CCC Backstage Is My Life

Ok, so you never really expect that when you start work on a production that it’s going to be so…well…big…and time consuming…and basically run your life. Yep! That’s what good filmmaking is all about. It wasn’t very hard to get excited for our documentary, “CCC Backstage”, seeing as how I was already involved in it, building sets and stuff. What Matt, Matt, Kimi and I tried to do was give a glimpse into the world of theatre buff’s like ourselves and show that there is more behind the curtain.

            Pre-production didn’t have a lot of involvement. By the time we decided to do the project, the set was already half built, the actors were into their rehearsal schedule by at least a month and the ball was rolling. We planned for as much as we could, but with a production trying to scan something as big as this, there was really no chance we would get it perfect.

            For about a month before opening night for Caucasian Chalk Circle, Kimi or I were backstage filming as much footage of playmaking action as we could. It wasn’t difficult to get in the way, that’s for sure. We filmed everything from the scene shop, the prep of the stage and the actors during many of their rehearsal times. All interviews were done either on the fly before Dress Rehearsal night or were conducted after strike. Audio was an initial concern because all we had was in the in-camera audio, but amazingly it turned out decent, not the best but decent.

            Editing took about a total of a week, to log all the clips took forever and forever. When all the footage was captured the real fun began. I started editing the piece into segments; intro, pre-play, dress rehearsal, and strike. Once each segment was tweaked it was easy to put them all together. 

            “CCC Backstage” has not been the greatest piece I have edited but it was fun to produce and work on with my fellow film-students. I would say that the greatest thing I learned from it was how much preparation and time really goes into the back-stage workings of a production, and I hope that that message is conveyed through the documentary.   

So needless to say, i won't be a graphics designer

Photoshop was a lot harder to maneuver than i though. The project idea was simple enough but learning a new program is always a challenge for me, especially when it comes to graphics. Although i have worked on graphics with final Cut, Photoshop is much more involved. Along with Matt M, Matt F and Kimi we are filming a behind the stage look at CAM's fall play, "Caucasian Chalk Circle", which premiers this Thursday. For the photoshop project i wanted to make a billing of the documentary. 

I started with a black and white photograph taken by Matt from rehearsal. The photo was of the back of one of the actors head. How it looked in the harsh shadows was really captivating yet when i tried to use the lasso tool to cut out just the person from the background it lost it's effect. Messing around with different backgrounds and filters i just could not get the right look that i wanted and the picture of the person didn't look so great. Although the photos Matt took were awesome, none looked well in Photoshop. Square one. 

After messing with several of the rehearsal photos and not getting a desirable effect i decided to go in search of my own image. The images i found of the Caucasus mountains held a lot of depth and were beautiful to look at, also i though it would be better to include an image that held meaning to the play but was not an image you would see in the documentary. The picture is of a small stone house with a chimney and a fence post in front of it. The little house is at the base of the Caucasus mountains and there are multiple greens and blues to work with. At first i tried to edit it in black and white but that took the contrast out, plus i liked it better with color. Through the Photoshop book i learned a lot of little tricks like the history brush, i used the history brush to apply a filter to the image. The colored pencil filter looked really neat, and then i used the history brush to take the filter off of the house in the foreground. 

The titles on the print are not exactly the look i had in mind but still look OK. I distorted the titles to make them bend so they appear like a circle. Overall, i still have a lot to learn with Photoshop and would have liked to have added multiple layers to my piece. If there was anything specifically i would have like to learn more of it would be added multiple layers and working with the lasso tool to perfect an image.  

   

“Denver’s Music Scene” Camera and Editing Assignment

by Amy Shannon

 

            To be honest, this was not my favorite project; as a matter of fact it was one of my worst. Well, ok there was the time I had to edit a bunch of beach shots to Jimmy Buffets’ Margaritavile…yeah that one takes the cake. So not only was this project my second worst project in my editing history it was also some of the worst footage I ever had to put together. When it comes to conducting interviews on the camera, not everyone can do it. Not to say that I can but it’s funny how many people think that camera work like that is easy.  When your lighting is good the audio sucks and vice versa. Although I personally enjoy filming interesting people, these music wanna-be’s were not interesting, to put it nicely.

 

            As far as the editing was concerned, my main goal was to stretch about 2 min’s of interview footage and make it into something interesting. The opening montage of random Denver photo facts was a fun thing to work on and I learned a lot from it. Working with still images in Final Cut is much easier than it appears to be. If you’re looking to do some quick Photoshop work but cut out the Photoshop then Final cut is your best bet. Given more time I would have worked on how to perfect the images and possibly added more.

 

            The one thing that was hard to control was the tempo of the piece as well as the meaning. It slowly got less and less interesting going from quick pace to really draggy footage. This was nearly impossible to get around unless the interviews were split somehow, which is what I should have done. Technically there was no meaning of this piece other than letting a bored audience know that music exists in Denver. The end.    

 

Television Editing Project

“The Lies the Commercials Told Me”

T.V. Editing Project

By Charles N. and Amy S.

 

            Given a mess of television footage and random commercials Charles and I had a somewhat difficult time determining how to edit the footage to make meaning out of it. Besides a bunch of college promotional videos and beauty advertisements there was a murder mystery show. We decided to focus on the beauty product commercials and create a message that television dictates how we are supposed to look and feel.

            The commercials for community colleges came in handy as filler before and after the beauty commercials. At the beginning we edited one of these college promos followed by a makeup advertisement. Putting the two together it was blatantly noticeable that the college student was average and simple compared to the glamour of the makeup models. We changed the coloring of the college promo to black and white at the end and put the title “NOT” to contradict what the college student was trying to say.

            Weight loss is another issue, next to beauty, that American television is obsessed with; every day we see at least one weight loss commercial. Charles and I ran across one commercial like this and another that completely contradicts healthy eating. Our next editing scheme was to put the weight loss commercial and an IHOP promo together. Inter-cutting the two makes a clear message that the morals of television are all over the board. Here is one commercial telling people (mostly women) that weight loss is easy and then there’s another telling America to come eat American pancakes and “come hungry, leave happy”. Personally when I see a commercial advertising fattening food the though that comes to my mind is weight gain. So we took the happiness out of the pancake commercial and expressed through titles exactly what some people feel when they do go to places like IHOP.

            One trait of the commercials that was noticeable was that they were for the most part targeted toward women. The animated model in the weight loss commercial was a woman; the pretty makeup models were of course all women with the exception of one guy thrown in. Even the college advertisements models were mostly women, except they were average looking people. It’s just a funny idea to me that television tells us to get a career, loose weight, eat pancakes and wear “wrinkle free” makeup all at the same time.           

The Editing of Atonement

Amy Shannon

8/17/08

Multi Media           

 

“Atonement”

 

            Director Joe Wright’s timeless piece Atonement is the story of a little girl named Briony; although filled with suspense and mystery at the beginning it slowly becomes tragic in it’s closure. What she first considered to be the assault of her sister Cecelia by the family’s servant son, Robbie, later proves to be the beginning of a love story. 13-year-old Briony accuses Robbie of a crime in which he did not commit and then slowly realizes how wrong her decision was.

            The editor of Atonement contributed to making the film it’s own style by the way he choose to edit. Rhythmic editing was definitely used in collaboration with the movie’s score and added sound.  The score was already authoritative and then the sound of Briony’s typewriter added even more to the buildup of the drama. The opening titles team with the beginning of the score and for the first few minutes of the film we see Briony. The audience can tell from her action with the score that she is a character of presumption. The same typewriting sound effect can be heard in her adult introduction as well. 

            Through the use of spacial editing the audience can observe Briony from many points of view, there are times when the camera is directly on her and times it is following her from a long distance. But possibly the best spacial shot was focusing on Briony’s eyes. The actress does a lot of acting in her eyes and really doesn’t need a lot of dialogue. Through temporal editing the audience follows the story of Briony first when she is 13, then as an 18-year-old war nurse and again at the end of the movie when she is an old woman in a book interview. Between the three Briony’s is the love story between Robbie and Cecelia and it can be argued weather those scenes are real or imagined through Briony as she writes about them.

The first temporal edit in the film is the fountain scene in which Briony witnesses Robbie and Cecelia from the inside of her bedroom window. Briony opens the window to let a bee out that drew her attention in the first place and when she does the camera is then on the outside of the window. Once on the opposite side the fountain scene starts over, this time from the point of view of Cecelia. The fountain scene was so carefully constructed, it proves multiple purposes. The main purpose is to give Briony the idea that Robbie wishes her sister harm when in reality Robbie is in love with Cecelia. 

When Cecelia jumps out of the fountain to face Robbie the editing followed the 180-degree rule and without breaking that line it also included some interesting shots. For instance, Robbie has a vase handle in his hand, when the camera cuts from the frontal shot of Robbie to Cecelia’s cross shot, it is through Robbie’s hand. Although the characters don’t say anything at that moment, you can see the tension through that shot of Robbie’s hand because he is gripping the handle so tightly.

One of the most beautiful close up montages follows the fountain scene between the lovers as she prepares for dinner and he attempts to write her a love letter. Cecelia’s light is reflected through a mirror that gives her an angelic effect, almost as though Robbie is picturing her that way. The lighting of the mirror was a graphical choice on the editors behalf and is the only bright scene in the entire film. This scene is followed by one of the better temporal edits of the film with a shot of Robbie giving Briony the love letter to give to Cecelia. He realizes in a flash back that he gave her the wrong letter and the suspense leads from there to his arrest.

Temporal editing was a popular choice throughout the film especially since the plot goes through multiple periods of time. There is a lot of fast forwarding and flashbacks through Robbie’s story, especially when he goes to war and reflects on his Cecelia. It is heartbreaking how he carries his anger and his pain for, what we assume to be, his dead mother. There a vital images of Cecelia and Briony through Robbie’s POV that give purpose to later scenes. For instance when Nurse Briony tells her fellow nurse about how Robbie saved her from drowning, the audience has already seen the memory through Robbie’s flash back. Ironically this flash back was placed after a scene where Robbie comes across a field of slaughtered schoolgirls.

Atonement did one thing as a film that I believe is hard to achieve through editing and placement, it lead the audience through a false sense of illusion. Warning plot spoiler, the scene when nurse Briony goes to apologize to her sister and to Robbie was actually all through her imagination. Then through the flash backs of the old woman Briony she informs us that in reality both Robbie and Cecelia died during the war without having been re-united. It was an excellent way of deceiving the audience and then breaking the painful truth through editing choices.

For such a heartbreaking story, Atonement was also a story of the mysterious mind of a little girl and how that led to her greatest guilt. It is testimony that the power of how deceiving our minds can be no matter the age. Through editing it created a story that will stay with audiences for a very long time.