Miss Communication By Anita Senior

My Role: Continuity & Editor

Student: Jessica Ruxton

CONTINUITY

My role for the short film Miss Communication was keeping track of continuity in framing, character positions/movement and dialogue, eye line and observing pauses and interruptions during the filming. I had never before experienced continuity as a role so that is why my continuity skills were not entirely up to scratch on the day. However, I knew what to do and did look out for any mistakes in dialogue, positioning etc. A week before the shoot, our production team came together for brief meetings about what needed to be done. As I wasn't too familiar on what my role consisted of, I came across useful websites on the Internet that explained how to achieve perfect continuity from the script. The Wikipedia page on 'Film Editing' gives a short description of what 'continuity' entails'. ''Continuity is a film term that suggests that a series of shots should be physically continuous, as if the camera simply changed angles in the course of a single event'' I again came across another website named 'Cyber College' which includes step-by-step points on what to look out for when editing. I wanted to see videos that explained continuity within films so a video called 'Continuity Editing 101: Hitchcock's Rear Window' was incredibly helpful. This video told the viewers about continuity techniques, temporal/ & spatial continuity, master shots, inserts and cutaways, including sound and eyeline match. I finally found a video on YouTube that took scenes from the movie 'V For Vendetta' and with the aid of a voiceover the viewer fully understood the importance of continuity. The consistency in dialogue and appearance was a little difficult to achieve in most shots. The chosen actors had difficulties with sticking to the script and I mentioned this to the director but towards the end the dialogue came together better than when we first started out. The hand gestures, tones of voice and positioning all remained alike. I was happy when it came to these; but the two things that I worried about the most were the consistent change of dialogue and the placement of the coffee cups. These two seemed to change very frequently considering the actors weren’t too confident in what they were doing. I did notify Anita on the placement of coffee cups and did mention the change in dialogue so we both continued to examine this complication. I noticed that when Matt (Anto Gray) sat down on the bench in the train station, he either placed the coffee cup on the ground or held it in his hand in different takes. I told Anita and soon this dilemma was resolved. I mentioned to Ali that her positioning as an extra needed to be consistent or there would be problems when editing. One of the things I didn’t notice, as I should have, was when Muireann waved at the businessman. I didn’t look out for what hand she used to wave, but fortunately Anita had already taken note that it was her right hand that she waved with. If neither of us observed this and it turned out that she waved with both hands at different times, this would have been a major let down and it would be impossible to cover it up when editing. We didn’t have a lot of time to reiterate the script and to rehearse shots so because of this I didn’t pay close attention to everything at once. Nevertheless, I did keep track of shots and noted down the things that went wrong and also the shots that were successful. I wrote down each character that appeared in every shot and noted the time e.g. 7mins 58 secs and the shot e.g. shot 7 take 1. I drew a small illustration of the finished set and the items we should see in every shot e.g. the Waterloo sign, posters, the bookshelf and the plant stand. The actor’s eyeline was pretty accurate in each take; I looked at how Maureen (Margaret White) typed and where Matt looked whether it was towards the audience or towards Muireann.I do think I need a bit more practice when it comes to continuity but for future references I will make sure to keep my eyes open at all times.

EDITING STAGE

''Editing is the creative force of filmic reality...and the foundation of film art''

- V.I. Pudovkin, 1915

Before the editing stage I gathered all the paperwork I needed to bring the script together on screen. I firstly took out the best shots achieved on the day of filming and started to edit from there. The storyboard, which Anita kindly provided me with, was what I tried to follow as best as I could. The first shot was CU of people's feet and then followed by that a shot of people walking, members from the class. The next shot I included, from the storyboard, was a WS of the station as Matt enters. We got different shots of this scene by means of CU, MCU, MS and WS. I used a MS next to show Matt sitting down then the panning shot from the businessman to Matt takes place with Matt commenting 'typical'. Maureen replies with 'what Matt?' and with this we see a WS. A CU of Maureen tying on her laptop is the next shot I have included here – so that there is time for the viewer to see what is puzzling Matt. A MS of Maureen and Matt is then seen; where the camera sees Matt questioning Maureen by asking her 'is there no such thing as conversation anymore?'' The next shot works well with the previous shot and it shows the opposite camera angle – giving the illusion that there are more than 2 cameras in the studio. The next shot captures Maureen responding to Matt by saying 'I AM having a conversation!' and begins to wave at the businessman. Another shot where we see her waving is filmed behind her and the viewer can see the reaction from the businessman then. The next shot is a CU of the businessman responding with 'ya alright da'lin?' The next shot is not actually seen on the storyboard but I thought it would fit in nicely to end the one-minute short film. This shot is a reaction shot from Matt himself, he looks at the businessman and makes a sound like 'pffft' and looks away and Maureen continues to converse with the businessman. I added the titles introducing 'Miss Communication' and mentioning that it is a short film by ANITA SENIOR. The end credits consist of a text scroll containing all crewmembers and their roles. To fully end the short film I thank everyone who participated and also thank the viewer for watching. I gathered a song called 'We Should Be Lovers' by Royseven, which explains the secret attraction between Maureen and the businessman. I also took an underground train-sound from the audio suite on ProTools (which permission from Brian) to give the illusion that we are really in a train station. There is atmos also in the background, which I also took from ProTools to give the impression that there is people walking passed the characters. Penny McGovern's voice is also heard as the V.O. I had to add an audio effect on this so that it sounded like an echoed voice. I had to adjust the voices of Matt and Maureen continuously because the background noise seemed to over-power the video clip sounds. I added a fade in on the audio and video at the beginning and at the ending. I also had to add cross-fades when I heard little clicks or small interruptions; this was done by highlighting a section within the clip and adding the cross-fade. I found it easy to just press 'B' for blade and 'A' for the mouse. I really enjoyed editing in FCP, whether I did it right or wrong! When I get used to it a bit more, I will kindly edit as much as I can because of the enjoyment I acquired.

References:

Wikipedia, 6 December 2011 at 07:47. [Online] Film Editing. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing

Cyber College, 12 September 2010. [Online] Video Editing, Part I, Continuity Editing. Available at: http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp050.htm

Slide share, 12 August 2009. [Online] Continuity Editing 101: Hitchcock's Rear Window. Available at:

http://www.slideshare.net/mcmrbt/continuity-editing-101-hitchcocks-rear-window