27. more editing

It actually just dawned on me how soon the school year is finishing; this is our second last film lesson, and the last lesson we have to work on our documentaries. This means a lot of panicking for my group. We have everything done - music found, footage shot and captured, but everything is very 'raw' at this stage, and needs lots and lots of editing. Chris continued work on the voice over - it is almost finished. Benny and Tiffanie continued looking for music for us to use, and I went between editing with Marcus and checking on Benny and Tiffanie. I realized that their partnership was a mistake as Tiffanie is new to our group, and both of them have not seen the footage we have. This made it difficult for them to find appropriate music for us. Unfortunately, I did not think of that sooner, or I would have suggested a change in partners. The editing Marcus and I did today consisted mainly of arranging the clips according to Chris' script for the voice-over, and playing around with the speed of the clips. In one of my previous blog posts, from the MVC project, I mentioned the problem I encountered with not being able to speed up the clip. The same problem occured today, and I am glad I remembered the steps taken to solve it (double-click, 'F', AppleJ, change speed, overwrite) as it saved a lot of time.
Today was not as productive as I would have liked, considering the fact that this project is due on Monday, but I am staying after school tomorrow to work on it, and Chris, Tiffanie and I will come in from 1-5 on Saturday, so that we will finish our documentary.
However, I am getting along a lot better with my group than I had previously thought I would. Other than Marcus, I had never really talked/worked with any of my group members before, and it was a little difficult at first for me to adjust and fit into the requirements and thoughts of the people in this group, but I think that, although short, this project has made me learn how to work better with others, something that I will need later on in life because I will not always be able to choose who I work with.

26. causeway bay and editing

Sunday, June 7
Yesterday morning, I went around my neighbourhood in search for a cleaner to interview. Despite my previous fears of not being able to find a street cleaner, they were everywhere. The fact that I had not expected this was a bit sad. It showed me that I often take people like street cleaners for granted just because they are paid to serve us. However, all the street cleaners I found were 'too busy' to be interviewed by me. I found one in the end, but he was very unopinionated and most of his answers were one-word answers. I learned through this how to interview people better, to draw out more interesting questions from the interviewee. Later in the afternoon, I met Chris and Marcus in Causeway Bay to film the streets there. Despite the fact that Causeway Bay is usually full of litter, we found very little yesterday, and only managed to film single pieces of trash at a time. We went into Wellcome to film the shelves stocked full of candy, to show how much plastics and wrappers there are in Hong Kong, much of which then ends up on the streets. After that, Benny and I went to look for a cleaner to interview, as I did not particularly want to use the answers from the cleaner I interviewed this morning. This time, it was easier to find someone to interview, mainly because the morning rush to clean everything up was over by then. The cleaner this time was a lot more friendly and open, and answered all our questions very well, providing a satisfactory interview with the answers we wanted. Benny then suggested we go to the wet market near Times Square. This turned out to be a good idea. We got a really nice shot of boxes and styrofoam next to a truck there. We also filmed the crowd crossing the street in front of Sogo, as Chris wrote on the shot list 'busy streets'. I don't exactly know why he wants that shot, but I think the shot we got of the crowd was pretty good. Overall, today was quite a good day of work.

Monday, June 8
Today, Tiffanie Ma joined our group, which was pretty good for us since Benny apparently listens to her. We were split into pairs: Chris and Marcus doing the voiceovers, Kevin and I editing the footage we had so far, and Benny and Tiffanie finding music. We had a small problem while capturing and had to ask Mr. Chang to fix it. Turns out that there were many empty spaces in the tape because this tape has been used for so many previous projects. To capture, we would have to fast forward to the next recorded section. I learned that if the numbers at the top of the camera start scrolling, it means that something is recorded on that section of the tape. When it stops scrolling, it means that section of the tape is blank. This is something I didn't know before. The interview Benny and I conducted yesterday has gone missing from the tape. Hopefully this is only because of all the blank spaces, and we will be able to find it, or we will have to use the interview I conducted, which is a lot less interesting. After capturing, we ordered the timeline and cut out unwanted parts. After that, our jobs got jumbled up. Boris volunteered to narrate for the voiceover, so I went with him to the practice room next door to record. Chris wrote the script for the voiceover. The keyboard strangely refused to work and the 'h's, 'y's, and 'n's did not appear on the script until I changed the keyboard for the one on the computer next to the one Chris was using. Benny and Tiffanie found quite a good selection and variety of music we can use for our documentary, so overall I think today was a good day's work.

25. June 1 & 4

Monday, June 1st
Today was the beginning of my work with my new film group: Chris, Benny Marcus and Kevin. As I am new to the group, we had to have a discussion about what theme we are going to explore, etc. I also have limited say in what goes on in the documentary since they had already made most of the decisions. They had already filmed a few minutes of footage during my absence; unfortunately I was not present when they took the footage, so all I could do now was edit what they already had. They only had about three minutes worth of footage, so there was not much to do. We all decided on what footage we wanted to keep together, then cut out the rest. Benny and I then edited the rest of the footage, while Marcus Chris and Kevin made some kind of plan for the completion of the documentary. Benny and I edited the colors of the pan of Tsim Sha Tsui harbor to make the sky look bluer. We did not get much done after that because we had to go downstairs to choose our arts for next year. A lot of time was wasted this class because we lacked concentration and our discussion of film got very off topic.

Thursday, June 4th
Today was a bit frustrating as some people in our group still won't take our project seriously, even though it is due in less than two weeks; another lesson wasted. However, we now have a firm plan of what we are going to do over the weekend. We are splitting up into two small groups so we can get more done: Marcus, Chris and Kevin in one group, and Benny and I in the other. Benny and I are going to Yau Ma Tei on Saturday, and will be in charge of interviewing a street cleaner on her job, and we thought up questions in class. However, we don't know when we will see a street cleaner, and if he/she will be willing to be interviewed, so that may be a problem. The questions also have to be translated into Cantonese by Benny. Chris, Marcus and Kevin planned the other shots. We have not had a chance to discuss what we planned in class yet, so I don't know where Chris, Marcus and Kevin are going. They will assign us other parts to film as well, because the interview does not take a lot of time, and I actually have not contributed much to the group at this point yet.

24. presentations

Today, we watched some of the Michael Moore documentary presentations created by people in our class. I was slightly disappointed by the fact that so many chose Fahrenheit 9/11, as I myself have prepared a presentation on that documentary as well, and most of the points they made were points I myself had noted. However, I was impressed with Joanna's presentation because she had actually taken the time to research on the facts presented in Fahrenheit 9/11. For example, she mentioned that the documentary states that President Bush apparently was on vacation for 42% of the time he was in office, while Joanna found out that he was only out of Washington D.C. for 42% of the time, and as quoted from the documentary, 'I don't have to be in the White House to be working'.

23. documentary introduction

Today, we learned about documentaries, focusing on Michael Moore's style.
Documentaries are films/video clips of actual subjects, created to:

• educate/raise awareness of an issue
• entertain: direector uses music, editing, and has an interesting storyboard
• criticize
• celebrate: documentaries of the lives of great people
• portray different points of view

Ms. Wong reminded us that documentaries are almost always biased because it is always filmed from the director's point of view, and we have to apply the OPAL rule (from history: Origin, Purpose, Audience, Limitations) to decide whether a documentary is useful or reliable. Some questions to ask when analyzing a documentary include:

• What aspects of the real world are portrayed?
• How might this quote (Documentary films demonstrate the creative treatment of actuality - John Grierson, Founder of the National Film Board) explain the impact of the film?
• What style does the documentary have? (different documentaries have different styles or atmospheres to cater to different people)
• Does the film use a narrator? If so, what roles does he/she play? What attitudes does he/she have and how does it contribute to the storytelling?

We then focused on the sound aspect of documentary films. Sound for feature films and documentaries are very different in quality. Feature films have high-quality sounds where the dialogue is filtered to allow the viewer to hear it properly. It is layered with different sound effects and background music to enhance the mood and help the storytelling. Documentary films are not as clear and direct because the situation of the filming cannot be controlled. Background noise often competes with the dialogue because there is nothing to filter it out. However, because of the advanced technology these days, documentary films also have sound effects, background music and voiceovers. I learned about that the use of voiceovers is called the 'Voice of God' effect, and that it 'has long been one of the stylistic signatures of documentary sound'. I also learned that the sound effects in documentary films are not always, in fact, part of the film, but are actually sometimes recorded separately and then synchronized with the clip.

We then watched and discussed some of Michael Moore's documentaries. Ms. Wong commented on the characteristics of his films:

• Expository style of documentary film-making
• Interactive format (I noticed that in Roger and Me, when he talks directly to the viewer)
• Always features himself as the everyman in a quest for simple answers (he establishes a connection with us; he is just a normal person like us)
• Creative interpretation of actuality
• Ironic use of music (this came up very clearly in the documentaries we watched)

Themes of Michael Moore's documentaries:

• U.S. politics
• globalization
• gun ownership
  
• Bush administration
• Iraq war
• U.S. healthcare system

Criticism Michael Moore has received:

• accused of manipulating facts and interviews
• biased, shamless grandstanding.

What I liked about Michael Moore is that his documentaries are very extreme: he really takes a lot of effort to illustrate his points. For example, in Roger and Me, he really went to people to demand to know why he was laid off. He is also very funny and entertaining - I had never known documentaries to be fun to watch before I watched his films. Although I was very tired on Thursday (from having waken up very early to finish my history) his documentary films really captured my attention. For our next lesson, I am supposed to have prepared an oral presentation on one of Michael Moore's films/make a comparison between two of his films.

screening, part 2

Today, we finished watching the rest of the videos.

Jerald: although I had watched Jerald’s video several times previously, I had not noticed any flaws in his video other than the fact that his video is more editing than footage. However, the class miraculously managed to criticize it quite heavily, and I do agree with some of their comments. Someone mentioned that his subtitles were hard to read because it was white and blended into the background, and after rewatching it, I found that this is true. I also agree with Ms. Wong, who said that footage could have been put into the beginning and the end, when we were basically looking at a wall. However, I really liked Jerald’s editing. Not many of us had played around with effects, and that made Jerald’s film unique.

Joe: I liked Joe’s use of lighting and music. He has obviously put a lot of thought into his film because of the setting and costumes used to make the scene as realistic as possible. Although the storyline was a little too dramatic, I don’t think it was a major problem; I think it made the film more interesting rather than over-exaggerated and unrealistic, as many other people said. One problem was that Chris opened his eyes while supposedly dead, which detracted from the overall realistic-ness of Joe’s film.

Justin: Justin’s clip was very entertaining and unique for the upbeat tone it adopted for most of the video. He made good use of lighting and music to enhance the whole mood, and his sudden change at the end from cheerful to serious was smooth because of his good use of music. The best thing I liked about his video, however, was the nice range of shots he used – it made the video so much more interesting than always looking at things from one angle. This is something I have to improve on as I know my film was very monotonous in that aspect.

Kevin: I think Kevin should have cut the beginning parts shorter so that he could have included an ending that actually made a point about intellectual property. The first part was too long and very repetitive – we already get the message that someone is copy-pasting from the internet. The acting also made it a bit confusing as the actress scratched her head at one point, making it look as if she was actually working, instead of effortlessly stealing form the internet.

Nick: Nick could have chosen a more dramatic piece of music for the background sound. It was a bit strange because Nick had obviously thought about the location and props a lot, but didn’t put a lot of effort into costumes. He could have made use of a wider range of angles and the acting could also have been more dramatic.

Tiffanie: I think Tiffanie has the same problem as Kevin. She does not make a point in her film. The clip of the Google search ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ could have been sped up to make it less boring and also to leave more time for her to make a point. I think she made good use of the camera, however, and had some nice shots of the computer screen. I remember that in LokLok’s video, it was just a sraight almost screen-shot feel, but Tiffanie included other parts of the room as well, which I thought was good.

Clare: the orange font at the beginning was quite hard to read because there were multi-colored vehicles zooming around behind the text, and it was a bit dizzying to read with things zooming across the screen at the same time. I think she could have used more video, because hers looked as if it was made from pictures, which made it seem more like a slideshow than a film, and it was quite static. The ending was also too abrupt.

Francesca: Francesca had a lot of repetitive footage, and the whole video is basically a process of her sharing files, which was a bit boring. Added on to that, what happens on the screen is not very clear, and the music doesn’t suit the theme.

Stephie: I liked Stephie’s film because it was humorous, something that not many others had tried. The choice of music was appropriate to her light clip, and her storyline was very easy to understand (she was criticized for having too simple a storyline, but I think it’s good because the viewer can follow it easily). However, the filming was not so good. More extras could have been used in the beginning, because Clare was the only one sitting in the ‘cinema’. The jail shot was also very unrealistic because of the lighting. The page of information at the end was too much for the viewer to read, and defeated the whole purpose of the film, so that should have been taken out.

Shun: I thought that Shun’s video was not very well executed. As Joanna said, it seemed like a homemade video, rather than one to submit for a film project. The change in background music for his video was too abrupt. His video also does not have a clear point.

Josh: The deep voice he used for the voice-over at the beginning didn’t really match the atmosphere. I also wonder if his statistic was true (45 000 or so songs being downloaded illegally during the time it took us to watch the 30-second clip.) I remember someone having used that same statistic, but the Josh applied that statistic to 30 seconds, while the other person applied it to what I assumed was a longer period of time. I also noticed that one of his shots was a bit grainy.

Isaac: The atmosphere for Isaac’s video was too light. Even when Isaac was in jail, happy music was playing. However, his shot of the jail was considerably better than Stephie’s. I also think that the subtitles Isaac used took attention off the actual footage, and he could do something about that.

screening, part 1

Today, we screened the videos we have been working on for the past 2 weeks. We didn’t have time to watch everybody’s videos, but we watched Lucas’, Marcus’, Michele’s, LokLok’s, Andrew’s, Joanna’s, Benny’s, Boris’, Chris’ and mine. These are the comments from the class/comments I came up with.
Lucas: I thought his filming was very good, and his clips and audio were arranged very neatly, and he got the message across effectively.
Marcus: He had a good theme; fake designer clothing. This theme is quite relevant to us because it shows that we can suffer from the violation of intellectual property rights, as well as the creator of the product, and we have all bought fake designer clothing at some time before. I also liked the humor in it. The last scene with Boris really made me laugh. However, I think that it was quite poorly filmed. The video was set in school, instead of a marketplace, where it was supposed to be set, so it looked quite unrealistic. He could have asked other people to stand in the background so that there is a real marketplace setting, as he is the only seller in the scene. He should also have thought about attire. It looks really unrealistic as he is wearing his school uniform. In terms of sound effect, there was too much background noise. I know that a little was desired to achieve the marketplace effect, but there was too much in his video, and it distracted from the dialogue.
Michele: I liked her idea because, while inapplicable to us, was quite fun with the ninja thing. One small improvement I would suggest is that the beginning scenes with me walking on the street could have been edited so that the color was more saturated. I think this would have made that scene more dramatic. One thing I did not notice, but the class did, was that the subtitles and graphics were too much – she should have focused on one point instead of having everything all over the place.
LokLok: I had liked LokLok’s idea from the beginning, because of how applicable it is to us as students. I had seen all her clips before (and have commented on them in previous blog posts) but this is the first time I have seen it fully edited with subtitles and full audio. I think she could have made the different pieces of background music fade into each other, as they end quite abruptly as it is. Other than that, I think the editing was good on her part.
Andrew: I thought the execution of his video was good, but I didn’t like his idea because it seemed so clichéd. It was obvious he put a lot of effort into it though, because he managed to get people in different industries (art and music) to speak in his video, which must not have been easy to find. I also liked the visuals.
Joanna: I liked her video a lot. Many people said that her video was too informational, but I don’t think so. I think she achieved a good balance between information and visuals. I liked how fast-paced it was, very suitable for a 30-second video because she was then able to fit a lot into a short time without making it seem weird. The music suited her fast-paced video, and the filming was very good. I especially liked the angle she used to film the shops.
Benny: I didn’t really understand what Benny was trying to portray through his video, since there was no link in between the videos and there was no real ending to it. I liked his use of shadows though, and the first shot was good, but a bit slow and unsuitable for a 30-second clip.
Boris: Boris did not make use of visuals in his video. His whole video was basically one long dialogue, and it was boring to watch. Making use of all the dialogue also made me lose interest in what was being said, which in this case was a really bad thing because what was said was pretty much the whole video.
Chris: Chris’ video had similar problems to Marcus’: costumes (especially in this one, where Chris was a police, it only became apparent in the last scene when the subtitles said ‘ARRESTED’.) and location. I liked his chase scene though. Firstly because it was something I hadn’t seen yet in any of the videos, and secondly because the shaky handheld camera made it a lot more realistic. Colors could have been edited darker to make it more sinister though.
We also watched my video, and I learned a lot from the comments of other people. The main problem with my video was that my audio was too cluttered. I had noticed that before and tried to do something about it, but the narrator’s voice could only be magnified by 150%, and I couldn’t decide what to cut because I liked all the audio I had put in. Thinking I could get away with leaving everything in, I magnified the narrator’s voice as much as I could and softened the background music and echoes slightly. Apparently, I was wrong, because the audio was a problem everyone else spotted. Some of my audio also went on for too long, i.e. the clock ticking. One point that no one noticed was that I had edited the lighting on Final Cut Pro. For example, I made the beginning scene darker, making it look later in the night outside and also making me look tired and hiding the smile I had while videoing, which would have been obvious if I hadn’t edited the lighting.
I can’t wait to finish watching the rest of the videos!