Here is my creative critical evaluation link made on prezi
http://prezi.com/zkrtcnflncow/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Final Cut
Today I finally made my Final Cut, after fixing every small little mistakes and missing texts, trimming and sound equalization, we have rendered our best cut, adding Bashir Ahmad’s interview, merging it with the Awais’s, making a sense out of it, adding inditional cutaways and better shots taken from a better angle, making and adding the subtitles, today we finally are done with editing the documentary. and is up for Playing on Youtube.
Interview with Bashir Ahmad
Today we got the chance to interview the “The Godfather” of the pakistani MMA fighter Bashir Ahmad. The interview took place at his commercial gym at Synergy-Gym in Lahore. Bashir talked about Awais training with him and how he met him the first time. He also talked about Awais’ potential and that he is one of the fighters that comes in his top ten fighters of all time.
I was the one taking interview of him as in, asking him all the right questions, with the help of my coach Sir Abu Bakr on holding the camera, and setting the best angle for our interview, it was a busy time at the gym and Bashir’s pictures on the wall provided a good background. Our subject was kept in focus. We used the sparring sounds of the gym as naturalistic sound effects which worked in our favor to create the atmosphere.
(Images were added on 25th March)
Poster
We looked at different posters and designs, initially, wanted to go for a “Southpaw” look for Awais, but we wanted to also highlight the fight for life ideology.
Inspired by the communist flag, we decided to go with the red theme. Red being a symbol of revolution and empowerment, and in this case a revolution of martial arts in the country with the map of Pakistan incorporated in the center.
First Cut
Today we had our first cut done, it lacked many things in it, such as some cutaways, missing texts on some scenes which was required, and also it didnt include Bashir Ahmad’s interview,
But this was a start, now we knew what we were doing, and were on the right track.
Website
Today we have published our official website via WordPress for our documentary series. The home page of the website gives information about our documentary’s narrative and also a summary of the story of our documentary, with a picture of Awais Raja (our protagonist of this chapter) as our Header picture. The home page also includes the link to the official Synergy page and the official website of Pak MMA.
https://www.mmadiariessite.wordpress.com/
Editing Script
Today we introduced the editing script to show how the documentary will be edited depending on the scene. For example when will voice-overs be used and also transitions.
Our series documentary is based on continuity editing where time is moving forward and no kind of flashbacks are shown. The techniques that we used while continuity editing are:
- 180 degree rule
- Match on action
- Eye-line matching
- Parallel editing
The software we will be using is Sony Vegas 13.0.
In the first 30 seconds of the documentary, we added a montage of EWS shots of the major landmarks of Lahore City, each scene was approximately 1 to 2 seconds long each consisting of texts containing information about MMA or related to MMA along with ambient digetic sound. As the montage begins to end, I added a fade to black dissolving into the next scene in which we display our documentary title, and that scene is a mid close up of Awais “The Assassin” Raja, along with the music being built up, which is an instrumental of a hiphop song, the scene for the documentary title lasts for approximately 3-4 secs, and then the music gets lowered to minimum just enough to fill and also cover up the background noise, there were many cutaways added according to what Awais mentioned which lasted for 2-3 seconds usually, the interview merges with Bashir Ahmad’s part as soon as Awais mentions him as how he helped him joining Synergy, I added cutaways of Awais sparring as Bashir mentioned him respectively, and then there were scenes shown of Chara Pind as Bashir mentioned Charar Pind, along with Awais training kids at the Charar Pind Gym named Shaheen, and then we add back Awais’s interview, him talking bout his past, when when he just started doing MMA, and then we add his interview part where he mentions his Goal, and then fade to black, texts appears with dissolving into one other transitions.
Narrative Mis-en-scene:
Mis-en-scene in french means everything placed in front of the camera, will it be the setting, costumes and make up, lighting, performance and staging.
In our documentary series, we decided to create a fighter profile type video of Awais Raja, with cutaways of him training in his gym and training the kids in Charar Pind. We added a interview with Bashir Ahmad to make the documentary look more valid and give quality to it, as in having an interview with Awais’s mentor and also Bashir Ahmad is internationally popular.
There was natural and indoor lighting throughout the interviews, no additional lights were used, during Awais’s interview we used the Gym’s Window for the lighting, and while Bashir’s interview we used the indoor lighting of the gym,
We didnt used any kind of costumes as such, our characters had their natural clothing on them.
We showed a montage of EWS shots of Lahore city in the beginning to let the viewers know where the documentary was taking place, and also wide shots of the places being mentioned by our characters in the documentary.
Narrative:
These are types of conventions that are useful to to tell the story of the documentary. An example is timing issues where the editor can use techniques such as camera, lighting, sound and fades.
Our series documentary uses texts to narrate the story where in the opening scene statistics are given of how popular mixed martial arts in Pakistan is. We kept no narrator as we think that the story is pretty easy to understand and we used subtitles to make it easy for viewers.
As we know, setting creates a sense of place and a mood which can reflect on the characters state of mind. We fabricated it as an authentic reconstruction of reality, where we show situations that people live like and how Awais Raja, our main character, is used alongside his situation to create a reality scene and promote peace through the sport.
Awais’ character was reflected by his appearance of wearing sport kits as he is a mixed martial arts fighter. He was not needed to wear any make up or other costumes as we want to keep our series documentary as real as possible.
The sunlight from the window was our key light while we placed Awais at such a place where he was focused on the camera. We did not need a back light to keep it natural and real.
In the first few seconds of our documentary, I added alot of EWS shots of Lahore city, which were mostly taken from the inner city area, then i added a instrumental background music at the very end of the EWS shots sequence, the music was to get the build up and also to create a better atmosphere of the documentary, making it more interesting to watch and also enjoyable, we had ambient sounds at the beginning, but as the music gets build up, we hoped best for eradicating all ambient noise and tried to get Awais’s voice and the background music only,
(Photos were added on 25th march)
Shooting
Filming at Charar Pind
When we were filming here at Charar Pind, we got surrounded by the kids while we were filming, and when we wanted to ask them where can we find the glue sniffers and druggies, they said to us you will find them in the graveyard around the block, which was actually a warning for us to leave them alone.
Awais Sparring at Synergy
After taking the interview with Awais, we took some shots of sparring at the gym.
Filming Lahore City for EWSs
Me and my camera man decided to go towards the inner Lahore city for some good EWSs, such as this one for our opening sequence of the documentary.
Filming at Synergy Continued
Filming “The Assassin” at Synergy Gym
Editing Tutorials
Today we were given editing tutorials by Sir Abu Bakr, on how to add footage on our timeline, what are transitions and their types, how to cut, trim over lap footage, usually the basics of how to use the Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13.0 for editing our documentary.
Interview With Character
Today we had our interview with our character,
we asked him numerous questions, our main goal was to gain his emotional side of his life, like as in where he had troubles and hard times, and what made him start Mixed Martial Arts.
He told us the story of how he got know Bashir Ahmad, and how he started MMA at synergy, how he got trained, and how his relatives didn’t like what he was doing.
MMA Diaries 