Tutorial and Rough Cut Review

After continuing to work on my rough edit for the film, I rendered what I had done to share with Elliot, the rest of the group and Debbie in our tutorial.

Following the opening story about the angel, I cut to shots around Ralph's house to establish him in the setting. I then went straight into talking about him in the army, zooming out from a photo of his group. As he spoke more about his job in the army, I panned across other photos to add a sense of movement. Linking to this I then had him talking about meeting Karla in the army, including the story about her hair changing colour.

After this I used Ralph talking about where they got married, and then talking about why they chose not to stay there. This then linked well to Karla and her family coming over, and then talking about her son Manfred.

In the final part of the rough edit I had Ralph talking about his mother not getting on with Karla as she's German, and then the story of her chatting with a Jewish doctor about Germany back in Sheffield. We wanted to include this as it was one of the few anecdotes which could fit in to the structure of the film. It also added to our impression of Karla's character, and was a strong parallel with the attitude of Ralph's mother.

We both showed our rough edits to Debbie and received feedback for improvements:

• More information at the start of the film before getting into Ralph in the army. Additional establishing shots and more detail - when did he go into the army, what year?
• Swap the sections around about Ralph's mother and not having children. Makes more sense to go from talking about coming across to England and then issues with where they were staying. 
• Stay on the photos for longer, make the panning slower and don't have Ralph speaking from start to finish. Leave audience chance to look at and absorb images.

Another concern that was raised was the music, but we explained our plans for the sound design in the latter half of the film, and our wish to create contrast and a change of tone. Although we are still experimenting with the structure leading up to the end section, we also shared a rough outline of the content we're aiming to include. Also discussed was if there was a way for us to include part of the interview where Ralph sings 'Edelweiss', which we are now considering adding during the credits. 

I will continue to work on the rough cut for the film, implementing the changes we discussed today, with the aim of finishing it by tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to problems accessing the computer Elliot is behind with his version, and we've been unable to fix the issue importing with the photo scans nor find a simpler way of taking screen-grabs to use as shots. Hopefully after my edit is complete it should be a simple process of finding and assembling the footage in AVID, adding Jamie's music then mastering the sound for exporting.