Evaluation

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Evaluation

What specialism did you choose and why? How are you hoping it will help to improve your
future productions?
I chose editing as my specialism because it is the part of filmmaking where I feel I can show my skills
to the best ability and is also the part which I want to develop my skills to have a future career in. I
love learning new editing techniques that I would like to use in the future and I feel the more I learn
the stronger chance I have of doing successful in the future as if a production company asks me to edit
a production in a very specific way I’d hopefully be able to that, to a good standard too as I would
have practiced various techniques needed for them in previous productions.
The history of editing is also something I have not looked into in any sort of the depth before this unit,
and hence I was excited to research and learn what people did to edit in the early days of film, as I
knew it was mainly edited on Celluloid film, but without any computer aided editing, I didn’t know
what they used to do it, so I felt as I wanted to learn about this personally I would be more likely to
put even more effort into this unit to get the best grade possible, I wanted to learn about the devices
like the kinetograph and see the similarities with it and modern day cameras, the same with the splicer
and modern day editing, this shows me how much the industry has developed as well as the
technology around it.
The specialism study of editing will help me a lot with future productions as during this unit I feel I
have improved as an editor by learning about various new techniques I can use including cloning and
various other I have watched tutorials on to prepare for this production. I have also improved on
animating my clips and pictures using key frames which previously I didn’t feel over confident in
doing so. Learning these sort of techniques will develop my editing for future productions to ensure
the highest quality and push my grade to as high I can get it for editing.
The aspect of research that I think improved me the most over this unit was looking into the
professional editors interviews, seeing what they have to say about their experiences in the industry as
well as advice for editors was very helpful to me and quotes that Michael Kahn said ‘An editor never
work well when over worked or tired, come back the next day fresh and see the difference’ is
something I completely agree with from personal experience I know this is true, as when I’m feeling
fresh and not drowsy my production quality is a lot more likely to be of a higher production and this is
something I have noted down for future productions including my FMP, to only edit when not tired
and to get a good amount of sleep before I edit, this will help my push the quality of future
productions to as high as possible and will allow me to show my skills to the best of my ability.

How effective do you feel your research is? Are there any gaps or did you have to complete
further research when putting your script together?
My research is effective as I found everything I need to make my videos essay in pre-production
without having to go and ad to my research as I felt there was gaps in my production, this is a positive
as it shows my makers I know how to confidently do some concrete research in pre-production and
shows my planning skills having improved after finding all necessary information for my script
beforehand as in previous productions Id usually find a lot of gaps I needed to fill during my
production and sometimes even after, I am happy I can now be past this and I know I have improved
in doing the necessary amount of research.
When writing my script there was no issues with any of my researched information, showing it was
concrete enough for me, and there was no gaps I had to go back on which helped me have more time
to develop and improve my script to make it as informative and professional as possible. I research
into the history of editing well, looking at various old production seeing the techniques they used and
analysing the people like Edwin S porter who was one of the first to developed his own editing skills
to implement things like crosscutting into his productions, and these techniques developed over time
where more and more films where being made, and new techniques like green screening and
eventually CGI all came about because of these foundations put in place in the early 1900’s editing, I
also did some research about the Soviet montages and how they developed into Hitchcock’s version
and today the modern montage, as this was a huge step forward in editing as montages kept films
interesting especially when they hadn’t been seen before, these early montages also allowed the
audience to come up with a collective contact for themselves so all the information isn’t just spoon-
fed to them, which made the productions boring. This information helps remind me when making
productions not to spoon-feed everything to the audience as nowadays audiences a smart enough that
you don’t need to waste their time and make productions boring by showing themselves every little
moment, it’s not necessary.
It wasn’t easy to find all of this information on editing, as editing is not really a front runner in
filmmaking and its history, and there are very little well known editors, especially that I knew so
doing this research helped me learn more about what they did to help develop the industry as well as
watching long interviews with them, analysing the best parts of it so I can learn the most I possibly
can off of them as they’ve been in the industry and been very successful, so their knowledge should
only help benefit me to become a better editor
Do you think all your sources were reliable? Which were good and which were less so
I think my most of my sources were reliable, this is because most of the information I wasn’t sure
about I double checked, for example an article about The great train robbery said that it was released
in 1902, but I had watched numerus videos researching it on YouTube where it said 1903, as there
was a lot more videos saying 1903 than just the one article that said 1902, I deemed the videos to be
more reliable as more people said 1903, I feel watching YouTube videos as a whole for information is
likely to me more reliable as if they didn’t have a good amount of reliability their vidoe3s wouldn’t
get so ,any views and likes, they’d get dislikes and a lot of comments correcting them if they are in
fact wrong, so any information video I watched I double checked this, whilst also double checking on
google other information if I still wasn’t so sure, this helps my research become more reliable as if I
take more time to find correct dates and information my essay will contain more reliable information
which is morel likely to be accurate.
For the majority of my research I tried to stay on mainstream websites like imbd, which have a library
of reliable research into films and production teams, this was useful when research Michael Kahn and
Paul Hirsh as I was able to instantly check all of my information on what films they edited, how they
started editing and when they last edited as ImdB gives a small biography to most people involved
with film which helped be a lot in this unit, as I knew this information was reliable so I can check my
own and edit it so it is as accurate as possible
I also did all my research chronologically so that not only I could implement it into my script better
but so that my audience don’t get confused with how editing develops as I tried to keep the history of
film chronological when making my production as this would help my audience understand it easier
as it develops chronologically. The research I did when looking into the directors was first hand as it
was mostly interviews, this makes it very reliable as I can see when im researching their words aren’t
at all getting twisted, like they may do in newspapers or even when researching really old interviews.
Through my research I tried to find as much first-hand information as I possibly could have, as with
this I knew the information is reliable.
There was one source which was a student presentation that I was not sure if it would be reliable or
not, so instead of just using it in my work, I double checked every piece of information I used off of
that presentation, and thankfully it was pretty much all accurate, but It was still good I double checked
as using student work as a source can often be misleading or inaccurate. By double checking the
information, it shrinks the risk of inaccuracy in my script. I usually don’t use student presentations at
all because of the risk of inaccuracy, however I felt as there was very little information about my
topic, especially aspects of it like editing on a splicer was difficult to come across so I felt it was
worth the risk.
Did you complete any primary research and how did it help you in understanding techniques in
greater detail?
One of the techniques I did primary research for was the cloning technique. This is due to me always
wanting to use this in productions as it gives me so many different possible plots I can use for
productions, I had never done it before and therefore had little confidence in myself to do it well
before this unit, however after watch 4 different premier pro tutorials on how to clone yourself and
make it look reliable, I was finally able to try it practically and I feel it worked well. I want to use this
a lot in further productions and possibly even my FMP, as I struggle when writing plots but this gives
me a whole new level of lose plots I can develop. I was also going to do parallel editing (cross-
cutting) as another example but I felt as I am passionate and knowledgeable about star wars and its
stages of production I can express my knowledge of cross cutting better to get the best possible grade.
I feel this worked because my part of the script about cross cutting in star wars was one of my most
factual as I didn’t have to do much research as I knew most of it already.
What do you feel the strengths of your script are and how could you further improve
it?

One of my strengths of my script was that It was in a clear, chronological order of how editing
developed. I started with late 1800’s, developed into early 1900’s to the soviet montage theories and
then into the move to digital editing. I think I made it easy for my audience to learn easily about
editing because of this. Another one of my strengths was my knowledge on dates, and overall
research, as I checked over my information numerous times to get it to be as accurate as possible, and
before publishing my script had one last look at my sources and double check on the ones I still
wasn’t sure on, but overall in the end I felt confident my information was as accurate in could be and I
researched well.
One improvement I would make if I had to do the production again was to analyse examples of my
practical task (cloning) to show why I feel the editors used it and how it impacts the story, as I feel I
would have had a stronger script If I portrayed my knowledge on how the technique develops other
productions, and not just my own. I Would also do more primary research, for techniques like the
Soviet montages I could have made my own example to explain what they are, and it would have also
better shown my understanding, proving that not only I can talk about it but also practically show it in
my own work.
What have you learnt from this process and how can you utilise it in your remaining projects?

One thing I have learnt from this unit is how much pre-production work is needed to have enough to
not need to go back and add bits to my research whilst doing my production. I worked very hard
during pre-production to get a good amount of research so I can write a clear script that had good
information on it, and thankfully because of how clear and well I did my research writing the script
was not too difficult, as I usually have to back and find something to add to the scripts in past units,
with the extra time I saved not having to go back and add bits to my LO1 I was able to look through
my script and refine it to be its highest quality. For future units and my FMP I’m going to put the
correct time into my preproduction as I did with this unit because I saw how beneficial it was to my
production as whole, by not having to go back to lo1 during production makes it easier for me to
refine the script as it will take less time to do. This will help me to get a higher grade as the more
refined my work is the higher quality it would be.
I I have also learnt how to do more techniques when editing, the cloning one especially to a while for
me to learn and be able to do it correctly but once I had done it, it looked good. I’m exploring the
possibility to make a production using this technique for my FMP, this is because it opens up a lot of
potential stories that will help me be more imaginative when writing them, something I usually tend
to struggle with.

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