The Editing Process.

The editing process of film making is possibly my favourite part of creating a film. I usually edit on my own, so I can sit for hours and finely tune everything as best I can and it doesn't feel like work. I worked for a number of days on my edit, before Christmas and after Christmas, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. 

After everything had been shot, I was a lot more happier to edit because I already felt like I was closer to finishing it even though I had just started. I encountered a small number of basic problems while editing but I feel like I handled them well with my best efforts.

Colour Correction:
This was only due to either not the right white balance being set or the fact that the lights I used where normal household lights and most lights like this, do have a yellow tint to them. After spending at least two or three days on colour correction, I did what I could but there is only really so much you can do before you start going into over exposure or making it too dark. Despite this, I don't think it takes away from the documentary, which I'm very happy about.

More Footage:
Part of me doesn't want to have to say that I wanted more footage because I already spent hours deliberating what shots to use, and this wasn't because of a lack of footage by any means. The shots I took after I interviewed my Mum; I got a few shots of her knitting and if I could do it differently, I probably would have got my camera out only for a minute or so every time she was knitting something different and created a short montage piece of the various things she was knitting. I just think it would have added slightly more depth to the piece.

My Mum's interview.

Over the Christmas period I conducted the interview with my Mum. She brought a lot to the interview with funny stories, childhood memories and being quite comfortable in front of the camera, despite being very nervous beforehand.

Once I had asked her all her interview questions, I got a number of close ups of her knitting and with her tea. The tea element was important to me because tea often relates to being sociable and this is what her knitting group is about, as well as knitting of course.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to interview my Mum. Some would say I have an advantage interviewing someone I know so well, but I was still nervous at the prospect. The only thing I would have changed about this is I would have worked more on sorting out the lighting problems. Everything looked fine on the camera at the time but as I put it on the big Mac screen, it turned out that it was quite yellow. With this happening, I spent a good majority of my editing time trying to colour correct the interview. In the end, there is only so much you can do unfortunately but I don't think it ended up being too bad or at least I don't think it would be too overly obvious to anyone who wasn't a film student.

Reshooting and Production Photographs.

We had our re-shoot on Wednesday at our afternoon group in the library. I wasn't sure what to think when going into this shoot; on the one hand I was really looking forward to getting more footage and getting stuck into the editing; but on the other hand I was quite nervous too, but I think that's only natural before any shoot.

It went even better than the first shoot, I was a lot more relaxed around the group because we had been there before, and because we had looked over the previous footage, I knew what shots worked and didn't work. This meant that I knew what type of shots I wanted this time around. The group we go to isn't very big, there's only around six people in it but I personally like this type of number because you can feel more intimate with them, and are able to work around them a lot easier than a bigger group. I did like the big group we went to, but I felt there was too much choice of people and in filming a smaller group; we didn't have loads of people but we can't concentrate more on a few people but get shots from a number of different angles.

Below are some screen shots that I have taken from the re-shot footage, that we looked at today: 

(One of the girls arrived late but this is a group shot from above, which showed that it's quite a tight knit *excuse the pun* group.)

 (I really liked this shot and even though it's just of tea and biscuits, I wanted to bring across that it's not just knitting that brings this group together, it's a social side too.)

(A two-shot of two of the ladies knitting and chatting away.)

(This shot will be cut down to start with this frame and it slowly glides up to the woman's face to show who is knitting.)

(Another shot of another one of the women knitting)

(Some close ups of the wool my Mum was knitting with as well as a glimpse of small Christmas presents one of the other ladies handed out to everyone.)

(I really love this shot; it may seem very simple but it brings together the social side and the craft side of knitting all in one shot.)

Overall, I'm really happy with our re-shoot footage; we used our tripod this time (Lesson? Always, always, always use a tripod or a steady cam) and the shots came out so much more beautifully. I wasn't able to get some of the more close-up shots I wanted to; this was due to the tripod not being able to get close enough, but after all at all the footage, I don't think we actually need them now. I feel like we have more than enough footage for our documentary (This is excluding the interview which I haven't filmed yet but we will be including it) and I think we also got a good variety of shots compared to last time too.

Researching older documentaries.

We watched a handful of older documentaries in class to try and get a feel of how our own documentaries may turn out because we have to use the same method of storytelling (No voice over and no interviews).

Terminus (1961)
No voice over or narrator; a couple of the scenes were clearly staged (Later research confirmed our predictions), the songs played throughout were made specifically for the documentary, voices weren't always synced up with people's mouths, graph cuts were used to edit shots together, no interview took place and there was overlayed sound.

Launch
No interviews, no dialogue, no voice over or narrator, impressionist and outside sound was used.

Drifters (1929)
Completely silent film wth no sound, music, voice over or dialogue.