Editing photos can be a tricky buisness..

We swapped our un-edited footage of Transitional Spaces with a group who shot some stills.
The photographs themselves were quite good and well shot, but as a group we really struggled to apply them to Transitional spaces, and just felt that possibly they weren't relevant. The group told us that their intentions were about the first things you notice when you wake up in the morning, and the journey you take to uni. Some shots were of toes in bed, a bed sheet and breakfast cooking, others were of cigarette bins outdoors. This is where we struggled, half were of a transitional space (the outdoor cigarette bins), whilst the remaining were already at a place..
So not only did we not know how to edit stills into a video clip, we hadn't a single idea for them. I thought about it, and spent soo long looking over and over the photos and couldn't come up with any kind of idea about them.

Ideas ideas ideas
Debbie came up with the idea of quitting smoking because of all the cigarette bin photos. But when me and Liv came to edit the photos we were still really stuck. We started by editing the photos in Photoshop by liquefying them- the idea being nothing else in the world matters to the smoker other than smoking itself. When put in FinalCut Pro we came up with the idea that the bins would fade out one into the other with text on a black screen in between. The text would have a sort of NHS feel "we know how hard it can be.." with eventually the photos converging into the ones which were liquefied. It was all a bit cheesy and cliche, but the ending of the video is what took us to the final piece.

The ending is the Beginning
The idea now became to have split second shots off all the photos repeating over and over again. Through the first set of repeated shots the word 'WAKE' flashed, the second set 'EAT' flashed, the third 'EVERYTHING', and for the last set (which was considerably longer and flashed more frequent) 'CRAVING' for added impact and intensity. A soundtrack of a heartbeat from Soundtrack Pro is playing throughout. The underlying meaning was to convey the cravings of the smoker no matter what they do- wake, eat.. eventually everything until the craving takes over.

Personally i thought our piece was very good, edgy, dynamic and snappy.. although a little short (approx 20secs). If it was any longer though i think it would have been too long and the impact wouldn't have the same effect and it would have been dragged out.
The feedback we got was good too, someone commented "that's exactly how i feel" they too are trying to quit. Considering the time we were given to do it, and our initial thoughts i am extremely pleased with the final outcome.

Below are the stills and out edited piece.. Enjoy :)

(Note: adding later)

Transitional Spaces- RE SHOT

After looking at the footage we filmed at Liv's house of random-ness, we came to the conclusion that it was really bad footage. It wasn't well planned out and not thought out enough to be acceptable really, was a loada rubbish.
So last Monday, Debbie and I sat in the library and tried to think real hard about 'Transitional Spaces' (as i was still unsure). So transitional spaces- the bit in between places.. the journey between the start and the destination. E.g, places that you don't really think about, or take notice of as its a ..Transitional Space! Ie its nothing. So, to film nothing.. Hm. Im not going to lie, it was a hard concept for me to grasp for some reason?

So our idea;
- To film point of view to get a personal experience from this transitional space
- Character X (me) is waiting at a bus stop
- X takes notice of anything and everything, imagine yourself when at a bus stop what do you really think about? Do you think about your destination? Your departure? Random nothingy-ness things; colours of cars, people that walk past, whats in your pocket, the time, and something i do a lot is make lists of things in my head (of things i need).. eg, milk, bread, paper, kitchel roll etc etc
- To attempt to film a random thought process from X's p.o.v
- To shoot short clips of these random thought processes. We went into a newsagents and sought permission to film milk, bread, papers etc
- And also to shoot additional footage, Debbie shot me so that the group who got our footage to work with had a varied amount of footage/shots to work with if they didn't like the p.o.v perspective

After playing it back in the edit suite, was pretty proud as we accomplished filming in around an hour! And (more importantly).... it was so so much better than our original footage, and made sense playing it back.
Heres a short clip of some clips from our footage.
NOTE: Will upload later as file is too big!

im actually excited

First post as a new blogger.. going well so far me thinks.
Ok, so the reason why i've suddenly started to blog is cos of my course at uni (Photography&video for those who didn't know). They wanted us to start blogging as a sorta 'online sketchbook' so that our ideas/thought processes on our work are more gradual over the year, rather than all being a load of crap printed from the internet a month before deadline..
..Which is what im actually excited about. I am one of these guilty people who pile a load of crap into a book at the last min and always always regret it "Why didn't i start it earlier?!" "Why is there 3 days till the deadline and ive done F all?!" "Why did i watch so much Friends?!"
Yes, shit of me i know.
But now hopefully all that is about to change as this new way, 'online sketchbook', is keeping up with the time, and now ive no excuse for going on me laptop and not doing any work hoooray! For now.

Transitional Spaces Vid.work

Ok, so now down to the nitty gritty.
So today Liv, Jo and I got a vid.camera out to do our work for the un-assessed 'Transitional spaces' video work. At first didnt have the foggiest of 'Transitional spaces' even after reading the examples (Alone in that?) So i didnt really have an idea to be fair, but was somehow picturing the underpass near the train station. Slow pans, lotsa wide shots, it being empty, bit o' vertigo (I have a thing for vertigo at the min. Love it). But after i was late for the cancelled lecture this morning, Liv and Jo had 2 hours to discuss the work we were to film today and came up with the idea. They thought about a waiting space or area and focusing on aspects in that. ie. lotsa close-ups, clocks, ticking, empty space possibly? The general idea of what youd expect whilst waiting.

We were gonna film this in one of the empty rooms in Fletcher building, but Liv had 5 tapes at her house and it didn't really seem worth buying some more, so we ended up filming the same sort of idea but in her house. We almost got 15mins of footage, which was quite hard to be fair. We filmed in almost every room. We shot- pans from most angles (all sitting eye level), zooming down the corridor, wide shots, close ups of almost everything (lol) but still didn't hit the 15mins target! Oh well. All the sound was "diagetic" sounds, new word learned today.

Diagetic sounds- sounds that are recorded at the time of visual. Non diagetic- sounds that are recorded after ie. voiceovers.

We wanted to leave it as plain as possible to give whoever was editing our footage as much freedom to do whatever they wanted with it. At first it was hard to think of shots to do, as trying to envision the final piece was impossible..as we wouldnt be editing it- as obvious as it sounds. I think it was a well interesting way of working though, not visioning and end goal, or finished polished piece, and made me think that the other group had got the harder end of the work (lol soz guys).

We also filmed the other non assessed vid work, the 30second film based on sound. Watched a clip from Apocalypse now (1979) to get us thinking about sound in class- woah. I actually made a few notes whilst watching as well, and was so so into the clip and was so in the moment of the film (happens rarely these days). Thank you martin sheen! And i probably have Sue to thank for this but I think that today ive really opened my eyes and ears to sound, and have really started to think out of the box. Yes finally! Just the way sounds overlap each other, what sounds mean and trigger in peoples expectations, and the way you can trick or manipulate the viewer with such simple sounds! I just felt well inspired and thought about a career in the 'sound' industry? (If such a thing exists)
Anyway back to our work! I do ramble a lot, apologies in advance. We (tried to) film my face, with my eyes closed for about 30 secs, unsucessful, im a fool, i laugh. So Liv filmed Jo with her eyes closed for approx. 30secs, and at the end her eyes opening wide.
Ok now, so the sound over these 30secs- it starts off with general pub hubbub, then parts of convo hinting character drink driving over lap this. Sounds of traffic starts to creep in over these until you hear screeching and a crash sound. And then (Liv's) car horn. Beeeep. Dont want it to sound too long, and i dont want it to end like this. Too cliche and cheesy otherwise? Thoughts please. So want to go back to general pub hubbub towards the end, maybe have the faint noise of car horn too? Maybe even throughout the whole piece? The car horn can be out helicopter from Apocalypse Now. I like that.


Ok so i think this is enough for one night. Will add photos, sketches at a later date for this, poss. tomorrow. Hopefully the layout wont be as dodge in future blogs as much as this one has been. Its my first blog after all, maybe rambled a bit too much? Maybe still doing it. Just wanted to set things out a bit. And hopefully future ones will give you more of an insight!
Nan night