With the scans of the photos and the second day's interview transcribed we have been able to create an outline for the film's structure. We had already discussed how we will approach the end of the film, even down to the individual soundbites we will use, and so this has stayed largely the same. I split up the transcriptions into a number of different subsections, and we worked out which we wanted to include and in what order.
As I've been editing I highlighted parts of the transcript with different colours and symbols corresponding to the section I've been working on. As well as the time-codes we included in the transcripts, this has helped to greatly increase the speed at which I've been able to find and extract individual soundbites from the audio.
We had a number of different ideas for the opening of the film, which we had narrowed down to three.
- The photo of the bench at the cemetery - extract from Ralph's interview
- The montage of the clocks in the house - introduction to Ralph
- The story about the brass angel - Ralph going into the army.
As Elliot couldn't get access to the editing suite, I began a rough cut of the film at home to see which would be the best opening. I first tried using the story about Ralph on the bench at the interview, opening to the photo and Ralph talking about looking back to England. Unfortunately, the essential end part of this soundbite was unclear so we could not use it.
Ultimately, we decided to open with the story of the little brass angel, as we felt it was short and succinct enough to introduce Ralph's character and immediately engage the audience. It was also more personal than using 'My name is Ralph' (although this was an option) and linked to the idea of sentimentality and stories behind photos and objects. To make this work required a lot of cutting from the original transcript (below), which I masked with cutaways of the angel.
Since last week I had been looking online for suitable music to use in the film. We felt that music was necessary to maintain a pace whilst looking at the static photos, and then to create contrast later in the film when it slows down and Ralph talks about his wife passing away. It was important to us that the film's tone should not be sad or mournful all the way through, as that would neither represent of Ralph's outlook nor fit the tone of the memories he describes.
I spoke with Jamie and the group about what type of music we wanted for the film, as we were struggling with finding a suitable tone. We wanted to try and find a piece which was quite simple so as not to distract from the images, but conveyed the quirkiness and history in Ralph's story. For an influence we looked again to the use of music in 'Eric's Secrets' (Lucia Zoro, 2008), which used a clarinet and ukulele as a quirky, relaxed undertone for the film.
Whilst I looked for music online, Jamie experimented with music ideas for the second part of the film. I looked on many different copyright-free music databases such as Mobygratis, Incompetech and YouTube Audio Library. I downloaded and tried a couple of tracks on the film, but they were either too bright, modern or sombre and didn't fit. One option I tried was using German folk music and stretching it out to slow it down. Whilst this fit some of the parts in Ralph's story it was ultimately too complex and distracting.
Eventually, I came across a piece of music on Beatpick which I felt was the closest to the pace and tone we were going for. I downloaded a preview of the track and tested it out in the rough cut, after which I showed it to the rest of the group and we agreed to go with it. As it was not copyright free, paid a small fee for the rights to use it for an online-distributed student film. Afterwards, I sent the music to Elliot for him to use as he started the rough cut of the film on AVID.
Another challenge we came across as we began editing was the difference between shots on the two cameras and, due to the change in lighting, between the two days of filming. For the most part, the shots on the XF305 were very orange and required correction to look similar to the other footage. As we don't have enough time to correct all the shots individually, we decided to use largely the 5D footage instead. However, with the amount of coverage we shot on the second day, and the availability of the photo scans as cutaways, this was much less problematic.
There is also a noticeable difference in quality between the two microphones we used whilst filming. The recording with the shotgun microphone is much clearer and crisper than the lapel microphone, which sounded too bassy and muffled. The main problem was that for the second day of filming we had only used a lapel microphone, so we cannot use the other channel in the edit. However, rather than continuously switch between the two throughout the film, we have tried to change it between sections so it is less distracting.
After reviewing the footage again we noticed that many of the cutaway shots are slightly shaky, despite being filmed on a tripod. As most of these shots are still anyway, I took a screen-grab of the frame and used a still image in place of the video. Whilst this was a simple process on Sony Vegas, on AVID this requires exporting part of the film as an image file, which is much more complex. We cannot afford to spend time doing this at the moment, as we are still at the stage of assembling footage and finding a structure. Once this is done we will go back to colour correct clips, fix the shakiness and re-insert the high-quality photo scans.
From this point I will continue to edit my rough assembly of the film and share my ideas with Elliot, discussing which sections do and don't work and which cutaways and photos to include. In the meantime Jamie will continue to work on music for the second part of the film and we will try and find a workaround for importing the photos into AVID without error.
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