Week 7 Presentation [Notes/Script]

Week 7 Presentation: Project Progress

Brief: 

Each group will make a 15–20 minute presentation to your tutor outlining their research to date towards the project brief. Each team member must contribute for 5 minutes, focussing on those aspects of the production for which they have assumed responsibility.
You should research possible outlets for getting your project screened (regardless of length) e.g online, broadcast, festivals, other audiences and explain why your project is suitable for you chosen outlet.
You should talk about your project in depth covering such aspects as:

• How your project will address the brief:
  
• The suggested structure, narrative – how will the subject be revealed over time to
  sustain interest?
  
• The documentary modes to be used
  
• The aesthetic style e.g. use of static or moving camera, pace, types of footage,
  colour/black and white etc)
  
• Use of sound and music
  
• Any particular challenges major problems you foresee with it. 

You should use examples to illustrate your work and also provide visual/aural aids where necessary. The tutor will be in the role of commissioning editor/curator and must be prepared to ask searching questions about the project’s aims and realisation. The tutorial will finish with questions from the group to the tutor regarding the submission of the pre-production portfolios 

Planning:

Since my role was being the editor for our creative project I would be using an editing 'bible' I was informed about when I was working as a Film & Media technician at a London secondary state school by the head of the department to assist my work towards our project. The Book was called In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing by Walter Murch and I shall be incorporating some of his methods and editorial techniques he suggests for when we get to editing stage of our production such as:

1. Rule of Six

Here’s Murch’s list of priorities when analyzing what makes a good cut:

1. Emotion:  51%
   Is it true to the emotion of the moment?
2. Story:  23%
   Does it advance the story?
3. Rhythm:  10%
   Does it occur at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”?
4. Eye-Trace:  7%Does it acknowledge eye-trace (the concern with the location and movement of the audience’s focus of interest within the frame)?
5. Two-dimensional Plane of Screen:  5%
   Does it respect “planarity” (the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography to two)?
6. Three-dimensional Space of Action:  4%
   Does it respect three-dimensional continuity of the actual space of where people are in the room and in relation to one another?

Ideally, every cut will satisfy each of these six criteria. Obviously, however, this is not always an option. So, in short, this list gives priority to the subjective over the objective—that is, it challenges the me to weigh things like emotion and story significantly more than 2D and 3D spacial considerations within our footage. Murch even assigns emotion to a value of 51%, which means that cutting based on emotion is more important than the other five criteria combined. 

Slides to Include

Research of Subject Matter
-Readings on Human & Dog Relationships, addressing the brief
-Readings on Editing Documentaries
-Interview Research

Aesthetic Considerations
-Colour
-Pace
-Rule of Six
-Stills, Archive footage
-Shot types & challenges

Sound Considerations for Edit
-Transcripts
-Certain Microphones for specific shots/locations
-No use of voice-over
-Instrumental Accompaniment 

Screening Outlets
-Local film festivals
-Student film festivals
-Online competitions

Script

Slide 1: George's Slides; Editor

Today I will be discussing with you my research on my role and theme so far for our group's documentary project on Human and Dogs, specifically those who have a close companionship to their pet. I will be presenting you this in 3 parts, analysing my subject matter research and role research for the project, I'll be informing you about our aesthetic considerations for the project and some sound related considerations that we will need to focus on during the filming of our production to help improve the efficiency of the editing process. Finally I will discuss you possible outlets that our documentary could be exhibited at.

Slide 2: Research on Role & Subject Matter

In terms of research, I have done various readings of books, online articles and surveys concerning human and dog relationships and found the most interesting and poignant piece to our documentary topic to be this article by Michael J. Dotson and Eva. M. Wyatt concerning human and dog companionship. 

It analyses how and why humans form specific relationships with their pet dogs, and explains the benefits of people keeping pet dogs and the nature and meanings of certain dog and humans relationships. 

Since our documentary was going making our audience aware of bonds people have built with their pet dogs, this journal provided a strong insight into how and why humans form specific relationships with their pet dogs, and explains the benefits of people keeping pet dogs and the nature and meanings of certain dog and humans relationships. For example, in this journal it explains that in Russell Belk in 1996 did a qualitative study with high involvement pet owners and found there to be 4 main metaphors of human-dog relationships. Pets as a means of providing pleasure and problems; an extension of ones self; a replacement family member; possession. This was very similar to another research related article I found called Interrelations between humans and pets (Fox, 1981) where he also reports that there are four categories of dog and human relationships where they are:

1. Object orientated (dog as a possession)
2. Utilitarian/Exploitative (dog provides benefits to human)
3. Need dependency (dog as companion or surrogate child)
4. Actualizing (dog is a respected significant other)

He explains that dogs also have identical emotions to humans and that is why such strong bonds can be formed between humans and their dogs. We wanted to find people who did satisfy the need dependency margin and to make our spectator more aware of how powerful this type of bond between human and dog can be.

Since I'm the editor for the project, I will be using an my editing 'bible' that I was informed about when I was working as a Film & Media technician at a London secondary state school by the head of the department to assist my work towards our project. The book is called In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing by Walter Murch and I shall be incorporating some of his methods and editorial techniques he discusses for when we get to editing stage of our production which I will touch upon later in this presentation.

Slide 3: Aesthetic Considerations

By having editorial control, I'll be able to construct narrative and meaning within the documentary just by how I construct and layer the footage together. Therefore, it's important to consider and decide upon as many aesthetic considerations as possible when it comes to the editing process of the production. 

In terms of colour, we will need to make our footage more vibrant and warm to give a more natural and comforting feel to our documentary. This can be done by adding fillers to the recorded footage and we can saturate the images and play with the contrast to create our desired effect. Another reason why we will have to add colour effects is because all the footage we are going to shot will take place in the outdoors in natural light settings and there will also tend to be grass within the shots. According to Willie Fielding in his book on Film Making, he says outdoor sunlit locations will give a blue cast to the image quality when filming and if grass is in the shot, the blue cast will show even stronger."  Therefore I'll have to alter footage where this applies to the footage we shot and play with the colours and add fillers to the image.

Pace is another area of the editing process which we have considered. From watching various clips on YouTube and Vimeo on human and dog related videos, I have seen an array of different cutaways used in them. The most effective being the high frame rate shots  of dog's running around in an activity which reduces the motion blur but also captures and exaggerates the movement of the dog. Another technique employed in participatory documentaries with animals is to have close-up, observational shots of pet and owner. We will employ this technique as we want to give a balance to the amount of frame time our interviewees have as well as their pets

Besides that, I will ensure cutaways will be no less than 3 seconds but not longer than 10 seconds as frantic/over-long cuts losses the attention our spectator and detaches them from the narrative according to Murch.
From watching various animal and nature related documentaries such as BBC's Planet Earth and The Wonders of Dogs, they contain a vast array of extreme-close ups when there's poignant dialogue to be heard. This has influenced me to show emotive shots of extreme close-ups of dog's eyes. By focusing on the eyes of both the dog it will capture their emotional qualities  which agrees with Murch's rule of 6 when we analyse what makes a good cut

As we want our audience to be emotively involved with our production, I must consider what Murch calls in his book In the Blink of an Eye as the 'Rule of Six' when editing and cutting footage. As there will be so much footage to go through, the best way of selecting sequences to analyse them as seeing if they match Murch's criteria of what makes it good cut. 

[GO THROUGH SLIDE]

It's apparent that emotion is the key part to any sequences as it outweighs all the other areas of consideration in the rule of six and I aim use this technique as it limits you to having the best quality footage. Ideally, every cut will satisfy each of these six criteria. Obviously, however, this is not always an option. So, in short, this list gives priority to the subjective over the objective—that is, it challenges the me to weigh things like emotion and story significantly more than 2D and 3D spacial considerations within our footage. Murch even assigns emotion to a value of 51%, which means that cutting based on emotion is more important than the other five criteria combined. 

Stills and archive footage are cutaways in which we shall only incorporate if: the dog owners possesses such footage and if it's relevant to the dialogue. If neither fits that criteria than we shall not involve archive footage or stills. 

In terms of challenges we'll face that will effect the edit of our documentary, this will mainly be caused by weather and location conditions because practically all our footage is going to be shot outdoors in natural light. We will have to be wary of the weather in particular as rain and wind will serious impact not only the image quality of our footage but the sound too. Therefore, we aim to do all our filming in places where there is not a huge layers on sound in the sonic environment and to shoot during the prime time of the day to gain the brightest natural light.

Slide 4: Sound Considerations for the Editing Process

Sound is another important aspect of the edit that needs consideration. From all the production tasks and readings we have been set throughout the course, it's obvious that sound has just a big an impact upon the response from the spectator as the visuals do and is something that needs to be planned before filming to make the editing of the sound an easier task. 

We've encountered many problems brought on from our locations we've filmed at and the weather when it comes to the editing stage of our tasks. Therefore, we now know to use specific microphones for certain situations when filming to avoid having to reshoot/record scenes because of the audio. For example, we know that clip-on microphones are the best for picking up dialogue as the boom microphones pick up too much other ambient noises for the dialogue to be clear. 

As editor, I'll be responsible for transcribing all the interviews we record which will make the editing of filmed dialogue a less tedious task and by using Murch's technique of summarizing sequences into specific keywords mentioned in the scene, it allowed the edit to become much less time consuming process and allows the rest of the team to easily locate footage. Also when it comes to a paper edit, it become much easier to shape the narrative we want to construct by narrowing down specific shots/scenes into keywords. 

Slide 5: Possible Screening Outlets

Once our documentary has been fully produced an edited, there are a number of different ways would could exhibit our documentary. We could send it in to film festivals or competitions that are available to students to enter. I wasn't to sure about who has the rights to our documentary when made so I wasn't to sure how to go about submitting our documentary but there are many festivals on the BFI website in which students in the UK can enter. 
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/bfi-film-academy-scheme/film-festivals-young-filmmakers
Since our films focuses on dogs and their owners and the relationship between them, our audience is to be aimed at potential dog owner's or people who want to know more about the close relationships people can build with their pet dogs. I do not think that our documentary is aimed at a specific age demographic and the theme is open to people of all ages and cultures.