Advert

Davidoff Aftershave Advert

For our last assignment we were asked to shoot and edit an advertisement for a fragrance. We could choose any fragrance we wanted but the advert had to be exactly 30 seconds long. the motive behind this assignment was that it is hard to advertise a smell through video as you dont know what its like. We choose to advertise Davidoff Cool Water in our video.

Editing Techniques

One of the first things we did was add a colour filter to the video clips that didn't have an image of the bottle in. This meant the video was in black and white accept for clips with the blue bottle in. we did this so the viewers attention would be caught by the blue bottle as there was no colour in the other shots. Another thing we did was to delay the sound track on the first clip so that the clip was silent when showing the bottle of Davidoff. We did this so at the beginning the attention of the bottle was not taken away from by the sound track. As there are clips of there different people dressing in various smart attire we wanted to show all the three people in the end so we created three separate layers of video and placed a clip on each so an image of each person was placed on the screen at once. We did this to give the view a summary of what they had seen previously. The sound track we choose was quite slow and smooth as we wanted the pace to be calm and collected.

The Meeting

The Meeting

For our second video editing assignment we were given a script telling the meeting of two different people and an hours worth of mixed up footage to choose from. We were asked to edit the footage to fit the script we had been given, there were two possible endings and we had to choose which ending we wanted.

One of the main editing techniques we had to use during this assignment was the contrast of the two men in the video. In the five principles of editing Vsevolod Pudovkin a mention how important to video editing this is. We had to display that one of the men was in a rush to get to a certain place and the other one was calm and on point. One of the things which make this possible was adding the soundtrack to the video. We used an upbeat sound track on the shots of the person in the rush to increase the drama on his scenes to indicate to the view he was in a rush. When it came to the other gentleman’s scenes we lowered the volume so it was barely hear able. We didn't want to cut the music out completely because we wanted the viewer to remember the other man is simultaneously rushing. We flicked between the two men frequently to show the contrast between the two men more.

We didn't really play around with the effects and filters for this assignment because we wanted to deliver what was on the script properly and they were not really needed.

Movie Trailer

Necro

For our first assignment we were asked to create a movie trailer which lasted exactly 45 seconds. what the movie trailer was about was totally up to us and there was no specific genre we had to choose. Our group decided to go with a horror theme as we all enjoyed the genre and thought it would be a challenge to get the spooky effect. 

Editing Techniques

One of the effects which gave our trailer a horror like look was adding a colour filter which slightly drained the colour out of the footage making it look dull and life less. We also used a negative filter on our weapons shots, we did this because it totally changes the colour making it hard to distinguish what you are looking out making the weapons harder to see initially but then they come to light. Another techniques we used in our trailer is a montage, we complied seven shots of different weapons which played one after the other rapidly to flicker through the weapons. We did this to add suspense and show a multiple collection of weapons in a short amount of time. we also played around with different angles by showing clips from POV showing only the persons feet. We added a distorted effect so it was hard to make out what was going on. At the end of the trailer we played a mini montage of all the clips we had already played in the trailer backwards. We did this to build suspense before the title of the movie was revealed. We also edited the clips to different speeds, at the beginning of the trailer the soundtrack starts of slow so each transition from clip to clip we edited slower. At the drop of the soundtrack we speed-ed up the pace of the cuts between shots to match the soundtrack speed. At the start of the video we placed the shots with slow moving camera shots and towards the end we used more erratic fast paced shots to build up the pace of the trailer.

Montage

Montage effect

The montage effect is a compilation of shots edited in a sequence to represent a certain amount of time. An example of a montage effect on film making is shown in the video linked below. The video is a clip taken from the first Rocky film and shows his training in a montage of clips.

The Rule of Six

Walter Murch

Is an american film editor and sound designer who come up with set of rules to follow when editing which are:

1. Emotion - How will this cut affect the audience emotionally at this particular moment in the film? 

2. Story - Does the edit move the story forward in a meaningful way? 

3. Rhythm - Is the cut at a point that makes rhythmic sense? 

4. Eye Trace - How does the cut affect the location and movement of the audience's focus in that particular film? 

5. Two Dimensional Place of Screen - Is the axis followed properly? 

6. Three Dimensional Space - Is the cut true to established physical and spacial relationships? 

These techniques are widely used across the video editing industry in movies and tv shows. Below is a video where Walter Murch elaborates on his six rules.

5 Principles of Editing

5 Principles of Editing

Vsevolod Pudovkin was a film maker who began in the 1920, a few years later he wrote a book called film techniques and film acting. The techniques that appear in the book are still used to this day and was a great influence on the film industry. The five techniques are as follows:


1. Contrast -  This is cutting between scenes of two different scenarios to highlight the contrast between the two. For example if you saw scenes from a really well off family and then show scenes of a very poor family you would see the contrasts between the two families.


2. Parallelism - This links two different unrelated clips together by cutting between them and focusing on parallel features. For example one clip of a farmer picking apples, the cutting scene to some apples in the super market.


3. Symbolism - This would link two different scenes which share the same symbolic message. For example a scene of a group of people getting beaten by the police unfairly then a scene of animals getting slaughtered. The technique links the two together.


4. Simultaneity - This technique builds suspense and is used a lot in Hollywood. the technique involves cutting for two simultaneous event to create mood. E.g. a car chase cutting to the gear stick being changed then cutting to the speedometer then cutting to the tires spinning.


5. Leit Motif - This is using a shot to create a code of give the view a signal of what is going to take place. E.g. in the movie Jaws, Spielberg shows a shot from the sharks point of view looking up at the swimmers on the surface. Each time this happened it gave the viewer a signal that the shark was going to attack. 
Below is an example of principle 5 with the shot looking up to the surface.

The Kuleshov Effect

The Kuleshov effect gets its name from an influential film maker in the mid-twentieth century Soviet Union called Lev Kuleshov. The nature of his experiment when creating this effect is hard to pin down.  For the Kuleshov effect he shot a single long close up of an actor sitting down still with no expression on his face. The image then cuts to an image of a different subject, the camera the switches back to the actors face with a reaction e.g. smile on his face. Below is a video explaining how the Kuleshov effect can be effective in cinema.

Below is an example of our Kuleshov technique with two different scenarios and two different reactions to the footage.

History of Video Editing

The Lumiere Brothers

Antoine Lumiere farther of the Lumiere twins started of as a portrait artist but due to the low financial rewards he began manufacturing photographic equipment. With the help of his sons he developed a new 'Dry Plate' process known as 'Etiquette Bleue' which helped boost their financial status as they were producing 15,000,000 plates a year. Due to his success he was invited to a demonstration of Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris. Inspired by the Kinetoscope he bought back a piece of Kinetoscope film and presented it to his son's, he told them this is what they had to make as Edison sells at expensive prices. the brothers experimented in 1894 trying to improve of the size and weight problems of the Kinetoscope they also wanted to change the nature of the Kinetoscope as only one could experience the films at a time.

In 1895 the Brothers invented their own device called the Cinematographe, it was smaller than Edison's design,a lot lighter and was hand cranked. To use less film they reduced the frames per second to 16 compared to Edison's 48, this also helped to reduce the noise of the machine.

The brothers kept their new device very secret and was guarded closely, the screenings were private and were strictly invite only. The first screening of the device occurred on the 22nd of March 1985. Unlike Edison the Lumiere brothers were quick to protect their invention and placed a patent on the device. The first public screening was on 28th December at the Gran Cafe on Paris's Boulevard de Capuchines. Below is a video of a film which was played on the Cinematographe. 

The History of Video Editing

The Kinetoscope

Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope had draw in many others by its amazing concept of moving images. One person who was drawn in by the device was famous inventor Thomas Edison. Motivated by the work of Muybridge and Jules Marey Edison began to experiment. In 1889 Edison met with Marey to witness the result he had achieved with his roll-film Chronograph to help inspire and gain knowledge. After various experimentation with his assistant W.K.L Dickson they developed the Kinetoscope.

               The Kinetoscope is a motion picture device designed for films to be viewed by one person by a peephole window on the top of the device. It worked by using the illusion of movement by using a perforated film with a sequence of images over a light with a high speed shutter.

Above was one of the earliest motion pictures displayed on the Kinetoscope. It is a short film created by Edison's assistant W.K.L Dickson called 'Record of a Sneeze' it was created in 1894 for advertisement purposes.

The History of Video Editing

The Beggining - Eadweard Muybridge

As with a lot of discoveries Eadweard Muybridge did not set out to come across what would be the foundation of stop motion and cinematography. Muybridge was a young English photographer who had immigrated to United States and before stumbling across motion-picture, he was known for his landscape photography. In 1872 Muybridge was hired by race horse owner and former governor of California to shoot some pictures for a photographic study. The study was a long questioned debate of whether all four feet of a horse come off the ground when trotting. After proving that all four feet of the horse did come off the ground he was then hired again in 1878 to take photo’s which would help the study of a horses gallop. Muybridge placed multiple cameras along the side of the race track which were triggered by thread and a picture would be taken as the horse passed through each piece. Using silhouettes transferred from the pictures which were placed on to a disc for a machine Muybridge himself had created called a zoopraxiscope. The zoopraxiscope was a device which projected images which were drawn as detailed silhouettes on a glass disc. Light shone through the glass disc showing the silhouettes and was then spun as the disc moved and each image was shown one after the other it gave the effect that the image was moving.

The Zoopraxiscope was considered the first movie projector. After transferring the the images of the horse on the race track and placed on the machine, they would see the horses gallop in motion from a collection of still images. You can see the numbers of each image in the bottom corner.