Experimental Film Rough Cut

We have completed the first draft of our experimental film. The project is of course far from finished in this state, but it is certainly beginning to take shape. We have mostly completed the first of the four 'cycles' of the sounds project; although admittedly, the first is likely to be the easiest. It can be viewed here. The following three cycles are likely to require some more complex editing, especially in order to implement our intended split-screen effect.

Initially, we had some trouble working with Avid Media Composer. In order to match up the sound with the visuals, we needed to import the audio as it appeared in Pro Tools, i.e. - as multiple individual clips as opposed to one single difficult-to-interpret clip. Attempting to interpret the sounds by ear would have proved very challenging and time consuming. However, we had difficulty importing the sound project in this way as although we were able to successfully import the sound project into Avid Media Composer, the software had not located the clips properly, meaning that they produced no sound. Thankfully, we managed to decipher how to fix this: exporting the project as an OMF, finally allowing them to work as intended and allowing us to interpret the sounds much more easily.

Avid Media Composer remains, for the most part, a rather alien piece of software to us. I personally am much better acquainted with Adobe Premiere Pro. However, using this software would not have been suitable as it would lack the compatibility that Media Composer and Pro Tools have with one another; both being Avid products. We initially had attempted to use Premiere Pro, but this meant we had to resort to interpreting our sounds by ear; which unsurprisingly, proved to be very impractical. Despite our lack of experience with using it, Media Composer allowed us to reference a template of our sound project; allowing us to apply accompanying visuals much more efficiently.

The rough cut, although clearly incomplete, does shed some light on our intentions for this project. Around a quarter of the visuals are complete (the first cycle is mostly complete, but is likely to undergo alterations). The remaining three-quarters of the project will continue in a similar style, but are likely to make use of some more advanced editing techniques; namely the aforementioned split-screen effect. It may be that our efforts to utilise this effect may prove a little too ambitious given our lack of experience with the software. The project is rather demanding in terms of editing, meaning some aspects may need to be toned down. Nonetheless, we will soon begin work on a final version.

As the project stands, I am not entirely satisfied with it. Although it does give a good impression of the style of the remainder of the film, I feel that the editing between the sounds and the visuals needed to be more tight. The combination of these two elements is largely the focus of the piece. The aforementioned split-screen effect also needs to be implemented soon to prevent the film from becoming too visually repetitive. Hopefully, we will be able to take action on these criticisms when we being work on the final version.