Category: editing
Finding my way
I’d recently written about my need for extensive planning with my screenplays. Right now, I am outlining one screenplay, scene by scene; while ironing out the treatment of another. But interesting things are also happening with the third screenplay.
This screenplay is outlined, but not to the point of a scene by scene list. Writing has been slow and meandering at times, with my having to fill in blank spots that I should have ironed out in the planning. But every now and then a revelation comes up in the process of writing that I didn’t expect: a plot turn or line of dialogue that I didn’t imagine; the story coming alive as I write.
This is not how I’d like to write in future. The hope of writing something interesting, rather than planning something that I want to write, isn’t an ideal prospect when working on a 90 page screenplay. But these moments of revelation have been pleasantly surprising.
Self
One rainy night in Austin, Texas during the South by South West festival in 2015, I watched the audience from a sheltered area while waiting for a show.
In the crowd, a young woman took numerous selfies, illuminated by the stage and auditorium lights, one after the other, until she got the shot she wanted.
Prior to that moment, I’d always been disdainful of selfies, looking on them as superficial, but I saw that young woman’s photography as her saying, “I am here,” and wanting to see herself in her best light. Good for her, I thought.
That vignette made me think back to my attendance at that same festival the year before. In an on-stage interview, the actress Tilda Swinton talked of how her family had painted portraits of themselves hanging in their grand home. She said that the sight made her used to seeing herself “in the frame.”
These two festival memories stayed with me when I decided to use my newly acquired lighting equipment to take self portraits. I’d been uncomfortable with this: the time taken to set up a shot of oneself felt indulgent, but I had wanted to take portraits and understand how to light them; in this current pandemic, who better to experiment with other than one’s self?
I’ve been using one light so far: Rembrandt lighting from 45 degrees up and to the side; and from a height at a 70 degree angle. I take the photos on a timed exposure of ten seconds, giving me enough time to pose after setting up the picture. (I may buy a long cable release for this purpose.)
I’m learning, slowly. Good focus takes some effort. I definitely hope to use what I’ve learned with other sitters. I am nowhere near a portrait “style”. But it’s very interesting to sit for a portrait and see myself in the frame, especially as a black person, interpreting and representing what I look like in a photograph. I am here.
New filmmaking
After making my environmental short, I have started work on a new short film.
I wrote the script some months ago, but put it to one side as I had started writing a feature screenplay that expanded on this short’s idea. As writing progressed, I returned to this short as I found myself more and more interested in playing with its ideas.
Although realising this short film is a daunting prospect, the shoot has been enjoyable so far, with props and shot set ups I haven’t used before. Where I think things will become complex is with the sound, which will be a huge part of this film.
In any case, I’ve greatly enjoyed the process. I’m looking on short films more as sketches or practice and I’m enjoying making as many as possible, on any media I can use. And the more I do it, the less daunting it will be.
TikToking
The social media platform TikTok, with its short form videos displaying stunts, humour, music, politics and mischief, has amused and fascinated me for some time, so I’ve decided to make a few short films for the platform myself.
While the features of the platform allowing you to upload and edit phone videos are straightforward and simple to use, some content creators have done some fantastic work with transitions and camera moves: all very inspiring.
Most inspiring for me are the people I’ve come across on this platform. I’ve learned about design, architecture and cooking. I’ve listened to varying views on politics, economics and cinema. I’ve been fascinated by historians and polemicists. All these individuals, with their interesting, at times irreverent but always well put together videos.
Every social media platform seems to have a “moment”: Facebook’s first flurry in the early part of the century; Tumblr’s glow up a few years later; Twitter’s intersection with politics and culture a few years after that. All these moments have been extraordinary, and all have soured somewhat, whether with content problems or algorithm issues. Even as the platforms themselves have gone on from strength to strength financially, much of the same user affection from those earlier highs evaporates.
TikTok is having such a moment, with users trolling the former president and content creators building careers off their micro-short uploads: maybe bigger moments are to come. But in the meantime, it’s great fun to use.
The air around us
Following my WHO Health for All film festival entry, I decided to follow up on another idea I had for an environmental short film.
The idea was concerned with air pollution: I’d read news stories about people suffering respiratory illnesses near busy carriageways like the North Circular Road and Park Lane; also Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s case had been in the newspapers for some time.
On researching air pollution’s effects on the body’s organs, I depicted these with watercolour paints on a pristine white shirt, intercutting them with images of road traffic.
I enjoyed making some work around the subject of the environment, which is becoming ever more urgent as time progresses. As usual with any creative endeavour, there are many things that I’d do differently next time. Nonetheless, I learned a lot, which I hope to bring to my next short project.
WHO Health for All Film Festival
Late last year, I saw by chance that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was organising a short film festival.
The WHO Health For All Film Festival has been running for two years: this year, it requested short films on three possible categories. Universal health coverage, health emergencies, and better health and wellbeing were the topics on offer and I chose the first, as it was partially concerned with non-communicable diseases.
Having had personal experience of Alzheimer’s disease through family and friends, I made a film about this illness’ effects. I remember thinking that it was like having parts removed from something familiar, so I took my idea from there.
Alzheimer’s from Burning Details on Vimeo.
Recently, I received an email detailing the competition’s finalists. My film was not among them, but the shortlisted films displayed a standard of craft in storytelling, sound, photography, editing and design that I found wholly inspiring.
The craft of filmmaking is an ever deepening field. One of the many pleasures I get from making films is discovering more of it. I hope to bring some more of this craft to my work when I enter this competition next year.
Scanning
Having worked through my old digital images, I’ve begun to sort through my transparency photographs.
I shot on transparency film exclusively for a number of years at the turn of the century: most were mounted and scanned, but as I shot more print film and then moved onto digital capture, I left transparency film by the wayside. I have quite a few rolls to go through.
Shooting on 35mm and medium format film, I found the images on transparencies, especially when projected or on my light-box, to be full of gorgeous detail and light. However, my scans never quite measured up to what I saw “live”. Furthermore, on Kodak’s beautiful Technical Pan film, a single scan pass didn’t do justice to all the detail held therein.
After chancing by an article in the Guardian, in which a photographer talked of scanning his images for highlights, shadows and mid-tones before layering them in photoshop, I changed my scanning technique. I made three scans of each image for the bright areas, shadows and “normal” areas then looked to how I could best combine them.
The internet is full of tutorials on this, but I found the most comprehensive (and understandable) ones gave pointers on using image>apply image with layer masks on Photoshop. After recording a few steps, I worked through the scans pretty well. As to the results?
Fitzrovia Square
I’m currently working through some donated rolls of 35mm film on my rangefinder: black and white print film. In time, I hope to be working through more 35mm and medium format film and I’ll be trying more scanning and blending techniques to display them.
The deep dive
I’m currently amping up my photoshop skills.
There have been two projects so far; both to do with layering. They have been fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, but also totally necessary in order to make the images I am ambitious to create.
I have been inspired by such photographers as Ilina S, Erika Tschinkel, Sabina and Zhang Jinga, who all suffuse their images with an air of the fantastic, with their use of subject, composition, lighting and post production. Their images and technique remind me of the painstaking work of special visual effects teams in film making.
My rudimentary efforts so far make me think of how one can know when an image is “complete”. I’ve never been able to work that out in my writing, editing or darkroom work. The idea that creative work is never finished but abandoned comes to mind.
Maybe such knowledge comes from knowing how to best use the tools, which is what I’m learning now. Tutorials abound and I’m practising regularly.
New Light through Old Windows
To clear space on my computer, I’ve been going through every file to find RAW images. Thorough searching has turned up a plethora of files, containing RAW images from as far back as 2010. I’ve been editing them and exporting them to jpeg files and the space cleared has been phenomenal.
Tower bridge in 2014
I’ve learned a lot from this process. My image editing speed has risen and I’ve become more organised in my photo collating: over the years, files have become organised by date and place, rather than subject, titles, moods and whatnot; I hope to find an ideal filing system in future, but for now, my filing has never been more organised.
The main aspect I’ve learned is in my ability to edit an image, especially when I come across photographs that I have edited some years previously. Like shining new light through old windows, my editing vastly improves on what I have done before. I’ll be printing some of these new images soon.
This last aspect has left me wondering about when an image is complete. I must have felt that I had done a decent job editing some years ago, only to supplant those efforts more recently. How may I edit those photos in a year’s time? How do I know when an image has been edited enough? When will a photograph be “correct”? And what is a correct image? One that represents an event with perfect accuracy, or one that lives up to one’s personal memory or expression?
I have also been wondering more about how I use editing programmes. I recently wrote about taking a deeper dive in using Photoshop: part of that deeper dive concerns thinking about what kind of images I want to create. There are many photographers I follow: snappers, artists, portraitists, fashionistas; they all have their own way of looking at their worlds. They all worked towards their particular view, so in my new photographs, I hope to experiment towards a view of my own.
Trailer
Fluid trailer from Burning Details on Vimeo.
My micro-budget feature, Fluid, was screened one morning at the Rich Mix cinema in Shoreditch, London to an audience of cast, crew and friends. It was the last step of an extraordinary year-long adventure, in which I’d written, produced, directed, photographed and edited a science fiction film with a crew of professionals and non-professionals: fuelled by enthusiasm, a low budget and hope, we completed this film to the best of our ability. I had never felt more fulfilled.
My wish was to see a project through to screening and, while it didn’t make it into the festivals I entered, I considered it a rewarding project that taught me a great amount about filmmaking. There’s much I wish I could have done differently, but that’s for the next film.
As part of putting the production to bed, I wanted to make a trailer for it. Friends who come with me to the cinema know how much I love trailers and I wanted to do the same for this film: as an exercise it was as eye opening as making a feature.
When I was at college, I met a musician who told me of his experience in editing down an album track to release as a single. I kept thinking of this as I ended Fluid down on iMovie; trying to distill the essence of the film, its story and themes from 75 minutes to under two minutes. Many notes were written before I edited a single image.
On completion, I shared the trailer with the cast and crew: their responses were positive and I’m pleased with the result. But I’m left with one nagging feeling: I want to do more. I want to tell another story. I want to make another film. Onto the next.
Burning Details 
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