Workshops

Throughout this unit, I engaged in numerous workshops, all of which I enjoyed; in particular, the Haiku editing exercise.

I'd been wanting to continue to develop my editing ability for some time using stock footage, as I engage with a lot of content that does just this on Youtube. I'd seen poems, songs and philosophy all accompanied by stock footage that really helped to emphasise the 'feeling' of the audio content and direct the viewers emotions in a visually interesting way. For our first exercise, I chose to try and create a montage that appropriately conveyed my interpretation of the haiku (I, Kobayashi)

"Everything I touch, 

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble."

My interpretation of the poem was that no matter to what extent you may love something or someone, ultimately, love hurts. I wanted to create a feeling of sentimentality, of love lost and nostalgic encapsulations of 'moments' that have long passed. Those vivid snapshots of beauty and positivity, in contrast with the pain and pessimism that can sometimes follow these feelings and a longing for the past. 

I also created another video after our study of different montage techniques. I was particularly fond of the Kuleshov montage technique and found it interesting how viewers create their own interpretations between two images that are seemingly unconnected. I thought that this might be a practise that I integrate into my edit when I create my piece for this unit, so used this opportunity to exercise one of these ideas. I was also interested in creating a visual interpretation of pathetic fallacy and using deliberately evocative imagery of weather to guide the viewers to experience the emotion that I was trying to create.

Storms, rain and rough seas are all overtly symbolic of turmoil so were good choices for the purpose of this exercise. I wanted to make something that could easily be interpreted by the viewer, without shrouded visual metaphors. Building a story or feeling between two people using stock footage requires careful consideration because you only have limited footage available to you to try and create a cohesive narrative. For this edit, I used footage from user cotton bros. on Pexels, who had a slightly wider array to choose from. Things like the weather weren't as difficult to find, but trying to find footage that remains aesthetically consistent was; there are millions of rainy days, but only a handful that feels as though they belong alongside the rest of the footage.

We also had a workshop downstairs in the studio which I thoroughly enjoyed, but unfortunately didn't edit together to post in the blog. However, you can find some stills below. This workshop helped me to better understand some of the equipment available to us such as the use of the track and dolly, as well as trying to light a scene and the time-consuming nature of setting up a scene. Using the track was new to me and something that I enjoyed doing, adding a controlled sense of movement to a scene was fun and required a more precise level of skill when using the camera in regard to the timing of the push-in that the Director had asked for and being able to succeed in doing this was rewarding. It was also fun when given the chance to direct to be able to work alongside other peers in achieving a certain 'look'. I wanted to recreate the look of a scene from Paul Thomas Anderson's 'The Master'.

Creating this look was more difficult than it appeared, I assumed that bouncing some soft light onto one side of the actors would create the high contrast look above, but it wasn't so simple. Being in a dark space meant that having the light fall off into darkness was relatively easy to achieve, but the light on the performers was more difficult, seeming to flatten the performers, giving very little depth or atmosphere. 

These workshops highlighted to me the importance of improving my practise in regard to lighting. I've not used it to any real effect in any project thus far, being fortunate with natural lighting up until now and not focussing on how lighting could help improve the final product. That being said, there are areas that these workshops have helped me to greatly improve on, and both my editing and understanding of visual language have come on a long way. Being made aware of editing a sequence specifically to interpret feelings made me consider carefully the order in which images are shown, cue: Kuleshov effect. 

It also made me think about consistency of aesthetic and how easily the 'wrong' image can be alienating to a viewer. Many auteur filmmakers are known especially for having this trait, and their aesthetics are their creative imprint on their work. This has made me want to start developing a 'style' and moving between genres has made me take on board how this style can still be used to great effect across different texts.

Bibliography:

Baldwin, E. (2021) Everything I touch by Kobayashi Issa, Poem Analysis. Available at: https://poemanalysis.com/haiku/everything-i-touch/ (Accessed: December 20, 2022). 

The Master (2016) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Zw0p9qOkg&t=2s (Accessed: December 29, 2022). 

What is the Kuleshov Effect? learn the importance of video editing - 2022 (no date) MasterClass. Available at: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-the-kuleshov-effect-learn-the-importance-of-video-editing (Accessed: December 29, 2022).