EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 14

This was very nearly the final cut. However, I still need to increase the overall audio level and fix the door slam at the end of the Jazz Cafe sequence, as it goes on for too long at the moment.

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 11

I forgot to this new rough cut when I exported on Friday.

You might notice something significantly different with this one.

 

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 10

Here I have done colour grading on all the shots, but I still need to have a fiddle because some of them are still not quite right and some still need brightening up slightly. You probably will not be able to tell the difference, but I promise you I have done the grading and the shots look a hell of a lot better than they did originally. Also, YouTube darkens the picture somewhat after they have processed the video on their servers, so that is something I am going to have to compensate for in future.

There is also a new addition, right around the 4:30 mark - it looks unreal! 

 

EYES Pilot - Colour Grading

Before and after.

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 9

This rough cut is almost identical to the previous, aside from a few very minor tweaks. 

This is the edit Danial, our very talented sound designer, will use as a reference while doing the sound design. 

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 8

Here I have done a few more minor tweaks and fixes. The final shot has been smoothened as it was originally shaky due to the wind and the static shot of the Jazzmeister's eye will be replaced by a live action one which I will shoot some time this week.

Basically, I'm at the point where there is not much more I can or want to do with the edit.

Aside from colour grading and the odd technical fix (mostly where I fucked up the focus) there really is not much more I want to do and, quite frankly, I am at the point where I want to move on from this thing.

I will put the latest rough cut up in a bit and I will endeavour to come in tomorrow afternoon to do some more fixes. But aside from coming in next week to give everything a final going over and at some point finalising the sound design with Daniel we are almost done! 

I want to devote a whole day to the colour grade because it needs to be spot on and, hopefully, that day will be next Wednesday...

 

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 7

Another day of hard work means another rough cut.

This one has some significant changes in it. The most significant changes are a major re-thinking of the lower weir flash back scene/memory with Ella (Letitia Ringshaw/Tish) and the changing of Ella's name to Turner. This change of name is something that I have contemplated on for a while now. It comes from an artefact of sound I found in one of the shots of Boris (Mykel Elledge) playing with Rubik cube by the weir. 

 While fiddling with the cube, Mykel whispers something along the lines of 'turner', 'turn it', 'turning'. Regardless of what Mykel actually says, I always heard it as Turner and figured it would be a nice unintentional ghost/subtextual element to incorporate; as such, I have placed the 'Turner' bit of dialogue at three points in the pilot and this dates back to rough cut 1. It is only now that the cohesion of the whole thing is starting to come together that I have decided to directly connect this whisper of 'Tuner' to Tish's character and remain that character Turner.

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 6

Here I have done some more leveling of the sound, some more trimming and inserted a few new pieces of footage. The logic of the whole thing is starting to coalesce into a coherent whole - this has come a long way since the shooting script!

The climb up the mountain continues, but the end is in sight...

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 5

I have had a slight fiddle with a few of the shots, I have done some more trimming and I have been levelling out all of the sound.

There is still more to do...

EYES Vlog Update 20: Marks and Feedback

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 4

Again, this new rough cut is very similar to the previous one as all the editing I did today was concerned with trimming shots. I spent about four hours trimming the first half and I have now reduced the overall run time by 20 seconds! However, this is not the sole reason foe why I am doing trimming, as I want to make the rhythm and pace of the whole thing flow much more cognitively.  

The editing is still far from over and I will most likely continue when I return to Bath on the 8th July. 

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 3

A new rough cut. Not much has changed with this one, as many of the changes were concerned with correcting elements of the audio.

EYES Pilot

Due to the extraodinary workload of this module and my other two modules (Documentary Making and Film Dissertation), I have not been able to complete a final cut of the EYES Pilot Episode. However, this is not something I will apologise for and I do not believe that it is detrimental to overall success of my project. In fact, I would rather submit a rough cut and openly admit it was a rough cut, instead of trying to submit something that I was pretending was a final cut. A good editing job requires 80% of the overall production time! For more of my reasoning in this respect, see the vlog below.

The primary reason I enrolled on the Creative Enterprise Module was so I could produce a film-like entity that I could put into my professional portfolio to demonstrate my theoretical and practical filmmaking skills. Therefore, the Pilot will endure long after I am finished with module and I fully intend to complete the Pilot episode. As much as I want to finish it, I have to finish it to ensure that the other members can use it to demonstrate their work, as I promised. Myself and Daniel are already planning out when we are going to meet up for additional sound design session. 

Therefore, while I have not a fully complete project for the module, the module has enabled me to create a project and a mindset that will endure beyond it. Surely, this is the point of the module. 

As this is a rough cut, the current state of the picture and sound are indicative in terms of layout and style, they are by no means representative of the final presentation quality. 

Below I have embedded rough cut 2, the most up to date edit of the Pilot and rough cut 1 that features some of the intended sound design for the final cut. The final video is my reflective commentary on the Pilot and the overall EYES web series concept, this video provides many explanations.

EYES Pilot: Sound Design (Rough Cut 1)

Due to various technical problems, Daniel was not able to produce a version of the second rough cut with any sound design. Therefore, what follows is the work Daniel has already done for the first rough cut. As the second rough cut is my indication of what the final cut will look like, this should be seen as a demonstration of the direction the sound will go in for the final cut. 

 

EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 2 - Reflective Commentary

Video-centric: The EYES Website (that nearly was)

Initially the EYES web series concept proposal was going to be hosted on an original website that would demonstrate the EYES web series franchise presence on the internet and how it would engage with my intended target audience.

 

As I knew building an original website would take up a considerable amount of my time, I started work on it back in November. Following a meeting with the University's Publishing Lab, I invested in a domain name eyeswebseries.com (and got another one free eyeswebseries.co.uk) and a web hosting package through 1&1, it was a special offer package that gave me 6 months free if I signed up for a year.

My original 'Video-centric' plan sketch for the website.

However, due to my other work commitments and devoting the whole of the Christmas break to researching my dissertation, I was not able to devote any substantial time to the website before Christmas. Therefore, the actual building of my website did not begin until the end of January. In addition to hosting through 1&1, I started to build my website on Wordpress.org using a wordpress theme I had purchased on themeforest.net.

The way that I kept describing  my vision for the website was 'video-centric' and, as such, the design of the website would need to place the pilot episode and other video content at its center, as the episodes of the web series is its primary content. While searching for website templates to use, one in particular caught my eye. 'This way' is a theme that epitomises the term 'video-centric'. 

I was always prepared to invest some money into the website.

Below are images of the template's operations as a demonstration website. 

 

'This Way' enables video content to be the body of the website.

As shown above a video is the background of the website.

It has a playlist function that gives the template a Blu-ray main menu feel. 

It has a popout menu, again adding to the Blu-ray menu feel.

Other pages/sections of the website appear as modules over the main video.
Again, like a Blu-ray main menu.

The template's are customisable.

I saw the EYES concept working very well within the 'This Way' theme! The whole aesthetic of the 'This Way' template and its alignment with my video-centric stance was something I really liked. 

A Blu-ray menu with the film playing in the background.

The Blu-ray menu feel of its presentation ensures that the content is always playing and always present; this has an awful lot in common with my vision for the narrative of EYES as being cognitive and something that is continuously very active and always moving. Also, It would have nicely fulfilled the marking criteria for my website:

Website: show good awareness of target audience through the site design; website design should reflect the content of the project, so that the two things work together to tell a story.

Below are slideshows of the some of the Posters and Visual Design Elements I prepared for the project and which would have been incorporated into the website. These images together with the images of the 'This Way' theme should give some idea of what the eventual website would have looked like. 

Additionally, I have some items stored in my EYES Website notebook.





Ultimately, the reason why I was not able to complete the website was due to problems installing the 'This Way' theme into wordpress. I spent a great deal of time trying to solve this problem on my own; when that didn't work, I contacted the chap who made the 'This Way' theme via his forum. He was able to provide me with instructions for how to fix the problem, but it would have required a great deal of re-coding and time that I didn't have. Therefore, I believe I took the right decision in abandoning the website. It was an instance where an element wasn't working in the current paradigm - therefore, I discontinued it. 

However, I did briefly toy with trying to build a simpler website from a free wordpress theme, to fill in for the 'This Way' website. 

This is closer to my original sketch for the website.

Again, though, I abandoned this concept because I was having trouble changing the mechanics of what is essentially a basic blog template into something that is closer to being video-centric. While I was able to engineer this particular theme to look something like my original website sketch, I was not able to make the operations of the website work the way I wanted them to function. Again, this would have required a great deal of coding!


While the loss of the EYES website is disappointing, ultimately, it has worked out rather well. Firstly, I haven't yet completed a final cut of the Pilot and I'm not going to showcase a rough cut on a fully polished website! Secondly, I can use my web hosting package to build a website for myself! This is actually something that I've been wanting to do for a while and something I had put in my initial submission of the EYES Planning Portfolio: 


Professional Profile - This is not something I have to necessarily get marked on but it would be a nice side result of my project. At the moment, I have various online profiles scattered about all over the place and I've always wanted to make an About.Me style hub page that I could integrate all of my other profiles into. Basically, an online CV/professional identity page that would go beyond and be more personal than a LinkedIn profile. Providing I pull it off, EYES and the CEP module would act as a nice testimonial to all the skills I am going to flaunt on this page.


Therefore, the website has a longevity that will persist beyond my participation in this module and, surely, that is the point of the module!

Creative Futures Event & Knocking the iBook on the Head

As I've already commented in my previous post on the iBook, I had volunteered to be a part of the Creative Futures Showcase event. Unforetunately, the event has suffered from some poor organisation as it is the first year that it has been tried out and the first time the Uni has trialed the iBook software. The main problem I have suffered from is the fact that the Uni has only installed the iBook Author software in one of the computer rooms, a computer room that has timetabled classes. Therefore, I've had to work around people and, as such, I have not been able to devote any substantial time to the iBook.

My update in the Facebook group.

However, the event organisers said I could still come and promote myself but without my iBook I didn't see much point. I also reasoned that I could use the time more productively. To this end, I completed the second rough cut of the pilot!

I managed to get into the Publishing Lab today to do some more work on the iBook. However, I was still not able to finish it, so I have printed off a paper copy of everything I have managed to do and this I will submit as part of my appendix.

Survey Monkey: EYES Pilot - Rough Cut 2 Questionnaire

Using Survey Monkey, I created an online questionnaire for the second rough cut of the Pilot episode. I didn't do this for the first rough cut as it was missing the first scene, a scene that is curicial in order to understanding the whole thing. Therefore, I waited until I had a thorough representation of what the final product would look like, as now represented in the second rough cut, before I started testing its effectiveness with its target audience. While I'm not able to complete a final cut for the submission, the results of this questionnaire will enable me to identify any problems in the edit and to implement refinements for the when I do complete a final cut, for my proffesional portfolio. 

Below are the 10 mostly multiple choice questions that make up the questionnaire.

Questions 1 & 2

Questions 3 & 4

Questions 5 & 6

 

Questions 7 & 8

Question 9

Question 10

EYES Pliot - Rough Cut 1

Today, I finally completed a rough cut of the Pilot Episode.

Here's the info I posted on it, when I posted it into the Facebook group.