Editing and Montage - Introduction to the module - BAFI105

Monday 11th April 2016                             Editing and Montage                   Dan Paolantinio    

Today we were inducted to our brand new module "Editing and Montage", throughout this lesson we started to look at the seven different types of camera movements, shown examples of how they have been used within existing films. I am going to take notes every lesson to improve on my own learning. 

Monday 18th April 2016

I went out filming all weekend, I managed to capture some glorious close-ups of the baby lambs, after the first shoot I decided to pick my theme around spring time, I set out to film different types of shots and subjects, focusing around nature within the woodlands.

Stalker (Film) 

Shot pans up the pool - shows a lot of different artifacts and objects which covers a wide area of ground.

David Attenborough - Life Story

Panning shot to follow the Barnacle Geese as the camera portrays the chicks plummeting to the ground, really dramatic and the footage has been slightly slowed down to add anticipation and tension for the viewer.

My ideal shot that I have in mind to re-create these long takes would be to pan up the face of a pine tree in the woodlands, start with the camera high in the clouds with the tree top visible, then gradually pan down the face of the tree to reveal the branches continuing all the way to the bottom. Thinking about using continuity editing and Juxtaposition for my spring time short film. I have come up with the idea of "Spring to Life" as a working title. 

My Main Idea

Focused around the spring season, feature a variety of species of nature, life around the woodlands, portray how the wildlife interacts with its surroundings. I would like to shoot the majority of shots towards the start of spring and then venture out at the end of spring to capture a sunset or sunrise.

I plan to use a variety of camera angles, wide angled shots, tilts, pans, tracking shots to show the lambs movement around the field, with some long takes to show the sunset. I need to pick a day where the weather is bright with blue skies, this will enable myself to capture the glorious green colours of nature and the sun as it reflects off of the newborn lamb's coats. 

Plymouth Arts Centre

The man with the movie camera
We took a trip to the Arts centre where we watched "The man with the movie camera", I have never seen this before but I absolutely loved the film, really liked the different camera angles, movement, footage, music choices, upbeat and fast, I feel like the music reflected the pace of the footage i.e. when the music got fast in certain areas so did the footage and when it got slow, the majority of the footage had actually been slowed down which was fascinating to watch. It was really effective in black and white, I liked the long takes that had been shot which I feel like I have managed to re-create using the woodlands, I loved the fact that different things faded in and out of the screen, clearly visible for a few seconds and then they disappeared again,  I thought I could edit my piece using the same aesthetics to that of the film, I thought that for soviet montage, perhaps I could think about the tone of my clips, the majority of footage is green, different shades of green, the footage has a gradual shake which is clearly visible so perhaps I could use this to my advantage just like in the film where the camera would shake and turn on its side to reveal a different purpose, juxtaposition. 

Stalker

I thought that this film was very atmospheric, the long takes worked so well to build tension up to the action and adventure scenes positioned towards the middle of the film. I liked the choice of colour for when they were in the zone, it reminded me of soviet montage in a few places due the fact of using black and white, gritty colors for the shots at the start where the man gets out of bed. I didn't have much to say about this film other than the fact that the shots were amazing, I liked the color choice and I thought that the edit was amazing, the way that they were laying on the floor asleep and we heard VO as the characters talked to each other about their lives. 

Requiem for a Dream

I liked this film, I thought that the fast-paced editing helped to build up tension towards the narrative of the film. It made me feel like the end of the film was near, getting faster and faster as the music sped up, the images got more obscene but at the same time it was so faced paced and it got my adrenaline going. I thought that the piece had been edited really well, it took me a while to get into the narrative of the piece, the start was very slow, I couldn't piece everything together, I had exactly the same outlook on the other films that we watched but then I just sat and let the film wash over me, I understood more as I wasn't trying to piece everything together.

References

The man with the Movie Camera, dir. by Dziga Vertov (USA) 1929.

Stalker, dir. by Andrei Tarkovsky (Netherlands) 1979.

Requiem for a Dream, dir. by Darren Aronofsky (USA) 2000.