Editing session 3

The editing continues!

The dinner date

For this scene I wanted The female character to eat really sloppily and vast quantities. Again, this is a case of role reversal between the characters, playing on audience expectations for comedic effect. To show that she had eaten a lot of food I am using a kind of stop motion. Usually this technique would involve using lots of still images edited together to create a coherent sequence. Instead, I filmed one continuous shot, removing/adding food to the plate at intervals. During editing I trimmed the shot removing sections leaving only food being present and not present. I decided to using film rather that still images simply as a stylistic feature. The candle is flickering at the top right of the shot and in every few shots there is a bit of movement from the chicken bones, hinting they have been thrown onto the plate with little care. This continues the idea that she is eating with no table manners and in an animalistic fashion.

Each stage of the food removal (chips) and additions (chicken bones).

The technique is not so much stop motion, but quick cutting inspired by the stop motion technique.

Comedy

Hilarious, I don't think anyone has every been that happy to
have a bucket of KFC. 

Quite a sizeable aspect of my video is that it has to be funny. This is not always easy. Much of the most successful humour (in my opinion) is spontaneous. A lot of the humour in my short film stems from playing on audience expectations. For example in this scene the male eats with pristine table manners and the female doesn't care at all. In fact she flouts table manners so greatly she even drinks gravy straight from the jug. Most unladylike. Similarly in the film scene he is the one scared of the horror film rather than her.  

Clear expression. 

I have also relied on physical comedy. I have only realised how violent my film actually is whilst editing. Jacobs character falls over, gets hit in the face AND gets hit by a car. But, however immoral it may seem, people getting hurt is funny. 

I have been so lucky with having such talented actors. Jacob's facial expressions are priceless. He is so capable at creating and conveying emotions to the audience just by his facial expressions. This is perfect as a large proportion of my short film doesn't contain dialogue. His voice over he produced for the animatic was also really funny, a lot of it was improvised or he put his own twist on it. I think I will re-record the dialogue so it fits with his facial expressions in the film for maximum comic effect. Other wise it may seem disjointed.