Critical evaluation

For our two minute piece we decided to create story about a boxer who had been kicked off his circuit and was struggling to get on with everyday life because boxing was all he knew. Ben Wilson (director) took a lot of his inspiration from Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’. He wanted to use a lot of long drawn out fades and long cuts to focus on the characters eyes and his frustration. He also wanted to put use a very quick cut montage, as though the character was having a flash back which was affecting his day to day activities.
I think we have managed it achieve what we set out to achieve. When we originally discussed the piece and the ideas Ben had, I had pictured the montage more like the training montages from the ‘Rocky’ films. However Ben wanted them less rhythmic, and more quicker, snappy cuts between the character in the shop and the montage itself, a similar example to this can be seen in a YouTube film called ‘Time to Dance’.
As the editor of this piece I would’ve liked more montage footage because there was little to choose from while editing, which I feel made the montage less affective. Also due to time constraints, we had to cut down the script a lot. We had originally planned to have the character doing a number of different activities: shopping, clubbing etc. but eventually we had to settle with just using the shop as we were unable to get the other locations we needed within the time we had.

The production process went very smoothly, all the footage was filmed in timely manner and I think that Ben Wilson and Ben Brown worked very well together to create some very nice looking shots. However the post-production went less smoothly. Trying to edit the montage together without music to put it to as I was originally expecting to do was very difficult as I did not have a beat to put the clips to. Ben wanted the sounds to continue without them appearing on screen, sort of like a composograph style. However without the sounds there to help me or to add it was hard for me to get a clear vision in my head of what the end product would look and sound like. The sound for the piece became a real issue after a while, mainly because Alice was using the excuse of seeing her boyfriend for the reason she had not done what she needed to do, which I found very unprofessional. Eventually I had finished the picture cut but she had not done any sounds towards the piece. This meant that I had to leave the picture cut with her until she had finished the sounds.
During the process I learnt that it is important to do everything as early as possible so that if problems do arise you are not left trying to deal with them last minute as was the case with the sound design.

I feel that I put a lot of work into this project, it was decided early on that I was not needed on set, apart from one day when I was required to show the actor how to fall properly and safely onto a mat. I was required for this as I have an extensive martial arts background which includes choreography. I was came in to university to edit every day and if I felt that something needed reshooting I supplied Ben with a list of everything I thought I needed to be able to edit the piece to its best potential. The only real problems I encountered during my work was that I felt the group were not including me in the plans i.e. I was not told when they would be filming or when I could expect footage, which made it very hard to give myself deadlines. To try and solve this, I made a habit of telling everyone when I would be in the editing rooms so if they had any footage to give me they could come and find me. Another problem I ran into was trying to edit with everyone present. I had made it clear early on that I only needed Ben with me (if anyone) while I was editing. On one day however everyone in the group turned up and was trying to crowd around the computer to see what was happening and give their opinions on what I should do, it got very noisy and claustrophobic and I got very frustrated and angry. I took Ben to one side afterwards and explained to him that I could not concentrate with everyone shouting in my ear and the only person who needed to be present was him. After that there was no problem.

I feel that overall we worked well together on this project; although there were a few teething problems we managed to achieve our goals successfully.

For the second piece we followed on from the first idea and created a story about a boxer who had been kicked off his circuit, only this time he developed an eating disorder (over indulgence).
This time Ben Brown was the director and writer. At first we struggled getting off the ground with this project, mainly due to the amount of ideas Ben was trying to push into one script, all the ideas were good, but there were too many to try and fit within a ten minute time frame, and Ben (probably because he wasn’t seeing it from an outside perspective) struggled to cut anything out because he saw it all as relevant. Because of this the script took a long time to complete which meant we lagged behind. I don’t feel that this piece was as strong as our first. This is because during the filming we had to cut or change a lot of the story: either because of lack of actors or filming time etc. I felt that we should’ve focussed more on the characters degradation in boxing more and less on his eating habits. Looking at it from another perspective I can see that eating disorders happen gradually and this is what Ben wanted to show, but I still think that more footage within the boxing gym would’ve helped strengthen the story as this is what it was supposed to be about.
Had we not had to cut things out and change the story I feel that we could have filmed and included more boxing footage. I still think we managed to portray someone suffering from an eating disorder very well which was one of the original aims, but to achieve it we had to stray away from the main goal of showing boxing degradation as a result of the eating disorder.

Again in this project I was not needed on set apart from one day. Again I had to draw on my martial arts and choreography background to choreograph a quick fight scene for the beginning of the piece which shows the main character being beaten and the reason he is thrown off the circuit. When I first set out to choreograph this piece I had in my mind a very elaborate sequence with a lot of complicated shots and moves. However the director told me that he wanted something very quick and snappy without embellishment. So I had to review the fight sequence I had done and tone it down a lot. Even though I wasn’t on set for long I learnt how different it is choreographing to someone else’s needs rather than my own. Whenever I have choreographed fight sequences before I have never had a brief so I have been able to add whatever I wanted and make them look as “stunty” as possible. However I have realised that elaborate and impressive does not always fit the look you are trying to achieve. I am happy with what I managed to come out with considering that I had to make it up on the spot and teach the actors as well.
Other than this I was confined to editing. Due to time constraints and certain things going wrong with the actors knowing where they were meant to be and when I did not get all the footage I needed straight away. So That became a big problem when I was trying to edit scenes together without all the footage, I did make the best I could of it though and I did not get impatient as I usually would have. Another problem was that I did not receive the storyboards when I asked for them which made it very hard to edit scenes together because I did not know what order the scenes were supposed to take place, I had to use my intuition until Ben came and sat with me to put everything right.
Towards the end of the editing process I was constantly trying to get the credits off the Producer (Jonathan Copeman) but he would not send them to me. So on the last day I had to leave the project in the hands of Ben Brown and Alice Hathaway while they did the sounds design as well as trying to get the credits of Jonny. Unfortunately this led to them forgetting to add my name to the credits.
There was a scene in the film that was filmed outside while the sun was setting, When we watched it back one shot was really dark so Ben asked me to colour correct the shot before it so it all looked dark. Later on however I found out that Alice and Ben had tried to colour correct the shots to make them lighter, although usually I wouldn’t have minded, they did it badly and a lot of quality was lost and they didn’t tell me about it until the day of the presentation. I was very upset by this because I would have gone back to do the colour correction had I been asked to and I had asked Ben if there was anything more he wanted me to do before I left. I did not raise this issue with the group as it was beyond the point that anything could be done about it.
From this whole process I have learnt how to be more patient, with myself as well as others and I have learnt when to raise issues and when not to. Usually I am a very opinionated person and this can cause me to become confrontational. In the past I have been used to having things done my way, this is a habit that I am breaking out of, especially being editor when the decision is not ultimately mine to make.

I am happy with the feedback we received about this piece. Even though I feel that the piece could have been stronger, I feel that we have achieved our goals and managed to show a fairly convincing eating disorder.