Anxiety- The End result and evaluation

We are yet to post the full version on line how ever here is a rough cut to demonstrate what the final version will look like. 

Summary

Anxiety was developed as an idea by me and Lauren as we both enjoyed working together last year on our dance project and thought it would be a nice little side project to end the time at university on. The aim of the project was not to learn new skill but to further refine the skills that our team had  to create a well rounded  polished project. This project will both show case our skills but push them a little but further to create a mixed media film that works with both planning and incorporating animation alongside the dance.  I feel how well the process was from start to finish and how the final film looks shows how defined and dedicated we all our to our role and film making to create a piece that is as good as it is in such a small space of time.  I feel the video all thought simple is very well constructed and put together  in all aspect  with only small room for improvement.

Short evaluation of my role

From an editors point of view this project was very enjoyable to work on as I was given a lot of footage and freedom to develop the film with my own style. The film not only let me get to show case my avid skills by over coming edit continuity problems by flipping or cropping the clips, but it also showed how organisation and planning benefits and editor.  Knowing the project would be passed around from person to person I made sure the files were well organised and labelled to make it easier for other people to work on later on in the edit.  I also, all thought it was not my intention too, got to develop my skills in after effects too. As the project was a solid white background I was tasked with keying and masking the film in after effects. In doing this all thought a simple- ish task, I learnt another skill that may be called up when looking for employment.

What I achieved from it

All though on paper it may seem like we have not learnt many skills, as I am already skilled in avid editing I feel the execution and precision of the project  demonstrates the ability I didn’t think I was capable of before filming the project.

Anxiety - After Effects

Im not a big fan of after effects. It confuses me. How ever, when looking for editor jobs online most of them asked you to not only be able to edit but use after effects as well. So learning new skills in this area is pretty important for the future.

As we couldn't get a white room to film in we had to film in a green screen studio. Our initial plan was to just turn the footage black and white and mask out the lights from the background if needed. However it was thought that the film would look best if we turned the back ground white.  For most shots this was an easy task as we just had to key out the background, how ever for others it involved masking around the dancers body.  Together me and shahid  tagged teamed the after effects part of the edit, he would key out the shots and make them black and white, i would mask them out, then back to shahid to start the animation.  For some of the more complex shot, because not a lot of time left until hand in,  Lauren and Tom stepped in to help as they are more skilled at after effects than we are,  so could complete the faster.  Normally one person would take on this task over a large period  of time, how ever with only a week to complete all of the after effects it needed a team of people to get it done as fast as possible for it to look its best. Which i do not see as a problem as it showed more initiative to solve the problem in a way that worked for us rather than be like no this is my role im sticking to it.

edit team 2016 

shahid providing the banter

All thought masking is a pretty easy concept, if you have not done it before it was quite frustrating and time consuming. The main problem was how to do the shots on the floor, as turning them completely white meant that you couldn't tell she was on the floor any more. It just looked like she was floating around in some white space.  we aded a shadow underneath her to make her look a little less like she was floating by duplicating layers and adding blur, so the shadow followed her movement.

Over all the after effects wasn't too challenging. ( i feel like im saying this phrase too much for this project how ever we all used our skills to the full potential for this project, which is what made the whole process so smooth.) The main challenge was how time consuming it was for the little time we was given to do it in, how ever by working together we go it done to the best of what we all can do. 

Anxiety- The edit

The edit itself again was pretty smooth, other than a few little bumps like tom forgetting to tell me we filmed in 4k so then me spending a day unable to get the files to play because they were to large the edit itself for me was pretty enjoy able.

Knowing that the files were going to be  passed around from person to person to do the animation i tried to keep the folders in avid as organised as possible so it was easy for who ever was looking at it to find footage.  I also made a folder for the shots that i thought were really nice and that i wanted to include where i duplicated sub-clips into there so i could easily find them then remove them once i had used them, to make sure i did not use the same section twice. 

For the edit its self, as the dance wasn't set to a routine but improvised there was not specific sections that  i need to cut in and out of. I used the shot list as a rough guide of what lauren wanted to see, starting at a wide  ending above ETC. But for cutting the shots i stopped and started where there movement naturally flowed into another, going back and forth into different shot types  that allowed the banches to flow nicely between the movements and interact with the dance. 

If there wasnt a movement that cut nicely into the next one or had a continuity issue  i used my initiative and applied effects to the clip to make it fit together. For the most part shots just needed flipping to another angle  of slowing down to match the hand movement. 

I think the nicest thing about this project is that the sound is being created around the edit, as it allowed me a mot more flexibility to where i could place the clips, as i didn't have to worry about the movement matching the sound.  Where as when creating the fashion film i became a bit stuck as i had to cut a speed down clips to match the beat. 

Over all i found editing this project pretty straight forward, i like to focus when editing something and get it all done in one go so i managed to create  a rough cut with in one full day after filming. 

I also tried to do a different version starting with a different angle to see if the clips would cut another way, how ever after like 1 minute of footage i felt like it was not as interesting as the first cut so stuck to that one. 

Rough cut used - 

different rough cut - 

Anxiety - Filming days

Short and sweet 

This is a relatively short post as you can guess from how smoothly the pre production went the filming went exactly the same.  We all knew what we was doing, we all know the outcome we wanted and after a quick rehearsal everything just went as planned.  So i don't really have an interesting blog post to write about the filming days.  So here  as some small clips of us filming i got on my phone. 

Anxiety - Production and planning

Paperwork. 

From a producers point of view this project was simple, its similar to ones we had done before so we all know what we was doing. I knew where to look for dancers and how to do risk assessment, lauren knew what shots she wanted and how the camera would move Etc. So the paper work processes was very simple. As always booking a room and equipment at uca was a pain but with a lot of emailing and complaining everything started to fall into place pretty simple.


I think the main thing that i had learnt different from last year was to just keep being persistent, rather than getting stuck at a hurdle and getting confused i just kept trying and nagging until something fell into place. We also was less stressed about this project as we knew that things can fall into place last minitue, Ie we got the dance 3 days before filming, and we would have the confidence and skills to make it work for what we needed. 

Dancer struggles and Auditions. 

The only problem we faced is the lack of men who want to dance, despite emailing 20 or so different dance schools and websites no men wanted to dance for us.  We hosted one set of rehearsals with an elderly man from Buckinghamshire but his dancing capabilities were not suitable for our needs.  Getting desparate i posted the position repeatedly until a few days before filming a female dancer emailed us asking if the position was still avalible. After a skype audition we found out it was worth waiting and re posting the application as she was exactly what we wanted for our project. 

Anxiety dance - Concept and reaserch

Creation of the idea and group forming. 

When pitching projects for beyond the boundaries i knew i wanted to take part in another dance project as i enjoyed creating them in second year. I didnt really have an idea but had see a play at Edinburgh fringe festival called blind mans song that i would could make a good starting point for a film. My main interested in the concept of this project was the relation in-between body language and movement the over all story was just something to flesh out this idea.

As lauren pitched her ideas of film project she also sugested a dance film based on bodily movements but hers was in the form of anxiety. As me and lauren worked together on a project last year that went well and the base concept of our ideas was really similar we decided to work together to create her idea of anxiety based dance.

Me and lauren are both working together on my film debbie as well of tom, shahid, and lucy. So we decided to do another film together in the roles we all fit best at. Tom on camera, lauren direct, shahid dop, lucy sound and me direct and edit. This combination fit well together as we all got to work in areas we enjoy and we know we work well as a team together. 

Initial ideas and research. 

So the main concept of the film is about how anxious movements effect  the body, this is a simple and effective idea that could easily be created, using movements that reflected anxious states such as: 

• heart pounding 
• heavy breathing   
• tremors / twitting 
• restlessness 
• dizziness 
• insomnia 

Along side watching similar films to this, i sugested that we incorporate some kind of animation and experimental sound track. This would give the film a different edge to what other anxious based dance films look like and give us a more challenging project. After various research we decided on a film that had animated branches like  this : 

Focused on bodily movements like this : 

with and soundtrack like this : 

All of these things combined would make invoke the scenes of anxiety allowing the viewer to feel how the dancer feels and not just watch a dancer replicate the emotions. 

As the editor of the project i have also been watching several online tutorials and documentaries into what makes a good film edit such as : 

https://vimeo.com/138829554

https://vimeo.com/86125935

I will use the techniques mentioned in these video, to cut the film  to a pace that builds up tension. keeping in mind the continuity of the movements and making it flow nicely.