We started the session by going through the interviews and transcripts again to see how the words may correlate to the action in the clips. Throughout this project I have been keeping notes for us. These have included our ideas, our change of directions, our research and rough storyboards for when we've tried something new.
One big thing that we discovered and discussed was how the interviewer, and the interview as a whole, was very unprofessional. The main interviewer didn't ask open questions so the climber being interviewed answered with closed responses which for the most part don't actually stand up by themselves as full answers. This limited the use that one has for the responses and makes them difficult to cut without having the interviewer's voice in too. Also, at some points there were two people talking over each other to ask the climber questions and this obviously bamboozled him and as the questions were filmed you could see him look uncomfortable at times. In addition to this there is noise over some of the responses as the cameraman erratic moves the camera around.
In fact, camera movement has become a bit of a bug-bear with this film as (as indeed I find with a lot of footage that people film when given a camera) the cameraman seems to think that because this is a film that the camera should always be moving, or zooming. A lot of the time, especially when you are filming somebody doing something, or filming something that is moving, I think the camera can afford to be still and let the subject do the moving, otherwise, as in this case, you negate the action of the subject by sending your viewer's focus, or field of vision, all over the place.
Once we had an idea of where the audio and clips for the first climb would go in the assembly we reviewed the landscape clips to see if we could start the film with establishing, slow pan, landscape shots. We decided on the scenes and clips and put them together in what we thought was the optimum order.
We didn't like it. So we tried rearranging into a different order, and it was even worse. Alex and I are both agreed that we want the film to be exciting and have some life to it, but the opening as we had it looked the opening titles of Emmerdale, and that isn't what we want the film to be like. So we scrapped it. "If in doubt, whip it out!"
As a result of that deletion we had a re-think and tried to visualise it the other way round to what the original plan was and to bring the montage sequence from the end of the film to the start to create a snappy build up, and then moved a shot that we both really like, the climber walking off into the mist, as our ending (which worked well as it is a natural ending shot).
We put together the montage sequence of quick, interesting actions for the beginning intro to the film, and it looks really engaging. So we are happy about that. We also discussed how to use the clips that we each like best and decided between us on a good shot for the title shot.
In researching how the film would look as a more extreme sport style we watched some films on YouTube about extreme rock climbing. We noted the type of music used, the use of montage and different camera angles. One film that we watched was Chris Sharma's Wanderlust film. This was a great film, with a very likeable character, and it was also interesting to watch as we think that the producers of our film may have looked at that work as there are many, many similarities between the camera angles, climbing shots and preparation footage. Or maybe there are only so many shots that you can shoot on a climb.
Alex and I are working really well together and I am really pleased that we can share ideas and discuss them. Neither of us is too stubborn to think that our ideas and decisions are always right, and neither of us is too shy to say when we think something could be tried a different way. The work has been divided equally and we have taken it in turns to do the editing, reviewing and labelling.
I'm confident that we will have a decent rough cut to show on Friday, but I know that we have used up a lot of time trying out different sequences and changing the design and pace of the piece. But personally, I don't think that that is wasted time. We had an idea and tried it and didn't like it, and didn't think that many other viewers would like it, so we changed it. I'm glad we have had this project to experiment with. We don't learn if we don't try!
One of the experiments that we do like is the idea of the black and white sections. Although when we laid them down amongst the colour clips on the timeline it didn't work at first. It was supposed to look slightly arty, but it just looked like a fault and we had lost the colour. Then we worked out what it needed. It had to be different from the surrounding clips which meant making them different not only in colour but also in speed. The rock climbing action will be in full colour, at full speed, whilst the bedroom clips of the fingerholes, ropes hanging on the wall and the climber hanging in a position that we had just seen in a climbing clip will be very slow, lingering, (but short) black and white clips.
We tried this with the first black and white section and it looks quite impressive...
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