"Nicolás, a Mexican immigrant, is a dishwasher at a fine dining restaurant in New York. When his head chef challenges him to find handmade tortillas for a surprise addition to their menu, Nicolás jumps at the opportunity to prove himself, embarking on a journey that ultimately tests the limits of his ambition. Inspired by real events..." 

The second letter is for her cousin Kay who was just like a sister to her. Their differences tore them apart and she felt betrayed by Kay leaving her alone on holiday and treating her horribly, but all she wanted to do was help her cousin and protect her. There was jealousy, guilt and verbal abuse involved. 

Both girls deal with the ending of the relationships leaving them broken and questioning themselves. To deal with feeling heart broken and betrayed there will be a ceramic heart being glued back together piece by piece as the film goes on.

I want the audience to sit through a very emotional journey and reflect on their own family relationships, whether they need to reconcile or just be grateful. For them to realise the importance these relationships hold, especially for those you have known since birth or birthed yourself. 

This will be shown through the use of illustrations, archive footage, cinematic landscapes and the visuals of the written letters in darkness. Hardly anyone writes letter these days, which is why I believe writing one for this topic is a more intimate and satisfying way to portray your feelings. The etching of the pencil needs to stick in the viewer’s brain. 

Draw me a map so I can find my way to you.
 Leave me a clue, set me a task, anything
 that will help me win your presence
 back in my life again.

We only meet inside my head.
 I talk to you; you have no words for me.
 I miss your voice; your face is turned away.
 All I want is to talk with you again.

 Cut radishes and pickles line and garnishes line? Or one of them?

Maybe don’t need the wide as he leaves the kitchen

Location, taco, kitchen 

Maybe don’t have the shot in-between leaving tacos behind, move the time of the shot to end 

Shorter grandma convo

Looking tracking shot doesn’t work

Cut out more faff, cut to the chase a lot longer

Greg 10/03/2023
The final shot in scene one gone,

Music still to leisurely 

Shoter dialogue grandma scene, no need for not explaining line for boss, 

Party montage shorter, taco shot too long, got straight to him walking in the back room 

Maybe the black frame not need, might be odd.or maybe add more atoms 

Shorter head chef reaction

 reflecting the characters moods.

Punch cheers crowd

Coach screaming 41 secs

Looked dazed after first punch

Maybe don’t come back to the ring after first flash back moving it a couple shots later

Lined punching match cuts up better

1:06 maybe not that shot, training then boxing, don’t go back to sit-up 

Maybe add ref saying box again after montage

Look on freesound for war general 

Maybe change the narrative to make him win , flop the footage around, use it as a client relationship,

Maybe cut the middle section

Greg 10/03/2023

Maybe shorter first slow mo punch shot(me)

Walk to coach after winning needs to start a few frames later as its a poor first bit of the take

Wins the fight

War footage punch, the maybe come back at the end

Long on the countdown when he’s down 

I have a few ideas on the way I would like it to look but as I'm still working on the final script I may change this slightly. I'd honestly like to pace it in coordination to the classical music playing. Making it quite calm at the start quicker as Mark gets excited about the dish, slowing down again when it comes to the final product of the ramen and then speeding up again when it comes to the robber being introduced. Some of the close up shots from the movie "Chef" I quite like.

I still feel that there could have been more improvements made to the edit. Having watched it back, I feel that the first half of the edit is paced a little fast with too many cuts that feel quite jarring, but these decisions were made based on client feedback to make the story feel more urgent and to show that time was of the essence. The party scene could have felt more lively, I missed out on some shots, and the montage from that scene could also have benefited from more variety of shots.  And I'm still not entirely happy with the music from the first montage. I did the audio and grade for this piece too but just to an acceptable level not 'professional', if I had more time I could have done more to these too.  I faced some technical issues, when conforming from avid to resolve I could not get the clips to link up, as the start timecode for the rushes in avid was different to the timecode that the rushes were displaying in resolve, you could change the start timecode in avid to match resolve but only when the clips weren't in a sequence, so I couldn't fix it that way. So I decided to export an AAF file from avid to premiere, premiere found the rushes and synced up, then I could change the timecode within premiere, export an XML file and then open this up in resolve, this worked. 

If I were to do this again the only major thing I would change is the first half cut, I would maybe add an extra 30-60 seconds to it, and slow down the speed of the cuts, giving it a little extra time to breathe whilst still keeping the urgency of the story.

One thing I did like about this piece was the fighting scenes. They cut together well and flow continuity-wise. I feel that I have chosen the best shots and takes for these scenes, which all feel relevant, just the right length, showing the emotion of the character and how he's feeling through the journey.

This project required a lot of time dedicated to media management, with around 25 hours of +1000 clips to import, organization was key. I initially linked the rushes in avid, then transcoded them from 4k h.265 to 1080p DNxHD LQ so my computer could play them back easier. After that, I copied the log description of each clip to avid and made a reel for every individual folder of rushes imported. After that, I then went through all the footage and sorted it by type (e.g. landscapes, birds, boar) and placed it into their own bins, once again creating a reel for each bin. This helped me narrow down the clips and made it easier for me to focus and find what I needed based on the script. I repeated this process each time rushes came in. I didn't get the rushes all in one go, which made the edit slower and more difficult, I would have to re-edit sections as new more relevant stuff came in. I got the initial batch of 700 GB of footage, then every few days I would get some more footage up until around 3 days before pic lock. Also working with multiple frame rates and resolutions was also something I had to consider with this. I had to size up and down clips and work with h.265 and h.264. Transcoding into proxies helped with this. This project had footage with about 5 different frame rates used, I had 50fps videos set to play back at the timelines 25fps for the slow-mo smooth shots we needed. Most of the clips with different rates were set to play back at 25 to help consistency.

To help manage the size of the timeline, which was initially 24 mins. I separated it into 3 acts, and then within each act, they had its own subsection. This allowed me to create assemblies for each section working only on that, helping me to focus and manage the scale.

Because of this scale and amount of footage, I feel that if I had a couple more weeks on this project I could have produced a better cut. I got the initial batch of footage at the end of March, then the script started in April. So between that and media management, I didn't have long to work on this. I spent 91 hrs on this but I'd say this needed another 30hr.

My relationship with the client throughout this project went well, I did have to convince him that this documentary needed narration, as originally he didn't want any at all. So I'm glad I got him to change his make as this definitely improved the piece. The only negatives I have with the client, would be that he didn’t fully understand the workflow and I had to explain it to him, he didn't understand how long the edit would take and underestimated the time needed for this, and the constant flow of footage throughout wasn't that helpful. This project could have been improved by using stock footage, to replace some of the less relevant clips. I did suggest this to the client on 2 separate occasions but unfortunately, he wouldn't have any. Another thing I think would have benefited this project would have been a shorter runtime. I said this to the client originally and after suggesting multiple areas to cut/cut down when I got the cut down to the run time it is now. I did suggest further removals but was denied. I think a sub-10-minute version would be more engaging, because of the shots we used it feels more like we're watching a ‘slideshow’ so having this shorter would have allowed for only the absolute best shots to be used, the VO to be more concise, and just a tighter cut.

Overall, based on the direction from the client and the available rushes and script I had to work with I am happy with how it turned out. It's been a challenging project and I've learnt a lot working on it, especially how to manage and troubleshoot a large project within avid!

One of them was, working with still images, finding the timing to place these into the cut and making it flow next to the videos was tough. Especially with the intro to the piece. Getting the pacing of this was critical, as this was a poetic documentary, it needed to be slow and emotional with the cuts and pacing and I think I managed to succeed in this. It was nice to slow down and work with a few longer shots and just find the exact right frame to cut on for this piece. The lack of footage for the project caused this project to suffer in my opinion, I wasn't given a lot of options with which shots I could cut too, and some shots had to be used twice to extend the length of the cut, as the director wanted to make this as long as we could. I would say the opposite was needed, a slightly short runtime was needed for this along with a reworked structure of the story, this would have been more engaging to the audience to me, I feel as if the story in this cut isn’t super clear, but that was down to the script and nothing I could change, unless we change the piece as a whole, which I was not allowed. This project suffered from a lack of organization on the director's part. I was happy with the elements of this cut though, it was nice to work on something a bit different from what I'm used to, and I think I managed to successfully portray the ‘poetic’ part of this poetic documentary.