Finishing

This is it, my film is done and my folder just need to be graced with this blog and my evaluation and it will be complete.

I can't think of anything else to say apart from, that this project was really hard but was alright in the end, mostly.

Old Habits and New Ideas

Well well well, I got in a bit of trouble today; I was a bit too cheeky and avoided paying for an edit suite (as usual) but this time "the guy" wasn't too happy about it and sort of told me off but still let me go without paying, but tomorrow I’ll have to pay £8.25 for a Mac in the computer room there as a suite would cost me £20! And they don’t accept a tenner for half a day for some crazy reason. Erg, "the guy" was kind of icy about it as well, but I guess it was literally all my fault, but either way he could have been a little bit nicer about it, its not like I messed the whole place up and was inconsiderate and unfriendly or arrogant the whole time I was there...

If I ever run a place like the Phoenix media centre, which I hope I do at some point because it's literally THE coolest place in Exeter for film students, I would have a 'firmware' style price list, like I'd have set prices for commercial users and random individuals/professionals/freelancers but with students and trusted users (people who've been using the facilities for a long time and know procedures) I'd have a negotiable price list, so if a person couldn't afford a whole day, they could just pay half the price of a full day and work for a half day, its simple, logical division. Obviously people will try to exploit these floating prices and things could get out of hand, but if management (aka me) is mellow about it and friendly, people (unless they're really full of malice) will be nice back and generally follow the rules. And when I say trusted users, I mean, people who have been around the centre, going in and out, contributing for a few YEARS, or like me, have grown up around these places and got to know a lot of the people and how things are done. I just think the decision that someone can or cannot uses facilities for creativity shouldn't be based on how much money that person can spend, but more on their value as a person and trust... I think the relationships between people in a place like that could be worth so much more as well, it would feel like a home or something instead of a workplace for the employees and a club or something for the users.
There wouldn't be a set strategy either for new comers to read up on and know that that this is what the needed to do to get stuff cheaper, that would really encourage the greedy exploiting people, people would prove their worthiness for a cheaper price by having the initiative to negotiate...

blah, I'll find out who sets the prices at the phoenix and make a few suggestions, I mean even if they had half day prices a lot more people would come along, and if they were a bit nicer about it all.

So I might

So I might use that last post as my evaluation after all. Clean it up a bit, make it less mocking and more professional sounding when criticizing myself and the course...

I've been feeling a bit ... Lost or I duno, maybe constricted. I think I'll go for a walk tomorrow.

I've been listening to the soundtrack of Bodysong, the british documentry on life, directed by Simon Pummell. but the album was scored by Jonny Greenwood and its amazing.

The stuff I've written lately about my final edit has been really great, I've really enjoyed thinking about my documentry and how its not all bad, and how this last edit(s) is really going to make it better.

This almost was in the EVALUATION (a.k.a A look at the brief)

It’s an often occurrence that I only inspect the details of the project brief when I’m in the final stages (of course I do read it at the start as well, but I have nothing to compare it to at those early stages) of the project and previously it has only served as a reassurance that I have in fact done everything I needed to do and in a very nice way too. This time however, when I read the project brief, I found my folder to be a most unimaginative response to the briefs instructions. It implies in the ‘SHORT MODULE DESCRIPTOR’ that I am to “investigate the depiction of real events in moving image”; examine “how the form has developed in recent years and has embraced other forms such as drama, animation and music promo”, additionally the brief encourages me to “reference identified exhibition routes”. This is starting to sound like I’m blaming the brief in some way for my own failures, I’m not, I’m just trying to procrastinate. (It was at this stage in writing this paragraph that I realised it probably wasn't the best evaluative material, but none-the-less still worth saying, therefore I transferred it to this Blog). If your looking at my folder: The first section is my production brief, suggesting that I hold the goals of this project in priority and return to the front of the folder often to dwell on the projects direction and progress; this is an inaccurate description of current practices concerning my production work ethic. Immediately following the production brief is my PRODUCTION PLAN, written in all capitals in a imposing, sturdy font and receiving a whole title page to rule and proclaim its importance over, only then overleaf is the reader treated to a very well thought through and clear production table, broken down into weeks and blocks of work groups and time specific production dates. This layout may once again suggest that the author holds pre-planning and production organisation in high regard and proceeds to obey the efficient and effective schedule religiously thus completing a full and whole folder and supporting film in the time given. It's true I do hold planning in high regard, but only place it near the front of the folder because its one of the first things I do. I don't think I have ever, EVER followed a production plan to the letter, but then again who has?
Another title page follows the production plan; the introduction, which I've yet to write. Initial research follows that, I said initial, it really is my only primary research; hand written and generally not touched again since plugging them into my folder. Erg, I've just realised half of the stuff isn't even research; it's just my notes on what I should make a documentary on. There I go straight away, falling into the trap of immediately associating 'Non-Narrative' with documentary, something that I thought I expressively tried to avoid throughout the whole project but ended up doing anyway... O hang on, there IS some good mentions of various Non Narrative stuff in these Hand written notes, perhaps I should write up some proper stuff from these or something over the next few hours, couldn't hurt.
BANG next in the folder is the TREATMENT, there we go no lolling around in this folder, no I get straight to the problem in hand and solve it in one fell swoop and punch the production in the face with my 'Twits' idea and run with it. Oh what's this? next up is PROJECT DEVELOPMENT, looks like a bloodied nose of a production caught me up and sat on me, thwarting my initial elation and vigour to create a ground breaking and edgy 'On-line TV' based short comedy series based on peoples real life experiences as professed on internet social network and worldwide craze, Twitter, hence the play on words title 'Twits'. Ho Ho Ho. So yeah, it fell through, basically I'm not a huge production company and in the end unless I acted out everything myself (could've been done quite effectively to think about it now) I just couldn't feasibly produce the film(s) I wanted to. So as usual, I fell back on the standard way of doing things and decided to make a fairly normal talking heads Doc on what the people of Exeter thought of twitter OR what my friends who didn't mind being filmed and also had twitter thought of twitter... (hmm this is actually turning out quite nicely, I might stick some of this in my evaluation) So that's why I literally have a treatment right from the get go with pretty much no explanation and then some "project development" and a less interesting treatment, which is also followed by two pages claiming to be 'Critical incidents', I can't see any blood or anything on the pages and they're in good nick apart from some printer errors, so I'd just treat them as standard 'Incidents' or even 'Stories'. Yeah, that sounds a lot better.
Wow! Look at this next part! A whole section on planning! WOW! It's true I'm genuinely proud of this section of the project, because even though I didn't end up filming the majority of them and none are in the final film, I am very pleased with 'Episode structure' pages as well as the 'Tweet Boards' section; they just did exactly what they need to do, no fuss. The subsequent planning pages are still good but not as conclusive and clear as I would have liked, although reading my 'Sound design' notes again now, I think I did a good job there. I feel like there is a lot missing, but I can't put my finger on it, maybe I feel this way because a lot of this folder is geared to creating the 'Twits' films and because now at the end that didn't get made, I feel like all the supporting documentation for it doesn't count and the film I have now is just balancing dangerously on a few poorly chosen interview spaces and unthought-of bias, but that's not true, if anything it supports me even more!
The next section is a bit weak as I have mention before; Research is never really my strong point as I always find it spoils the fun a bit when researching as you always end up finding something far better than what you’re trying to support... Anyway this research section is just some wikipedia copy and paste jobs, nothing special. Although the production notes from Wisconsin Death Trip (obtained from they’re own website) was quite interesting. None of the films I chose to research helped me in any real way, which was a shame. After research we see the tweet boards, which are like storyboards but more general and more conceptual. I enjoyed making those, even if they didn't get used. The next section; Shooting, was around the time in the project where I realised I just couldn't continue with my 'Twits' idea which threw me off course for a bout a week or two. I wrote a little explanation or apology for the lack of documents in the folder a few weeks after that, since it was looking so bleak and "head down in the sand looking retched", it really was the lowest point of the project. Then comes the editing section, the most detailed and interesting of all the sections, apart from maybe the BLOG, but that hasn't got its own section yet. It was in the edit suite that the film I will hand in and that this folder will support, was born. I've still got to write a good chunk of the 'progress' and 'development' style documents in this section so I'm gona cut this non evaluation short but also cuz I'm tired of over describing events and processes of this project in the unnecessarily witty, incredibly accurate and humorously eloquent fashion I do so well and love to exploit.

Well Well Well

So in my Independent Study Evaluation I was pretty harsh. With this projects I may end up spitting on it!

Hahaha. Naa its not that bad, but this is pretty serious, I've tried not to do too much work to be fair to the circumstances of this extension, that is, not completely overhauling the project and massively exploiting the extra time and just completing an adequate amount of work, enough to pass.

Generally I haven't kept this Blog as up to date with my progress with Non-Narrative as I would have liked, but I guess this is just the way it has turned out and I don't think I can specifically blame myself in any way, just generally really. There are all kinds of explanations I can think of that might have contributed to me not doing all that well this term for example; loosing my home editing suite, being nervous about doing a better job this term (backfired), being nervous about moving to Plymouth next year, working too hard on other projects, worrying about other projects, worrying about not doing other projects. All this and more I guess just really got to me this term and hit this project particularly worse than the others, apart from maybe my essay, of which I'm terrified of.

Back to Non-Narrative, there are a few detailed 'progress' and 'development' type posts/documents I need to get out of my head, just so your a bit more clued up on the way this film has turned out. I want to see if I can fully explain the intricacy's of the films bias and eventual message/base concept, I want to discuss whether the film is balanced in its current state(half edited) and whether I need to edit it differently or add some more insightful commentary to make it feel more like a genuine comment on twitter and not just my very opinionated opinion.

'Commenting' and such is very popular these days in a variety of modern endeavours.
From the most outspoken review to the subtlest of remarks from Youtube to rotten tomatoes. I just want to make sure that my comment on twitter isn't just another standard rant and genuinely something worth listening/watching.