Due to storyboarding, it was really easy to arrange and file my footage systematically. Firstly I went through all of the footage which I had separated by each day of filming – any footage of retakes of previous days were moved into the folder that aligned with their sequence. I numbered the ‘usable’ files; ‘unusable’ files are takes that contain footage which is of poor quality, or where we weren’t ready to to take but rolled the camera accidentally or simply where a better version was taken. I also began creating a separate category of footage beginning with ‘C’ to indicate that this is ‘cat footage’ which is usable at any point throughout the entirety of my film. I can also use this footage to create cat videos to accompany the marketing of my film. I moved all ‘usable’ files into one folder entitled ‘usable footage’. I also noted the numbers of each day of shooting in order to import my files one section at a time (referring back to three sections my poem is in), to prevent crashing in my editing software but also so I could edit through each section gradually.
(Screenshots demonstrating my editing organisational system)
Organising my footage like this made the editing process a lot easier to do. It allowed me to spend more time editing rather than spending my time sifting through which footage would make a good clip. As I have already lost a week of editing due to my laptop being fixed (after the Great Coffee Flood ’15), having my footage organised this way made my editing process more efficient. Researching editing roles within the industry, I found that editors are often creating a rough cuts as the film is in production, Fred Raskin who was editor for Tarantino’s Django Unchained (after the tragic death of Sally Menke) stated in an interview:
“I worked on my own, assembling a rough cut from all the material that was coming in, and, in the process, familiarizing myself with all of the footage, so I’d be able to find things more quickly when Quentin arrived… I was very thorough and made sure that everything was pretty polished even at that early stage” (Raskin, 2013)
Unlike Raskin, I have written, storyboarded and filmed my project so I fortunately know what I want from the footage. Nonetheless, I wanted to practice keeping my editing organised as editing is something I’d be interested in going into as a career. As I wasn’t in control of the camera and at some points I had to stand away so I wasn’t in shot, I don’t know exactly what all the footage looked like, so familiarising myself with the files allowed me to be swift when it came to what I wanted to communicate through my edit and what footage I had.
In the beginning sequence (getting ready) of the edit, I used jump cuts to show that time had passed but also to move the sequence on. Brian getting ready isn’t vital for the narrative progression, it is merely an opening sequence allowing me to introduce the character to the audience. Most opening sequences often set up the narrative, location and/or characters. My favourite opening sequence of all time, The Lion King (1994) offers the renowned African chant, setting the location to Africa (we assume Kenya due to the species of animals) and also introduces that all the animals are flocking and moving with their own animal groups. As it plays out, it brings in the idea of unity amongst the species (despite some being predators) and then a kingdom, which brings the introduction of the main characters, and more importantly, the Lion King.
I have considered using the technique of opening with the ending, a common practice amongst many great films such as Fight Club (1999) and Pulp Fiction (1994). This is a style used to get the audiences attention from the beginning and consequently hooks the audience to watch the rest of the film so they understand the beginning sequence. Some films such as Goodfellas(1990) use shock to get the audience to question how the characters would end up in such a horrifyingly violent situation. Others, such as American Beauty (1999), plant information in the audience’s mind to make them think they know the ending, cinema often lies to us so we wait to see what happens, and whether our prediction of the narrative is correct.
(Goodfellas, 1990, Opening sequence)
(American Beauty, 1999, Opening sequence)
One opening sequence using this formula, which I have always distinctly remembered, is Breaking Bad. They firstly set the scene of the dry American dustbowl landscape which then they bring an object into the visuals, a pair of trousers, which you wouldn’t associate with this environment. This brings an air of mystery and captures the audience’s attention through the use of an enigma.
Unfortunately, my film is a short film and I have around thirteen minutes of good footage at most, so I feel in my circumstance I can’t use any of my visuals without giving the plot of the film away. I had originally used the ‘ending as the beginning’ style, however, it felt that the rest of the film was relatively dull in comparison to this sequence. Fortunately my opening narrative paragraph brings this idea of giving away the ending:
The story begins in a town neither big nor small,
Nothing eventful, nothing at all.
Here people lived at a pace rather slow
Never in a race, moved by ebb, drawn by flow
A suburban wasteland of the mundane
No compulsive behaviour – always the same
However there was one thing Brian really did know…
Was that these infernal cats had to go!
I use the idea of letting the audience think they know what’s going to happen throughout the narrative, when in actual fact, Brian is already being eaten by the cats by the time he makes a decision about whether he really wants the cats or not. It also sets the scene for the narrative, giving a circumstance to the character and his location. My plan from then on was to have the sound overlapping a plain black background, however, I wanted to be a little more adventurous – although this idea could work, I feel these kinds of openings work best followed by a cinematic landscape shot, or going straight into a group dialogue like Tarantino does in Reservoir Dogs (1992).
Originally I had used a black ‘paper textured’ background for the opening, however it felt boring and the ‘paper’ almost looked like ridged metal flooring, I then overlapped it with a moving image of a blended overlapping shot of the cat. I think this works well as it sets the theme of the cats, but also, the cats aren’t instantly recognisable as cats until you really focus on them. It gives an unusual but enigmatic feeling whilst complementing the black paper textured background. It also gives a sense that something is watching you, adding to the eerie feeling I want to communicate throughout my film.
(Opening shot for In the Cat House)
I have used an editing pattern throughout my film where I create a montage sequence of Brian doing a trivial task such as getting changed or preparing a sandwich, which is then followed by a long intense shot. I have done this to balance the spurts of jump cuts and long shots to give a pacing to the film and to coincide with the pacing of the poem. For me, they represent a failed visual crescendo, foreshadowing the climax of the film where Brian has a breakdown, I eventually use lots of overlapped images. This represents Brian’s emotions and how they build up, echoing how he ‘flipped’ and murdered Jim and his mother.
The long shot show the pacification of Brian’s heightening emotional state. The overlapping of the shots when Brian breaks down shows that he is trying to organise his real repressed memories and his false memories of how he got the cats, they also show how Brian is struggling to grasp on to reality (the room around him) and give the audience a sense that his ‘head is spinning’ with thoughts and emotions. As Brian doesn’t speak throughout the film, the audience has no real way of knowing what Brian is thinking, they can only assume things through what they see, this for the audience is the first look into Brian’s thought process and, hopefully, it’s as confusing and disorganised as it is for him. He is struggling with guilt, and I hope this sequence represents that.
Color Grading
For the colour grading, I created a dark but saturated green tone to the piece. This has been influence by a few texts. Firstly, Breaking Bad uses colour significantly throughout it’s series. Vince Gilligan comments in an IndieWire interview about his editing process that he wanted ‘to spend as much time in the editing room to get the edits exactly right to the frame‘ (Gilligan, 2012). My favourtive part about Breaking Bad, visually, was the colour used throughout the series. Characters had specific colours given to them (like Marie and her sickly obsession with purple) which the show creators have explained to be planned precisely to the character’s involvement with the meth, and then throughout the series the colour changes as to how the characters ‘decay’.
(Breaking Bad, colourising character’s decay [Breaking Bad Wikia] )
My specific colour attraction to Breaking Bad is the colour green. The green within Breaking Bad represents the greed, money, growth and envy. These are the themes that cause the characters to corrupt and decay. Similarly with In the Cat House I want to show that Brian is corrupted and decaying. Green is, by nature, the most natural and ‘earthy’ colours, however, through the expansion of civilisation and the modern world and through the growth of capitalism, we see the colour ‘green’ less and less everyday. With capitalism, we see those traits of green in Breaking Bad (greed, money, growth, envy). For my generation, green has often been used as the ‘stepping stone’ colour of evil within texts, for example, the green of Slytherin in the Harry Potter franchise. Green is becoming more associated with the colour of corruption rather than nature; it is associated with the idea of a nuclear holocaust too as it’s the colour of toxic waste, nuclear pollution, and the nuclear source, uranium.
Even to counter act this idea, we now use the word green as a verb i.e ‘we’re going green’, although it is associated to a positive outcome, it also reminds us that we have to ‘go green’ because of the devastating effects of pollution and climate change.
‘Money can’t buy you happiness’
But unfortunately, for a lot of people, they think it can. Personally, cats bring happiness, cats are like an instant hit of ecstasy for me. This is a message i’m trying to communicate through my film, that Brian doesn’t find happiness in money or relationships, he finds happiness in his love for his cats.
Another reason I use the colour green throughout the film is because of the thematic homage to The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses colour to represent his message to the readers. He uses green as a symbol of hope: ‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us‘(Fitzgerald, 1925). I similarly have used the colour of green to represent Brian’s hope for his future with his cats, however, his future is futile due to his actions in the past.
(The Great Gatsby, 2013)
There a couple of scenes where the colour is altered. Firstly, the scene where Cleocatra hides to have her kitten. This uses a dark nighttime blue colour grading as we filmed during the day whereas this scene is meant to be during a thunderstorm at night. I created this by using blues and then dropping the dark tone on the exposure and dropping the dark tones in the saturation. Although, the scene doesn’t look like it’s filmed in the dead of night, it seems as if the scene is set just after the sun has set, or during a thunderstorm. By using light keying and tracking and by adding flashes to the light source I gave the effect of lightning.
Another scene where the colours aren’t complete green, are after Brian has his breakdown. I wanted to create a dream-like memory scene by using yellows to make this effect. The idea of yellow in both Breaking Bad signifies the true colour of meth and also the colour of cowardice and fear (whether it’s within the character internally or the effect they want produce externally). In The Great Gatsby, yellow signifies the idea of decay and the corruption of white (corruption of purity). With the tones of green come the tones of yellow, especially on the white cats and Brian’s skin, signifying to audience that these characters are ‘unwell’ and decaying.
Bibliography
Online
Slant Magazine. 2013. A Cut Above: An Interview with Django Unchained Editor Fred Raskin. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/a-cut-above-an-interview-with-django-unchained-editor-fred-raskin. [Accessed 06 May 15]
Indiewire. 2012. Vince Gilligan Talks “Breaking Bad,” Knowing Where the Series Will End and the Spin-off He’d Like to See. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.indiewire.com/article/television/vince-gilligan-breaking-bad. [Accessed 06 May 15]
Breaking Bad Wikia. 2008. Colour – Breaking Bad. [ONLINE] Available at:http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Color?file=Breakingbad-colors.jpg. [Accessed 06 May 15].
Video
Youtube. (1994). The Lion King – The Circle of Life (HD). [Online Video]. 27 August. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RE7uC8QXjY. [Accessed: 06 May 2015]
Youtube. (1990). ICONIC CINEMA: Goodfellas opening scene. [Online Video]. 17 March. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEwJdGfi1p8. [Accessed: 06 May 2015].
Youtube. (1999). AMERICAN BEAUTY opening scene. [Online Video]. 05 November. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqwSTe5rvo. [Accessed: 06 May 2015]
Youtube. (2008). Breaking Bad Season 1 Episode 1 Pilot Full. [Online Video]. 09 February. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SszTbvV6yQI. [Accessed: 06 May 2015].
Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. UK, Penguin Modern Classics
None Of That 
