top of page

Pre-Filming Thoughts

25th February 2018

 

"I traveled from Canterbury to Plymouth this weekend for the first filming attempt. I think I'll need to visit more than once. Jack is arriving home in a couple of days. I'm actually very nervous about seeing him and spending time with him, which makes the thought of filming our project even more intimidating. I feel like there has been a tentativeness in our interactions lately. I think it's because we're both nervous about talking about some really sensitive things that we've kept to ourselves. We've planned to go climbing together. We've never really spent much time doing activities together as adults so this is the perfect opportunity to do this but, also to allow the film to influence our relationship as well as our relationship influencing the film. 

 

We've set aside another day or two just to spend together, and with mum, and talk. I know Jack is ready to talk about everything from our previous conversations when I suggested this project to him. He is really keen to play an active role in creating the film and deciding what goes in it. If I have to return for another filming session, it will probably be in March." 

 

 

 

 

After the first filming session, I watched and listened to all of my audio and video footage. I wrote notes on our interview about what topics were covered at particular times to make putting the film together easier later on and to save me from scrolling through 30 minutes of audio at a time to find one sentence. I also began to visualise the kind of scenes that I wanted in my film, and decide what kinds of images were missing after my first filming session that I would need to film in the second session. (I was limited as to the number of times that I could visit home due to the long distance and thus monetary and time restrictions as well as fitting it around my university schedule ).

 

Editing: Building a Narrative

I built upon the skills that I was taught in class as I carried out the process of editing. These extra skills were either learnt through experimenting with the tools and settings on Premiere Pro, asking my peers how to do certain things, or researching how to do things on search engines and YouTube. Some examples of techniques that I learned in the earlier stages of editing can be seen below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My main challenge whilst editing became how to build a narrative out of all the footage I had. I knew what I wanted to include, however, I was struggling to make sense of it in my head. My solution was to first go through all of my footage and gather all of the clips that had the potential to be put into my narrative. I then reviewed this selection of footage and drew a flow diagram, starting with my potential start and end points, and as I went along in each editing session, filling in the gaps until I had a coherent story to follow. I wanted to begin my film with a nostalgic sentiment, which I created through images of photographs of my family and me when we were younger, family memorabilia like school reports, and letters that were sent between my parents whilst they were apart during their Navy careers. I use this letter motif throughout the film to created consistency and join the scenes together. I also did this through repeating the music that I recorded from my brother playing the guitar in the opening title sequence, and then later a part of a sequence which depicted a journey. My film mainly portrays the events mine and my brother's relationship in chronological order which would facilitate the audience's comprehension of the story as well as their own reflections on relationships and growing up as provoked by the film. The film ends with a scene from one of my two filming sessions which depicts an everyday scene of my mum, my brother and I cooking together in the kitchen and represents how our relationships have improved not only as depicted in the film, by through the process of filming itself. 

 

bottom of page