Technology Standard Ramblings

Operating a Video Camera:
Well, For most of it I simply held it. Documentary live action styled. It would have been too hard to follow the action if it was on a tripod ie. the hotel scene. I did use a tripod for the scene of me walking and talking about what the film was going to explore. Also for the interview shots. The reason for this was that they were non-moving shots and a mildly shaky camera would not have been appropriate like in the moving shots. The camera was sufficiently controlled for the kind of film I'm making. It never wobbled too much and camera movement as opposed to the movement of the characters is never obtrusive to the flow.

Composing Shots:
Starting with the framing of the shots for the interview portion. The interviewer is generally shown waist up, as I am for the majority. I never cut off heads or have the subject cut down the middle to the side of a frame. This was dificult during the scenes in the morning, with me having to follow the character up the hall and having to adjust the camera. Some crafty as editing made it so these moments of poor framing were non-existant.
Lighting was horrible, and the cameras that I used did not help in the slightest. I tried filming the morning scenes using the camera I had in Australia but after an hour and having to be restrained from taking to it with a hammer I decided I had to find another camera. I understand cheaper cameras have issues with different lights and the new one still had light streaks and things so I removed some lights from the roof and the lines disappeared while still providing adequate lighting. The lighting was also an issue during my takes. My scenes of me asking questions had to be taken in 3 different locations. Twice I had a half-light half-dark scenario going on as the sun was much brighter from one side and my camera thought it was smart trying to adjust its lighting settings. Silly thing. So I had to take it from a location without light coming from either side. It wasn't ideal, but it is alright and seems to fit alright now.

Recording or using sound effects, dialogue, music + manipulation of:
Dialogue was my biggest disappointment. Having to re-dub the whole first half of the film with post-recorded audio is hardly documentary style outside of narration. Possibly only what advertisers do when they introduce ads to new countries. At least I did it so you can't tell unless you really pay attention and am OCD about perfection as me. So, I used Audacity and lined up my original recorded waveform and then used the waveform cues of my voice to re-record and then over-dub into the film. Muting the original sound. (Refer to picture below.)
Sound effects only included the establishing shot with city sounds and birds chirping. Juxtaposing the beautiful sounds including the sea to the aggressiveness of the mother. Oh, and also waves during the boat shots in the montage.
Music. One thing that I learned while doing all of this is that in documentaries you must make sure that the music fits the type of doco and also that you do not over-do it. I played around with including background soft music during the action outside of the montage. Especially the beginning, however it seemed out of place no matter how much manipulation occurred.
To fit 'When Doves Cry' by Prince in I had to make 5 edits to the sound file. The biggest being the complete cutting of about 3 minutes of the middle of the song. I then levelled the song to remove the dynamics so it fitted better with the volume of the rest of the film and for the playback systems that will be used in the classroom setting - laptops, cheap speakers. I did this in audacity. I also changed the volume so it is much lower while I talk then gets loud for the snare hit. The verse I kept in I felt had relevant music to the doco. The lines 'don't cry' and the general depressed, broken feeling of the lyrics showed what the holiday was like.

When Doves Cry - Original vs. Edit

Eden's Speech. The bottom is the original version after sound level boosting where you can barely hear the speech over the hum clearly visible in the waveform lie during playback. The top is the re-recorded speech which has been levelled and boosted which is much clearer, and was easier than trying to remove the hiss from the original. That simply reduced the sound quality further by also affecting the voice.

Importing Images, and also manipulation of:
I added them all to premiere pro. With the ridiculous amount of footage I took it did at times take a lot of sifting to find the best of each shot, however generally when I got one I knew was absolutely perfect at the time of filming I stopped filming and moved on or took one more. So generally the best was at the end of each section of shooting.
Starting with the general transitions between shots. Tacky transitions are my biggest pet peeve. How many films, or documentaries have you ever seen that actually non-ironically use the star wipe. The only ones that I utilize are the Film dissolve between the establishing shot and the hotel room. This is because the shots are parallel to each other, time wise. There is no break in flow, they go directly from one view to another. And then the dip to black. These are used between different segments eg. the start and end of interview portions and also once in the montage. This is because the shots are not happening one after the other, and are not sequential in the timeline. the rest is simply a cut transition and is the most commonly used in real documentaries. Simply flowing between shot angles or shots designed to fit sequentially one after the other.
I used still titles for the Title of the film and also the names/just painstakingly funny occupations of the people like they do on the news. It took me a long while to figure out how to actually make these appear on the image. But none-the-less they are there now. They need to be on their own track and set so that they are transparent to the background video. the font type and size also had to be changed to be appropriate. The fading out of the title in time with the image also took careful manipualtion. Originally the title was fading too late, after the image so I had to play with its track length.
On the section with me walking and the Dreamworld ride I had to cut the video tracks into multiple sections and then edit their 'crop' and 'position' setting. Cropping 50% off either side and moving it by the appropriate amount of pixels.
the only other thing to really comment on is the fitting of the montage clips to the snare hits on When Doves Cry. I zoomed right in and listened to where the snare hit in regards to the location on the timeline, then edited the clips to that length. This left about 4 seconds at the end before the family shot so I had to add in some cutting room floor footage of the swing ball game.

  A portion of the timeline. The video 3 section is the titles. Video 2 and Video 1 are video files. Then Audio 2 is the dubbed sound files, with Audio 3 being in this section the music and in previous sections the sound effects.

General Changes from the Original Plan

Most of what I have done is still the same as what I had before. There was the change from not having the 'attempt at funky eye opening techniques' as I put it before as it would be outside my capabilities. The change just meant that I filmed from the mother's angle as opposed to the son's. I had also originally planned to have the montage filmed in Australia but that was impossible due to me putting it off and I'm glad I didn't as later I got a marginally better camera to record here.

The biggest changes came from my original Concept where I thought I was going to make a mockumentary. Thsi quickly turned into a documentary due to it fitting my general ideas better found in the treatment. The original concepts connotations of characters and also the whole testing family dynamics were still relevant. I mention exaggerated realities in the concept plan, they are now all just realities. The exaggeration was for the mockumentary. Documentaries wouldn't be documentaries if they purpsefully exaggerated what was going on. The montage wasn't one going backwards through the trip, simply a montage. And I did end up using When Doves Cry.

So mostly the final product follows the original plans.

Production Evaluation

The positive aspects were far and few between, lost between the stress and procrastination of the majority of the process. An aspect that was positive about the whole process was slowly building knowledge about how to use Premiere Pro. I say this as the first day i used it I could have thrown a brick at the screen. But I'm not into destroying things before I've even paid them off, so I came back the next day and over the week of editing and clip manipulation I managed to make some things easier, while some of the more complex edits such as getting both clips on the screen at the same time for my walking and the tower at Dreamworld took much playing around to get something that worked. Also the fitting of the clip transitions (of the montage) to the beats of the music. It was important for the tower clip to start when the snare kicked in and then, besides the boat clips, change to the beats. It took a lot of editing of clip lengths and also eidting of the music to get it to work. I also enjoyed trying to fix the sound throughout the video. Mainly the talking. I am someone that while gets absolutely stressed at the whole editing process is quite happy when things eventually work and a masterpiece comes to fruition.

Steps that could have been done better are the original scripting. Looking back if I had have actually sat down and tried to get a solid script it could have been better. My favourite is the last scene with my mother 'and touch everyone.' how awkwardly amusing. The fact I went to Australia wasn't the most helpful of things that could have happened. I was supposed to film a lot more over there which would have made the montage better however I was purely in holiday mode. Then I got sick. So some of my original ideas had to be thrown out the window. Again, mainly the montage. It looks a bit cheap now.
My sound recording could have been severely improved. Having to try and dub the tracks to an acceptable level was just about impossible. Waveforms of my voice everywhere and having to put up with listening to my own voice. I pity other people.

To achieve these things I could have gone with my original idea of using separate microphones attached to the people top record the sound. Even if these were visibly attached to the front of the people's tops like on talk shows it would have been fine as it is a reality show. And in saying that it's also not Jersey Shore boom miked 'reality,' it is reality. It's not a movie where every little imperfection needs to be hidden. Overall re: the scripting and any planning, a more solid plan that I was sure could be gold would have been better. The feeling that everything I was doing was just a little bit average put me off fully investing myself in the project and putting things off. I can see now that even with what I did do that it isn't a bad film. But it could have been box office smashing level.
The fact I also used so much different technology at different stages of the production process was also an issue with the quality of the final output. I used a different camera in Australia to the one I used back home. I actually used two. One for the hotel room and also the establishing shot. I then used one on the boat which I borrowed off the people I stayed with in the second week. Then I used one for the majority back home which was supposed to be an upgrade. But as far as sound goes that is hugely debatable. Then I used a fourth one for the reshoot of the scene of me walking along the bridge going into the montage. I should have invested in a quality video camera. I just was a cheap production manager back then and wasn't going to spend more than a flat $100 and what can you get with that? Nothing.

Well, all in all these changes could have positively affected the media product. What is already a fairly good idea could have been better executed and the quality of the footage could have been better so that the editing stage wasn't such a pain. There was unnecessary stress when other subject departments, namely English, are throwing a mass amount of work at us. Also internals in 2 subjects during the final editing week. So, also, the clichely cited time management could have been better which may have meant a better edited project.

Focusing for a moment on the actual scenes. The footage of Mum - 'get that f--king camera out of my face' through until the door slam was my favourite single piece of footage. It brilliantly portrayed my Mother as an unhappy, vile character. It would set you up going through the rest of the film as someone who could change into this mood at the drop of a hat. Making the trip horrible for everyone else. The establishing shot was taken to go right across to the sea more, however due to a smudge on the window and sun glare this was not possible. Removing the smudge proved out of my technical ability as it blended in to the rest of the image a bit much. But I think it does still portray a lovely little city where you would want to holiday. high rises,beach, sun. Eden's section does show a broken, deprived boy. So all is well there. Ahh montage is as mentioned throughout and the day:1 activity is fine with me as it shows the stess before they have even left. You have to leave on a positive note or it can set the tone for the whole trip.

Exam Reflection

Well as a whole the exams went better than the mocks last year. I at least attempted to put some study effort in. However, this year I have put more effort throughout the year in so more information was already retained, especially in commerce so that studying was purely for brushing up on points and not staring at a page and going 'oh holy scheiße I have no idea what any of this is about.' Well.. apart from 2.1 accounting but who knows about accounting notions and qualitative characteristics, really.
In respect to Media Studies I did try but as seen in English my essay writing has never been particularly stellar. I'm not good at sequencing or the memorizing of points and quotes etc. I spent about an hour and a quarter on each essay I believe and didn't write everything that I could have purely for condensing purposes. In the representations essay I did have an essay memorized where they compared the boy racers to skin head Nazi's and compared their actions to those undertaken in the South African rugby protests of the 1980's but I felt it was too specific even within the offending group. Mmm I'm not sure what I'd do for the end of years that is different. I attempted to perfect them this time around so I'm not really sure what angle I would take next time. For genre I'd probably go back to basics and for representations write about whatever we learn in the coming weeks and write a parallel essay to everyone else in the class.