Conversations on Cultural Identity with Julia Editing Process

Final Cut:

https://vimeo.com/user94672251/review/483006755/eb3db6d48f

As I mentioned, a worry of mine was tackling the editing due to the overwhelming amount of footage. When I did the initial ‘string-out’ there was 50 minutes of footage of just her speaking, without my questions. Plus b-roll!

This is obviously quite a lot, and as I mentioned, I did feel as though there were three topics that were covered, so this is something that once I started editing, that I found really hard to narrow down what was important to be said.

Also as there were three languages in the film, I really wanted to make sure there was enough in each. Furthermore, I added in these three languages not only as another stylistic choice, but also as I think that knowing a language from your heritage really becomes a part of your cultural identity which I think was important to show through the film.

Initially I found myself putting in quotes that just sounded nice, however, I then realised that what was important, was Julia speaking on purely personal thoughts, as opposed to ‘academic sounding’ definitions of cultural identity.

Last night, I watched a video of Agnes Varda, a French New Wave director, speaking on Documentaries, and she said somethings that I found really interested and this influenced my editing technique which worked really well for me.

In the video, Agnes spoke about her editing technique, and said that she collates all of the speech, and then transcribes it. And then from there, is able to select what quotes she wants to use to build her story. I thought this was really clever and that I would experiment with this method.

So I inserted a timecode layer onto the footage, and watched through the 50 minute string-out and every time Julia said a sentence that I felt was relevant and sounded nice, that I would slice that part of the video, label it yellow, and then write down the beginning of the quote in my notebook with the clip name and timecode.

Then following this, I numbered each of the quotes. I then went through all of the quotes and played around with creating a story by switching the quotes around to create a flowing narrative. This process took a really really long time, but then once I had done this, I was able to go to the timecodes, pick out the clips and string them together.

Here you can see my quote notes with timecodes and clip names with little comments and notes to remind myself of the quote.

Here you can see that I created a transparent video which I put into a new track and then input a timecode effect on it and made sure that the timecode referenced the clip as opposed to the media which would start the timecode at a random time. It was good to learn how to use timecodes as this is something that can really help with work efficiency, but it is also heavily used within industry.

Here you can see my notes where I experimented with moving around all of the quotes to create a cohesive story but it was really useful to work like this to make the footage easier to handle. As you can see though, a lot changed to the narrative from here which I did within Premiere itself,

I am really happy with this technique and it really helped me and made me feel less overwhelmed when looking at the 50 mins of footage and not knowing where to start.

Once I put all of the footage in the order I selected, I played around further and swapped and changed different parts and added in and took away certain parts until I was happy with the overall flow of the audio.

I eventually got this down to 4 and a half minutes. and then further down to 1 minute and 45 seconds without any pauses or credits.

Then once I was happy and locked in the audio, I began adding in the b-roll footage to cover awkward cuts where I had strung together  individual words to create sentences.

Just to be clear, I didn’t change the meaning of Julia’s story by doing this, it was purely to create the correct ‘tense’ or flow of a sentence to make the story more concise and flow with the different sections/topics.

Then once I was happy with the b-roll footage and the over all edit of the film, I decided to test inputting the still imagery to the shots to bring in the influence from French New Wave again and also as a visual tool, as I mentioned previously to create a stillness and focus on the words.

I took photos of the polaroids and put them into photoshop to ensure that they were ‘flat’ using the perspective tool and removed the backgrounds.

Then I began with experimenting on how to put them within the film. I tried cropping out the white border and just having them as images that filled the screen, but I decided that that didn’t really work and was a bit confusing, and so decided to keep them as polaroids layered onto the footage behind.

I also experimented with placement, by trying them to the side and eventually decided on having them centred mainly due to the fact that the subtitles are also centred.

This image I felt was really unbalanced and gave an uncomfortable feeling to the footage which I didn’t like.

I actually quite like this experiment, but like I said, I decided to keep them uniform and in the centre now to keep uniformity with the landscape polaroids that are featured later on in the film.

^The chosen outcome.

With regards to subtitles, I created two string outs of the footage where she was speaking in Russian and German, and she wrote out the translations for me. I decided to use the same sans serif font that is used in the title and credits graphic which is Adobe Clean UX with a 3 point black stroke which I felt was clear and referenced a lot of the subtitle styles of the French New Wave films I’ve watched as well as gaining quite a nostalgic feel.

As you can see, I decided to keep the polaroids in colour and have the footage all in black and white. I felt like this gave a sense of realism and warmth, to the cold black and white fabric. Also I quite enjoyed the experimental feel it gives to the film and references the French New Wave’s ideas of playing with colour in a subtle and stylistic way.

As you can see here, there is a big difference and I prefer the way the colour polaroid brings life to the screen.

Overall, I am really happy with this film. I feel as though I reflected well upon my two previous shoots by learning the creative process of filmmaking and editing from Ruby’s and I learnt from my mistakes from Max’s shoot. Furthermore, I developed my experimentation by bringing new elements to the film and really exploring new ways of filmmaking and editing, therefore improving my skills.

I am now really excited to apply some of this knowledge to Max’s films edit and and really glad to have found a really efficient and compartmentalised method of working which I will carry forward in my work!

Here is the final cut of Conversations on Cultural Identity with Julia Jalyschko on my Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CH53VnqFg5d/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

/Google Drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16z2paTnsyFfU66fcSIPwJ5-JdGui78S2/view?usp=sharing