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mickdockfilm-blog · 8 years ago

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Crit FeedBack for Corner

VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OF FEEDBACK:

Cat: I think for me it still needed a lot of work and editing in my opinion, especially the beginning, I think the grassmarket has a bit, eh, this was something that tina told me after we edited and I totally agreed with her and kind of like made it visible for me, that the grassmarket kept coming back and forth and I think that sometimes we added shot that were not needed and didn’t really add up to much of what we were trying to engage, which was a more broad atmosphere rather that these particular stands but we tried to work a lot with it and we did try to do a sort of random rhythm to it so that’s why we use some so often but I feel like we could have done it in a different way. And the end didn’t really end up being as good as we wanted it to because there was complications with the footage that was shot and I feel like that kind of concluded things, there was a couple shots from an alley way at need, near the place, the last place that was filmed and it was filmed but it kind of just disappeared from the footage. So it wasn’t there and it was the day right before the deadline so we had no way to do it again because it had to be filmed at night. So those two alleyways were kind of missing, didn’t draw a conclusion.

Michael: The thing I’m happy about with it, basically cat covered all the things that were the problems, but I’m happy just how different each of the places feel, I think the atmosphere of the different places comes across quite well.

Cat: yeah I think you feel what we felt when we were there. Which is kind of what we were going for.

Jennifer: I feel like some of the stuff in the first location, there was some conversation that I wanted, that I thought you were gonna use, it was a Greek guy talking about being a painter, I was waiting for it and I didn’t see it, but that was just me, but I was really happy with it

Cat: We had a lot of really interesting things from the grassmarket, but at a certain point there was just so many conversations that we had to just cut some of it out. Honestly I could have, we could have done a whole documentary just on Grassmarket to be honest, and we had so much footage and really interesting characters, really open about talking about everything. But I agree with you, there were certain things that we didn’t put that were quite nice but

Holga: It took me a wee while to remember, it was funny, when you pitch this, like oh yeah that one, and I think what is it that I didn’t recognise straight away and I think it was um, where to start, It was four films, I would call it four films, what I saw was the market, the bookshop, the housing estate then the musicians at the end, for me I felt there was too many, because the style wasn’t unique, so they’re all, you could argue ok they’re all different so I have a different style for all of them. But if you have a continues style of how it’s shooted then the diversity is much clearer to find. But I thought in the third one, now you’ve eased into the style because you’ve got some lovely observations, there’s a guy in a garage, there’s a, it suddenly wasn’t just uninformed looking and you leave it up to the audience to find their way and see what you see, you really cinematically , you made a choice and I understood

Cat: You mean Dean Village

Holga: What’s it called

Cat: Dean Village

Holga: I think captions wouldn’t have been bad either, to separate each section, to really set you up again. But I felt you found, really a visual voice, that’s a bit contradictory but yes a visual voice. And at the beginning, I like market, and again I think it was the sound track, it wasn’t really very distinct who was talking and what was ambient. I was constantly trying to, is that now an interview or was that just ambient?

Cat: It was all ambient

Holga: the cinematography was also kind of, the heads were chopped off, loads of them and I had a sort of, almost childlike view, I thought it was a very short cinematographer. Which, I like that, and I Liked when I saw a bit more, when it wasn’t kind of too fragmented. When I got interested was when there was a big pot and I watched somebody cooking, I see detail, I see they’re making something, they’re stirring, so I follow a process, and that allows me as an audience to say, oh that’s how they do it, and then I can suddenly use my interpretation of what I see, and then it joins into one story. And there was something throughout that made it really difficult for me to engage the sections, like in the end there was one about the music, You show me a cover with the Beatles, you show me a picture on the wall, but I couldn’t make it to see the links. I think I always need a kind of filter from the director to form a decision, and that almost the most difficult bit because, you wanted to share with us what you found so unique about these places, is that right? Yeah. But the filters weren’t strong enough for me to appreciate or disagree with what you show me. I was left kind of hanging, it was an endless journey of offerings without cinematically making choices. But generally, because I don’t know Edinburgh very well, so it was interesting, and I liked the bookshop, it was kind of interesting to because there was, some of it, was absence of people, so the first one was busy busy then I’ suddenly in this empty space where nothing is happening and you had a bit of a wide shot, which was a bit of a shame because when you stay close you also emotionally stay close. It’s almost a sort of anti-climax to have an empty shot because you make a statement. You know there’s nothing happening. Or you ask questions and they’re never answered. Sorry to be going on but um, they’re all places where communication takes place, but there was very little communication, I would have like just one conversation in each location between the people. You know like a very distinct one which shows exactly what made you heart jump when you made the choice for this market again, I like outdoor markets and there was a shot, I don’t know why it was in there, and it was a girl and a boy and they hugged outside the market, I felt kind of ok.. but it didn’t really gel for me, but if gel for me, but if you stay on this tightness and the sides are all hemmed in so there’s a lot of personality already in there but you could of pushed a bit more.

Sana: I felt with the grassmarket there was a lot of work needing done, I really liked the bookshop sequence, somehow for that, that sequence for me works the best. And followed by that the dean village sequence, the court yard, the washing lines, and there’s something, I felt in the book shop, I felt this sense of being given glimpses into this space and I felt the experience of being there, which I think is what you wanted to capture. And there was something about the openness pf the courtyard and watching these people do all these little moments, all the different things that could happen in this space. With the grassmarket sequence, I think your problem lies with sound, the sound isn’t right somehow.

Cat: I think we tried to stuff it too much, I was trying to

Sana: I really think you should bring out that whole monologue, somehow, either the whole thing is fragmented or , because you hear that once complete conversation and there’s one more we hear in the bar at the end of the film, neither of which had in, I don’t know there was no kind of revelation in them, so I wondered why there was a completeness, why do we hear the whole thing, So the other space is the Tibetan café, which certainly works a lot better than it did before. I mean for me what the film did was it made me feel I was experiencing all these different spaces. The bar, I felt, the one at the end, was the weakest section of the film, it just didn’t work. We didn’t need to see what the space looked like, I felt you could have just taken us and put us amongst these people, from the silent courtyard you’re taking us to this other experience, and obviously your ending is just way too abrupt so there’s a kind of big question mark k on the whole thing. What it this? As a result I suppose. I mean I still hold to what I said at the outset. This film would be a different film to what you first set out to make obviously but another layer of something, of sound, you know something that’s a thread that takes us through the film. Would hold it together in some way. Now what that layer is would have been for you to work out, whatever it is, you know all the conversations we’ve had, you know whether it’s poetry or a certain kind of sound track or attention to particular sounds in each location that, consistency in sound design or something that, some kind of link between those three places that brings the whole film together

Cat: I think when we were editing we kind of went against a kind of cohesive thing, because as you said we were actually trying to go for visually different ways of interesting watch location and I completely agree that it didn’t work out as a full narrative but I felt that every time I was watching it I honestly didn’t know how to solve it because I would have to lose that personality from each space so I was not entirely sure of how to do it. Even with sound I think we made it quite cohesive in the beginning then I decided it would be nice to make something quite abrupt and quite unexpected so we could play more with the randomness, since we’re not doing a cohesive thing from the beginning, we might as well do everything abrupt and all mess up but I guess it just needed a lot more work

Sana: It needed a lot more work, it’s hard to make that work, it’s really hard, I mean you set yourself up with a really challenging project from the start, and added, you didn’t stay in one place, I mean you say you could have, maybe the film should have just stayed in Grassmarket. Maybe put this aside, if you want to revisit this project and see what you can do, which will archive, you know start with that and see. Because it feel like you’re in the process of finding a voice but it’s still in process and this kind of film is all about cinematic voice, as you said. It’s all about weighting moments, by weighting I don’t mean waiting I mean weighting, the weighting of the moment, there’s something about the weighting of the various moments, they all have, there’s an inner harmony in the edit, in the way the sounds come together which make us experience something more than the film. I know you want to achieve that and I think, you know it’s possible. It just need more work, and you have to keep working.

Holga: Yeah and also, was the Grassmarket always the beginning of the film?

Cat: We played around with it a lot but I think it was always in the beginning

Holga: Maybe that sometimes helps, to challenge yourself, what if we put that at the very end. Just to kind of read it differently, especially because I’m trying to think how could you bring all those conceptually together, I’m thinking it’s about people in an urban environment, you’ve got one that’s a sort of spiritual space, there one with food, is it a kind of physical wellbeing, then you have the mental wellbeing, and you have the architecture of being, you know which is just a guy in a garage so you could draw it but then you’d have to get a clearer visual language in order to connect them it can be through sound or colour or shapes and then your there.

Cat: We split cinematography as well and I think that made a huge difference, because I did cinematography for Dean Village and Grassmarket and Michael did it for the others and even though in the other ones we were discussing I think it makes a huge difference. I think two people doing a very different visual language.

Holga: or your very clear of what you’re looking for or what you’re looking at or something

Sana: Any other quick comments

Bogu: I just thought that for a piece that was so cinematography based what was very distracting for me was that a lot of shots and a lot of them were either over exposed or under exposed and we’re losing a lot of details and already we had these wide shots and their detail just weren’t there, except for the book shop sequence, I really felt that there was a perspective to the camera, and it worked with the sound because a lot things were muted, we saw a person but we didn’t hear it, we heard like really close sounds so I thought that maybe if you had a sense of perspective in each of the places you visited that would have made a more coherent film, even though you would’ve still gotten different vibes from every space. But I thought that in the book shop it really worked together, the camera and the sound

Cat: So you need to coherence between the sound and the image in all of them

Sana: I think what Bogu is trying to say is, which is what I liked about the book shop as well, is that you feel the perspective, you feel like you’re looking through someone’s eyes

Cat: Yeah we were trying to do a labyrinth sort of thing cause it was a labyrinth sort of place so

Bogu: It just feels like you went to the book story and you’re a person there whose looking through the books and hears these specific things and not just the special sounds and the camera, because it was very close, worked with that as well.

Sana: The experience of watching that or experiencing that is very point of view, but then that style is different to the other sequences so. Other comments? Jack?

Jack: I really like the transitions between locations but we had one guys story at the start which at first I just though was back ground noise and it was only after a while I kind of noticed, oh wait I think I’m supposed to be listening to this guy so I heard half a story but for the rest of the film you didn’t hear anyone else’s story so for the rest of the film when you saw the guy in the garage I was think ok we’re gonna hear a story but we don’t then at the end you hear a little bit, I don’t know why it stuck out so much but a guy said he tried writing poetry and I thought someone trying poetry is really interesting for the first time but we never actually, it like your teasing stories but never actually telling them

Helen: I was going to comment on that as well, the ending of it was like super abrupt I felt like it just ended and I was like oh and it took a while for me to realise whether I like that or not and I realised because the dialogue in some places, like when you hear the hoof guys story first it does seem to just end and he’s gonna say more and when they’re in the café you here the lassies talking about how people think they’re lesbians and stuff and I thought that if the whole film did have kind of snippets of conversation, like you were just in the space and you were hearing things and you were cutting off and you were going to a different space it would of made it maybe a little more interesting

Cat: yeah we were missing the alleyway, I think in the end we really needed that

Jack: Even the stories you heard in the grass market, if you record them, transcribe them then get actor in to retell the stories.

Cat: Yeah we did we did, we had so many lovely conversations, it’s a shame we didn’t use them all

Michael: What Helen said about having snippets of conversation that ust come and go, we were going for that but it didn’t just quite come together

Costas: In the pitch I sort of gathered that you were going for location as character theme, which didn’t really get but especially with the grassmakret it was very people oriented, whereas the bookstore is much more quiet and it’s kind of the location that’s the thing there and the guy in the garage, even though he’s a person he’s still kind of part of the space so I feel like the market scene was too people and I Don’t know maybe taking out the conversations would have made it less so.

Cat. Yea I think we should have gone for either sound scape or conversations.

MAIN POINTS GLEANED FROM FEEDBACK:

The main thing that I take away from the feed back is that it need more work, which ever direction we chose to take it in. Many different directions where suggested, often contradictory ones. The lack a strong visual voice is likely the biggest one in my mind. Which is roughly similar to the lack of perspective. The point of perspective could have been the visual language.

Sana said that in the book store we should have dived in a amongst the pople a lot more, and I striglny agree, it would have opened the film out to a new energy rather than merely looking at inanimate objects.

The end was obviously an issue which I accept, this was my fault, I kept procrastinating in getting it so when we had complications on the final day there was nothing we could do.

There wasn’t enough detail in the sound or the visual, the sound rarely left atmosphere sounds to be more detailed, which could have been used to punctuate the sound design. Same with visuals.

Because of this it seems the book shop was the most successful, which I always felt. And the grassmarket is the weakest.

REFLECTION:

I feel like we may have ended up becoming lost between many different approaches, leaving the film to be a bit formless and without style. For example we wanted the sound of the grassmarket to be in cpherent and jumpy, which it was until sam did the sound design and in cleaning it up he lost some of the thing that made it interesting. As though because this was the first abstract piece I have attempted I didn’t have the experience todraw on and each creative idea we had got sucked up into that lack ofexperince, or the banality of the editing process

ACTION PLAN:

First of all we need an ending on it and nice titles

We have some amount of footage from the grassmarket, which was the weakest location. So I feel that if we continue working on the grassmarket, possibly even revisit it to film more, we can get that location to an acceptable standard, and once that one has been nailed we will possibly have found our voice to complete the other locations to a higher standard.

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