Reflection on our film and other films

We managed to successfully complete our film, thank goodness. On watching it, we received some feedback, and I saw the film in a new light as a result, one could say.

I think we actually did quite well considering our fortune and the logistical difficulties involved with shooting it. I do agree with Ms Wong that we should have been far more careful in using shots, since we had chosen a slightly bare location. However, I was surprised to hear the comments on the acting, since I didn't think it was that great or bad. But if it exceeded expectations, I won't complain.

I think the music was chosen well, and I give some credit to the editing. However, I accept the comments on the words on screen to an extent, in that the beginning little 'introduction' to the film was absolutely unnecssary in hindsight. However, the '10 minutes later', etc., I think was there to emphasise a point. Since clearly the character didn't stay there 10 hours, it was merely for exaggeration to show a long time. My inspiration for that actually came from the film 2046.

I'll comment briefly on the other films as well. I quite liked Jonathan's film, and I thought that it had a very good idea. I do think on some editorial or scripting points, they could have been a little clearer. Something felt like it was missing. But mostly, the acting was good, and the shots reflected the melancholy mood of the film, especially since a lot of the shots were in contained spaces, with a lot of emphasis on point of view.

The other two films were shot pretty much flawlessly. I have some comment on 'In the mood of love', that the motiff of the scooter should have continued throughout the movie.

16 Dec 2009 (work)

Today, I assembled the music cuts into the film, and we added some screens representing time. I felt the music was very good, because it highlighted the mood very well (I congratulate Justin and Chris for this, since I was not heavily involved in music), though I chose to cut the music in differently. I also found much to our luck that the music and the cinematography were very well timed.

9-15 Dec

This Saturday, we planned to record audio and do a re-shoot. Unfortunately, everything went wrong at once. Firstly, my sister's costume was washed, so our attempt to re-shoot a mirrors scene had to be abandoned. Secondly, Christopher left his tapes at home, so he had to go get them. In the end, we wasted much time. However, I had put aside 3 hours, so we managed to re-do the voiceovers and we collected foley on certain sounds. Unfortunately, the footage was lost, and hence we had to re-do Justin's voiceovers and the foley in quite a rush on Tuesday. As a result, we ended up not redoing my sister's voiceover, much to my disappointment.

However, editing proceeded far more smoothly. I was not present at any of the editing sessions, however, since I was busy, and secondly, since I had done a lot of editing up until now, I wanted to ensure Justin, as editor, got a chance to edit the film. I entrusted him with putting the sound together and choosing the appropriate musical clips. This he did excellently.

I took the time on Wednesday also to alter the last shot where the tripod appeared in the shot by cropping it, which in fact makes the shot better framed.

8 December 2009

Today, apart from uploading, we did some initial editing. The voiceovers were edited in place (some will have to be re-done due to the re-drafting of the script, but we still edited nontheless), and we're quite satisfied with that. Also, some initial choosing of shots from the footage we had edited had begun. We seem to have more good shots than I expected, but I expected very few, so that's not good news. I think one of the challanges we have faced is the timetable, increasingly. However, we plan to do the best we can and hopefully we won't run aground.

4 December 2009

This was the next work we did on the film, which was a re-shoot. We found when uploading the footage that there was a huge problem: we had made my sister walk all kinds of diagonals and hence the continuity was terrible. I also decided that I wanted a lot more footage, and with a clearer idea of what we needed and what we didn't need, we shot a re-shoot on Friday. Also, we needed to include the party scenes, but this ran into a problem: all the extras we had been promised disappeared at the last minute.

However, we had mostly success from thereon. I manage to lengthen the amount of time the film took by having Justin sit on a chair and drink more slowly. Also, we quickly made a decision to amend the script to set the film in a club instead of at a party, which works as well. We continued to use mirrors and emphasise the loneliness of the two characters. A lot more angles were used, and all in all, the film shoot went well.

There were one or two problems with the footage we discovered later. One was that we hadn't watched the camera carefully enough and there were one or two shots where we got ourselves in the mirror. But then again, this may have to be ignored or somehow re-shot.

22 - 28 November 2009

We did some shooting and uploading over this week. On Saturday, we recorded my sister's voiceovers and shot the movie (minus party scenes). I note that we did rather poorly. The difficulties we faced were that everything took longer than expected. Unexpected noises lengthened the voiceover stage, such as jet planes and vacuum cleaning. Also, it took some time to get my sister to say the lines correctly. However, in the end, we had some good takes. I think that this was a testimony to the warning we were given by Ms Wong not to assume things would go as quickly as we expected.

The filming stage was also difficult for several reasons. Firstly, it was hard to inspire the actress to act in character since the whole film revolves around the voiceovers and the cinematography (not to mention the music). Therefore, my sister's imagination was strained. But we did manage to get the boredom (she was bored!) and fidgeting from her. Some interesting angles of pacing were shot. Also, Justin did very well with the beer drinking and we got some interesting shots of various pacing and walking using the mirrors. I think that these shots may be useful. However, many of the shots may be unusable in editing.

All in all, it wasn't as great as expected, but it could have been a lot worse. I think we'll continue with editing and reshoots next week.

27 Nov 2009

Clare is now unable to make it, and Denise, who promised to make it, has been stopped by her parents. I have phoned about 7 different possible candidates, none of whom are that keen to come. Hence, we have decided to use my sister, who can be more reliable. She seems quite keen to try, so this should go well.

We're planning for our three-hour shoot. I'm a little worried about the party scene later, but that I'll deal with after we have edited the shoot.