Post Production Essay Task

"The post production stage can be the most important part of the filming process."
How important has the post production stage been in your foundation and advanced portfolios and how have you skills been developed over these two years?

Across the two productions I have created (a thriller opening for AS and music video at A2). I feel that the post production stage has been significant because this is when I finally saw my productions come together.

"Editing was the foundation of film art." was believed by Eisenstein who was a media theorist, by this he meant there are relationships between many shots and are two types of montages which can be used. Dialectical montage which is abrupt and jagged like in the film 'Seven', although these effects look really professional I didn't use this in my thriller opening because it didn't suit the sub genre I was looking for. I didn't use this in my music video either, although I did use fast cut montages which worked well with the tempo of the song and cutting on the beats. The second montage which Eisenstein created was called intellectual montage which is editing to suggest ideas. This was what I used through out my music video, some of the editing effects such as the 'dream' effect was put in the chorus section which matched with the lyrics to imply 'a trick of the light'. I didn't really use this in my thriller opening although because I had analysed other thrillers I had noticed that the lighting of the shots was darker, so I scaled down the brightness and contrast of some of the shots during editing if they were a little to light for the genre of my opening or if they stood out from the other shots.

In both of my productions I used the same editing software, iMovie which was on an Apple Mac. This software is quite basic but was really all I needed for both of my productions. In my first production, which was my thriller opening (AS) I had a draft storyboard which had basic indications of what I wanted to achieve in the editing process. This was very helpful, but because I wasn't sewn down to a completed final storyboard, I didn't have limitations which I did in my music video. The limitations for my music video weren't bad because at least then I could follow it precisely and not go off into a different effect which wouldn't look quite as good. If I had used an exact storyboard during the editing process I think the effects which I would have used would have been more precise and look a lot more professional. On the other hand, not having a final storyboard allowed some freedom as I had not used this software package before and could explore different effects to see if they fitting my thriller.

In my second production which was my music video (A2) I did have limitations for what effects to use because of my final storyboard, but this doesn't mean I didn't have a chance to explore the effects. Before I was drawing up my story and whilst I was doing my storyboard I browsed through effects I could use and also uncovered a hidden drag and drop menu which wasn't enabled as a default. This was helpful whilst editing my music video together because there were a few more features which I played around with. I was originally going to use a green screen effect because it looked very effective when I was browsing the effects. Then I found that a green screen was actually needed which was a lot of money and out of my budget. So alternatively I found some green fabric which I was potentially going to use, but in the end, that idea wasn't going to work because there was no way of hanging it up during the filming process whilst keeping it static.

My star image motif which I used throughout my music video and ancillary task was the idea of cardboard boxes. This was very effective and fitting in well as boxes were all over the warehouse to imply a toy factory. A jack in the box, was my other star image motif which was equally effective, it also fitted with the name of the song which was also 'Jack in the Box'. To portray my star image motif from the beginning of my music video right through to the end, I used the song which is played when a jack in the box is wound up - Pop Goes The Weasel. I added this to the beginning along with a black screen which was to get my audience wondering what was going to happen next in the music video. I ended with the jack in the box popping up to the remainder of the music. This effect worked brilliantly and I am very proud of it.