Bowie - Final Media Artefact

Bowie

https://youtu.be/B5XoxnTSn3o

This is our final edit of BOWIE - a tribute to David Bowie.

We chose the poem "Welcome Your Confusion As A Guest" by Ellen Reiss.

Shauna's Evaluation

My main intention for the short assignment was to push the boundaries and really put myself out of my comfortzone and experiment with different work within the project.

I am the director of this production team. As director I believe I make all the final decisions and keep order within the team. My personality naturally tries to make the best decision for eveyone without putting myself first. There are five people in total in our group so there were many times during filming and editing sessions where I would have to make the final decision due to a 50/50 split decision in the group.

I feel our strength as a group was the equal contribution from each team member. Everyone wished to experiment with each role and in some aspects we did. We really worked as a team on set and in the editing studio to create a really interesting product.

Our weakness as a group was most likely attendance. This weakness was mostly due to illness or confusion within the group, which is no excuse. As the director of the group I made the decision if someone could take the day off or leave early due to the reason behind the depature.

I feel that if all members of the group were present during all sessions we would have come across less issues than we did, because I think that the team working skill can influence every decision and problem. This is something I feel we could imporve on as a group, because at one point or another every member including myself has not attended a session, which I now see as unacceptable.

My Strenghs in this assignment were managing the group and making the final decisions during the editing sessions especially.

My weaknesses in this assignment were managing the pressure on myself as leader of the group and trying to control my perfectionist side and create a edit which looked visually impressive without focusing on the minor inperfections of the quality and content of the video.

I feel that I have learnt about myself a bit more during this assignment and personally I dont think I would like to become the director again. I would like to try being a camerawoman on my next assignment, because I would like to learn more camera techniques and get more comfortable using different technical equiptment with the help of other students who know how to use them well.

To conclude, I am very impressed with our short film tribute to David Bowie and I feel my group and I have took a unique path to completing this assignment by creating a short film to interpretate a poem.

Shannon's evaluation

Evaluation

For this project I was the producer, at the very beginning of this project we decided we wanted to do something different and take ourselves out of our comfort zones in our work. I was not comfortable and did not enjoy paperwork and to me this was a producer was to do. To start with I found the role quite difficult, as I prefer to be practical instead of studious but as I eased myself into the role I found it easier. Although I enjoyed this role for future projects I feel I still lie as a director.

We came up with our idea when we decided we wanted a very unique project, we wanted something we didn’t think anyone else would have. It was very interesting researching and completing the pre production for this project as it was different from what we have done before. It was a good expectance having to create a story rather then to hope for the best, this gave us more control and the out come we wanted.

Although I like what we have created there were a few issues along the way, the major one being editing. We had numerous issues during the editing process due to different computers holding different versions of the editing software, throughout the process we lost two almost complete edits.

Marketa's evaluation

Marketa's Evaluation

For this specific I was chosen to be the visual editor. I am relatively new to the role, so I wanted to improve. The job went mostly smoothly, we had enough footage to choose from. The hardest part of it was to make it look smooth, especially for the actors movement from and to work. There were parts that we could have done better, but we did our best to make it seem natural.


For me, the worst part was not the editing itself, but the problems we had with technology. All of us knew the possibility of problems ocuring when working first on Mac and then on PC. What we didn't expect though were the problems with different versions of Macs and Premiere Pro. One day we make basic rough edit on Mac and the other we spent well over 3 hours trying to get it to work again. We did, but sadly were not able to properly transport it elsewhere or finish our work there (this one particular Mac had no sound). In the end, we had to start fresh and make the edit all over again. Thankfully we managed to finish our project at the same date (with a bit of tinkering afterwards).

That made me realize one thing. No matter how many times you save, render and export, make sure you do it on the same Mac/PC, or at least in the same room. Because it may not like different versions.

Otherwise I enjoyed working on this project and am curious what will come next.

Michael's Evaluation

Thursday 28/1/15

Micky’s Evaluation:

For this project I was the audio editor and actor, I joined relatively late into the project as I was unwell but my team did accept me in and allow me to do the work needed. Acting was my first responsibility I felt at points uncomfortable with this has I haven’t really ever acted like this before and don’t have a lot of confidence in that area. Nonetheless I had a great amount of fun doing it. The audio editing part called for me to source sounds and tracks for our poem as well as sort some of the levels during editing so the poem voice over could be heard over all the ambient and natural noises, at times this proved difficult since I was the voice over and it was difficult to get my voice much louder than the other sounds with our video, however on saying this I gave it my best attempt and think I did well with the time I had.

To conclude I had some fun and some difficulties working on this film, I learnt some new things that I can take away for future projects.

Scarlett's Evaluation

During this project I worked as the Camera Operator. This is a role I would normally shy away from as I lack confidence in my camera skills. But as we decided to challenge ourselves as a group at the beginning of the project, I thought that it may be a good idea to work with the camera a lot more to learn new skills and improve my abilities. 

I am fairly happy with how the project ran. I believe we worked well as a team, even though we had a larger team than the other groups taking part in this project. Having more group members definitely worked in our advantage as we were able to give everybody a specific role rather than sharing tasks. For example; we were able to have two editors; one to focus on sound and one to focus on vision which was definitely useful for a film with a soundscape. The vision editor only had to focus on one aspect of the editing rather than juggling vision and sound at the same time.

Looking back at the filming process and the final edit, there are a few things I believe could have gone better. During shooting we had issues with using the television in shot due to lighting. We decided it may be better to try editing the footage we wanted to show on the TV in post-production. This was not as easy as the group originally thought while editing and in the end, it had to be left as it was. Even though the film has a black and white filter, the radiating light from the television is still very noticeable and distracting and that is not what I was aiming for. I do believe that the final edit is easy to follow and tells the story that we wanted to tell from the beginning but it could have done with more outdoor shots. Obviously, timing comes into consideration here and during the post-production process it is not always possible to fit in every shot. Although I think if we were to re-do this project, I would have liked to focus on more outdoor shooting and possibly cut down the length of some of the shots in our edit as they do seem a bit long sometimes which can lose the interest of viewers.

Overall, I am happy to have worked within a different role to my usual and I think I managed to do quite well. I'm not expert and I don't think I ever will feel fully confident behind the camera but I had the chance to work and experiment with two different cameras during this project and I was able to chose the one I worked the best with and spend a bit of time learning about it. I was hoping for a gloomy and dark appearance in this film and I believe that was achieved which is fitting for the atmosphere as the topic of David Bowie's death is, of course, very dark and sad. I think this project has definitely a valuable experience for me.

-Scarlett

Rough edit shot list

I have made a rough edit shot list. The shots ended a bit different, with different timing and the special effect are not written in here. It is simply a basic version of a edit list.

	SHOT LIST
Shot Name	Shot Description	Time Duration
MVI_0094.MOV+BOWIE	Title showing, background of NY	31:09:00
MVI_8637.MOV	TV playing the Labyrinth	24:04:00
MVI_8633.MOV	Man wathing TV	26:24:00
MVI_8634.MOV	Man wathing TV	14:22
MVI_8640.MOV	Man wathing TV	8:08
MVI_0050.MOV	Man realizing he is late and running out the door	6:03
MVI_0060.MOV	Man running out of house	4:12
MVI_0103.MOV	Man walking down the street, getting earphones into his ears	38:02:00
MVI_0112.MOV	Man walking down the street	17:09
MVI_8649.MOV	Man walking down the street	25:08:00
MVI_8652.MOV	Man getting to work	23:15
MVI_8670.MOV	Sweeping card for the door access	7:00
MVI_8661.MOV	Time goes by, man works	20:21
MVI_8655.MOV	Man gets out of work	23:21
MVI_8657.MOV	Man goes home down the street	40:07:00
MVI_8664.MOV	Man goes home down the street	8:00
MVI_0067.MOV	Man getting to the door of his house	4:06
MVI_0070.MOV	Man opening door	11:21
MVI_0071.MOV	Man hanging his coat	13:09
MVI_0076.MOV	Man sitting on couch, watching news	12:24
MVI_0080.MOV	Man finding out David Bowie died	5:00
MVI_0085.MOV	Shocked man	11:03
MVI_0090.MOV	Outburst	9:07
END CREDITS	THE END

Filming Analysis

Now that our shooting days are done and dusted, I'm taking some time to reflect on how they went and what I learned and gained from them.

We filmed in two very different locations; one was a home and the other was city streets. Obviously the lighting in these two locations had to be taken into consideration as natural light is easily accessible in the outdoor location whereas indoors we had to be reliant on artificial lighting. This factor did cause a few problems for us initially when we began shooting indoors but as we had access to two slightly different cameras [Canon 600D and 700D] as the camera operator I was able to adjust the settings and exposure to work as well as it possibly could with indoor lighting. I do believe we could have used some artificial lighting from the university's media shop but we do not have much lighting experience and would probably have found it difficult setting everything up.

Although we did some filming in the early evening as it was getting darker, we did not face any issues with lighting. It was actually really effective to achieve the dark appearance we are looking for with a film based on such a gloomy topic.

I would have liked to get some practice with the cameras done ahead of filming but as we were limited with time, this was not possible. I feel as though if I had done some practice beforehand the shooting process itself would have gone much more smoothly and quicker. I will definitely keep this in mind for any future projects with camera work.


-Scarlett

Rough version of the story

Rough version of the story:

Title shows up

Scene opens in a room. A man is sitting on a sofa watching film (Labyrinth), being completely immersed into it. Everything is quiet. Except....Tick..Tock. A clock on the wall is ticking. He either catches the ticking, or the clack starts ringing (alarm). He looks at the time and registers that he is late to work. He quickly gets up, leaving in a hurry. The sound of the clock ticking seazes, we can hear the door shutting. Otherwise everything is quiet. We see him get his headphones out and onto his head. The muffled sound of David Bowie’s music starts playing (Only mashed bits). Alternative is, that the man starts humming and quietly singing the songs. The narration starts here.

He walks down the streets, not interrested in anything. In this sequence the city is shown, the tall buildings, people and traffic never seazing it’s beat.

He gets to work and starts his day. Timelapse.

He is leaving work, again with the headphones on. He goes through the city, when he realizes it has stopped raining. He takes off his hood/hat and looks up. There he sees a big screen showing the news ‚David Bowie is dead‘. What follows is a burst of sound, people talking, laughing, dogs barking, cars honking, clock beating, ambulance horn. The same with vision, we can see snippets of the news, headlines, interviews. After it gets the loudest, everything suddenly stops. Narration ended.

Alternative: He takes the headphones off, and all the normal sound comes in, laughing, talking, etc. And then he notices the news. Everythingslows down, the sound of his surroundings quietens, but the news get highlighted in his mind.

It starts raining again and the man starts slowly walking home. The only sound here is the rain. The man is crying. He gets home, sits down and plays the movie again. The camera will then slowly back away and tilt to the dark sky.

Alternative: The film the man was watching in the morning was on tape and when he returned, the tape was broken.

Alternative 2: The end scene could end with the rain sound and the sound of the wall clock ticking.

End Credits.

All through the film, New York merchandise will be seen, to underline the poems roots in New York and at the same time show the place of death of David Bowie. 

First Running Order

Shot List

-Scarlett

RISK ASSESSMENT NEWPORT

Our risk assessment for our newport location

RISK ASSESMENT CARDIFF

Our risk assessment for our Cardiff location 

Our Final Idea

Our final Idea.

We decided to try and do something different with our poem so we went with Welcome your confusion as a guest. We thought we could make this different and do some interesting work with it. We thought it would work well to go with someone loosing a person they adore, it worked timely with the death of David Bowie so we decided to use this as our base for the poem. We would focus upon the persons connection to the celebrity and their distraught as they learn of his death.

Analysis - welcome your confusion as a guest

Idea Development

Welcome Your Confusion As A guest.

To me the poem seems like someone who happens upon a tragedy/heartbreaking moment in their life. It seems as if the person is confused, they don’t know how to act when put into this situation taking them into a further “depression”. They have gone out to clear their head but nothing around them has any effect upon them. The rain no longer feels wet, the noise is no longer too loud and the cold although there is barely effective. I feel the line “you hold your jacket tight around you” does not refer to it because of the cold I see it more as a sign of comfort. I think the end of the poem the person realizes that’s its okay to be sad and lets his/her emotions back in and it is too much for them to bare.