with via email throughout the entire process.
In terms of producing, both me and Alex took on a producer-esque role, given the size of our group this was inevitable. Alex secured filming access for the Tunbridge Wells area as well as posting the job offer onto Mandy Actors. We were contacted by a number of different actors/actresses and therefor carried out Skype interviews in order to ascertain who would be the best fit for our project. Out of the 5 people we interviewed, Louis seemed like the best candidate for our presenter role, given his variety of experience on shows such as ITV's 'Endeavour' and various west-end theatre performances.
We knew that we needed to secure filming access in a café within the Tunbridge Wells area, therefore I began researching and contacting multiple cafés in the area - several responded, however it was 'Manna Café' who peaked our interest, going by the images online and their interest in the project itself. After messaging them via their Facebook page (somewhat ironically), the owner gave me a ring and let me know that they were interested and could provide filming access after providing a copy of the script to review. Upon arriving at the café on the morning on shoot day, it was clear that the owner was enthusiastic about not just our project but filmmaking as a whole. This ended up working to our benefit as the owner and staff at the café were incredibly nice and accommodating to our requests, even at one point turning down the music playing through the store-wide speaker system for us.
In terms of shooting itself there weren't many issues in general, the equipment was in working order and thanks to our preparation before shooting, batteries for the cameras were not a concern throughout the day. We found the vox-popping sequence much smoother than we initially anticipated thanks to Louis' charisma & willingness to approach people and ask for their take on the subject. The nature of the documentary piece we were shooting meant that we could shoot everything within a single day, with a lot of the work being done in post-production in order to create the right look and feel for the documentary. There was of course considerations made when blocking scenes and writing dialogue, in relation to the upcoming editing process as well.
The editing process went more or less smoothly; taking on the role of 'Editor' within this unit, I edited the entire mini-documentary over the course of a week, alongside essay based work for a separate unit. I began compiling after effects assets before diving into premiere pro, that way I built up a base of usable assets to drop in early on during the process, thus giving a better idea of the finished product when it came to rough cut/fine cut reviews. Following this, I spent a large amount of time working back and forth between Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After Effects, thanks to their dynamic link feature it's easy to move between the usage of both programs fairly seamlessly.
What Could've Been Better?
Considering the scope of the project we laid out ahead of us just under 4 weeks ago, I feel like we handled it pretty well - there are, as always, going to be some minor hiccups that I can talk about though. The nature of the documentary meant that a large portion of the dialogue was recorded as voice-over, and therefore had to be done outside of the May 3rd shoot day. Initially the plan was to have Louis come over to my house and use my professional recording set-up in order to record the voice-over, however he informed us that his father has a recording studio in his home, therefore he could "record and deliver the voice-over whenever you need it by" ... given our time limitations, both myself and Alex agreed that this would be the best option. However despite giving Louis 7 days notice, he was not able to deliver the V/O by the agreed date of May 10th.
Fortunately I was able to record in my own V/O in the meantime, thus allowing me to edit around it and simply swap the voiceover out towards the end of the editing process, however we didn't actually receive the voice-over files from Louis until 22:00 Sunday evening. Not to mention there were several errors in the recording, stutters or straight missing dialogue. Fortunately there was only one line that was missed, however this was the first line in the intro sequence, and of course due to the late delivery of the voice over there was little time for Louis to re-record dialogue.
There was also an issue on shoot day with Louis being somewhat under-prepared for the PTC segment, i.e. it was clear to us that he hadn't been over the script as much as we'd have expected from someone of his experience, and this showed on camera. Despite managing to shoot everything in accordance to our schedule, there was some difficulty in the pronunciation of some words in the script, as well as looking off camera. We attempted to alleviate this by holding the script underneath the lens as Louis read it when he needed help, while this sped up the process for sure, you can notice him looking off-centre during the PTC segments. I did however do my best to mask this in post-production by cutting away to appropriate after effects sequences or other shots B-roll shots from the PTC segment.
When it came to editing there were a few issues that needed to be addressed during the course of the editing process. Most of which came after our feedback session with our unit leader, Simon - he expressed concern over a particular shot that was used 3 times during the initial fine cut we showed him on Monday, stating that it was very cliché and didn't need to be used; in order to address this Alex shot additional b-roll footage of a Facebook timeline, recorded off of a PC monitor, which was then slotted in instead of the original shots. Furthermore, there was also some audio issues with the quality of the Katie interview, however I was able to fix this by opening the file up in Adobe Audition and adding various noise-cancellation modifiers to the clip in order to clear up the static in the background - this was much more successful than I initially anticipated and came out sounding much, much better.
Conclusion
Looking back on it now at the end of our second year at UCA, this has been one of my favourite projects to work on. The freedom we were given by the project brief, as well as the aesthetic of our documentary and editing process, has genuinely made this one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on the course. I genuinely believe that given the time and resources that we had to pitch, plan, produce and edit together this documentary, we've done something truly special. As an editor, I have grown exponentially since the beginning of the project, a mere 3 and a half weeks ago. 2 weeks ago I had no experience with After Effects whatsoever, yet now I feel confident in my ability to create and animate on screen elements to a professional standard - no doubt continuing to improve and refine these new skills as I proceed forwards in my career. This is also, whilst not the longest project I've edited in Premiere Pro, certainly the most complex, with hundreds of different elements being incorporated into the timeline. I'm looking forward to today's screening, and seeing how we all do.
Throughout this post I will detail the journey that has been the transition unit. It was somewhat tricky to know what to expect starting the unit a mere 3 and a half weeks ago, however I've found myself taking away quite a lot from the experience. Experience in which I intend to detail extensively within this blog post.
Overall though I would say the project was very successful and to be honest fairly seamless. Fortunately there haven't been as many issues during this project as there have been in previous projects. Perhaps this is to do with the independence/freedom we were given in coming up with something unique and interesting, in which case this probably bodes well for our upcoming major projects starting in the back-end of 2018. Let's begin with the good shall we?
What Went Well?
As previously stated, a lot of the project worked fairly fluidly. Myself and Alex decided to work as a two on the project, despite the fact we knew that our idea would be an ambitious undertaking given the time we had to do it - there was a mutual acceptance within us both that spurred us to rise to the challenge. Given what we were able to produce in the time that we had to do it, I'd say we did a pretty remarkable job considering that most other groups on the course consisted of teams of 4-5 people.
The scriptwriting was handled by myself mainly, with all of the dialogue being written by me. We found this to be the best choice out of us both as I always did exceptionally well in English subjects during my time in mandatory education. This worked out well as we were able to collaborate via google document and discuss, adapt and cut the script as need be, throughout the entire pre-production process. Google Doc's also allows you to download the document in a '.docx' format, allowing for viewing and editing in Microsoft Office - This made it easy to send continually updated versions of the script to our presenter Louis Rayneau, who we've been in contact with via email throughout the entire process.
In terms of producing, both me and Alex took on a producer-esque role, given the size of our group this was inevitable. Alex secured filming access for the Tunbridge Wells area as well as posting the job offer onto Mandy Actors. We were contacted by a number of different actors/actresses and therefor carried out Skype interviews in order to ascertain who would be the best fit for our project. Out of the 5 people we interviewed, Louis seemed like the best candidate for our presenter role, given his variety of experience on shows such as ITV's 'Endeavour' and various west-end theatre performances.We knew that we needed to secure filming access in a café within the Tunbridge Wells area, therefore I began researching and contacting multiple cafés in the area - several responded, however it was 'Manna Café' who peaked our interest, going by the images online and their interest in the project itself. After messaging them via their Facebook page (somewhat ironically), the owner gave me a ring and let me know that they were interested and could provide filming access after providing a copy of the script to review. Upon arriving at the café on the morning on shoot day, it was clear that the owner was enthusiastic about not just our project but filmmaking as a whole. This ended up working to our benefit as the owner and staff at the café were incredibly nice and accommodating to our requests, even at one point turning down the music playing through the store-wide speaker system for us.
In terms of shooting itself there weren't many issues in general, the equipment was in working order and thanks to our preparation before shooting, batteries for the cameras were not a concern throughout the day. We found the vox-popping sequence much smoother than we initially anticipated thanks to Louis' charisma & willingness to approach people and ask for their take on the subject. The nature of the documentary piece we were shooting meant that we could shoot everything within a single day, with a lot of the work being done in post-production in order to create the right look and feel for the documentary. There was of course considerations made when blocking scenes and writing dialogue, in relation to the upcoming editing process as well.The editing process went more or less smoothly; taking on the role of 'Editor' within this unit, I edited the entire mini-documentary over the course of a week, alongside essay based work for a separate unit. I began compiling after effects assets before diving into premiere pro, that way I built up a base of usable assets to drop in early on during the process, thus giving a better idea of the finished product when it came to rough cut/fine cut reviews. Following this, I spent a large amount of time working back and forth between Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After Effects, thanks to their dynamic link feature it's easy to move between the usage of both programs fairly seamlessly.
What Could've Been Better?
Considering the scope of the project we laid out ahead of us just under 4 weeks ago, I feel like we handled it pretty well - there are, as always, going to be some minor hiccups that I can talk about though. The nature of the documentary meant that a large portion of the dialogue was recorded as voice-over, and therefore had to be done outside of the May 3rd shoot day. Initially the plan was to have Louis come over to my house and use my professional recording set-up in order to record the voice-over, however he informed us that his father has a recording studio in his home, therefore he could "record and deliver the voice-over whenever you need it by" ... given our time limitations, both myself and Alex agreed that this would be the best option. However despite giving Louis 7 days notice, he was not able to deliver the V/O by the agreed date of May 10th.
Fortunately I was able to record in my own V/O in the meantime, thus allowing me to edit around it and simply swap the voiceover out towards the end of the editing process, however we didn't actually receive the voice-over files from Louis until 22:00 Sunday evening. Not to mention there were several errors in the recording, stutters or straight missing dialogue. Fortunately there was only one line that was missed, however this was the first line in the intro sequence, and of course due to the late delivery of the voice over there was little time for Louis to re-record dialogue.
There was also an issue on shoot day with Louis being somewhat under-prepared for the PTC segment, i.e. it was clear to us that he hadn't been over the script as much as we'd have expected from someone of his experience, and this showed on camera. Despite managing to shoot everything in accordance to our schedule, there was some difficulty in the pronunciation of some words in the script, as well as looking off camera. We attempted to alleviate this by holding the script underneath the lens as Louis read it when he needed help, while this sped up the process for sure, you can notice him looking off-centre during the PTC segments. I did however do my best to mask this in post-production by cutting away to appropriate after effects sequences or other shots B-roll shots from the PTC segment.When it came to editing there were a few issues that needed to be addressed during the course of the editing process. Most of which came after our feedback session with our unit leader, Simon - he expressed concern over a particular shot that was used 3 times during the initial fine cut we showed him on Monday, stating that it was very cliché and didn't need to be used; in order to address this Alex shot additional b-roll footage of a Facebook timeline, recorded off of a PC monitor, which was then slotted in instead of the original shots. Furthermore, there was also some audio issues with the quality of the Katie interview, however I was able to fix this by opening the file up in Adobe Audition and adding various noise-cancellation modifiers to the clip in order to clear up the static in the background - this was much more successful than I initially anticipated and came out sounding much, much better.
Conclusion
Looking back on it now at the end of our second year at UCA, this has been one of my favourite projects to work on. The freedom we were given by the project brief, as well as the aesthetic of our documentary and editing process, has genuinely made this one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on the course. I genuinely believe that given the time and resources that we had to pitch, plan, produce and edit together this documentary, we've done something truly special. As an editor, I have grown exponentially since the beginning of the project, a mere 3 and a half weeks ago. 2 weeks ago I had no experience with After Effects whatsoever, yet now I feel confident in my ability to create and animate on screen elements to a professional standard - no doubt continuing to improve and refine these new skills as I proceed forwards in my career. This is also, whilst not the longest project I've edited in Premiere Pro, certainly the most complex, with hundreds of different elements being incorporated into the timeline. I'm looking forward to today's screening, and seeing how we all do.
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