Let Him Dangle

This is the film the student submitted for their first semester, post production module. The brief set for the class was to create a 3 minute film which is biased towards a conspiracy only using online footage. Below is what the student submitted.

Technically this film should have been phrased differently as the case was proven to be a conspiracy, so it wasn't a theory any longer, but there are still debates on whether those exact words "let him have it" were actually used when he couldn't even write his own name and signed his signature with an X. The student attempted to make the piece revolve around this point but for the audience to understand the story the texture of the entire case had to be seen. Including whether he was guilty or not of murder.

• The pace of the film is slow paced, although this does fit the atmosphere of the piece it makes the film boring to watch from an audience's prospective. 
• The use of very strong dark images supports the piece as it makes more of an emotional impact on the viewer and this is needed for the audience to feel a connection with Bentley and to support the conspiracy theory. 
• The editor used red text to symbolise blood throughout the piece and this ties into the story of an autistic 19 year old boy who got hung for a crime he did not commit.  
• The cut to Kenneth Clarke is quite sharp and it doesn't add much to the film, to enhance this film this would be a good thing to take out and replace with more footage focussed on Bentley's illness.
• In the middle section of the film where Bentley speaks his last words and the song "Hanging Tree" from the Hunger Games is playing the audio levels decrease heavily. If the editor was to do this again they should consider changing the levels to make a more balanced soundtrack to the video.
• Overall this video shows the story of Derek Bentley well and gives a good case on why the conspiracy is true but this film could do with a lot of tweaks within the edit, there are a couple of errors where the sound either cuts or fades to fast and the end or start of a line isn't clear to hear, this could lead to annoying the viewers as they didn't catch what had been said. 

This edit was done in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

Scene 37

Following on from Scene 34 students were asked to edit Scene 37. This edit took a more clear approach using the cut in motion technique when editing in the over the shoulder shot of the other woman. There was also use of reaction shots by Katherine when she is talking to the man in the scene this as with in scene 34 enabled that extra emotional tie between the audience and Katherine.

Scene 34

The students at Staffordshire University were given the task of editing together a scene from a film following a on set script which had been marked. Here is what one student edited together for Scene 34.

• Throughout the film there are issues with the sound as it changes from the boom which followed the woman and the one which followed the man as they picked up different levels of background audio. To tackle this the edit required a wild track adding below the sound which would enhance the entire piece significantly. 
• The shots chosen through the middle of the film are blurry, if this was tackled again the student should unlink the sound to the footage and then chose the best footage to use rather than swapping lots of blurry footage which will both confuse and aggravate the audience.
• The editor used the shot of the couple walking down the beach within the scene over the lines where the woman is asking the man whether he has any ambitions, this reflects to the audience that the woman is thinking about that ideal world and adds to the context of the situation as it has just been revealed that the man is an escort. 
• The majority of the footage is following what the woman does within the scene, this is to establish that she is the main character and to build a relationship between the audience and the character.

This film was edited within the Adobe Premiere Pro Suite. 

Juxtaposition

City of Gods

When watching the City of Gods, in particular the scene in which the chicken is chased there is a high usage of the editing technique, juxtaposition. This is where two things juxtapose within the film side by side. In this instance the sequence juxtaposes itself. The editor mixed footage of the chicken being chased with footage of people chopping a chicken up. This adds more emotion to the scene. Without this edit to the dead bird it could have been seen as a comedy but with the footage of the dead chickens it makes the audience link the two chickens and anticipate the chickens death. This technique in this instance makes the audience feel empathy towards the chicken.

The edit itself is fast pace and moving, this fits with the context of the scene. The man chasing the chicken and the imagery of dead chickens it heightens the tension for the audience as they don't know if the chicken will survive the ordeal or not.

The Staffs Factor

The students filmed and performed on "The Staffs Factor" stealing the format from X Factor the students were asked to film an audition and then edit their film into a succinct clip. Below is an example of one of the students.

This was the first edit the student made on AVID to create a sequence which makes sense. In this edit there is very basic editing skills such as inputting and outputting footage, titles and sound editing.

Walter Murch

Walter Murch

Walter Murch, born in 1943 has worked in the film industry for over 4 decades working mainly alongside Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now, Ghost and The Godfather trilogy. In 2001, Murch wrote “In the Blink of an Eye” the book explores the depths of editing and its importance in the film industry. {Citation} Murch (2001) explains within the book how people in the film industry often forget about the editing using the metaphor that humans, when asked which is more important the brain or the skull. Humans will say the brain, but the skull is more important because “there is only so much brain you can get in there before you can’t fit it in anymore. At any rate, it seems more important for a chimp to be born with a hard head than a big brain.” This analogy suggests that the edit, how the film is structured and built is more important than the content.

His work has been inspirational, Apocalypse Now reportedly made £81,250,488 by NIC (1997). One particular scene in which Murch's sound design is astounding is within the opening sequence where the audience see on screen a mix of both Colonel Kurtz's room and scenery from the war in Vietnam. This was also discussed on a Paramount Documentary where famous sound designers explain how Apocalypse Now, it was also one of the first times that a multi channel mix was used. They used surround sound system which became the first feature film to be released in the cinema with three channels in the front and two in the rear of the cinema. This allowed for a more realistic experience and for this to sound believable by an audience it required a high level of preparation by Walter Murch.

This has shown the importance of sound in film and how both the final edit and the sound need to be given due time through the production process. When working on productions it is advised that the team should give more time to the post production element as this can have a huge impact on how the final film is perceived.


(“In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing - Google Books,” n.d., p. 12)

Kuleshov Effect

Soviet Film maker, Lev Kuleshov in the early life of film played with a psychology of film through his experiments. He then established the Kuleshov effect. This is an effect which is caused by the viewer when they watch to clips together. Kuleshov found that the brain likes connecting emotions together and putting two images next to each other in an edit the viewer will automatically assign the emotion to the person. The experiment he did was to take a picture of a man with a blank expression then show these three images with the man.

The first of the images was coffin, so the audience see the mans neutral face then see the coffin. The immediate reaction of the audience is to believe that the man is sad that the person is dead, even though he has a blank expression and had no connection to the death.

This is used heavily in films and Hitchcock speaks of it in the below documentary about the study by Kuleshov.

Rocky Horror Edit

Students at Staffordshire University were asked to create a 4 minute edit of a feature film. For this module the student began by deciding to do Black Swan but felt that it wasn't working. There were issues with reflecting the entire storyline as it has the same story duplicated throughout the film. The editor then attempted to edit Frozen but felt that they felt that they were unsure of the storyline as the film was quite new and so they chose a film they were familiar with which was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

The main narrative of the story is that engaged couple Brad and Janet are going to tell Dr Scott that they are to be married, on their way their car breaks down near an old castle. They go in to use a phone but they go on a strange adventure. Meeting Dr Frankfurter who is on a mission to make his own man, Columbia in love with one of the first men that Frankfurter experimented on, Magenta and Riff Raff siblings who with Dr Frankfurter are from a different planet and came here to clone and make a better human race. Dr Scott, Brad and Janet's friend is a scientist in the field of UFOs after he sees what is happening Riff Raff and Magenta kill Dr Frankfurter and Rocky, his human creation. 

Here is the first edit by the editor which was then improved by doing the following;

• Cut out the part in the time warp where Columbi explains how she met Eddie.
• Cut out parts of the song "Touch me" and shorten.
• Adding in the car breaking down with narrative of what is happening.
• Adding in the line by Riff Raff explaining they are aliens. 

There are a few errors within the edit these are as follows;

• When the editor started working on the titles they wanted the word to move like blood and dribble down the screen but the effect looked to cheesy, the editor then tried to put a displacement map over the mouth but this didn't work so this effect was used as it can move with the time and it has the sense of liquid moving in it. 
• Throughout the film there is a lot of use of cheesy transitions, in the feature film it uses this and it is there to add the cheese factor to the film. This was the first stage play for the LGBT community and they tried to bring that feeling into the film, the editor tried to encompass that through the transitions.
• In the beginning of the film the transitions are quite fast paced and some of the sound is very loud in comparison to some quite quiet audio to improve the editor should have ensured to check the sound levels out through speakers before uploading it.
• The use of the narrator aided the editor in being able to use his voice over to cover the action and move the plot along quickly. The editor also used split screen to cover to scenes at once where you see Brad and Janet enter their separate rooms and then be enticed by Dr Frankfurter in drag.  

Overall the film feels much more whole and understandable with these edits and it makes the film feel more fun to watch. Using techniques like cutting in motion, the kuleshov effect it has enhanced the film and taught the student how editing techniques can make a film better for the audience to watch and a more pleasureable piece.

This was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.