Getting on with the Editing in Final Cut Pro.
Yet again, it was time for the wonders of Final Cut Pro to collaborate all the frames together to make our short film, Just Desserts. After filming was seen to be a success, we got on with the capturing and logging the two tapes. Everything was looking good, the picture quality was satisfactory and as the music was sent to us in mp3 form, it seemed to work well with the frames.
Music
We decided to make the whole short with music as the audio, and having no audible dialogue. Rachel's friends band, called The Jackals. The song we used was called Puppets and Fakes. The lyrics were suitable to the office scene (our opening scene) as it explains how working is labor and they rather get the money for free. This is fitting the main character Chris, as he is portrayed as laid back and immature.
Re-shoot
After we made our first rough cut, Mike told us that we were missing a few shots. Shots, such as the washing machine on, symbolizing the room turning upside down. Mike also told us that we needed more shots of Chris miss reading more signs. So me and Adi booked out the equipment to re-shoot. We managed to collect the equipment the next day and start filming. The only problem was that our main actor was unavailable to shoot these extra shots. So we had to improvise. Instead of shooting him in the shot, we shot my hands which will fit nicely into a shot we already had of him opening the cupboard. This we used for him as another example of ignoring a sign. We also had the idea of using my drawing pin board with numerous amount of signs on it, this worked quite well with just using a panning shot.
Post-Production Regrets
When watching at the rough cut several times, they are many aspects which I feel we could of done better or added in, which would be hard to re-do. I had the idea of a surreal moment of when Chris is on the ceiling and various amounts of signs fall round him. This could of made the ending much justified in its surreal ending of the room turning upside down.
Another idea I had was inspired by the Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. I particular like the duel scenes where Leone cleverly uses fast shots between two or more characters where it inter-cuts from long shot, medium, medium close-up, close-up, extreme close up, etc. These alternating between the characters. I had the idea of using for the character Chris while he glares at the microwave before the room turns upside down. This creating suspense and attention. The picture on the right shows this as the fast cuts ends up to being this close, if not closer. The next step is finalizing the shots and making them look visually perfect as possible. We are currently in the process of doing this. I am looking forward to the final outcome of the short film.
