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.