In the Blink of an Eye

Chapter 15- Test screenings: Referred Pain

• Public pre-views are tricky things. You can learn a tremendous amount from them, but you have to be cautious about direct interpretations of what people have to say to you, particularly on those cards they fill out after the screening.
• Test screenings however are just a way o find out where you are.
• If you do previews and listen to what people have to say, that's the way to do it- after they have had a day to two to let the film sink in.
• Most people say they do not like a scene because they do not understand it, you need to let it sink in before you judge.

Chapter 16- Don't worry, its only a movie

• Film is like thought, It;s the closest to through process of any art.
• Blinking interrupts the apparent visual continuity of our perceptions, how we look at something blink and move on.

Chapter 17- Dragnet

• Dragnet system is a simple way to edit but it is a shallow simplicity that doesn't reflect the grammar of complex changed that go on all the time in even the most ordinary conversations.

Chapter 18- A Galaxy of Winking Dots

• When people are deeply in a film you'll notice that nobody coughs at certain moments, even though they have a cold.

Overall Conclusion of:

In the Blink of an Eye

I found this book very hard to get into, to be honest I found it rather boring and confusing, as one minute it would be talking seriously about something then the author would bring in their personal life and I just thought it was not easy to follow. I am glad I have taken the time to read it as it's opened my eyes a little in film editing.

In the Blink of an Eye

To be really honest I am finding it really hard to get into this book, I will carry on reading it and maybe I will understand it better in the end. It is just a bit chatty and the language is hard to understand and I find myself looking in a dictionary a lot of the time to understand it.

We will see.

In the Blink of an Eye

Chapter 14- Methods and Machines: Marble and Clay

• A Moviola- a standup editing machine- which looks and sounded like a sewing machine.
• KEM- a horizontal editing machine which handles the film more gently.
• The tools you choose to edit with can have a determining effect on the final product.
• In re-editing what you thought was originally unusable may come to be your salvation.
• An ordinary film will have 700, 1,000, 2,000 set ups with more than two printed take per set up on average.
• As the scene is reworked and refined it reaches a point, hopefully, where the shots themselves seem to create each other.

"My Secret Lair"- Virtual Environments

I have started a new project for virtual environments called My Secret Lair, where we have to imagine we are a super hero or super villain and what our liar would look like.

I have been researching all types of different super heros and super villains and I have started to learn using 3ds max, which I find very difficult to use. I have looked at the power-puff girls and wonder woman but I do not want to be obvious so I am trying to think outside the box. I think for now I have decided to do a superhero, but I am finding it hard to design a liar, so I will be doing a lot more research and hopefully by this weekend I will be able to start making my liar on 3ds max.

"My Secret Lair"

I have started a new project for virtual environments called My Secret Liar, where we have to imagine we are a super hero or super villain and what our liar would look like.

I have been researching all types of different super heros and super villains and I have started to learn using 3ds max, which is very difficult to use.

Task A

My creativity is enjoying printing designs on fabrics, whilst I was doing my a-levels; I really enjoyed looking at Zandra Rhode's work and getting my inspiration from her. I did this for myself as I enjoyed the process of producing it. I want in the future for me to enjoy every aspect of the work I do including the design and the making of it. I would like to get inspiration of other people's work and improving it and then to review it and to establish if I have improved the original product.

Task B

I feel most comfortable when researching means interacting with other people by opening up my thoughts to new areas I would have not thought of and incorporating them into a new idea. I feel my research has to be physical, very hands on, looking at books, possibly the internet and talking to people is the best source to see what other people are doing or how other people are approaching the problem. I do worry about taking the wrong steps but I realise I need to learn from my mistakes. At this stage I am not clear as to what research is irrelevant to my personal development. I do understand that research and development is a continuous process to develop my skills.

On tuesday we had to watch an awful film called Iron Man which I found not interesting and very confusing and to be ohest it was sick. I am trying to understand and research this film so i can understand its relevance.

Later on we had a seminar, where we were given task A and B as above.

In the Blink of an Eye

Chapter 13- The Decisive Moment

• Taking photographs is useful- "with the director about what was shot and how it was shot- they resolve those lands of discussion very quickly".
• They keep "a record of some details beyond the ability of even the best continuity person: The particulars of an actor's hairline, or how rosy somebody's complexion was, or whether their hat left a mark on their forehead when they took it off- those kinds of things etc".
• "They are also a great resource for the publitcity department or anyone else coming on to the film at a later date. You can instantly see and cross-reference characters in all kinds of different emotional states, as well as the photography, the costumes, and the scenery".
• This process " sometimes you got sparks out of that, it would cause you to think about things, editorial leaps, that otherwise you might never have thought of without this system".
• "The editor's job now is to choose the right images and make those images follow one another at the right rate to express something like what is captured in that photograph".
• "Representative frame, what you're looking for is an image that distills the essence of the thousands of frames that make up the shot".