#;postpro

Final Cut

2nd & 3rd April | Second Cut

After showing our first cut during our last tutorial we made some changes in increasing the B story of the sound effects of the International Space Station, as well as quickening the pacing of the visuals in the middle to give it some rhythm. We’ve also colour graded and corrected the shots. 

While we were editing we also noticed how shaky the 50mm prime lens shot were, and we should’ve really taken out a monopod or steadicam in order to minimise relying on warp stabiliser.

We’re pretty satisfied with this cut however we’ll continue fine tuning any technical issues and colour grading. Such as the timelapse of the sun rise and set still bothers me as it jumps slightly because we could not manage a smooth timelapse, moving parts and shifting them around. 

We also realise we’re pretty messy with our editing tracks:

I met up with Farah to help out with sorting out the production file and getting it ready for submission. We talked through what we needed to put into the file and get ready all the documents from the past few weeks

Callsheets

Script

Script breakdown

storyboard

personal and location releases

Cash Claim

equipment list 

During the weekends, Ian helped looked through sounds and music and catalogue the atmospheric sounds he recorded. He picked out a few music that he talk could work and made a break down of each music:

1. “Grandpa” / Puddle of Infinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSeQesGs8-Y

Such a cool sound. The beginning is absolutely perfect. It leads you in softly much like our script, and it just kind of floats around tonally. Very cool match to the concept of floating around in space. I’m not as huge about the second half where drums start to kick in and the chords get a little heavier, but we could probably manage to find a loop closer to the beginning and keep repeating it until the end.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

2. “North” / Silent Partner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjgrDryFWFU

This was the closest I found to Brian Eno specifically. It has this very nostalgic electronic kind of vibe like Eno has, and the beginning of this one sounds almost identical to some of his songs. Again, the second half gets a little off track from what we’re looking for, but we could make it work. This one is also a bit shorter, so we would need to work out positioning silences in the video or extending the song to fit the run time.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

3. “Big Screen” / Silent Partner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WCvlSHGCaE

This is probably the furthest departure I’ve found thus far from the original goal, but I really like the sound of it. It reminds me a lot of the mood board and the general aesthetic we’re going for. I love a simple piano piece and this one was a solid option to throw in there. We would definitely need to slow it down, though (the slowed down mock-up is also attached in the folder!!). It’s got a great melody for the feeling of reflection, but the pace doesn’t match. This would also help fill the run time because the song is just under two minutes.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

4. “Inexorable” / Kevin MacLeod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUZAlIsmu9k

I’m not as wild about this one, but it gives you another option as far as tone. This one is much more mysterious, deriving kind of from the same feeling as some of the more atmospheric kinds of songs on Apollo. It uses real effects and field recordings mixed with a very ambient kind of melody and it creates an atmosphere all in itself. However, this could also be a drawback. We don’t want the music to overpower the visuals and script. This is a longer piece, though, so we have more room to play around with its positioning in the film without worrying about elongating or looping it.

No cost, must include copyright with distribution:

Inexorable by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1200097 Artist: http://incompetech.com/

5. “Shadowlands”

http://www.purple-planet.com/reflective/4583971306

Bottom row, middle icon This is a pretty good one. It doesn’t seem to match up as well with the visuals we have thus far because it’s a little somber, but it could give the voiceover a more emotional kind of edge if we want the audience to really feel something. Pretty simple and easy to loop if we need to lengthen it.

No cost, requires license if screened at festival. Must include credit:

Music: http://www.purple-planet.com

6. “Relaxing”

http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free- music/track/relaxing

Definitely a simpler one, but I think there’s something special about it. It mainly is just chords fluctuating back and forth, but they’re kind of dissonant and give a space-y kind of feel. Plus, the description says it’s great for massages, so who wouldn’t be into that? It would be good to help the audience focus on the voiceover, and it’s a good length to fill the runtime.

No cost, must include credit:

Music: www.bensound.com

7. “Melodic Acoustic Advert Music”

https://www.audioblocks.com/stock-audio/melodic- acoustic-advert- music.html

Again, this one is further down on the list, but I wanted to give the team some different options. This one would come across a little bit cheesy and risks compromising the visuals, so the levels of the music would need to be very low. I like it because the acoustic guitar and especially the bells give a feeling of childlike wonder, but it’s getting further away from Eno’s inspiration. One of the others will probably work better.

during tutorial we showed the rough cut and gotten feedback and what we can work on to make it better. Though we knew of certain technicalities that needed fine tuning but we got a few ideas or changing some of the shots as well:

 [sound]

- EQ, fix some of the foleys, VO competing with music in the middle

- there’s a subtle B story line of the ISS communication with the space control center, we could possibly add a bit more sound effects to enhance that story line further

 [visuals]

- too many generic day shots, put in some night shots? The day green shots don’t seem to be working as hard as the night shots (eg the grass, the flowers generic nature shots) why not have something different compared to the usual generic shots of nature that are pretty but everyone has seen already?

- Middle part with the Grandpa Music should pick up the pace, with visual editing

After being introduced to Matty Brown I decided to research further into his style of films and watch a few more:

Matty Brown has a very distinct style of editing his work and I truly admire the way he focuses more on the emotion of the shots than to coherency of the shots. Its quite amazing the way he edits and makes it very attuned to how people can feel just by watching it. Music plays a big part in his editing which I get very inspired by as music often drives the way and tone that I edit in and I can truly look up to his style of filming and editing. Right down to the way he’s already thinking about editing while he’s filming, I feel like that’s something we needed to think more of during our time filming. That’s what we want to achieve as well, to make people feel something when they watch the short film.

During the weekend as well I proceeded to look through the rushes and picked out the shots to be used. I think what we realised was that we had a lot more nice, day shots than night shots, while we were still concerned about the grain and all that from our night shots. We decided to simply threw together a sequence of day to night for the visual first before we met up together to get both the visuals, VO and music to one coherent piece. 

When Ian and I came together over the week we put together the rough cut and realised the the atmospheric sounds could play such a huge part in the film. As I was editing the cut without atmospheric sounds at first, there were a lot of times where the VO was not happening and it was slightly boring. The idea of throwing in the sounds of one of NASA’s launch and communication to the astronauts on the ISS was one of our favourite things to throw in, when it brought a certain charm to it, like the extra imagination of the girl, dreaming of being a part of that one day as he wrote her letter to the moon.

One of the toughest things while doing this was melding together to different tracks of music because our initial piece “Grandpa” though sounded amazing, was perhaps too stagnant in the certain tone, volume and pace throughout. We wanted to give it some pacing and breathing spaces and thus introduced a second track. It took awhile and we had to stop and come back the next day with fresh ears once more but we made it work for at least a rough cut.

Today in class we mostly discuss the problems we had during filming as well as scheduling our VO recordings and looking into music issues. We have discusses that we wanted a Brian Eno kind of vibe to the video and Sue showed us a film maker by the name Matty Brown and his work, and it was really inspiring to the kind of edit that we aim for. He conveys somewhat random and redundant shots into one solid cohesive feeling and even though sometimes the visuals don’t glue as much together in an obvious way, his films definitely makes you feel a certain way, and there’s that cohesiveness there. I think overall that is what we aim for.