16 - 18 March 2009

I have decided to reflect upon the final few days of the editing process as it seems fitting.

Today, we shot the rest of our documentary narration today. We redid Thrusday's work. I think we achieved an appropriate speed and sufficient clarity, but it sounds and looks too much like we're reading. But we haven't really got time to change that. We received feedback from Ms Wong, who felt that instead of just giving a lecture on the various required areas of knowledge, we should accompany our narration with visual and practical examples. Therefore, we decided to use some of the footage we had to our advantage.

For the stuff about recording dialogue, we decided to include a voiceover showing Francesca talking then. Then, as I remember they do in the 'making of's that I have seen, they then switch off the voiceover and allow the viewer to see the scene. So that's what we did. It was quite effective. Similarly done was the part about the sound effects and their meaning. The hardest part was selecting the appropriate scene. I decided that the scene where we discussed the forest sounds was best.

For foley, we took Ms Wong's advice most practically. Shun decided that in order to ensure visual examples were given, he cut in clips of us creating foley, and plugged a voiceover over it. So, when the narrator says 'we jumped in puddles', there's a clip of jumping in puddles; when the narrator says 'we dropped something in water', there's a clip playing of us dropping a removable soap container - it was removable - into a bucket of water.

For the music, I asked Shun to lead us on camera to the freeplay website and to show which theme he chose and why and how. I got the idea from another group, but thought that it would work well in our docuementary. The music we chose plays over parts of the documentary.

I learnt that when shooting a documentary, a lot more consideration has to be put into footage editing. We shot a lot of footage, but we wasted a whole week since we refused to go throguh the footage and edit out unncessary footage until it was near the deadline.

Also, the documentary needed to be more planned out. As it worked out, we shot the documentary as we decided how to edit it; but in future, it would be far better if the process were a little more orderly and more predictable. We should have had a better idea of what we were making before we made it. On the other hand, the final product wasn't bad.

12 March 2009

The mad rush of last minute work began today. Shun and I continue to edit the documentary, as we have been instructed to by the girls. Shun and I looked closely through the rubric and found that there was lacking in our footage any sign that we knew anything about music, foley, sound design, dialogue, silence, etc. The only part we had was the dramatic meaning of sound effects. Therefore, Shun and I borrowed some equipment and headed up to the ninth floor to shoot a short clip talking about music.

This was in response to feedback Ms Wong gave us. She decided that we needed to check the rubric more carefully to ensure that we knew exactly what the documentary was that we were trying to put together. Therefore, we are spending valuable editing time trying to conjure up footage that will put our documentary together.

I have to say that our filming was quite successful today, however. We overcame major challanges. I couldn't quite spontaneously improvise lines convincingly, so we wrote up a script which was held just under the camera lens so I could read the script but look like I am staring at the camera. The footage was good, but I spoke a little quickly, so we may redo it.

We need editing time. The plan is to shoot as much as possible on Monday, and edit after school and during lunchtimes at top speed and try to get the film in before the Thursday deadline.

9 March 2009

Today, editing was the main thing on the radar screen. We have finished capturing almost all the sounds, and the remaining sound or two will be taken care of by the girls. We began the editing process for the documentary, which Shun and I are in charge of. The two of us began sorting through footage.

The basic criteria for the footage were: a) did it provide the material necessary to satisfy the criterion A requirements; or b) did it provide a good background over which to create a voiceover. Most of the footage we have is mostly of our discussion phase. A lot of it is extremely off topic and hence useless. We cut that out. I suggested that we keep only clips absolutely specific to the topic, which suggestion was taken up readily.

I think that we weren't working our best today. However, the deadline is coming up soon, and therefore, if we don't quicken our pace, we will fall dreadfully behind. Unfotunately, the documentary is badly lacking footage for any of the music, silence or foley requirements in criterion A.

2 - 8 March 2009

This week, we were quite productive. We managed to complete recording the rest of the dialogue, although we did it in a washroom, which was rather embarrassing. The recording we managed to produce had relatively high quality, although sometimes, there have been rather weird background noises. I think we managed to do very well for this, since we completed the recording of almost all our dialogue.

In addition, rain and other noises were achieved through foley. We managed to record the sound of a man falling into swampy ground by dropping the soap container into a water bucket. We also achieved some other sounds, such as flopping cloth, thoguh I can't remember what that sounds was for, since I am not editing the comic.

26 Feb 2009

Today was a short single lesson, and I forgot the tapes for my lessons. Therefore, we spent all our time trying to put together more of the documentary. I think we were slow and inefficient, and next lesson, I plan to have more of a plan for the next lesson.

23 February 2008

We started with our recording today. It was rather spontaneous, since there was absolutely no plan whatsoever. We had 'auditions' for who was best for the role, and I was most unfortunately picked to voice the charioteer. I decided that to give the most choice to my group, I voiced it in different ways, as Ms Wong suggested. We tried normal accents, deep accents, strong American accents, even Star Wars Darth Vader talk.

Francesca was picked to voice the princess. I think she did well, but she was kind of too timid at first, a little afraid to show and voice emotion. However, I'm sure she'll get over it soon: she will have to.

I think we worked very efficiently today, since we managed to get a lot recorded. I did quite well with the voicing, and I think I gave it enough thought to make the lines work.

16 and 19 February 2009

We began 2 things these two days. Firstly, we began the editing of our documentary, what we had of it. Only Shun and I did this, and we were quite inefficient, since we spent more time viewing the footage than we should have. We nevertheless managed to remove some bad quality sections of our footage.

We also found some music on freeplay for our clip. We decided to use some very spooky music, the sort you get in the dark climaxes of horror films. It's quite effective, and I think it will work.