Titling and Prepping for Production

Choosing a Title

As my film partner and I near the beginning of production, we first have to create a pitch for approval. To do this, we discussed the possible names the film could have. Grief and addiction often go hand-in-hand, with those who are addicted feeling utterly attached to the drug, while those around them to feel as though their loved one has already passed away from how much the drugs have changed them. They become shells of their previous selves. Addiction commonly leads to overdoses as well, making grief the emotion that follows after people who care for the addicts. These two issues create significant negative impacts on mental health and will both be subtly represented in our film.

Due to the strong correspondence between the two, titling our film, 'Intertwined' meaning "difficult to separate" and "closely connected" felt perfect for the film's context. Having a title we could put meaning to helped to move along the process of developing a storyline for our film.

Expanding Editing Knowledge

In the process of creating a storyline, we had the idea of making the first half of the film transition smoothly to a girl 'watching' what was just shown full screen, to being on her laptop, at an entirely different location. Thinking ahead in terms of how this transition will be edited, I researched editing techniques.

A video I watched to learn editing techniques ahead of production.

Walter Murch's Rule of Six chart (as shown in the video linked above) divides each aspect of film that should be shown through editing with emotion, rhythm, and story as the main components. 

Some editing suggestions he has are:

• Mournful, contemplative scenes should hold on scenes longer to communicate those emotions while frantic, chaotic action packed scenes should use rapid cutting to reflect that. I want the film's two main scenes to contrast heavily with one another, the first being playful and chaotic and the second being solemn and quiet. Keeping Water Murch's theory in mind, I would need various shots for A-roll (the first scene) and long takes for B-roll (the second scene).
  
• Cutaways, involves a cut from the place of action to another place — create and break tension or can indicate what is on the character's mind. This edit will likely be used to transition the first scene to the second, conveying that the first half was in the past of the girl's mind. 

A few other key terms learned from the video are:

• Eyeline match — cutting from the eyes of a character to what they are seeing to correlate their perspective to the audience.
• Cross-cutting — editing two or more scenes happening in different locations simultaneously back and forth to give a multi-layered action effect.
•  Eye trace — cutting between multiple shots that focus on the same area of the frame. This increases audience focus to a particular character or object from shot to shot.

Educating myself on different editing styles and techniques as explained in the video, will help me give make informed collaborative decisions with my cinematographer, such as how many takes or shots in the same location are needed during production to aid me in the editing process later on.