Visual Literacy

So one of my favourite films is Transfiction by Johannes Sjornberg, the film is kind of an experiment into a practical methodology of 'ethnofiction', a theory pioneered by the director Jean Rouch . This method interests me in terms of creating a documentary where the authorship is somewhat shared. I decided to get in touch with Johannes and arrange an interview to talk about the process he went through to make Transfiction, in the hopes to learn and be informed when making my own film. 

Johannes: So Vincent, How do you know about transfiction? I would be interested in knowing a bit about your background.

Vincent: Well I am from a group called SWOU we reviewed many films for a film festival we put on, Transfiction was one of them and we liked it so much we screened it in 2011 at the first London Sex Worker Film Festival. 

J: Ahh yeah yeyeeah!! I remember, Sex Worker Open University, its a brilliant name, 

V: ha I know..

..I am also doing a course in Visual communication and I am trying to think about new ways of doing  documentary.  and I liked how transfiction.. was... a combination of fiction and documentary. I liked the use of fantasy. 

Johannes: First of all I am a visual anthropologist, so my background is anthropology, so most people who ask me questions about transfiction they come from anthropology and they are asking me about anthropological methodological issues.. but you don't come from a anthropological background do you?..  I suppose you come from a documentary film making background?..

V: Yes and activism too, I suppose.

J: Thats just perfect. thats great, It would be interesting to know what your angle is.

V: Well I suppose my angle on it is that I enjoyed how you brought out the imagination of the subjects, I felt it was more democratic in a way, than just the usual format of the director asking and the subjects answering questions.. even though it is simple and practical to that I prefer a more collaborative approach because when the subjects are involved with the creative process..the making of the story.. this gives their voices more strength.. and more insight into their situation..I suppose the elements of fantasy to me makes it more real also..

J: thats great, thank you for that. I have been working for a long time as an actor.. and I also studied anthropology, and I always wanted to combine theatre and anthropology, and because I am from sweden, you cant do much practicing in the university, it is more academic and there is less to study there..

Also it was difficult to do interesting work the way I wanted it.. you had to go either the anthropology angle or the theatre, and I wanted something else, SO,  when I had the opportunity in 2001, no 2000, to do an MA in visual anthropology at university of manchester,  I took it..I continued with my studies in anthropology, that was more focussing on film, on ethnographic film, and that was my first real contact with a film maker called Jean Rouch, because my teacher and also the director, Don Kulak,  he was a specialist in Jean Rouch, jean rouch was a film maker that was active in the 50s he was actually active in his entire.. his whole life .. do you know about Jean rouch's theories on ethnofiction?

V: Yeah I have read a lot about him the last 2 years

J:  so my idea was that, well jean rouch never really thought ethnofiction would be a method as such, he never really called his films ethnofiction himself although many others since call them that, he never called them that himself, but he wanted to have this surrealist game with his protagonist, (what he called 'le reflet de notre civilisation') like in film such as Jaguar (1967), Moi, un noir (1957) and La pyramide humaine (1961) , he asked them into collaboration, his fieldwork informants, but they were not just his fieldwork informants but his friends for life, he asked them to act out their experiences in front of the camera, thats where it begun, since then I always wanted to torch and develop creative and collaborative practices, as a method in anthropology and social science.

I thought it was good way to start doing that, these ideas were the start instead of focussing on documentary film, which is still what you use in academia, how can you use fantasy and imagination as part of the ethnographic methodology?, social scientific method? thats when I came to the project, I moved over from visual anthropology to drama, so I started to do a practice piece there which is possible at the university of manchester, I could, so at that point I had a girlfriend in brazil and my teacher Don Kulak, was in stokholm still, and he interviewed many sex workers for a study called travesti, in salvador in brazil, and he had written a book that , if your interested in it, is called travesti, so it was his idea to make a film of it.

Moving on, I did as part of my practice Phd in Drama, this project in in lapland, I thought if you can create a generic method that academics can use to explore wherever, whatever culture, doesn't matter if it is in the north of sweden of the south of africa, and this is what I wrote about in my thesis, that is the background, 

First of all it was more.. this another slight tangent, I actually applied for research funding to apply this practice in the north of sweden in lapland, but I didn't get the money for that, you know the raindeer herders, I applied again, so then I needed something, I could do this ethnofiction anywhere in the world, so if I wanted to be with my girlfriend in brazil in san paulo, I could, so I started to look for topics, in san paulo, then I talked to Don Kulak, about it and he said, well he gave me some contacts and he gave me some places to start exploring, and I went there and I started to get in touch with Travesti, the problem was of course to get in touch with people in the Travesti community, this is also something that Don Kulak told me from the start that..getting the contact is difficult because 1. I'm heterosexual, 2 I'm a man, so you will be perceived as the typical sex customers , they will not trust you, if your a woman or if your gay it would be much easier to get in contact with this community, so I didn't do that, so I didn't go directly to those women and try and push myself into sex worker communities directly.. so my girlfriend at that time she was in a theatre, so she had contact with a theatre group called Satyros, or the satyrs, they specialise in working on stage with the transponder community in a place called Praça Roosevelt, at Teatro Bela Vista, san paulo was a very violent place in 1990 and that was when they began, lots of drugs and so on, so they did theatre work that transformed a little part of the city into a better place, there presence made people come for a cultural space rather than you know a place for drug dealing. So Ivam Cabral and Rodolfo García Vázquez, they founded the theatre of satyr, and I tried to speak to them and they said "hey if you want to work with Travesti you could work Fabia or Bibi, if you want".. it was a complete accident, because fabia, never worked in prostitution, shes a hairdresser, she's a bit more middle class, and bibi she worked as a sex worker for a LONG time.. she's my age, 46 now, that time she wasn't a sex worker anymore,

V: So if you had tried contacting people through the Travesti Sex work areas you would not have met them?

No I wouldn't!

Anyway, Bibi, she first came out as gay and then as travesti, and then she came out as transexual, and so she's transformed, while Fabia she is more into modern queer theory, 'I don't like to be defined', won't be put in to a category, 'but I am a woman, that is how I identify '.. I would say both of them are transsexual rather than travesti, but fabia refuses to fully take on this definition, it is difficult for her to deal with that traditional point of view (fixed identity?), also if I may add vincent, its important to know transaction was conducted in 2005-2006, and a lot had changes since then in san paulo. 

V: How did you collaborate with fabia and bibi?

J: so I started collaborating in 2005 and I finished filming in 2006, so it all in all took a year, I started to make a documentary film about fabia and bibi, it was just an ordinary observational documentary, on and off for ages, a film called Drama Queen, 

V: I think I saw that 

J: Well no you cannot yet as I have not finished, I think you have just seen clips,

V: Yeah ok, wishful thinking, I think I just saw some clips.

J: its not ready yet, but this film informed transfiction, I thought I'd use this opportunity to draw on the documentary, and form transfiction. I knew more or less what was important to fabia and bibi in their lives and as you know I am working with a method called 'ethnofiction' and shared anthropology, which my thesis was about marrying a few principles ilke one is shared anthropology, ethnographic film, self-reflexivity, all of which I put into film making some kind of combination, 

Shared anthropology its the terminology of jean rouch and his idea was to change the sensitivity of the viewer, in the 50s this was unheard of, so the idea was you worked together with people instead of observing them, to create a subjective relation, so this became more common in the 60 and 70s but in 1950s it was unheard of, he was kind of a pioneer, but also shared anthropology is problematic,  jean rouch use theory of shared anthropology was problematic, because you never know how shared it actually was, this is of course is true of my work, but I tried to explore that consciously, I was interested in the relationship between fabia and bibi, I was open to put that on display and kind of fanning that collaboration, so my idea of ethnofiction was that it should be free as possible so the more ideas they could come up the more imaginative they could be the better, 

V: but I am curious how you did that?

J: Well yes, there were 3 ways I had to limit them, in a narrative way I had to push them to come up with ideas to start to form a beginning, middle and end, for a film, I had to push them a bit with the narrative, I also limited them in another way which was I had an ethnographic response, so bib and fabia wanted to come up with ideas which were not always related to the reality, so for example fabia wanted to be a cisgendered female waitress, but I said I wanted the film to be related more to transgender life because thats my ethnographic purpose.. I also limited them in another way which was Ethics, so that means I would never go so far as to push them to do things that might harm them or harm others, this was at the core of the collaboration that I wanted them to be as free as possible, to improvise in the film in any way they would like to, I would l have to limit them in a narrative point of view, and ethnographic point of view and an ethical point of view.

V: I am just curious how you practically did it, so did you sit down and just talk about it or did you do a mind map or 

J: Well there were two tiers that inspired me and that was 'applied theatre', 'participatory video', which is things I practiced at manchester university, you make film and you make theatre, that makes a change to the community, its not an anthropological, so my film was made entirely, to represent, it was an anthropological film, it was not made to help them, it was not made to help fabia and bibi, it was made to rather explore transgender culture, from an anthropological point of view, so applied theatre they use this to facilitate change in the community, to benefit the individual, which is two different things really, but the methods of how they did this and my film were similar in some way, so part of the process I would sit down with bib and fabia, I would say like, How would you like to make this film or What film do you want to make? and then we would thrown around ideas, what stories you would like to tell, then they started to, I asked them to come up with and idea, of how they would like to do it, and then I would facilitate it, so if they would like to do something about sex work I would come up with an apartment, hehe my apartment was actually used, and then I would ask who would you like to do the scene with, and the I would ask them, who would you feel safe with, and secure with, somebody you would have fun with, and then they would suggest someone, so I would just solve the logistics and 

V:Did you workout a storyboard together?.. 

J: its all improvised, I think this is the point, when you start to storyboard something you loose the spontaneity..

V: So it becomes indistinguishable from other kinds of fiction, 

J: you loose the authenticity, if you work with non-actors, fabia and bibi they were amateur actors, it was easy to work with them, but I think you can work with theatre with any culture, but it doesn't necessarily always relate to theatre as such, but it relates to play. so what you have to do is hang onto that idea of play making, you have fun together.. so what we'd do is when we are throwing ideas around I have a third camera, which is filming the whole process, and then we just start making it, when we made it, the main thing was that I was trained in making documentary, so I am prepared for anything to happen, because of course then you are more flexible and are used uncontrolled circumstances.. but of course there is a weakness, in the collaborative process the aspect which is the weakest is the editing, because this is of course done by me and I make the editing decisions, so this part is not collaborative and could be considered a manipulation. But I always try to be true to what I know of the fabia and bibi, but this of course could be worked on further and could be collaborated further in theory, but is quite difficult in practice. 

Link to my Action plan

Link to My Vimeo

In my action plan I mainly tried to focus on Documentary film making skills and other related skills. One of the most important things I wanted to achieve was to learn how to use all the equipment at college that I might need in my future projects so that I would be able to more easily access them. This was mainly the photography and audio visual equipment.  I believe I learned a lot doing this and feel I have succeeded on this point. One of the biggest learning curbs and challenges has been how to navigate the college system to get the most out of it, I now feel I know the ropes a lot more and how to access the facilities and equipment, although sometimes I feel that it could be made a little easier for Vis Com students to access this equipment.  Also on my action plan I stated that web social networking and websites was a skill I would need to explore further. On this project I learned a lot about blogs, I used tumblr to create a style of blog that suited my needs (this took a few attempts but I feel happy with it now) and have accessed a wide community of politically savvy and creative visual communicators using Tumblr and Vimeo. With Vimeo there is great learning tools such as “Vimeo School” and also community forums where you can get feedback and scout for possible collaboration projects. On Tumblr you can find many interesting creative and politically conscious bloggers. Tumblr is mainly visually focussed so it is quite useful in terms of networking and I use it often as a source of inspiration.  On this half of the project I learned a lot about where my skills lie and what I am interested in.. which are not always the same thing, for example I feel that I have good computer skills and find learning software relatively easy, but through this project I have found I don’t have a lot of patience for editing long drawn out observational footage and would much rather spend time developing concepts, constructing storyboards, scripts, interviewing, doing camera work, meeting people, doing photography and sound.  Editing and using software is a skill I have, but I do not enjoy it as much.  But then again saying that, I have enjoyed it in the past and I think I would enjoy editing more if the film were scripted and storyboarded, and had a more strict concept, because then it is much quicker and more interesting. I find it less interesting cutting unscripted documentary footage as you have to sift through sooo much footage, it is quite time consuming. I have done this so much and I think it actually drains the life out of me.  Other skills that were added were Filming cutaway footage (environmental footage, creating a sense of “place” and visual interest), I did this to try and learn more about panning, angles, apertures, distance, depth of field, perspective, framing, lighting, landscapes, color etc.. cutaway techniques, I have done this a bit before, but it has been a weak point.  For this project I did this quite a lot and realised that filming places with no exact purpose felt a bit..well… purposeless and when it came to the time of cutting it down to evidence it for this project it was very tedious when there was no story or purpose behind it, even if it was good practice. THE biggest thing I have learnt practicing filming this kind of thing is that if I want to practice those techniques it might be better just to do still photography, much faster, easier to evidence, takes up less space on the hard drive (and online, I have spent nearly 200 pounds on online space and hard-drive!!!)  and still photography requires much less tedious editing… ok so stills are are not good for using for cutaway footage but you can filter through the stills and storyboard with them and then later you can always go back to the location and film it. So this is what I have learnt from this, to do more still photography in general and  I learned you must document the locations and technical information (lens, angle, distance etc), which I achieved with the moving footage, but got it took more time that it was worth IMO.  Ok so other skills I wanted to learn  Directing: I covered some of this in the context and practice film I made where I interviewed, filmed and did sound for short film with one subject. Bit I also directed many short film bites exploring different techniques with my friend clare as a model HERE. And I also did tried some “Autobiography documentary techniques”, I didn’t actually want to share anything at this point, so I didn’t do sound,  but just the techniques of filming yourself, so I started by storyboarding the shots I wanted that would be useful to me for documentary, I took inspiration from the book “Shot by Shot - Steven Katz),  I used a mannequin to frame the picture and then sat there myself after I got the shot I wanted. This skill has really helped me understand how to frame subjects and create different effects. I feel visualising shots is the most important thing when it comes to directing because you are creating something from your imagination, something you have visualised and drawn on paper and then manifested through direction into a filmic frame. Most people don’t really think about this when they make documentaries but I think the best documentaries use these techniques, it makes the film much more interesting to watch. Also it just helps to get out of a passive approach to making documentary, and gives you more confidence, it gives you the mindset to guide or control to the creative process, and this confidence if transferable to many other documentary techniques, like interviewing, creating concepts etc. I also think this could come in handy if I decided to do a autobiographical documentary, which is something I have liked in other films like the film “Tarnation” (2003) by Jonathan Caouette .

THE FUTURE: here are some article related to future developments in my field.  

RESEARCH , OTHER ARTISTS & INFLUENCES: here are some articles on this. 

LIGHTING: I did quite of a lot of lighting on this project. I initially tried to organise a workshop through the AV department, but this was blocked at the time due to a miscommunication, so I was initially put off doing it at college, and did some stuff at home using very low tech lighting and got some interesting results. I later joined a photography lighting induction that David Collins set up for his tutor group, but this was by far the most useful experience I have had at the college, unfortunately its a shame that it was only for one day, but I got a lot out of it..I learned about constant lighting, flash lighting, use of color gels, reflectors, 1, 2 and 3 point lighting, lighting for different shaped faces, for different styles.. some more flattering, some more dramatic, this is when I learned I could also borrow the “constant lighting kit” to take home, no-one had mentioned this before despite my interest. So I did and this lighitng at home when I did my “Autobiographic documentary” thing (mentioned above), I thought this was a very useful experience because this equipment is quite accessible for me to acquire eventually and I can take it on location if I am shooting in different places, so this took the experience out of the studio and into the precarious situation of my small bedroom, which more closer resembles what I might get when going around making documentaries. I learned that it is quite different from the studio because you don’t have access to softboxes and lots or different reflectors and the lighting kit had no way of controlling the strength of the brightness and in my white small bedroom they were quite bright, but I still think I got quite a nice effect with these lights and my new knowledge of controlling the exposure using the combination of ISO, Aperture, shutter speed and different lenses.  Also I have learned how to use some new software such as Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro X, Flash CS6 which really is going to be useful in the future. I used FCP X with the framing shots film I made and I also used after effects for titles design. Plus I used Flash CS6 to make the Android app mentioned below.  In my action plan I also talked about wanting to create interactive platforms and mentioned that I thought more and more film will be on phone and ipad etc.. well I decided to learn how to make a Android App aswell, which I did to help me make Lighting floor maps.. it took me a while, but I have fairly successfully (although pretty roughly) made and interactive lighting design app for and android phone, it have some kinks but here it is..  For my project I have the idea to make a documentary about an individual from one of the groups I am involved in, one group is the transgender support group I attend and the other is the queer film festival commitee group I am part of, I would like to do some kind of collaborative documentary that involves scripting and storyboarding.  I think all these skills I have learned will definately come in handy for doing that. 

PS. If you want to see all THE VIDEO I HAVE MADE during this module away from all the other stuff, please go to my vimeo account... https://vimeo.com/user14001633

Participatory Video is a tool for positive social change; it empowers the marginalized; and it encourages individuals and communities to take control of their destinies.

Africa for Norway! Brilliant! ha ha

"Imagine if every person in Africa saw the Africa for Norway video and this was the only information they ever got about Norway. What would they think about Norway?

If we say Africa, what do you think about? Hunger, poverty, crime or AIDS? No wonder, because in fundraising campaigns and media that’s mainly what you hear about.

The pictures we usually see in fundraisers are of poor African children. Hunger and poverty is ugly, and it calls for action. But while these images can engage people in the short term, we are concerned that many people simply give up because it seems like nothing is getting better. Africa should not just be something that people either give to, or give up on.

I need to think more about my audiences. I have been thinking about film festivals for my most recent film "A Trick of the Light" and also for the film I am going to make for Visual Literacy...here is a little clip from the handout for the lecture..

I have been thinking about location inspired by a recent lecture on 'Participation and scale' , where they talked about the best consequence of participation is one that has a "causal relationship between the experience of a work of art and individual / collective agency", I think this means that the participation has an effect beyond just mere consumption, it has a knock on effect, it creates a change in the participant, it encourages the participant to do something, and perhaps this has a knock on effect in the world... with film we have certain decisions to make as and when this might occur, is it in the construction of the film, and if so which part.. but what I am questioning is if the participation ends with the construction is the film itself at the end redundant? has the work already been made in the making?

I don't think it is, but I think we have to be conscious about where the film goes, does it just end up being passively consumed by a comfortable audience, or is it viewed in a way which continues its causal relationship, is it interactive, is it viewed in a film festival, a cinema or in the streets of a ghetto? is it online? is it creative commons for anyone to use and edit (if so what are the ethical considerations of this when it comes to the participants disclosure, the protection of their identity and image).

There is a lot to consider and obviously this can be considered in a group when making the film.

With my visual literacy I have to consider what my piece does at the end, will the film be shown by itself, or will it be interactive, will it be a display about the process, will it educate about the process, I feel I have to avoid the film just being passively consumed. I would like the piece to stimulate or educate others to engage. 

With the film 'A Trick of the Light', which is documents the stories of a diverse range of participants at the Sex worker Freedom Festival (Alternative AIDS conference Kolkata), the film is already participatory but not really as a core principle, with this film I have been thinking about what are the best most effective places to show it..what places would it have the most impact, where would it be most controversial, where would it be most well recieved, where would it inspire people, where would it have positive effects, and where would it just wash over people. The film is an international film and I think their are thousands or hundreds of places this could be seen. Some places I have been thinking about:

Stockholm Film festival, (Sweden is famous for its "progressive liberalness" but there is this hypocrisy around migration issues and with its anti-prostitution law that criminalizes the client (which is actually worse for sex workers because this means they loose their livelihood and pushes sex work further underground, more dangerous etc), this has veil of being pro-feminist (protecting women), but which I actually think underneath it all is racist, sexist and classist. I think it could be interesting to show our film here because it will challenge this.

Reykjavik International Film Festival, because sex work is still illegal there, because its a place that is quite isolated and in some ways a bubble that needs popping somewhat, but also with its recent history of revolutionary activity and economic collapse, I think it could be an interesting place to show it. 

United states.. AIDS conferences and gatherings (because of it anti migration laws against sex workers), also the within the liberal metropolitan ghetto's like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, because I find them to be politically inward looking and perhaps they could do with an international view on problems to do with AIDs and Sex Work.

Latin american, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Argentina.. because of the politics already thriving in those place, because of the repression of sexuality, but also the great potential for even more radical organization. 

The UK; I am less interested in the big film festivals in UK, because I think maybe people are too apathetic and numb for this film, but I am more interested in smaller film festival, community film festivals, but also many Prostitution support projects in the UK are run by christian organisations that have an agenda (to stop sex work, to "save people" from sin) which I think is a problem. I wonder if it would be possible to show our film in, or near, a place like this.. or even in a church or at the women's institute.. somewhere that claims to save people but has a rescue/moral crusade behind it which ultimately hinders the rights and agency of sex workers. If not possible to get inside a place like this, maybe do something nearby and advertise nearby? 

Places sex work is totally illegal.. 

Afghanistan

Albania

Angola

Antigua and Barbuda

Bahamas

Cambodia

China (including Taiwan)

Croatia

Cuba

Dominica

Egypt

Grenada

Guyana

Haiti

Iran

Iraq

Jamaica

Jordan

Kenya

Korea, North

Korea, South

Liberia

Lithuania

Philippines

Malta

Romania

Rwanda

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Lucia

Saint Vincent and Grenadines

Saudi Arabia

Slovenia

South Africa

Suriname

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Uganda

United Arab Emirates Partial Illegality (mostly illegal but not entirely illegal)

United States

Japan

Iceland

India

Bulgaria

Started by storyboarding the shots I wanted that would be useful to me for documentary, I took inspiration from the book “Shot by Shot - Steven Katz. Using a mannequin I created the angle and distance I need to frame the image how I wanted, then I replaced the mannequin and filmed.

I used two point constant lighting,  diffused with brollies. 24-85mm Lens. I used the small aperture (otherwise it was too bright), there are point I wish I had increased the aperture a little bit and perhaps moved the lighting a little bit but I was quite contrained in my small bedroom. 

I went to liverpool to see an art exhibition by Sylvia Blocher. She made a video exhibition of famous utopian speeches that have somehow failed us (like all utopian speeches tend to), and used actors, poets and artists to recite them, giving the speeches new life and meaning. For example. she has a black male artist recite a speech by Angela Davies (Famous female Black Power activist and Prison Abolishonist), and she has a young female poet recite "the communist manifesto" by karl marx. The change in gender and age give the speeches a different appeal, it envigorates them and puts them in a different context or through a different lens. One of the things I felt when I saw a man recite the speech by angela davies was.. wow its so refreshing to hear a man say those things, and if you don't know the speech maybe it makes you understand it in a different way, maybe it makes you take it more seriously or highlight different parts of it. The feeling I got when I saw a young quite androgynous queer looking woman recite Marx was that it seemed to make his words feel modern and more up to date, which obviously IF it was not relevant today might have the opposite effect of maybe Jarring with the gender and age of the speaker.  

I found this a useful quote from macrumors.. I think I will try using both FCPX and Premier. This could solve a lot of decision making for me.. but I am also interested in Learning Edius, as it is a realtime editor, which could be useful, but will do that when I get a PC.

These are some photos I took with my camera the Canon 5DMii and the Lensbaby, which is a lens that is mounted on a piece of bendy tube that you can focus by squeezing in or out, its like a concertina and you get a very blurry effect especially because it used a pin hole style aperture wheel, and I used a very narrow hole. Creating a very small area of focus. 

So the aim of this was to practice specific shot distances that I pre-storyboarded. So I made a quick storyboard which has a few frame distances,

Extreme Close up (Even closer than a headshot, where the full head cannot be shown, I just cropped above the chin and below the hairline, but this term is used for any cropping of parts of the face.. for example just the mouth or just an ear or side of face etc).

Full Close up: Where you get the full head, maybe a little bit of the neck, but not the shoulders.

Close SHOT: Is the head and shoulder, above the elbow. (like down to a short sleave)

Medium Close Shot: Not as close and a close shot, this is with the elbows and head etc.

Medium Full shot: Head to Knees.

I would have done a Full shot too but I did not have the room in my bedroom for this. But you get the idea.

CONTRUCTION OF THE REST OF THE VIDEO

I used two point constant lighting. I borrowed this from the photography department. I used a Brolly to difuse the light. I used gels to divide the color spectrum for more control when editing, one slightly cooler one slightly warmer. I didn't care too much about the color as I wanted to experiment with this post-production. For post-production I used Final Cut Pro X and After Effects for the title design, just to practice using new software simultaneously. I had never used the new final cut pro and despite Matt telling me it was not very good, I actually preferred it to the old final cut, maybe final cut isn't obsolete after all (which apparently it is according to Matt Burton, well he might be right, but I hope not).

This is my storyboard for the Framing heights film I made...