Night Journey Progress and Time Management

Our first assignment for this module is to edit together a film called Night Journey using footage from rushes, audio sounds and voiceover narrative files.

For this assignment I am working with Bex who I have worked with before and know I work well with.  In the first couple of weeks Bex and I went through the shots in the rushes and cropped out the usable bits of footage and saved them as subclips.  We spent a lot of time doing this and were conscious to label the subclips clearly, with concise, descriptive names that give as much information about the clip as possible, as well as indicating that the clip has no audio.

I have printed off all the documents relating to the assignment; brief, script and log sheet and created a production pack and schedule for us to work to.  Using these I familiarised myself with what footage was available and how it relates to the story to be told and it gives a good idea of the mood of the piece and therefore the shots that I might prefer to use and the pace of the story / edit.

 In our session on Friday 19 Oct the other groups presented their rough cuts.  This was really useful to watch and to hear Chris's feedback.  A lot of the comments seemed obvious after seeing the films, such as remembering to name sequences, not using the thumbnails on timelines and how the beginning of any film shouldn't contain the important hook as audiences will still be settling, but that the first scenes do also have to grab the viewers' attention.

Our Progress, and Time Management

In the Friday session I was worrying that Bex and I had fallen way behind the rest of the group in terms of what we had put down so far.  Although we have a very good collection of shots from the rushes, all labelled and put into 'bins', we hadn't actually got to the first part of the assemble / rough cut / final cut process and put our initial preferred shots on the timeline.

Our plan to meet earlier in the week to continue working on the film was thwarted by both of us, I have had some pretty major personal problems to contend with which came completely out of the blue and meant being out of Sheffield a lot, and Bex had work commitments.  Also, as indeed all the group does, we both had projects for other modules to work on.

To be honest though, looking at it now that things have settled down, we are actually in a very good position to carry on working on the film.

Because we were unable to meet up this week to work on Night Journey I had rearranged the work for my other projects and managed to get ahead of schedule for both my MIP Narrative and Experimental Strand modules.  This was mainly due to being able to conduct research, read books off the reading list, develop ideas, work on my presentation task and write everything up in my notebooks and blogs whilst away from the university.  (Thank God for Peckham library!!)  I was able to arrange research meetings and rehearsals at SHU with Fraser - whom I was giving a presentation with in our session on Friday morning - which suited both Fraser and me.  And I'm proud that our presentation went really well, was thoroughly researched and very well received.

I also managed to do all the preparations for the filming of my two experimental films and get most of the production paperwork and resources sorted.

So in effect, I have applied time management and organisational skills really well and overcome the problems incurred.

Because of the forward planning, I am now in a really strong position.  For Monday to Thursday this coming week I only have one timetabled session, which is a fifteen minute tutorial, for which all the prep is done.  This means that I have four full days at university to work on Night Journey.  So I am no longer worrying about the progress of the project.  I am confident that we can produce an excellent film to present on Friday, and as I stated before, I am actually really proud of the way that I have applied time management to overcome the problems I encountered.