In this post, I will be looking back to my preliminary task, and find how my skills improved over the time. Also, I might compare some good scenes from my final movie, with preliminary's poor recording/editing/soundtrack. I will demonstrate how did I get these skills and what changed since preliminary task.
This is my preliminary task. I have created it with group 35. "The death".
This is my final movie - "Run to the past" created by myself.
BEGINNING
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SOUNDTRACK
For first 25 seconds there is absolute no soundtrack. Normally people do not realise that, but music is extremely important to keep audience... awake. Surely, if people would actually watch this movie, they would get bored after 20 seconds of silence.
In my opening, you can see clearly hear the non-diagetic acoustic guitar music in the background, which makes the audience feel "welcome" in house where my actress stays at, but also might suggest peace and calmness. Also, I think that music played from acoustic instruments are the best soundtracks for openings. And it's difficult to say why... I just feel this way. Maybe, the reason why is that I have watched so many films with similar openings (e.g. Shining, Catch me if you can, Dexter), that now it feels like natural (normal?).
ACTION - RUNNING
There is quite a significant difference between speed, action and movement when comparing my preliminary film with the final one. The prelim also has the running, however the editing is very poor and the number of shots is low. While making the prelim, I had no idea how to create the sense of action. Of course, I knew that changing speed is extremely important.
Now, I know that important factor is the huge number of shots from different angles, as well as good soundtrack and editing. Before creating my movie while half term, I watched few favorite movies e.g. "Matrix" and "Lords of the ring" to get the idea how to create action and suspense. Why these movies? I found the editing very powerful in both of them, and I was concentrated on successful speed changing and match cuts.
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SKILL OF PLANNING
I also gained the skill of planning my editing. Before I've actually started to record my movie, I knew how it's going to look like after editing. Of course, not everything went as I hoped, but most of my tasks were successfully completed on a good standard. When I've started the AS media course, or even while doing the preliminary task, I had absolutely no sense/imagination and vision. I really think that it is the most important skill I've learned, because this "imagination" is something that every good director/editor/camera men needs to have on a highest standard.
MATCHING THE SOUNDS
Now, I know that muting the film is very important because we can get rid of any background noises, especially the ones we do not want (like camera operator's sneezing... :)). Also, by pasting the new ones, we gain more quality sound and we also can increase/decrease the volume if needed for special editing. While watching my movie, you can also spot few mistakes, but I the idea is that I was able to increase the volume of e.g. car passing by or footsteps, and decrease the soundtrack.
I did realise that while editing the "007 James Bond" clips. I was shocked how it is possible that the sound while Bond was fighting was fully pasted from programs like Soundtrack Pro. There was so many of them... Astonishing! And even that I am not the kind of person who is interested in sound editing, I payed much more attention. Now, I know that sound editor needs to have extremely good skills, good imagination and lots of patience while listening to millions of sound clips...