Daniel Smith

From my experience, it's down to instinct. When I'm editing, I can always *tell* when something is too long or too short, if it does not flow. And someone with more experience than myself will know these things to an even further extent. Like everything it's down to practice. To be honest you're best off just giving it a go. Shoot a 5 minute basic drama, digitise the footage and start editing. And you will encounter all of these things on the way. Failing that, see if you can be an assistant editor on someone else?s film. That way you'll learn a lot of techniques from someone a lot more experienced. Personally I could never learn from books... Much preferred the practical approach to things.

Well it's a different story now but I'll certainly keep those ideas you've posted in mind for the future. Cheers! And here is a youtube version of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cla_VaGVgU Yeh, there's plenty of things I messed up on, which I could so easily put right if I had the chance to go back. The worrying thing is, I knew how to do these things, but when it came to it I just messed it up. Anyways thanks for the advice. Hopefully the cinematography in my next film *will* be 50% better. I have no idea what the final cut is going to look like now to be honest... considering the editor has now put the flashback scene at the beggining, and then the depressed dark scenes after. The thing he doesn't realise is that it will take hours to re-mix all of the audio for it. And at the rate he's working on it, and the time we have left, it's not going to happen. Ah well... it's the cinematography that counted I suppose...

Just to say, a few friends of mine had trouble just clicking on it and opening it straight up with wmp. If you right-click on it and then click on 'save target as' then it should work. Oh.. and lets not forget the crappy crappy poster I knocked up... lol Also just to mention, on the warmed up flashback scene, the white bits are not over blown, it's just that I de-saturated the highlights in post.

No unfortunatelly it was a lot more. More like 10 hours. Which, even so, doesn't sound like very much, the editing suites are only open for a few hours each day. And they all started at the crack of dawn, so I was getting up each morning when I didn't need to. And trust me I would love to get rid of him and do it myself, but unfortunatelly, I'm not allowed. Blow it there's no point in moping around, here is a very rough version of it: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bas/checkmate.wmv I mean... I really hate to sound arrogant and everything, but I practically did EVERYTHING for this film. I mean even when it came to the shoot, we didn't have any transport, so I myself had to carry the camera kit, dolly, tripod, lighting kit and sound kit home over 2, hour long journeys. (4 hours travelling in total, on public busses, which were packed)

Ok. First of all, may I just say thankyou to everyone here for your helpfull input, I really appreciate it. This isn't a post for sympathy, it's an apology with an explanation. The film is ruined. In a nutshell. Over the last few weeks I have been getting up at early hours to catch the editing room opening hours to do some editing. It was *almost* TV quality. But today, the editor had a look at it. All we needed to do was shorten it down a bit and add in the voice over audio. He ended up changing everything around. And saving over my version of the edit. So yes.. the film still exists.. and I will probably still post it (after christmas now..) But yeh, everythings screwed and to be honest, I don't care anymore. I'm not asking for 'Sorry to hear it' replies, I just wanted to apologize and explain why the film is not posted on the internet like I said it would be. The editor told me not to worry and assured me that it will be fine. It won't. Overall it was a good experience which I learnt a lot from. So it wasn't a total waste. It's just a shame the effort put into it will no longer reflect in the film. Anyway. Thanks for the replies in this topic. You guys are awesome.

Good boom.. good sound recorder.. *GOOD* microphone (will make all the difference) But having the sound professionally mixed will also make a lot of difference. It's one thing I always see people skimp on... they use the raw audio recorded on the day, edit it into the film, and leave it at that. The best example I can give is in 'King Kong'. When the actors and actresses are in the dressing rooms congregating, keywords like 'depressing' are mixed louder. That isn't an accident.

Well.. I think it might vary in certain ways, but the 96khz 24bit files I have run at about 4600kbits per second. (575 kbytes) Almost 35mb per minute.

It looks like an audio interface for the computer... not sure why that was mentioned, we're still on the portable audio recorder to plug the mic into on set right? Take a look at this: http://www.music123.com/Marantz-PMD660-i162149.music We have these in college, the quality was pro. *USB cable out to PC or Mac*, makes it very easy to transfer and mix in the audio with the video. (it's like plugging in a USB pen drive, and downloading the files from it) Tommorow we are going to be using it to record a voice over for a film I'm making. I'll find out what mic it is. That will give you a good idea of what the quality is like.

Not that this really answers your question, but it's the pre-amp that's really going to alter the quality.

Guitar and bass. And I'll give a set of drums a whack when given a chance. Practicing vocals. And from my experience, the theory behind film and music are very similar.

(just to clarify.. the mac crashed)

Ok. Film will be uploaded onto youtube and a link will be posted here by the end of next week. From looking at it so far.. it's ok.... nothing special atall. (Crap) Today I was making loads of adjustments to the editing, because the editor spent an overall 2 hours in total on it. (over 4 weeks.... ....) I spent about two hours on it, perfecting it. And if anyone new to editing wants a handy tip, save the work every 20 minutes. Otherwise you end up like me. Losing two hours of work. Talk about learning the hard way.... :(

UCAS points are obtained by doing usually either A-Levels or BTECs. An a-level at C grade is worth 80 UCAS points, whereas a B grade is worth 100 and an A is worth 120. And obviously the more points you have the better the university you will get into. I think you need about 360 points to get into Cambridge. My advice to you is to seriously consider a BTEC. The one my friend did was worth 3 times as many UCAS points as my A-Level yet my A-Level was 3 times as hard. http://www.ucas.com/candq/tariff/index.html

Ok just to say thanks for all your usefull comments, they have helped in my decision. I did try for Surrey but it said on the UCAS web site you need 300 ucas points to get in, I haven't got nearly that many unfortunatelly. (I'm not a very academic person in all honesty. Only reason I'm doing this is for the experience, contacts and links. The qualification itself is just for backup incase thinhs go wrong. I'm much better at practical work.) Now I just have to hope for good references from my teachers. Again, thank you all.

Whoops. As far from "written work" based as possible. Practical working in broadcast. (camera, lighting e.t.c.) There are a few problems I have with being away, for a start my mums not exactly too happy about it, and secondly, money. I don't want to be racked up in debt, working in an industry that provides money that's far from 'consistent'. What was the University of Kent like? Fortunatelly none of the campuses are too far away, so it seems like an option. Apart from Ravensbourne, is there a university that really excels in practical film making? I'm sure Newcastle is good but it's a bit out of reach. I'll look into uni of Kent. Thanks. (I should be in university at the moment... But I messed up a bit in my first year, due to shooting a few pilot episodes bang smack in the middle of college time.)

Wasn't bad... needs more attention to detail though. On position 1:21 there is shadow on the wall from the camera, atleast it looks like it anyway. Be nice if there was some back light instead of a flat key light. The title sequence seemed a bit strange, how it fades out into a static shot, and then the static shot starts moving. I would have probably faded to black, then created a white out into the moving shot. And at position 5:30 you can see a light in the reflection of the window. But it wasn't bad.

Hi. I'm a week away from submitting my UCAS form to the universities, trouble is I've only got 4 subjects listed where as I should have 6 ideally, to maximise my chances of getting in. So far I've chosen Ravensbourne as first choice and Greenwich as second. The trouble is I don't know of any others, that are local anyway. Any suggestions? Thanks.

I find film making to be a mixture of emotion. At times you feel stressed out, and that you hate the film you're making, but at other times you're having a great laugh with the others involved. But when it's all over, you almost regret rushing things and shouting at people because you were sick of it, you miss it in a way. Like most jobs I suppose. (Not that I've been on many films sets where I've truly missed the work and the people, it was only on that series I shot a few years ago that I became 'attached' in any way)

I saw this film some years ago, and have always wondered how they actually shot a few of the scenes. But never got round to asking. Does anyone here know how they did the fire extinguisher scene? And the camera movements are pretty inetresting to, the camera seems to spin around and revolve, I didn't think you could really do that with a hand held 35mm camera. (be bloody difficult anyway) What do you know about this film? Thanks. (In film A2 we're going to be studying shocking cinema... can't wait to show the class this...)

Oh don't get me wrong I'd do it again any place any time if someone asked me. It's a brilliant opportunity. But it's still pretty stressfull. Being 'on the ball' for hours straight, you have to be there on the ready so when you hear 'slates up', you have the slate prepared and ready to put up. And making a single mistake will screw things up all the way down the line. On my recent film I asked a friend to do the slates, trouble is, he'd never made a film before. At times I caught myself raising my voice with him a little because he didn't have it prepared and more importantly wasn't shutting up when we were going for takes.

If the DVD's have protection then Magic DVD Copier will do the trick. Although the demo only has 5 rips allowed in it, but it's not exactly hard to... well.. yeh.

People tend to see clapper loading as a job for a 15 year old p.a. from shootingpeople.org or something. I thought that. But then I did it in a film last year and... is it fu.....

I'm off to see Casino Royale in a few hours. After what I've been hearing, I'm pretty excited about it. Craig has completely smashed what the critics were saying about him (I knew he would), and it sounds like it's going to be a pretty personal account of James Bond, something we've never seen before. I wonder if it will top Goldeneye... (IMO "one of" the best James Bonds)

This is coming from an amateur so ignore if you wish, but it's still my opinion. I can't stand seeing flat lit backgrounds. (If you want flat, bounce the light off the ceiling or something to prevent hard shadows) One thing I did in a recent shoot was: 1. Shoot the light through a grid which separated the light giving a much more interesting look 2. Closed the horizontal barn doors leaving only a few centimeters. This gave a thin, powerfull line of light which over powered the backlight, looked really effective. I have to get some stills developed, I could probably upload an example once I have. Try playing around with some gels. Could try buying some incense sticks and smoke the place up a bit if you want. (Looks really cool, unless it starts showing light beams coming from places that does not look natural for a light)

Bare in mind that digital and film see light differently. I'm not exactly sure what the differences between film and tube cameras are... Perhaps someone around here can fill that in for me. And this Hi8 video camera probably won't have all the settings of the 8mm cine camera. (Shutter speed, ISO, f. stop e.t.c.) So it won't give a very accurate representation of what the 8mm cine camera will see at all. How about a light meter instead? That way you replicate the settings from the 8mm cine camera and can perform multiple tests to see what's correctly exposed and what isn't. Now THAT, would be impressive from a 15 year old in this modern day and age. Even if you cock up a few times. We all do it. I've just finished shooting a project. I screwed parts up that I'll never be able to shoot again. But I won't make the same mistakes again.