An RMIT media student reflecting and blogging on her experiences at uni, on making and learning.

The screening went well last night to say the least I believe. There were some absolutely fantastic works to be shown. I can’t review them all (simply because I don’t remember every single one so well as to do it justice) but I’ll give my thoughts on as many as I can – specifically my favourites!

First off, I will say how interesting it was to see more than one group tackling the same story idea, and the differences in script and overall production design (the Office Grinch was one, taken on by both Cassie’s group and Hugh’s group), and I do believe there were two other films based on the same story idea (a woman seeing a guy in a cafe and imagining an entire relationship before he even says hello. I’ll just say a few words on the ‘Office Grinch’ films though. The scripts were obviously different, being based on Dr. Seuss rhyming styles, but the difference in production design is what caught me. Cassie’s group went for standard, naturalistic looking design, costumes and make up, whilst Hugh’s decided to go all out and un-real, bright colours, over the top make up – something you might see in a Tim Burton film, or in a Seuss story book.
Now, let’s move on to my favourite (I believe there were four that blew me away)

Movie Addicts Anonymous (Lincoln MacKinnon, Caitlyn Royse, Heath Garvey and please, please forgive, I can’t remember who else worked on it and am having difficulty finding out). Four people meet, each of them addicted to a certain movie genre – the ‘army colonel’ addicted to war films, the stoner addicted to rom-coms, the woman addicted to film-noir and the…strange..guy in a mask, addicted to sci-fi. Narrated by a man who sounds like he wouldn’t be out of place narrating a nature doco. This film had me laughing from the get go. The characters were brilliant, which is what gave this film its edge, and the actors pulled it off brilliantly. The climax that broke the fourth wall, with the crew entering shot and the narrator stepping out to speak to us directly, was hilariously done. The cinematography and the sound were all solid, and even though it was set in one location, you never got bored – you never really noticed it, you were too caught up in the characters!

Crossing Live (Mel Gleeson, Zee Ko, Abbie O’Brien and Ryan Jafarzadeh) Again, loved it! It was absolutely beautifully shot (especially the moments in the actual studio and in the corridor outside). There is a moment towards the end of the film where we are watching the two characters through a security monitor, which impressed me greatly! Going back to the studio for a moment, I was impressed with the lighting. When the main character, a TV sports presenter who likes to cross dress, is left only in the studio, he is light from above with a single spot light, and all around him is darkness, highlighting how alone and apart he most likely feels because of this secret he keeps. Once again, casting was faultless as the actor and actress who played his wife were wonderful in their roles, and made it very believable.

In The Harsh Light of Day (Stella Foster, Jess Hallay, Damien Gould, Edna Lim Xin Yi) Two girls, with completely opposite personalities, wait for the police after finding a dead man in a park, and imagine how me might have met his fate (through flashback/imagined sequences) Another film that utilizes a single location for its story, so the script had to be really well put together – and it was (winning best script I believe). There was just enough tension between the two characters to keep the dynamic going. The opening shot was absolutely stunning, so I knew I would enjoy watching it right away (I like things that look pretty), and it doesn’t reveal the dead man right away, so the surprise is there. If a short film is going to be a drama, it had better be a darn good one, and this worked oh so well. The editing that was used for the flashback sequences was top notch, and great to watch!

And finally:
Press One (Jason Tseng, Georgia Morgan (can’t seem to find her blog), Jae Won, Alene Tan). A man wakes up in a forest, dressed in cowboy clothes with only a phone. He dials a number written on his hand, and hears ‘To begin your adventure, press one’. He does and finds himself caught up with cowboys and indians and whatnot. A great action/western film! Our group looked at this synopsis, and thought the story was great, but thought it would be too difficult to pull off – well, Jason, Georgia, Alene and Jae pulled it off to perfection. Beautiful cinematography, set in a beautiful location. The colour grading done in post gave it a lovely, dark and menacing edge (did I say how beautiful it LOOKED!) And there was a magnificent twist at the end of the film to leave you hanging. Editing was tight, costumes great, and as a friend put it, the actors were ‘easy on the eye’ (as well as being talented). Congrats to you all!

How did Pipe Dream go you ask? I think it did okay. We heard some laughter at the jokes, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief afterwards (second last film! My nerves!). It wasn’t perfect. I could see and hear things that we obviously missed after watching it over and over and over again in the edit suites, that show up on the big screen. It was darker than I thought, but that’s to do with the projector and DVD player in the lecture room as well. There were some parts in my soundscape where I felt like kicking myself (I forgot some foley, noooooooooooo), but I’m still relatively proud of it

And there you go! Film-TV1 is done for the semester! See you all back for Film-TV2!

I’m quite fond of my blog, “…let’s be splendid about this…” and my little group of loyal followers. It started off as an anything and everything blog, but it has definitely turned into a blog where I try to review films I see, give thoughts on cinema and movie news in general (anything relating to the Hobbit seems to take special prominence however). I use it as a way to help me think about the cinema, and I follow several film blogs in return.

So one of my favourite artists is in a new group called Fatty Gets a Stylist. It’s an odd name, but I like it. This song has been in my head for a bit now, and I like the use of editing in the clip. Cuts are made to the music. The way they’ve used repetition of the same clips works quite well I think. The similarity of the movement that each person does creates a kind of flow. Rad.

Sitting in the edit suites with Zach over the past week or so, discussing and updating the sound design for our film as we go, I have come to the most sound conclusion, that if I were directing this film (something I would like to try one day), it would be a very different movie, and I’m not sure it would be a better one. Mainly I’ve learned that while Zach loves to load a film up with sound effects and music, I’m rather minimalist in my style and would scale things back. I love long takes and hanging on a shot for as long as possible. Zach loves fast edits. I’m not saying he’d do that for every film, but the types of films he’s made so far are very much like that, and it works very well. Pipe Dream is going to be a good little film I think. I’ve just had to learn to base my sound design on Zach’s vision (though understanding what that is is easy, and its fun as well).
I don’t know whether I could be a sound designer forever though – its fun and all that, but also quite frustrating at times, especially when you don’t have a composer and rely on finding music licensed under Creative Commons. If I had the means, I’d so be hiring Hanz Zimmer or Howard Shore right now…
I’ve also learned, that I much enjoy the planning/writing/filming of a film more than I do the editing – especially when there are lots of fiddly bits to take care of. Seeing it all come together is immensely satisfying, but it is an incredibly frustrating process.

…well, Zach is fixing problems. We’re here to offer opinions and moral support. For some reason our footage was at 30 fps in the sequence, even though we shot it at 25. Converting back to 25 put the audio out of synch. Zach has been fixing it for a couple of hours now. It’s extremely frustrating to watch and probably ten times more so to actually do it. Everyone is really quite tired as well. And hungry.

We celebrated the last day of week twelve and the last week of classes by spending the day in the editing suites and getting some pick up shots with our lead actress Ali (she is absolutely awesome!). I was a bit concerned with how dark the footage looks on Zach’s computer, but he assures me that it’s just Final Cut and his computer and it will look fine. I believe you Zach.
Today I learnt that while sound effects that we source will sound just fine (we want them to be comical), music is going to be a little more difficult. This jazzy, swing band-ish track that I fell in love with and that I thought would work very well playing under the first kitchen scene – turns out it didn’t work at all. I managed to find a different track, softer jazz, piano. I’m still not sure about it, but Zach and Rikki both like it. And we also decided to make it more cinematic by putting this classical/romantic music on when Mallory tries on Alysa’s ring, and it’s very subjective.
Planning for music that you have to find copyright free or royalty free is very difficult. Maybe some people can, but I’ve just learnt it’s incredibly difficult to judge how a music track will sound before you put it with the footage.
As I said before they, we’re having much better luck with sound effects. I had a list of things I needed to get, and anything we notice while editing, I’ll quickly go and find at freesound.org then I’ll download and give it to Zach to add in, or I’ll tell him the file name so he can quickly search it and get it faster. Sound is going to make this film, and I’m more nervous than before!

…or the tape. Whatever you like. My sound sounded good! Woo hoo! I was terrified that it would be too quiet, or that it would distort, but it was fine (we also had a boom mike in shot, but Paul said it looks like a handbag. We probably only noticed because being media students, we look out for those things). On the last few takes however, the sound went crap. I think we had a problem with the connection, because the sound was cutting in and out and was jumping all over the place. It’s okay, because we had the lines we needed recorded already, we’ll be fine (that’s what the others keep telling me anyway!), but I’m still kicking myself. The cable did drop out at one point, and I put it back in, but I obviously didn’t check it properly. It sounded alright as well, I didn’t notice anything wrong on the meter. One of life’s little grievances.
Anyway, I found today’s lecture on editing and FCP really useful. I’m one of those people who has files and folders everywhere on my desktop, and my FCP skills are basic at best. I’m looking forward to learning the software more.

I just think this is beautifully shot. I love the production design and the lighting. If I could make something like this, I would be very happy.
And I’m growing to be quite obsessed with this song as well.

…I am both exhausted and relieved at the same time. I remember someone (I can’t remember who exactly) in class saying that once a film is shot, its as if you want a break from it for a day or two, and I certainly understand the feeling! I love planning and filming and seeing it all together at the end is going to be awesome, but doing shot after shot after shot…I just want to rest! I think our first editing session is booked for this week, so we’ll look at it then.
I am fairly confident about how we went. We arrived at the location the night before at around 6, and Zach and I unloaded the equipment quickly so Zach’s step mum (who very generously helped us get the equipment from RMIT and drove it to Seddon, seeing as our own transportation kind of failed us) could run back to the station to pick up Rikki and Nelson. They couldn’t fit in the car with all the equipment! Even with so much equipment, we were still missing a boom pole and a tripod for the monitor. All things considered, it wasn’t a drastic problem. It just made things logistically annoying the next day. Once we were all there, we decided to walk to Coles and buy some food to make lunch for everyone the next day (ham, tomato and cheese sandwiches for the win). We also bought fish and chips for dinner. It was absolutely freezing! We set up the lighting and positions for the major scene, dressed the set, then headed back to Zach’s around 10.30. We prepared lunch, then collected our actress Ali from the station at quarter to twelve. It was easier for her stay at Zach’s with us that night.
We had a 5.00 am wake up, so we could leave Zach’s at six to walk to the location, which took about twenty minutes. Even more freezing than the night before, pitch black and spitting rain, carrying plates of sandwiches. We managed to start at about 7.30 am, only half an hour behind schedule. Our set looked fantastic. I was worried about picking up the sound of the rain on the recorder (it was quite loud and I could hear it through the headphones, but the levels weren’t moving and it’s not really something I could control). With Nelson and Zach controlling the shots, I’m sure the film will look brilliant, however it sounds, and seeing as we have a lot of effects to add in post, I think I can make our sound scape sound acceptable at the very least!
Filming outside was difficult for two reasons – first, it was cold. Second, the clouds which brought the rain would occasionally break, which made consistent lighting difficult. It’ll work. Recording outside was annoying as well. There were more cars than I thought there would be and we can’t exactly block traffic. We will just have to deal with the sound of engines. I made sure I got a good atmos track in a quiet street with no cars.
I just want to say a big massive thank you and kudos to Hashim, Michael and Harry – our supergroup who made things so much easier for us, with set up, lighting, continuity and boom opping, not to mention being generally awesome! Looking forward to helping them in return on their shoot next week! Our actresses Ali and Genya were just beautiful to work with and ever patient when we had to take an extra moment to set up or change a shot. And our one and only producer Rikki kept us moving and on the ball, wrapping at 5.30 in a goodly amount of time.

You know my worries about failing? Unfounded. I managed to scrape a 62 out of 100. Sooo, I believe that would amount to a credit, but this is a hurdle, so all I had to do was get a pass mark. Which I did.
Looking at my answers and the right answers, where I lost marks mostly seemed to come from the questions that I didn’t answer. I think I had a bit of a freak out because of time constraints, and then I had a mental blank. Like I said, I should have studied more.
These are just a few of the answers I want to reflect on.
Question 1 – I got that wrong, and I know why – but I could have sworn I wrote the right answer. “If you were closing the aperture, you would move the aperture ring towards f.22 or f.1.8″ I could see myself in my minds eye circling f.22. What I actually put down was f.1.8. Huh. Silly me.
Question 7 – In Australia, the video image is scanned at how many frames per second? 24 fps, 25 fps or 30 fps. I put down 24 fps, but the answer is 25. I didn’t know this, and didn’t have anything about fps in Australia in my notes, so I made a sort of educated guess. I know the Hobbit is being shot at 48 fps, so I divided by two. Meh.
Question 8 – How to get correct exposure. Complete blank, didn’t answer. Completely forgot about zebra patterns.
12 When sending a 1K test tone from the mixer to camera what should you set/calibrate the Audio Levels of the camera to:
Left Channel? -12db Right Channel? -20db
See, for this one – I read the question and thought ‘What, what channel do I send the test tone through?’ I thought it was asking me whether I send a test tone through the left or right channel – moment of madness where I didn’t read the question properly. I completely knew this and had a ‘Well, duh!’ moment when I saw the answer!
15 What kind of aperture(s) are most conducive to achieving a deep, or great, depth of field? (you should know the terminology for this)
Didn’t know the terminology. I said something stupid like ‘wide’ aperture. I should have said something like ‘closed down around f11 to f22′.
Then there was the scene breakdown questions, which I did alright on. Describing/deconstructing scenes from Fargo, which I’ve decided I must watch. I missed the question on actor direction. I did my Lenny storyboard (Sharon has been killed – what kind of deal were these two involved in?).
So thats my exam. Not surprising why I only got a 62. I intend to apply myself much more from now on (I think I’ve been focusing too much on the our film and neglecting other things).