Final Cut - Life Of Hermit

After weeks of re shooting and editing, we have finally completed the final cut of Life of Hermit.

And here it is, the final cut of Life of Hermit:




Overall, I am extremely satisfied with what we achieved during the production of Life of Hermit. While there were times where it became stressful to complete this short film, I believe that it has all paid of in the end,

Now that the final cut of Life of Hermit is completed, we can now move onto the two ancillary tasks for the short film.

Final Cut Editing

Now we have finished our re-shooting we are now going to import the clips we have re-shot and then edit the rest of our film.

When: 29th January 2015

Who: Tilly Whitehouse, Daniel Vidmar, Robbie Gale

What: Edit the new clips, change credits, sound and colour

Now that we have re-shot scene 6, we decided to re edit that scene first. Instead of using re-editing the whole scene from scratch, we decided to use the old 6th scene as a basis to assist us in editing this scene again because it will be able to give us an idea of how long each shot should be and where the narration should begin and end. This scene didn't take very long to edit as we already know how to edit this scene so there was no issues when it comes to editing this scene however we took our time with the shot where the two Hermit's are facing each other because this was one of the main issues from our audience feedback of the rough cut so we wanted to ensure that this shot was perfectly edited which luckily we believe it was.

This is how we overlapped this shot.

This is how much we cropped one of the shots so the effect of
Hermit looking at each other works.

This is how the shot looks like now that it is cropped.

We decided to next work on the credits for Life of Hermit as the change wouldn't take very to achieve  so all we had to was replace the 'Mask 1' with the emotions that each actor actually portrays. This wasn't difficult to achieve as all we had to was type each of the emotions in the credits.

This is how we change the credits.

This is the final results for Life of Hermit's credits.

After changing the credits, we decided to move onto the change in speed of the spin the bottle shot in scene 3. One of the feedbacks from this scene is that it had looked like Hermit's thumbs were moving to fast that it looks unrealistic so in order to prevent this issue, we decided to re-edit that shot so it looks like Hermit is moving his thumbs at a normal, realistic rate. This took a while to achieve as whenever we altered the speed at that part on Hermit, his thumbs are either moving to fast or too slow therefore the process of finding the right became time consuming however we eventually succeeded on finding the right speed.

We overlapped the shot so the speed can change.

This is the speed rate in which we changed the shot.

Now that all the shots were edited, we decided to move on changing all issues with sounds. We begun with altering the volumes of Hermit's narration throughout the film. By looking at the audience feedback, we found out that at some points of the rough cut, it was difficult to hear what Hermit is saying so to solve this issue, we simply changed the volume so the audience can hear Hermit clearly. Another sound issue that distracted the audience was with short film's score at the end of scene 5. When this scene ends, you are able to hear a woman singing with the score. While this part of the score wasn't poor, some of the audience found it quite comedic which is not the mood that we are aiming to achieve in this short film so to prevent this, we found a part of the soundtrack that we could repeat without ruining the effect of the film. Although it took a while to match the soundtrack together, we eventually achieved this effect.

This is how we changed the soundtrack in scene 5.

This is an example of how we altered the volume of Hermit's narration.

Finally, the last thing we wanted to achieve for the final cut of Life of Hermit is to amend the lighting on the final scene of the short film. Although there was no one complained about the lighting in the rough cut feedback, we believe that in order to maximise the quality of Life of Hermit, we need to perfect every scene even if no complaints were made. In order to change the lighting we firstly balanced each shot so the character's faces are clear. Then, we matched the colour of every shot to the first shot of the scene as that was the only shot that had the right lighting. This caused all the other shots to have the same lighting as the first shot, thus preventing any lighting issues with scene 7.

This is how we colour corrected each shot for the last scene.

Before.

After.

Overall, we are more than satisfied with what we achieved during the editing stage for the final cut of the short film. After weeks of editing and re shooting, we are finally ready to distribute the final cut of Life of Hermit.

Final Cut Re-shooting

Now we have finished our rough cut, got feedback and decided what we are going to do to improve. We are now starting to make these improvements. This post will be the evaluation of the re-shooting for our final product.

27/01/15

Location: Drama Studio
Actors Required: David Twohey, Jake Bennett
Crew Members: Daniel Vidmar, Robbie Gale, Tilly Whitehouse
Time: 3.30pm - 6.00pm
Scene: 6
Storyboard: Shot 31-34
Props: N/A

Daniel and Robbie setting up the camera.

Daniel and Tilly positioning the camera to produce the 
perfect shot.

Robbie, Daniel and Tilly watching back the reaction shot.

Daniel, Robbie and Tilly positioning the reaction shot.

Tilly, Robbie and Daniel discussing the next shot of the scene.

Review of Day
3:30 - We set up the equipment, the tracking dolly and the tripod. It took us a long time to put the tripod on the tracking dolly perfectly because we wanted to make sure that Dave (Hermit) and Jake (Calm Emotion) were exactly under the lights, and that the lights were equal either sides. 

3:50 - We then shot when Hermit and the calm emotion walk into the centre to each other. This took many many attempts. We had to mark the floor to ensure that their feet were directly under the lights, and we had to make sure they walked with the same feet and stopped at the same time, all while tracking the camera in. We did this many times as sometimes the actors weren't directly under the lights, or walked too quickly, or the camera was too quick or slow or didn't flow well. 

4:10 - We decided that we would keep the camera in the exact same place and film the end of that scene (When Hermit is facing himself). Last time we did this at the end, and it was a mistake as the camera moved and you could clearly see Dave (Hermit) had moved. So we drew around Jake's feet as that is exactly where Hermit should be standing in. This was our main problem in our film, so we thought the solution would to be mark where he stood as we failed to do this last time. Dave (Hermit) didn't move from his spot as we filmed the last scene. He then quickly got changed into the clothing Jake was wearing. We made sure that the camera was not moved in any way as this way of effected the shot. We then filmed Hermit standing where the calm emotion was.

5:10 - After Hermit got back changed we then filmed the shock scene. We decided we weren't going to attempt to re-do the vertigo shot as we realised it didn't work the first time, and we got a few compliments on the alternative we did. So we moved the tracking dolly and positioned it so Hermit was perfectly in the centre and then tracked into him as he pulled a shocked reaction. We did this many times as we wanted to get the perfect reaction. 

5:20 - We then filmed the over the shoulder shot. We started with it from Jakes point over view. We positioned it so Hermit was in focus and the calm mask's shoulder wasn't. We left this recording while we directed him and shouted out different directions and facial expressions to him, so when it comes to the editing stage we can look trough the clip and decide which part we prefer.

5:30 - We then filmed the other over the shoulder shot. We started with Jake (calm mask) with the mask on, we filmed him looking at hermit and then taking his mask of. Then David got changed into his clothes and then we filmed him taking the mask of in the same way. We made sure we didn't move the camera from the first time, and I was used to double Dave's neck in the scene. We had to film this twice because we will use the cut away of Hermits reaction in-between when he takes his mask off.

Evaluation of Filming
I feel overall filming went well today, we were a lot more organised than when we first tried this shot, as we feel like we rushed the rest of the shots last time as we spent most of our time on the vertigo shot. At one point the brighting was a problem, but because we couldn't get into the control room we couldn't turn the lighting down so we had to work with what we have. We marked all the actors and were they stood which we feel will really help us getting the positioning of Hermit right in the reveal scene. We are going to edit this footage and hopefully the shot with the two Hermits works well.