Showreel 2009

Ate Logo Mama

A friend I made during my FCP course last year contacted me recently and asked if id like to be involved in an editing job. He was leaving the job due to gaining employment elsewhere yet had done all of the ground work leaving final editing left to be done.

I took up the opportunity in order to create a few more contacts and stretch my editing skills. After viewing the footage it was apparent the enormity of the work that had been done previously in simply capturing and laying out a rough cut. There were 60 tapes recorded and a large number of archived files and images. 

My task is to bring the rough edit into a final piece. Although the foundations were laid and it looked like a fairly straight forward task it has become quite challenging to go through, not that that puts me off at all, i've found it very interesting.

The documentary is about the life and history of Samora Machell, the first president of Mozambique who was killed in an aeroplane crash in 1986 that was never explained. The documentary features key political members from the time, close friends of Samora and his widow Mama Graca Machell, now married to Nelson Mandella.

The process of editing on my own projects has normally involved working either on my own or with one other person after filming together and constructing the concepts and ideas together.

For this project I was arriving half way through and into a subject I was completely unfamiliar with. As well as that, there is a very large percentage of the documentary spoken in Mozambican and Portugese. I have a translater available to me and will eventually need to subtitle everything. The biggest challenge is refining the whole documentary directly alongside its creator.

 
My input is welcomed very much in every aspect of the project, and seeing it with 'fresh eyes' enables me to be more constructive and opinionated. I feel I do spend a lot of time explaining what and why I request to do certain things and have often chagned things drastically back and forth to demonstrate the effect of certain editing techniques, or just simply changing the narrative slightly in places so that it fits better to a viewer who may not be very familiar with the subject. 

However, the creator of the piece has worked through the entire documentary from start to finish, when one is so involved in a project it is easy to try and 'over edit', this is really what I feel is the most difficult thing in honest. In a sense I am employed by this person to edit his work and follow his instructions, and despite his PhD and indepth knowledge of the subject, there have been occasions where I have had stop and discuss particular ideas and put forward my feelings that certain things may be 'too much'. Luckily I dont see this as such a bad thing, the experience itself has been invaluable, all of my opinions seem to be highly regarded and so far every discussion has been discussed, each idea tried and tested and an outcome agreed. 

Mentally it has been challenging yet very interesting in working in this manner as I have not had to do this to such a level in recent months. Currently the documentary has had its first half hour completed and there are a further 20-30minutes left to do. Ultimately the plan is to take the documentary to festivals and be credited for them, any money made has also been offered to myself although nothing is on paper yet. At the moment I see this as an opportunity to gain some experience and credit whilst making new contacts of which I do hope to work with again in the future.

Working with Sarah Campbell

On my course at University there are two students, myself and Sarah Campbell. Where I am simply just a student doing part time work on the side to support myself, Sarah works as a Digital Media Co-Ordinator with Torfaen County Borough and uses her training at university to develop her role at work.

It had been discussed previously that I would be welcome to attend some of her filming events and to work as camera man. The orgional project that I was going to attend has not yet made it to a stage where I would be able to be involved. However, after working with our tutor on a different project and being present for the discussion on how the filming had not yet been completed, I advised that I could be available to help her continue the piece.

The project was to advertise a secondary schools peer mentoring scheme. The video would be written and acted out by the students and staff from the school. It would be sent to primary schools in the area in order to encourage younger pupils to attend the secondary school knowing that they would not be alone and people would be there to help them throughout their education in all matters.

 On the evening before I contacted Sarah to confirm I would be available, she arranged to pick me up with all equipment already in her car.

During the car journey she filled me in on all of the scenes that needed to be completed and a brief over view of the project. I was shown a story board and well plan out timetable for the the day. With these things in place, everything from arrival went very smoothly. I did all of the filming on that day, we both shared sound and lighting, with Sarah on boom when needed and us both agreeing lighting setups. The students were wonderful and everyone was extremely co operative. For a short period some students came to watch and together we got them involved with holding reflector boards, boom sticks, listening to sound and guarding lights!
It was a different experience to be working with younger people, I was pleasantly suprised at how attentive they were and full of ideas and suggestions as well as understanding concepts such as 'consistency'. In the past, working with younger people was not something I was concerned about but at the same time I had not gone out of my way to work with anyone from schools. From doing this I would welcome children to participate more and will consider working with them more than I did before.