Production | Making the Poster

I had volunteered to make the poster, as I had a clear vision in my head as to how I wanted it to look, and I felt I was proficient enough in using Adobe Photoshop to realise this vision. We had taken a lot of photographs with the cast on the final shoot day to use for the poster and so I had a lot to work with when creating it. Katie also tweaked the colour, saturation, sharpness etc on the pictures I would end up using so that they were ready to be presented in the poster.

I wanted to style it as a superhero / comic book-esque type of poster, so I looked into comic book graphic styles for inspiration. The title 'VET-MAN' has connotations that Tim is a superhero, and the idea behind that was because that is how he sees himself - as some sort of saviour to the animals he treats, when in reality, he is completely incompetent.

I came up with a few variations of the poster, trying a more minimalistic approach, and experimenting with changing the background to give the comic-book panel effect, further accentuating the superhero motif. I have chosen shots where Tim appears larger as they are taken at a lower angle, as people and objects "placed higher in the frame hold more visual weight or importance" (Bowen and Thompson, Grammar of the Shot, pg. 214), further emphasising Tim's inflated sense of self-worth.

I wanted to accentuate his view of himself through the poster by designing it as if Tim is a superhero, standing valiantly with his sidekick as they take on whatever challenges lie in their wake. By using a half-tone effect with the bold font and vibrant red band, this works effectively to convey the idea that Tim sees himself as a superhero through the comic book theme of the poster.

Production | Fine Cut Review

The edit was now in Katie's hands - for the first fine cut, I opted to take a step back to allow Katie to tweak what she felt we could tweak and I would provide feedback after this. I know how Katie likes to work, and so I felt this would be a more appropriate way to direct this stage of the edit as she tends to work better without somebody peering over her shoulder and offering more immediate feedback. Here are some things that we know we needed to change at this stage:

• We need to work out where titles will go and what they will look like - this is something to consider in the final stages of the edit as the actual footage is more important to me at this point.
• Most of the dialogue needs to be fixed - i.e. sound/hiss removal and other things will be needed to create a consistent soundscape throughout the entire film.
• We need to make sure that the interior driving shots look like they are actually driving. As discussed in the rough cut entry, Katie would achieve this through the use of colour grading, sound and layering.
• We need to add the all-important shot of the dog in front of the van.
• Sound effects to be added:
• Printer
• Various driving/engine noises - in and outside van
• Dog hit / whimpering
• Cat purring
• Blood / impact from stabbing dog
• Thud as bin bag hits floor
• Loads of owls
• Heist music over night scene?
• Owl screeching
• Owl punch
• Various atmos
• Colour grading is also vital and I trust Katie to establish the realistic feel we pitched from the very beginning.

Katie got to work on the first fine cut with these aspects, particularly focusing on correcting the sound issues:




We had feedback from Beth Turrell and Simon on this cut, and they gave some useful tips on how to improve on the edit: 

• Beth:
• "We haven't seen him" ??????????????
• End of owl scene ???????????????
• She felt that we stayed too on the shot from the "you're not Sheila" line for too long. I agreed with this as it feels slightly too awkward and the audience are left waiting for something to happen for a few too many beats.
• "Scalpels and forceps not dirty needles and hot knives" is not very clear - this was down to how the audio was recorded on the day and it is something that Katie will try to amend as she continues with the edit.
• Simon: 
• The sound still needs a lot of work, which we are well aware of and Katie is working hard to correct it.
• In scene 1, trim down the sequence with Tess looking at the fake diploma - she takes a little too long to read the incorrectly spelled "VETT", which would be one of the first things she would realistically notice.
• Cut the shot of the vase on the floor, as it does not add much to the scene - we already know the vase is smashed and the shot we have of the broken vase needs a lot of colour correction.
• The first scene may benefit from a door slamming sound effect.
• The engine needs to keep running after the van has hit the dog.
• Simon suggested cutting to Tim and Luke before we see the dog to see their reactions before we see the dog itself. I was unsure whether I agreed with this but we will see how it looks in the edit we can decide whether or not it works then.
• He also suggested that we cut straight to the shot of Tim's black eye in the pub and skip over the establishing shot. Again, I was unsure whether this would work and I think I would prefer to leave this so that the cut between the scenes is not too jarring by switching to a different scene so quickly. Luke's line would also come in a little too early which would not work, as I feel we need a bit of a break in dialogue to recoil from the shock of the owl punch.
• Another suggestion that Simon made was to cut down the sequence of Tim finishing his drink and confronting Mark. He advised that we remove the shot of Tim finishing his drink to save time when Mark is marching toward him - I agreed that this would be helpful and would help to speed up the scene.
• As well as this, Simon suggested several places that we could trim to help with the pacing of the edit.

With this feedback, Katie continued to refine the edit:

Feedback from group crit and Nathan Caws:

We had a crit with the rest of the group which provided us with a valuable opportunity to hear some fresh opinions on the fine cut so far:

• On the whole, people enjoyed the film and praised the surprising moments, such as the owl punch and the end of scene 5 when Sheila reveals that Sooty is actually a cat and not a dog. It was refreshing to hear that the humour had translated well, as it can be difficult to gain a fresh view of the film, which we do not have the luxury of after seeing the edit so many times.
• As we have known for a while, the sound still needs a lot of work which is something that we continue to improve on
• The general consensus was that the film would improve with music. From the very beginning of the project, we had agreed that we wanted to avoid the use of music to keep with the blunt, The Thick of It style tone that the lack of music allows for. However some scenes, particularly the break-in scene fall flat because there is little diegetic sound and dialogue so have reconsidered this decision and will be adding some music that will help with the tone of the film. I feel adding some heist/Mission Impossible-esque music to the break-in scene, and to the surgery scene and credits.

We also met with finishing editor and colourist, Nathan Caws, who helped us look at the edit and gave us an industry-expert's advice on what could be changed:

• He suggested that Katie add some highlights to the first scene due to the lighting situation which meant that the curtains in the living room had a considerably higher exposure than the rest of the room
• He also advised that we stick on the shot of the slogan for longer to give the audience more of a chance to read the whole slogan before the reveal.
• He felt that the shot of the dog did not look right as there is some slight movement, therefore he suggested we leave it as a freezeframe and then add some artificial film grain so that the shot looks clearer than it currently does.
• Nathan advised that we speed up the surgery montage, in an almost Edgar Wright style montage to enforce the passage of time between the shots.
• He felt that the shot of Tim dangling the pills up in the air was an awkward length and that we should either shorten or extend it - Katie and I have agreed to extend it and add a J-cut of the music we are intending to add so the music starts playing as Tim holds the drugs up which would then lead into the next scene nicely.

Katie made these changes which we showed to Simon as our final suggested changes for the final version of the film:

• Simon advised we make the opening title font a lot bigger than it was. The initial idea of the small font was to reflect Tim's ability as a vet compared to his ego, but I agreed that we could rework it the other way so that a large title would reflect Tim's large ego.
• He advised that we could cut scene 2 slightly so there is less of a gap between Luke's line "You know, like poetry" to opening the glove compartment with the drugs. This would make the scene snappier and avoid a slightly awkward pause.
• He felt that we could make the 'squelch' sound effect louder as Tim stabs the dog, and that the levels on the lines "as good as him" and "the game is afoot" were not quite right.
• He suggested that we could add a punch sound effect as the screen cuts to black between scenes 12 and 13 to imply that Mark punches Tim. However Katie and I agreed that this would be too on-the-nose and that the audience can infer that Tim has been punched, and adding a sound effect may be a little too cheesy.
• His final comment was that he regretted that Tim did not wear the vet costume for the entirety of the film - this was unfortunate and I agreed with Simon on this, as I go into more detail in the evaluation.

With these changes, Katie was able to export the final cut of VET-MAN, ready for submission: