4 Points Film Project 2017: An Honest Reflection of My Work on "Joules"

One of the wonderful things about working with a fresh production company is the ability to see their unique vision without the influence of other production company experience. Making a film in four days...is an even bigger representation of what a company can do.

I will say that I have never done the 4 Points Film Project before. In retrospect I think there would be plenty of things I would do differently, but there were some things that I think I did amazingly and regardless of how the final product turned out, we made a film in four days. That is an accomplishment. If you want to learn more about this make sure you look at their website.

Deciding to edit the project was an even bigger last minute decision for myself (I originally was planning a trip to Grand Rapids, MI, but my doctor at the time wanted me to take it easy), but in the end, I am glad I was able to stretch myself and see what I can do with the ups and downs of a short turnaround and no "re-shoots." Which in the opening scene (as you will hear in the audio) I would have loved to see re-shot! Ha! Sitting at my edit suite for a long period of time certainly allowed me to take it easy too!

Realizing that we were filming on a camera with a high compression ratio, I knew that working online wouldn't be a major deal, and that color correction would be a major challenge (I didn't want to over-crank anywhere).

Nevertheless, I arrived on set with a script, a broad vision, and an experienced cinematographer and fresh director. My main priority was all about understanding the style and the kinds of coverage we were going to be filming. At an early glance, I knew this film would have a Classical Hollywood Narrative style, and my aim was to try and play with pacing and delivery as much as I could.

I had the privilege of being on-set, which doesn't happen to me all the time, but when it does, it can be very exciting. I love to be involved in as many areas as I can, and because this was an extremely small crew (a skeleton crew) I was able to help out anywhere, and I LOVED that!

ASSEMBLY

The first thing I do in an online workflow is upload the footage by day to my NLE. I decided to cut on Premiere Pro CC because it is my most familiar platform, and when under pressure, I want to work on something where I am most comfortable/familiar.

Next was renaming the clips. Normally, if I am editing by myself, this is my file naming system.

SCENE(scene #)(shot letter)_take(take #).

Immediately I start to watch all of the clips, and for the sake of time on this project, I start with my favorite takes and merge them with the production sound. I didn't make colored labels distinguishing the scenes this time, but required graphics were given their own distinct color to make sure I had the materials in the film.

Generating the Rough Cut wasn't the biggest hurdle for me this time. Surprisingly! I had a good idea of how I was going to put this together by having first hand knowledge of the coverage they were filming. I was able to have a rough cut done with many hours to spare - a very nice thing for when it came down to post-audio.

After some collaboration with the director, we ended up settling on a locked picture. I think I can speak for both of us and say that if time allowed us, we may have done some things differently, but nonetheless, we were ready to move on to the next step.

*if anyone would like a deconstructed breakdown of my edit decisions please let me know*

COLOR CORRECTION

Looking back at this stage in the production, I would have definitely made a lot of different decisions in terms of what would have done here. This area is probably my weakest, as I look back and see subtle details that I would have loved to match better, but OH WELL. We live and we learn.

Something that I was proud of during this process can be seen in the image above. I noticed that while filming, the skin tones came out just a little bit yellow, I decided to try and recover some of that redness in the face and with some selective color I was able to bring some of it back. I was very happy with that decision and I think it made the film look more natural. I will not speak on exposure or composition as I was only able to work with what I had and I did the best I could to match and feel as natural as I could while correcting color.

REFLECTION

Looking back at this project, I can honestly say I was hesitant to share this today. I would say that all the crew members learned something in this project, but it wasn't something that I would jump out and say, "I am SUPER proud of this piece!" Nonetheless, there is one moment that I really love and that happens in the beginning of scene two.

As the antagonist is intimidating his captives, the leading man lips, "Are You Okay?" to the female character across the room (trying to not let the antagonist in on their intimate conversation). I built the frame size up to this very moment, and it is the closest we ever get to the characters in the film.

She then just shakes her head with a mixed expression.

Here I feel like the audience gets the vibe of "Oh snap, they are in some serious trouble right now." And personally, I think it works. If there are varying opinions out there that is fine. However, I found this to be the best performance of both the actors here. I wanted to feel the tension between the seriousness of the situation, and I think I did alright.

Looking back, I find it important to think about the fact that with limited time, I person has limited options. I feel like where my knowledge base was at during that time, and dealing with my worst favorite moment of the film, I had to make some very dramatic attempts to get the beat shifts to flow as seamless as possible.

For the sake of time, I threw together this wipe transition between a shot that had a shaky ending, and the next beat in the scene. It was difficult because there wasn't anything showing that the antagonist was leaving the area clearly, and nothing to bring us back to the story. I feel this wipe was trying to ease the drastic change between a moving and a static shot, and I feel it fell flat a little bit. Not only should I have threw this together in after effects (see the bit of halo-effect around the guy's head? too much feathering). Originally I cut to the woman before the camera gets a little shaky, but the director was very keen on this kind of cut playing out all the way and for that reason I came to this conclusion. Is it my favorite thing? Oh no. But I think it was better than the original scripted idea.

THE FINAL FILM

With everything put together, I can say that we ended up with a complete film. I don't think it's perfect.

To think of the moment where we had to record the required line somewhere else (because the actor failed to say it in production) makes me extremely disappointed. I felt that as an editor it was my responsibility to catch this error, but I was busy handling some other post-issues and missed this. Next time I would like to make sure the team has the resources to allow me to just focus on continuity. A lot of the issues I ran into could have been prevented if I paid more attention. However, post-sound is the major hurdle in this film, and I would have loved more time to fix all the little errors that I discovered while reviewing the piece once more.

Nonetheless, I am interested to see what everybody else thinks of the final film! I will be embedding it below.