Commission Documentary Unit 3: Final Documentary : The Cathedral Apprentices'

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Final update and looking back!

After a long day of re editing our film, we finally have it all finished! :)

Although we had to cut some parts out and re arrange bits, we're over all happy with the final outcome, however I feel like it's a very basic documentary and very sync heavy as when editing I mentioned we should of added more cut aways in the final as we had in the previous edits.

Over all the project has been quite stressful however it's taught me a lot about working in groups and how it's crucial to collaborate, meet up, consider each others opinions and make sure that everyone is communicating well with each other. It has also taught me not to judge how someone will be in a group just because they have good work - it doesn't mean they are good to work with in a group.

As myself, Vic and Andrei are very passionate about our ideas in our projects, I tried to push that aside and make sure I am fully listening to other peoples ideas instead of wanting mine, however this didn't work vice versa for some aspects in our group so I felt like I should of been more adamant with putting my ideas out there.

Overall, if I could do the project again I would definitely allow more time for research as I had so much to say and do but not enough time to come up with a solid idea, just the outline of an idea which got brushed out the window because the Cathedral idea was unfortunately right there for us to do, so what are outsiders going to think, pick the girls idea who doesn't have a solid idea, or pick the Cathedral idea which has definite characters, a story and locations? ...

Although the Cathedral story is an extremely huge project and we had the privilege to work on it and document the stone being replaced after hundreds of years, I still wish we went with the 'My Hero' brief as it would not only allow lots of different ideas to flow, it would push us into not just going for something that's laid out in front of us on the table.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Final music.

As we have failed to find any music online that fits with our documentary, we had to go back to the music producer Andrei had found and try fit the song in with our film. 

Here is the final song we have used.

Although in my opinion the song sounds too depressing and morbid, it's the only song that the group agreed on.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: HUGE update!

Today myself Vittorio and Andrei was all meant to meet up to finish adding the interviews and finish off the edit.

However after various phone calls and messages off Andrei we had found out that our work wouldn’t re link therefore we couldn’t carry on with the edit and needed to find a way to re link the files. Usually it’s a simple process of clicking ‘Re-link files’ finding the folder and locating the files that way. As this is no body's fault and there is no way we could of prevented this (apart from being more time manageable...) we've decided to come together and try fix the problem. Andrei came round to the flat and we decided we’d try work on it for however long it took. However, for some un- found reason the files was not re linking and seemed to either be corrupted or lost, even though we had it saved on Vic and Andrei’s hard drive. We still don’t know what the problem is now (whilst sat here editing all over again) which is the most frustrating thing.  We decided to try re import the footage and then re link it from the new folder or ‘Replace’ each file individually in the timeline, however as we’d cut the footage and bladed it precisely, when we put the file back into the timeline, it only would replace the footage from the beginning – so although the footage could still be put back in the order we had it – we’d have to cut it all again which would take hours… another bad thing was that the footage didn’t always fit in properly and pushed some other files around. To fix this we had a huge discussion came to the conclusion we would have to start again and put all our work back starting from scratch. Although we had all the footage and it was a matter of placing it back in the timeline, I was really irritated as I’d worked none stop for the past week editing the footage precisely trying my best to make it work – and now we had to start all over again. This irritated me even more because if we’d just hurried up with the transcriptions, had the correct interviews without having to go back and film them again (because we had audio only) and synced up the audio quicker without messing around we would have finished editing so long ago. We’re all sat here now editing together trying to figure out where everything went and re adjusting clips until it’s finished – there’s one thing having a script to go by, but scripts can change and adapt throughout the process so it’s not as straight forward as one of us sat there editing looking at the script. As we all wanted to make last minute finishes on our blogs, it’s irritated us all that for some unknown reason the edit won’t re link, and we have to put off finishing things off until we’ve finished the edit. We aren’t rushing the edit as we don’t want it to look messy and unfinished, so we’re all giving our opinions and gradually getting our piece back together one step at a time. Luckily it’s not taking us too long but we’ve got a long way to go!

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Music update!

After not being able to find a free royalty free song online, I showed our group the song below, 

they all agreed it sounded good, however when I mentioned we needed to pay a small fee they didn’t want to use it. I understand that paying for a song that we are only using for a small section is a waste however I said I would pay for the song as we needed some music for the introduction to the cathedral, maybe during the middle and at the end. However, the group was adamant on not using it saying I should save my money, although I really wanted to use it as parts of it really fit well with the idea we had, as everyone agreed it sounded good and we wanted an upbeat ‘inspirational’ song as it’s meant to be a promotional piece. Nevertheless we will see what everyone comes up with music wise and hopefully we will be able to find a good instrumental piece in time to fit with our documentary. 

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Editing day 4

Today Andrei, Vic and I all agreed to meet up and the library to further edit and sync audio and generally try finishing the edit. Annoyingly it took a while to re link the files as we was working on a different computer, however Vic helped me do it and it didn’t take too long. Throughout the day I aligned the rest of Steve and Darren’s interview together and synced up the rest of the clip mic audio. All together I was really happy with the process as I’d edited a lot together and added cut-aways to the footage and cut and trimmed the footage extremely precisely to cut out the huge gaps and pauses that Darren and Steve took in between words as well as the ‘erms’ and repeating words. To make sure the footage didn’t look choppy I used cut-aways of what they are talking about and I also kept switching between the close up shots from the interviews and the mid shots to make it less boring – but didn’t do it too much. Throughout the day Vic was sat next to me doing some work and kept looking at the edit giving opinions, Andrei also came to check as well and we all looked at the video to see how I was doing, after receiving feedback and making minor changes we all agreed it looked okay so we all carried on working. However, I really wanted to start on Marella’s interview and sequence as hers was a very large chunk of our video, but Andrei was still lining up the audio with the interview clip - however I knew I could do it myself on Final Cut as it took a matter of minutes for me to do Darren’s, as at the beginning of the video Andrei had clapped so that when we placed the clips above each other it would align perfectly and make the process easier for us. I felt like we was going round in a circle as to save time I said I would line up Darren’s visual with the clip mic manually which worked fine instead of Andrei doing it on Premiere Pro separately as it was taking so long and wasting so much time. However, as the day went on I was getting nowhere waiting around for hours when I could have been doing it myself so I began aligning Jake’s interview in place and said I would add the clip mic footage myself as the process I did didn’t take long at all. It got to 7pm and the library was about to close so we had to leave, after saving the file and also saving it as an XML file on every ones hard drive and checking one more time it had saved, we all left. Today I felt like we wasted a lot of time as Andrei and myself was practically doing the same thing and I had to wait around for a lot of time which frustrated me as I knew the deadline was extremely tight.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Music Producer

In our group we’d discussed the type of music we wanted, but we didn’t have a certain song we could find on any royalty free websites. Luckily, Andrei knew someone that was able to produce a soundtrack for our documentary, so we began brainstorming ideas between us of the type of track we was looking for (as we didn’t want the classical genre). I myself began brainstorming ideas and I’m going to create a post on the songs I choose today. Andrei contacted his friend and gave him a few examples, however the music he kept producing was too depressing and slow paced – therefore we couldn’t use it. We asked him once more, sending him more reference material, however he hasn’t got back to us so we unfortunately had to get rid of that idea and begin searching the internet again for some ambient/upbeat/happy instrumental music that can go with our documentary.