The Clip Club

Primary after-school club in East London, UK – we watch, talk about, shoot and edit short films and clips

Archive for the month “May, 2014”

22 May 2014
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Workshop style session & split screen

It is another small group in this session. Wizard23 has football and Dual2 is elsewhere. Nimbus chooses to edit as does Leonardo, while Clara and Cara go and shoot the climax of the film – the meet scene where Clara meets her clone. Meanwhile Gman captures it all on the stills camera. Nimbus and Leonardo begin to think about the sound track – listening to the effects and samples available in the iMovie database.

It then turns out that we need to film Nimbus – The Master – having a meltdown under the stairs so Clara does some editing while this is happening. Both Cara and Gman have goes at filming – there’s a low angle pan upwards from Nimbus’s feet to head and then a high angle shot from the stairs, looking down on a crumpled Nimbus losing his sense of power and all his computer equipment. This shot reminds us of the shot earlier in the film where Nimbus was looking up and smiling, except this time he’s falling apart and things are all going wrong.

The group even get another shot done today – of the Clone’s twitching face as her batteries start to run out. Thanks to Gman for getting these shots and showing us how the film is being put together. Loving the screen in the screen!

It feels like a workshop today because people change what they are doing depending on what needs to be done. And then others take their place. I need to go to a meeting so Mr. P takes over during the remaining time. We’re also collecting some fun bloopers in a special folder in the iMovie project. Hopefully someone will feel like editing all these together at the end.

In the next session – after the half term holiday – let’s use this Youtube clip to tell us how to do a split screen effect. It would be great if someone could watch it beforehand and be prepared to tell us how to do it:

Posted by Michelle Cannon in Cara, Clara, Editing, GMan, Leonardo, Making 'Run School Run! 2', Nimbus, Stills
19 May 2014

Shooting The Meet scene, editing, experimenting on the bridge

Two weeks in May:

We watch a 5 minute animation called Animatou by a Swiss animator called Claude Luyet. He was asked to make a film showing many different animation techniques and he chose to do that using the classic ‘cat and mouse’ routine. The reason I choose to show it now is because it could give us inspiration about how to end the film…?

'Animatou' short by Claude Luyet

‘Animatou’ short by Claude Luyet Source: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtwzud_animatou_shortfilms

Cara is editing with me, and Mr. P accompanies the film crew around film locations going through the shot list. This works well – I make a point of not getting involved and they organise themselves with varying levels of co-ordination. I remind Cara about editing techniques in iMovie and we cut a great sequence. Cara is very good at watching clips, choosing appropriate ones and discarding the rest. She puts the clips in the order she wants and then chops them up into another order and shorter lengths to create tension.

Gman takes a rest from taking photos [particularly like the ones from behind the window of Clara fainting, shown below] and joins the editing team the following week, and over 2 sessions we get to the bit where Clara and Wizard23 are running away from the Clone, down the corridor, passing on either side of the camera – at which point the camera man was lying on the floor propping up the iPad – good choice!. The low angle here makes the audience feel the panic in the actors’ feet as well as on their faces.

Nimbus decides that a good place for the split screen Clone/Real Clara shot might be the bridge. We’re not sure yet if we’re going to use this as we would need to get the actors outside somehow, from the inside corridor shot. Wizard23 starts a great drawing of the insides of a computer. This is because the group had seen the short animation described above and might use some of its ideas with a green screen effect. Meanwhile Clara takes advantage of the smaller group today to film some “Making of” shots.

We watch the shots filmed so far and the cut as it stands at the moment.

Stills from The Meet scene
Posted by Michelle Cannon in Animation, Cara, Clara, Editing, GMan, Making 'Run School Run! 2', Nimbus, Shooting the film, Stills, Wizard23 | Leave a comment
04 May 2014

Shooting ‘the meet’ scene – a good mess?

I know that shooting the scenes can sometimes be messy and not go entirely according to plan… and I think this session is one of these. There’s no Nimbus or Mr. P today so we’re one bigger group doing the shoot together. When I come back from having to move my car, things seem to get more noisy. Tempers are flying … but sometimes, paradoxically and unexpectedly, surprises can happen. Looking at the rushes we get quite a lot of good shots – amid the mayhem – that will be useable. But how many more could we have got if the group had been working together?

The group tends to turn to me to stop the noise, get some order and approve shot ideas, when the group could just organise itself and try things out. Maybe I shouldn’t get involved at all in the shooting, which is quite difficult for me…. that’s my challenge, as a teacher, to let go… what’s yours?

How do people feel when the roles/shots as listed on the ipad aren’t being followed?
Should Michelle not get involved at all in the shooting?
Why do some people lose focus, split from the group, wander off and fiddle with other things?What happens when someone from the group takes charge of the situation?
Why is listening to other people’s ideas or instructions so hard sometimes?
Does everyone need to have something particular to do all the time?
Why come to Clip Club? What do you get out of it?

I’m really curious about all these things and wonder if we need to come up with a different way of doing things.

Posted by Michelle Cannon in Making 'Run School Run! 2', Shooting the film, Thoughts on Clip Club | Leave a comment

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