Artist's Statement

Ever since playing around with Microsoft Sound Recorder many moons ago, I've been advancing in filmmaking skills until the present day. From Sound Recorder to Windows Movie Maker to Ulead VideoStudio to Adobe Premiere Pro, I've been making all kinds of audio and visual works, almost always relying on myself alone. That doesn't mean I've never worked in a team, I've also worked as assistant director and camera operator on multiple projects.

29 September 2010

The Hunt Is On

So let's kick this portfolio off right, with a short film I made to show my technical skills for my interview at PCA. Animated using a video game called The Movies: Stunts and Effects, I had to split up the 17 minute film into two parts. If you bothered with the YouTube bar at the bottom, you probably saw the trailer I made for it. Here then is Hunter Parts 1 & 2, along with the blurbs they were originally posted at TMUnderground with:

PART ONE

The story of Hunter begins in early 2009. I had to attend interviews with universities and prove I could make films. All I could show them was an A-level Media Studies horror film I was part of, and that sucked the big one. I could show it and critique it, but I needed something else, something good.



Enter: The Movies. This godsend let me put out a short film (by film standards, by Movies standards it's a friggin' epic) all on my own. Although principle photography took place over a single afternoon (twenty years, game time), I never felt happy with it, and in the end only a short clip (the ambulance chase and abduction scenes) were shown. This version, which I now refer to as the workprint, was quite rough, and used temp music (I realise I'm using a lot of technical jargon, forgive me if I lose you). I felt I could do better.

So, from around June into the fall, I continued editing. Quite a lot of the finished film is reshoot material, as I was constantly noticing plot holes and continuity errors. Of course, by the time of the reshoots, the two principle actors had aged visibly. Most roles were entirely costumed, and so could be replaced easily. However, Jek (the hero) proved a problem, and although I did my best to hide it, it looked like Jek would have to occasionally switch age throughout the film. Luckily, fate smiled on me. I hired a new Stuntman to replace some old, retiring ones, and found he was a dead ringer for Jek's actor. Actually, the game was recycling the same model, but you know what I mean.

So, with a new Jek, I finished reshoots and assembled what you see here. However, there was one thing still bugging me. Ever since October, I had been trying to find someone who would be willing to score the film for free. Hey, it's a The Movies movie. The budget's roughly the size of Paris Hilton's brain (i.e. non existent). Eventually, I found Paul Wisby. Although he agrees his initial mix was somewhat lacking in the sync department, I managed to work my editing magic to get it working reasonably well with the picture.

Also, you may be wondering why the film does something during and after the fire scene (I'm avoiding spoilers). This was because when I first exported the rushes, I found the sound effects were slowly drifting off sync just before the fire scene, and then got worse and worse as it went on. This was my attempt to cover it up by being arty. Art from Adversity, I guess.

That's about all I have to say. I hope you enjoy watching Hunter as much as I enjoyed making it.



PART TWO

Hunter has existed in an insane amount of slightly different versions (the initial workprint, a "theatrical" cut with little reshoot material and temp music, a final temp cut which is essentially what you see here but with temp music synced to it...), and I'm loathe to create yet another version, but TMU has forced my hand.

First, the file was 316mb, too large for TMU to take, so some quality loss was required. Therefore, although the original film is presented in widescreen, I had to shrink the file size down as much as possible, so I rendered this new edit in 4:3 and in lower quality. Sorry, but not my rules.

Second, TMU limits length to 15 minutes. Despite the fact that 15 minutes dead in the 'definitive' versions is part way into the credits, I felt it would be not only distracting to have the credits start and then abruptly stop, but it would also be a huge disservice to Paul Wisby, who has composed an entire song for the end credits. I therefore had to split the file into two parts at a point that would work as a cliffhanger. To add an extra bit of spice to it, I added very brief titles at the end of part one and start of part two as a kind of eyecatch. I ended up using stock music stings for these moments, as this was not part of the original film and by extension Paul Wisby's score.

Here then, is Hunter: The TMU Edit, in lower quality and split in two.


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