Thoughts after Group Crit
The group crit session this week was a great opportunity to get some feedback and to reflect on where I am up to this far with my film. From my own point of view, it was great to see it up on a larger screen, so far the biggest I had seen it was on my own TV, which it works just fine on, but projected up onto the screen in class it really felt much more impactful, the work I had been doing on the subtitles also looked better on a bigger screen. This has made me quite hopeful about the possibility of showing the finished film at festivals towards the end of this year and next year. Some notes that I took away from the group crit were that the subtitles were useful but at a certain point they are no longer necessary and that I need to find a way to transition out of them, that the clip is possibly structured the wrong way, the section in Felix’s house is very overwhelming and almost climactic, whereas the rugby pavilion section is slower paced and more context heavy, and that I should try and think about ways of structuring the film to keep the audience on their toes and stop the film from becoming too repetitive.
Going off these notes, I have made some changes to the subtitles, which I don’t fully think work just yet; instead of subtitling each layer of audio as a separate full line of subtitles, I have instead written mangled versions of the subtitles, just picking out some words from each layer which are clear (for example: I stayed for a sleepover to congratulate your Dad). I have also made them slowly fade out as they begin to become a wall off sound. I don’t think fading out has the right effect, the fade makes it seems like the voice-over is going away when in reality it is actually more overwhelming and all encompassing, so I will have to try out some other effects and see which conveys this best. I have also decided to take a break from working on subtitles and to instead work on some other things for now. Thinking about the structure of the film has led me to think about some other sections I could include in the film; I am thinking that some other moments of voiceover throughout the film could work nicely as transitions between the segments I’ve recorded in present day JHQ. These other voice-over moments could work nicely with some archive footage. I am also thinking that I will swap out the audio from the news clip and instead record something myself, I think that it might be best to keep my voice as the central voice of the film to avoid a confusing point of view. I am yet to write or record this, but I think it will be a moment where I provide some context about JHQ and my relationship to the site.
Here is an example of how this slightly more structured version could go (without the rugby pavilion clip, which I still haven’t recorded the voice-over for, and without any subtitles):
Conor McBride 