Exhibiting our work

Our module stated that our film needed to be submitted to a film festival, which should have fallen parallel in with another Bath spa module which involved organizing a film festival, which was called Line Up. However, the dates did not quite match up which meant that in order to fulfil the course we would need to find an alternative festival to submit it to. It is fortunate that for the past three months Elspeth and Myself had been doing work experience for a local company called Suited and Booted which involved distributing their Club Flix young people films to free festivals. This meant that we were familiar with the process of trying to find festivals. However, all the festivals that we were familiar with had already passed their deadline dates, which meant that we needed to look for other potential options. Myles and Gus stated that they wanted to submit the film to one of their local film festivals back in London called Crystal Palace Film festival. Elspeth and myself decided that we were also going to send it to the local Bristol film festival called Encounters. It is unfortunate that this one now contains an entry fee that was £10, which when considering that this will be split between 5 of us, it works out to be a petty £2.

The other event that was organized was the Premier screening night at the Little theatre cinema, which was organized by Mike Johnston, our module lecturer. This was a very successful night that was very enjoyable. There were a few minor technical faults, which unluckily affected our film screening. This was brought about due to the fact that Mike was unable to play the films straight from a hard drive, which meant that he had to compress them onto a DVD format. This meant that the true quality of our camera (Canon 7D) would not be seen, and that due to the fact that we filmed on this great camera made if difficult to compress as it was filmed in a 24fps, which altered from the Sony Z1. Despite these technical problems, the audience awarded our film on the night as the best film. We won a bottle of Champagne, which was amazing, considering all of the time, and effort that was devoted to this film.

Here are some pictures of us after the event.

The edit.

At the beginning of my first year when I had signed up for a practical film module I decided to purchase Final Cut Express, as it would enable me to perform editing. Many of my lecturers said that it would be sufficient for editing. However, before we went on the Easter break, we all decided to do our own edits of the film. I bought a Lacie hard drive, so I could drag the Footage, and the synced audio and footage. However, when trying to edit it in my current version of FCE, it refused. After much research we found that this was due to the fact that Apple encouraged their customers to upgrade to the full FCP version, but however stopped people going back down the 'ladder'. This was extremely frustrating, especially as I was unable to perform an edit over the easter when I had FCE, and a suitably fast laptop. After much thought I decided to get the whole FCP version as it is something I was planning before finishing Uni anyway. Over the break I became very familiar with the software, completing In my opinion, a very tight edit. However, again I faced problems when trying to cut parts of my edit into the Uni machines, and this was because I had bought the latest version of Final Cut Pro, being the 7 edition. The one at university was the 6th, again I faced the problem with transferring my edit back down the 'ladder'. I am not impressed with Apple, all they are interested in is money!!!

We all had to do a complete re-edit on the uni machine. We incorporated the best parts of each edit, making it into one. Although we faced some big problems regarding the sound, due to the tape recorder not working. We had many booking with Richard Wood, trying to sort this. It's done now, but its not 100% perfect. I guess you learn from your mistakes. I certainly have anyway.