My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."
- Robert Bresson Robert Bresson was a French director living for 98 years from 1901-1999. He played a large part in influencing French New Wave cinema and contributing methods and innovations to the art of film.
I feel that this quote of his is a perfect metaphor for the entire process of film-making - particularly the part describing post production: rushes "placed in a certain order" bring a film completely back to life like "flowers in water". This emphasises the importance of editing and how it can be the making or the breaking of a film. To have a large variety of beautiful looking shots is fine however meaningless unless placed in an order that is readable and understandable. A film is dead unless it can be understood. Good editing enables this understanding.
As part of the course we were shown the opening of Ghostbusters to recreate and reshoot. This was inspired by Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind Protocol. We were to watch the scene intensely taking note of the shots included and then from that, draw up a storyboard of our own interpretation of the scene. This was the sequence.
After we had storyboarded our interpretation we set about recording it. We abruptly realised that no one in our group had a SiSo account yet and we'd left it a little too late to go about getting one in time. Luckily, my fellow group member Keelan had his own DSLR and SD card that we could use. This turned out fairly well because Keelan knew his way around the camera and it was capable of producing some very nicely defined shots. I asked my friend Charlie if he would like to get involved in acting and he was very enthusiastic. Mostly because he's a big fan of Bill Murray and wanted to pretend to be him! This worked out very well because it turned out he had quite a flair with comedy. Shooting took around 2-3 hours and we all felt that it went quite well and left the set with an air of confidence about us.
Editing the sequence on Final Cut Pro X began well and I enjoyed trying to fine tune the pacing and tweaking parts to give it a steady and natural flow. I discovered that this had to be quite an instinctual process. Over-thinking about timing in shots is a pathway to disaster. If you want the sequence to flow naturally then you have to edit naturally and with an open mind. I struggled with this as I generally tend to over think most things. As editing went on I realised we had missed out a rather important shot that was vital to driving the narrative of the sequence. There wasn't a lot I could do at that point so I reused a shot that was similar from earlier on in the scene. I know this is terrible editing and even worse planning and production but as mentioned we were poorly organised and left it far too late for any real changes to be made in filming. This is a regret that I'll learn from.
The sound on the rushes was also sub par because we used the built in microphone on Keelan's DSLR. The audio wasn't terrible but when compared to the audio collected using booms and a Marantz it's a little disappointing. Also, at the time of editing I didn't really know or understand how to edit and alter the sound properly using Final Cut Pro X because this was before our lecture and tutorial for it. The same goes for colour grading. I wasn't aware of the methods involved in setting the colours within shots to look more natural and matching at the time of editing.
If I were to do this again I would make sure the skills learned in lectures and tutorials were used effectively to perfect the audio and colour grading. We would also be better focused on set and make sure we get all the shots we need and more. I'd also make sure we used sufficient audio equipment, like a Marantz and Boom. It's very hard to fix bad sound.
