Chris Ramsden, Editor - Evaluation

For this project I was in group S-09 with Nathan Ives (Cinematographer), Alice Instone-Brewer (Mise en scène) and Chris Readman (Sound Design). I took up the role of Editor. Our film was a comedy mock rockumentary about the ups and downs of an unsigned rock band. This was my original idea from the pitch stage; I thought this would be a good genre to work in because of the conveniences associated with making a film that appears to be non-fiction. The choice of genre eliminated the need for any particularly difficult camerawork, editing or mise en scene in the part of the film we produced.

The subgenre we worked in greatly affected our decisions in the mise en scène, camera, sound, we worked in. The most obvious features that indicate genre in our piece are the camera and editing, the camerawork being simple medium shot interviews and the editing being non naturalistic, non linear montage editing.

The best known example of the genre we worked in is This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984.) Even though I came up with the idea of working in this genre I hadn’t actually seen Spinal Tap until after putting together the rough cut, this helped somewhat as it was a shining example of the genre. Seeing as I hadn’t watched TIST until late into the project I based ideas for cinematography and editing on the TV series The Office: USA. In The Office, medium shot interviews with characters are often used to elaborate or explain situations, as well as for comic effect.

Here is an example of this interview technique. In this clip Steve Carell, playing Michael Scott (the office manager and US counterpart of David Brent from the UK version) explains the rules of calling shotgun.

Due to my role as editor a lot of responsibility surrounding the shape of the story was under my control. The juxtaposition of footage combined with titles and sound in our piece clearly shows that our extract comes from the end of the film. I was sure to cut together footage of different characters talking about each other in a way that highlights the troubles of the band whilst simultaneously creating comedy. Although we wanted parts of our extract to be funny we were also sure not to ruin the seriousness of the extract.

As editor I knew that I would have to work closely with the rest of the group so that each person’s work could be presented in the end product. Alice was sure to use appropriate props and locations, the presence of music equipment in interviews was a small but effective way of indicating the roles of band members. Another good decision was to have Eddie being interviewed outside, in contrast to his band mates who were all interviewed indoors, this was done to show that Eddie is an outsider from the rest of the group.

As both Chris and me were working in post-production we had to blend the video and audio together well to create the right effect. Chris created both of the songs we used in Garage Band, one piece was a melancholic guitar piece (used as background music for all of the clip excluding the titles.) The other piece was made to be a song supposedly created by Rik and Pete from Zebra Voltage after leaving the band. Using this piece over titles explaining what happened to the band members after they parted ways mirrored real documentaries and added to the sense of the band members lives being divided into 2 parts, life during Zebra Voltage and life after, hence emphasizing the theme of broken dreams that persists throughout the film.

From the outset members of the group tweaked and discussed ideas relating to their speciality as well as contributing to ideas for narrative and characters. One change we made was doing away with an establishing shot at the very start of the sequence as we deemed it to be unnecessary. Another major change was the decision to make our sequence the very end of the film, originally we though this scene would be near to the end and not the film’s finale, we then changed our minds in post production and decided that the scene would make a good ending, we then added the text explaining where the band members went next, a classic convention in real documentaries often parodied in mockumentaries.

In response to our rough cut some people said that we should reduce the amount of screen time given to Rik and Pete, we followed their advice, deciding that cutting out parts of Rik and Pete and replacing them with Eddie would make the narrative stronger as well as making Eddie feel like a constant presence. Another criticism of the rough cut was that the “phase sheet” (a physical representation of the band’s misdirection) felt out of place as it is unexplained, however, it would feature earlier in the film, meaning that it would make sense.

The "Phase Sheet":

Labels: Chris Ramsden, Evaluation