With 43 seconds of footage left to remove, I decided to become more selective over which shots were essential to my narrative. Sadly the cameo role I found for my nan, involving her as a civilian walking past and suspiciously eyeing Dylan, wasn't something which I felt enhanced the narrative. This was a brief moment that seemed to characterise Dylan in an archetypal way, as a dangerous and untrustworthy youth whom people dismiss. Although I think that from a societal perspective this could be quite an important way to criticise adolescent stereotypes, I decided that addressing stereotypes wasn't my main aim of the narrative, so I cut out this shot entirely.
I think that visually the shot tracking the Father and Son behind the tree is more effective if the shot actually starts behind the tree, obscuring our view. Beforehand it follows the Father and Son, loses sight of them behind the tree and then recaptures them as they emerge again. By trimming this scene to the point where all we see is the tree at the start, I think that the sequence feels more progressive as the Father and Son then walk into view because their movement then feels synonymous with the camera's.
Another establishing shot which I had debated using or cutting, I had initially decided to leave this one in the finished film because the change of setting for the epilogue is quite a relevant shift in location, and so the establishing shot helps to identify this change. However I decided that cutting to black before this scene would be enough to signify that the narrative has moved on in time and place, plus the mise en scene of the photo, flowers and roadside should be enough to make the audience realise how the location is narratively relevant. With all these different aspects contributing to the change of scene both visually and tonally, I concluded that I no longer needed this shot.
Like with the tilt down to the gun that I had discussed in a previous post, I felt that I was being forcefully expressive with the connotations here. The camera tilts down from the photo to the flowers and lingers there, but I have trimmed this shot before it tilts down to frame the flowers in greater focus. With the flowers and photos recurring in later shots, I felt that it seemed pointless to use valuable time here if they would be shown again. Consequently the scene now unfolds to place more focus on the character stepping into the frame and so the flowers and photo are less overt in the background.
Further trimming occurred with the arc shot shown above. Prior to my editing, the shot arcs around from behind Dylan (where we briefly see the Father and Son in the distance) and then comes to focus on Dylan from a frontal position. I kept this untouched because I felt that framing Dylan, the Father and the Son in the same shot made the narrative seem more intimate and less disjointed. However after watching it back the circling movement of the camera makes the overall scene seem slightly disjointed because the dynamic tracking of the characters so far has mainly been moving forward, whilst the circular motion disrupts this progressive feel. Therefore I decided to trim the shot so that it began already at Dylan's side, and then it only had to move 90 degrees to frame him at the front. This way it seems as though the camera is moving downwards as Dylan walks, maintaining the forward momentum of the journey.
The shot above was going to be the last shot in scene 2, just before Dylan holsters his gun. However the shot that precedes it is a zoom in to Dylan's face as he undergoes his epiphany, and so this shot appears slightly too stationary and underwhelming in comparison. After deleting it completely, the build up and catharsis of tension felt much more fluid in this sequence, transitioning smoothly into the dynamic movement of the next shot.
I wanted to make further edits to the opening scene of my narrative, but I didn't want to do this hastily before I had added my voiceover into the timeline. The reason I didn't want to trim the opening any more is because I wanted to see how it visually unfolded alongside the voiceover before I cut it down further. After experimenting with the Tascam and microphone to record my speech, I didn't find that it reduced the background noise that effectively, so I opted to film with the camera and then just detach the audio in post-production. Using the same microphone for my voiceover as I had with my film had the benefit of producing a similar quality of sound, which will make the audial consistency much better. The screenshot above demonstrates how I added the clip to the start of the timeline, and the green bar shows that I have detached the audio into its own, separate file. After doing this, I just deleted the visuals and placed the voiceover underneath the shots which serve as the opening of my film.
At the moment my film seems to launch the viewer straight into the story, and since it is only allowed to be five minutes in duration this seemed to make sense. However, I didn't want the opening to feel rushed and had the idea to intersperse the opening shots of my film with opening titles in order to establish both a professional and narrative build up. Intercutting the shots with a black screen helped to evoke an eerie tone and this suspense was complemented with the emotional tragedy of the voiceover. It feels like this introduction is just that: an introduction. I am drip feeding the viewer clips from the opening rather than letting them unfold in a progressive and narrative sequence. Breaking the shots up into fragmented, standalone clips gives them a lot more meaning because the viewer can pay more attention to them at an individual level, rather than as part of a sequence of shots.
The writing in the credits is currently subject to change, but at the moment they include:
- 'White Light Pictures and Lapham Productions Presents' - These are fictional production companies that I made up by experimenting with my family surnames.
- 'A Film by Sam Lapham' - This is a common line in film credits that shows both ownership and teases what's to come.
- 'SHADES OF REASON' - Writing culminates in the title of the short film, appearing just after the voiceover finishes.
I should also point out here that I have edited down my voiceover as well. I removed some of the dialogue (specifically the lines 'I should have been, I was supposed to protect him') because I feel that I delivered them in a way which seemed too emotional for a voiceover. The narration is supposed to give clarity and inside information without coming across as too emotionally compromised, so I think that this clipping made the voiceover seem informative rather than melodramatic.
This is less of a reduction and more like experimenting with transitions. With the epilogue scene I wanted to fade in and out at the start and end almost as a way of containing the sequence. The transitions are subtle and don't impede on the narrative in a fake way, rather they help to elevate the slow and redeeming tone of this whole scene.
Having done all of the clipping of shots that I deemed possible, I decided that in order to get rid of the remaining 16 seconds the only way would be to completely delete some of the shots. The one above, for instance, shows Dylan catching sight of the Father as he walks past his car. However, as a way to give the Father more of an introduction without being distracted by Dylan's reaction, I thought that I could delete this shot so that the Father could be in a couple of shots consecutively without cutting back to Dylan. This way he starts to function more as his own character rather than as Dylan's opponent which humanises him as more than just a plot device.
I'd wanted the shots of the Father and Son in the Big Mead to be filled with simple and basic smalltalk, and one of the shots shows them talking about how the Son had been to see 'Rogue One' at the cinema. I decided to delete this shot because the conversation is supposed to help characterise them as just everyday people, but the shot is from behind and doesn't show their faces. As a result I found that the intention of the shot was undermined, plus my nan is also in this shot and not in the next, which could have exposed some continuity issues.
This footage still hasn't been edited in terms of colour, brightness and contrast, but in terms of sequencing and creating a narrative, I feel that I have accomplished what I had hoped: a story with an emotional core that successful blends two genres.
No comments:
Post a Comment