The Equalizer montage techniques

The Equalizer

The Equalizer uses many montage techniques. one montage that could be described as over-tonal
Is a scene where Robert McCall confronts the Russian mob.


 The montage switches between different
shots of the facial expressions of the mobsters for a set length of time (metric),

Secondly cutting on action to show the movements of protagonist  (rhythmic)

Finally fast cuts of facial expression to objects in the room displaying the fast pace emotions. (tonal)

Overtonal Montage

Overtonal montage

Overtonal montage is a combined mix of three of the five methods of montage defined by Eisenstein. Overtonal montage includes a mix of rhythmic and tonal montage as discussed previously but can also include metric montage into the mix, which is cutting based on time (Zettl, 2013). Overtonal montage may leave a take longer as a tonal cut to capture an emotion on a face, then cut rhythmically to display an action then cut metricly to display the surroundings of a particular scene. In The Bourne Identity (Crowly, Gladstine, Liman, 2002) overtonal montage is used frequently because the film has many scenes which have a mix of emotion and action happening at the same time. The scene of the car chase through Paris mixes rhythmic and tonal cutting, making the the car chase dramatic as well as using longer takes of the actors faces to show the emotions of the characters. Along with the rhythmic and tonal cuts, metric montage is also used in some overhead shots to show surroundings for a set length of time, then it will cut back rhythmically and tonally overall making up an overtonal montage. The use of overtonal montage used by Doug Liman is also demonstrates the direct influence of Soviet montage on modern film.

Tonal Montage

Tonal Montage

Tonal Montage is another technique within the five methods described by Eisenstein. The method determines the cuts according to the dominant emotion that is displayed on screen. For example if a particular scene shows people grieving at a funeral, the film will be cut so that the full emotion of the actors faces and surroundings will be displayed and reflect the tone of the piece. If the editor chose fast cuts to make up the montage it would not reflect the tone and not capture the emotion that the scene is displaying. However if there were slow cuts piecing together scene it would reflect the tone of the piece and the audience can be shown the full range of emotions displayed by the actors. In the film The Bourne Identity tonal montage is displayed frequently in amongst other montage techniques. One particular scene is where Jason Bourne and Marie Kreutz are traveling from Switzerland to France in a car, the montage is tonal because it leaves the take long enough to capture the actors emotions before cutting to the the next shot. This is effective to help the audience understand the emotional tone of the piece and is a clear indication that the director Doug Liman has been influenced by Soviet montage techniques.

Rhythmic Montage

Rhythmic montage

Rhythmic montage is a technique of cutting film depending on the content of the frame. “The movement within the frame that impels the montage movement from frame to frame” . In other words, the film is cut to display a constant movement of action in a linear timespace. For example if there is a long shot of someone sliding a cup across a table, then a close up shot of the cup sliding, the edit will aim to achieve a constant motion of the cup so the viewer perceives time to be constant. In The Bourne Identity The use of rhythmic montage is very evident in many places. One particular scene in the film that uses this method is where the main character Jason Bourne is in hand to hand combat with an assassin in his apartment located in Paris within the first act. The technique is used between different shot angles where action is extremely fast. The Rhythmic montage in this sequence adds emphasis to the action to make it more dramatic. It also shows how Soviet montage techniques have influenced modern filmmakers.

Self Evaluation

Self Evaluation

Pre-production:

I felt the pre production went well as I could shoot the interview inside my own home however I should have placed the interviewee in front of a darker background instead of a white wall i.e the curtain (see lighting).  B-roll footage was at the nursery and I had no idea what I was going to get. Unfortunately the workshop had finished by the time I received the call to come down so I couldn't get any footage of them actually making the products. The Interviewee was well informed so I feel overall it went well.

Lighting:

The aim I had for the lighting was to get a nice soft ambient light through the window and have the key fill and backlight covered with blue gels. However it was cloudy so the colour temperature higher than what the blue gels.  In retrospect I should have closed the curtain as the lights still gave a nice mood in the living room. One thing I definitely learnt was the importance of raising up the backlight to give the ‘halo’ effect over the head. My back light was too low and only lit the shoulder.

Camera:

For the B-roll I wish I made more use of the tripod for some of the shots instead of hand held, as some are shaky and some potentially good shots I could not use in final edit as they were too unstable. The reason for this I really wanted to get as smoother shots as possible as the subject matter of cosmetics is relaxing and only some of the shots were good enough to use. For the Interview I rushed the setup and did not make use of the peaking tool. And I didn’t zoom in to get focus when the interviewee sat down I just relied on the small monitor screen which was a big mistake as the focus is a little soft… I think in future I will just spend a few more moments before to set up and make sure i get it right. When I came to edit I wish I had more footage of the products and raw ingredients although it was sufficient I feel that I could have been better with more selection of shots as I ended up repeating some shots in the edit. As far as the white balance goes, I learnt my lesson from the Chases sequence and made sure the white balance was correct and this made a big difference for my edit.

Cinematography:

I like close up shots of subjects with focus pulls, I tried to achieve this with the raw ingredients shots however I wish I did slower pulls and longer takes in focus. Another thing I could have improved would be smoother motion for the product scans. My favorite shot was a close up of a plant then zoom out to reveal the garden I feel this worked well and was a good speed of zoom and steady camera.

Sound:

For my own sound work I think went really well, It was simple as during the interview the interviewee didn’t move so I was very simple. I think I could have pushed the levels up a fraction more, but that was easy enough to fix in post as it is easier to turn up the gain on a digital signal and have some headroom than having a unusable signal that clips.

Self Evaluation

Self Evaluation

Logging

Logging the shots was so helpful especially for the b-roll as later on I could locate exactly what kind of shot I wanted based on the interview content.

1st Assembly edit

This was actually the most time consuming part of post-production as the interview rushes had to be cut and trimmed in many places. Assembling the interview was a little difficult as I had to edit out a lot of the interviewee talking to trim it down to 5 minutes and then rearrange to make logical sense for an interview. The main assembly decisions were based on the audio to try and make logical sense. The b-roll assembly was quick because I had done the logging and could locate shots quickly.

Rough Cut

Trimming the audio to make the flow seamless was the most time consuming part, I tried to get the edits as seamless as possible then added crossfades to make them unnoticeable. One shot in particular I edited a way that she mispronounced the word “workshop” and said “Workssssshop” I zoomed into the waveform and found the “ssss” sound and cut in the middle and trimmed both sides of the “sss” sound as so It sounds natural with no stutter.

I positioned the b-roll footage over any edits so the video didn't jump between two shots of the interviewee, this work very well and gives a seamless flow to the video. I would have preferred to have more b-roll footage as I had to repeat some shots and some shots of the ingredients needed to be longer to suit the topic. Also I had no footage to place over the part where the interviewee leaned down to pick up items this could have been better

Fine Cut

Timing the shots and adding transitions was a little time consuming but not too much. Used a lot of opacity keyframes to do artificial fade-to-black for some shots. I wanted to have transitions as smooth as possible to give a soft feel to the interview to suit the topic.

Final Cut

I missed a couple of transitions I should have put fades and cross dissolves on but on the whole it went ok, not too much had to be done here, but I wish I looked over it before I reached picture-lock to take notes and correct the transition issues.

Colour

The colour correction was a little easier for this interview as I got the white balance right on set, It was too difficult to darken the background wall to make the face stand out so I left it as is. I used RGB curves and only did minor adjustments. Preferably I wish I could have made her face a little less red but whenever I tried it looked a little weird so I removed the corrections. For the colour grade I wish I de-saturated the shots a little but on the whole I think it’s ok as is.

Audio

The audio post was relatively simple, except for one problem that couldn't be fixed was when the interviewee bent down several times during the interview. The video is ok as I covered the shots (except one - see rough cut) with b-roll but the audio loses a lot of high frequency content when she turns away from the microphone. And also would have made too much clothes rustle with the lapel. For the voice I added two compressors the first compressing softly only about 3dB at the ratio of 2:1 then the second doing the same. After this I added a limiter to limit at -6dB to make it broadcast safe. Next in the chain I placed an EQ with a low cut set at 90Hz and then raised the high frequencies by +3dB with a high-shelf from 3kHz upward. The music a quickly placed only at the start and end as I didn't want it to distract from the interview. I chose soft piano music to suit the subject which I think worked well.

Export

Remember to check the spelling in the titles before you export!! Otherwise you have to come back and redo it all! I made my own presets for the TV and web broadcast standard which made the export process faster especially as I had to do it more than twice. This was very helpful.

World Animation

World Animation 1950-1960

The style of Croatian animation Surogat 1961 of the abstract style was very effective, I liked it as it helped the humour of the film.  

Yugoslavia - Duga Film Studio
The Big Meeting 1951
https://vimeo.com/67822042


Canada - oscar winner
Neighbours 1952

UK- Halas & Bachelor
Animal farm 1954
Depicts soviet communism

Hungary/USA - George Pal
Tom thumb 1958
Super imposition, Stop frame animation

Czech Republic Karel Zeman
The fabulous world of Jules Verne 1958

Croatia - Zagreb Film
Salmac (Alone)
Won a prize at venice film festival



Croatia - Dusan Vukotic & Zagreb film
Surogat 1961
first animate film to win an oscar not made in the USA

Japan - Taiji Yabushita

Legend of the white snake - 1958

roots of Manga and anime

Japan - Osamu Tezuka

Astro Boy - 1962

First a manga comic made in 1952

China - Wan Laiming

Havoc in Heaven - 1961

Russia - Fyodor Khitruk

Story of One Crime - 1962

seen as and attack on government housing policies

—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTRlvm8LhnE

Colour Correction and Audio Compression

Get it right first!!!!!

Learning how time consuming colour correction is, shows me how important it is to get it right on set!


Other things we learnt were

Colour correction is adjusting for bad camera work i.e. bad exposure and incorrect white balance.

Colour grading is giving the scene an artistic look.

and  RGB curves are awesome!

We also looked at audio post and I discovered that video editing programs are great for editing video... and time consuming for any audio work. however for small edits it is ok. Adobe Audition has some great tools for analysing waveforms but still not my preference for doing a full on audio mix.

Lights! Camera! Action!

What I learnt from my first two shootings.

Pre-Production!!!!! so important to have scouted the location beforehand thoroughly and thought about lighting placements shot types and what will be practical. I changed my idea about the location of my chase sequence shoot at the last minute due to the wether and practicality and ran into trouble with not having planned enough in advance. one main problem I had was the fact I could not locate switches for some fluorescent lights so our lighting was a mix of ugly fluorescent and tungsten lighting this led to me having to white balance on every different shot and was very time consuming and annoying for others on set.

Other things I learnt:

Don't forget headphones.

Scout the location for a while before hand to plan lighting and shots.

Keep positive even at the end and don't cut corners even when everyone is tired. Especially white balancing (this mistake is evident on my last shot of the chase sequence, actually was too bad I couldn't colour correct properly in post)

Bring your storyboard and tick off shots as you go.

Clear memory cards before hand and check frame rate etc. before shoot so you don't waist time on set!!

Overall it was a very good learning experience and was great to have so much help from fellow classmates helping with lights, dolly and sound etc.

The second shoot was the interview and this was a lot simpler and after all I learnt from the chase sequence shooting made this very easy. 

I had the convenience of being able to set up lights beforehand without talent being there and that was great so I could think clearly and try different setups and locations around the room.

One thing I found on this shoot that with all the lights, camera, and sound gear set up it was quiet daunting for the talent who thought they were going to just have a handy-cam in front of them. so making them comfortable was very important with cups of tea/coffee and snacks for them. getting them to talk about there breakfast was a good way to get them relaxed too. 

nailed the three point lighting too! used blue gels with ambient lighting from window and that worked really well. Just had to be mindful when the light changed outside.