Blog 3- The Journey Short Video Reflection

I created a short video in the style of French New Wave after researching into the style and the brightness of the colour grading. French New Wave was very famous for breaking the conventions of filmmaking and profound for the experimentation with editing. A large influence on this project was Jean Lu-Godard, who was famous for giving his videos an orange tint rather than the traditional black and white of the French New Wave. In terms of the movement itself, I believe it fits well within the movement. However, it does differentiate. For my visual narrative I made the editing style visible to exaggerate the feature which it is well known for. In doing this, I kept the French New Wave philosophy adding a modern take. My visual narrative contradicts some of the traditional conventions of the story line. Many French New Wave narratives involve stylistic parties as well as smoking, I feel as though this is very repetitive and so I wanted to turn away from this convention.

The editing lectures on colour grading were very useful as this helped me to achieve the orange tint over my film, giving it a summery feel. Filming within the UK means that although it may be sunny there is still a cool tone to the original footage. To do this, I used Adobe Premier Pro, reflecting on the notes which is documented during lectures of specific editing techniques which would fit into the style of French New Wave. On set I took the role of director and cinematographer, allowing me to have the creative freedom which you need to create a visual narrative for this movement. I feel as though I fit into the role of director well as I am rather organised, and my creative insight allowed me to think of a way I could adapt if a shot didn’t work during filming.

However, due to the exaggerated editing style of the unconventional storyline, this video both fit and did not fit within the French New Wave Style. Some said it was a brave stylistic choice which work very well but the story line didn’t match the style of the videos editing. To improve in the future, I will practise my editing and post-production skills, developing my knowledge to further my work. I would like to feel confident in my editing abilities like I am with my organisation of pre-production.