Juxtaposition

What is juxtaposition?:-

"The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development."

Hitchcock discusses how film works, and how certain images next to one and other create meaning, and slight alteration in any image can completely change how an audience reacts to certain events, actions or characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Kic2KTGjU

Juxtaposition also works via sound, the clip above has a huge contrasting juxtaposition between the images shown on screen, and soundtrack in which accompanies the images. The song played in the background is 'what a wonderful world', however the images shown are all negative, like the US invading certain places, and the effects of war, and showing innocent civilians dead, this is all accompanied by 'what a wonderful world', it almost makes a happy wonderful song seem sarcastic. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BrDlrytgm8

This is a great example of how well music and images can work well together. This is an epic one minute video of a man walking towards the camera in numerous different locations, but the continuity works so well because the editor has cut with motion, and each time he cuts, the man is slightly further ahead from the last clip. Each cut goes in time with the music, each note hit on the piano means a change of clip, when a note lasts a little bit longer, the clip lasts a little bit longer, the music controls the whole video and dominates, and it works fantastically well.

Pace, Rhythm and Timing

"Pacing refers to the rate at which cuts occur, as in how often per second or minute or hour. This is not just another way of saying 'duration of shots'"
Everything has a rhythm, pace and timing. Speech, music and film all have a natural flow.
Music is made up of beats, editing to music is one of the easiest ways to edit, and makes it look smooth and really professional by cutting to the beats, a scene with only dialogue requires much more thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzfSLgWkTlY

The Bourne Supremacy car chase scene is a perfect example of how fast paced editing can work really well within films. During this scene the viewer is supposed to be really engrossed into the film, and barely be able to take their eyes off of it, the usage of fast paced cuts between the cars on the road, the close ups of the characters faces and other pieces of action make sure the viewer isn't able to take his/her eyes off the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bB3jFOgFTE

This walk in the desert scene is very different, there is no pace and no cuts whatsoever, just one shot following two characters walking along the desert. They are both tired, lack energy and are struggling to survive, the lack of paced editing within the scene emphasises this, where as if this scene consisted of multiple shots with quite quick editing, the audience wouldn't get the same feel from the scene.

Both very different styles of editing, both very effective.

Storage Workflow

As soon as you press the record the button, you need a way of safely and reliably storing, backing up and working on your data.
In the past we had 35MM film, which were used and then sent to be processed, once processed it comes back with near perfect copies to work with. There were one or two issues with this though, many copies were made, and each one came back slightly less quality than the previous one.

We don't have this problem anymore however, as we now have digital:-

Tapes - DV stores 60 minutes/14gb
          - HDV stores up to 60 minutes on one tape

Workflow with MiniDV means you have to capture/log your work into a computer before you can work with it.
For example Canon DSLR and Panasonic 151 cameras are all solid state file storage - SD card (550d, 600d, 60d)
DSLR footage is better quality and smaller than MiniDV but the workflow of DSLR or MiniDV is exactly the same. 

Workflow Advice:-

- Backup onsite – using a laptop or computer if you have one.
- Make it one persons job to backup cards while you're filming.
- This gives you 2 copies as backup (one on card and one on computer)
- Once you wrap, the first job is to get back to base and backup the footage, whether it be off the laptop, or re-ingest into your main computer system edit suite.
- You should copy to the computer and if you have an external drive, to that afterwards.

What is editing?

As editor of a film it is your job to take all the footage, and choose the best and appropriate parts, and put it all together, but most importantly, make sure it all flows in terms of continuity.

"When it works, film editing – which could just as easily be called ‘film construction’ – identifies and exploits underlying patterns of sound and image that are not obvious on the surface. Putting a film together is, in an ideal sense, the orchestrating of all those patterns, just like different musical themes are orchestrated in a symphony. It is all pretty mysterious" - Walter Murch

There are two types of editing, offline, and online.

Offline editing is the basics, there tends to be a pretty simple structure:-

1. Start off with loads of footage

2. Watch all the footage

3. Watch all the footage again but make notes on what the best footage is or what footage you're going to use

4. Create your 1st edit

5. Create your 2nd edit

6. Consult the director/expert

7. Make alterations

8. Walk away

9. Create your final edit 1

10. Create your final edit 2

11. Consult the director/expert

12. Online editing

Online editing is the editing after you have got your specific footage all on a timeline running smoothly, online editing is the effects and mastering, in a nutshell.

One of the most basic rules of editing is always cut to motion/action. When cutting always look for motion, this will distract the eye making the edit seem more seamless and more realistic, resulting in good continuity.

Surf:-

https://ds4d3zl5uvpbf.cloudfront.net/videos/JVHG3tLb2_640.mp4

37 seconds into this video we are shown a male walking down the street, jump cuts are used to speed up time, but they are cut to motion, so they work very well together and the continuity is good. One excellent use of cinematography and editing within this video is 48/49 seconds in when we are shown a close of up of the mans hand softly scraping a metal gate, this then cuts to the same man in a totally different environment but the same shot, a close up of his hand but this time softly touching the grass, this works really well as there is once again a cut to motion and because of the similarities of camera angle and positioning, the cut almost seems seamless, even though they're two completely different images. The music works really well with the images, during soft, slow parts of the music, the images consist of him walking, but when the music becomes really dominant and loud the images we see are of him surfing, which work really well together.

180 Degree Rule:-

The 180 degree rule is another basic rule that needs to be applied when making a film. It teaches us to think like the viewer, say if we were filming a scene in which two characters were sat at opposite ends of a table and were engaging in conversation, the 180 degree rule reminds us to make sure the camera does not cross the 'axis of action' otherwise the conversation does not look realistic and doesn't look like they are talking to one and other as each cut takes place as the angles are all wrong.

Film Production

Development and planning is crucial in film production and all things creative.

The Production Triangle:-

The production triangle is widely understood to be the way in which anything is produced. 

If you had little money but lots of time, you would add tonnes of quality into your ideas and film making, lots of successful films have been created with a low budget, such as Winters Bone. Some films have a huge budget but have flopped and become very unsuccessful, such as John Carter.

Planning is critical within the film industry, if you don't plan then you are unlikely to reach your full potential and create a film to it's highest standard, many plan their ideas and time in the form of a Gantt Chart:-

A gantt chart helps a film producer really plan his work, it is a bar chart that states when certain people within the production are doing certain things, to enable everything flows properly, and everything is completed within a set time.