I have finally finished editing the film.

I decided to swap around clips four and five and I also changed the audio, it’s the same clip for each but from different parts of the same clip. I also added some bird song to the last shot and now it seems more cohesive overall. I’ve also tried watching the film without the sound, to see how the visual images work together and it does look better with clips four and five swapped over as clip four looks more windy than clip five. Also adding the birdsong at the end is another nice little touch and has a sense of completion.

Overall, I like the film. Having the effects of the wind at the beginning and then calming through the film to stillness fits nicely with the idea of the mind calming as the person enters their own private space. Then with the introduction of birdsong always adds an element of calmness and makes the place even more natural and peaceful. It also demonstrates how I see the woods, that part of the act of looking is contemplation and this is reflected in the use of 15 second clips and the more I look and contemplate the stiller the environment becomes.

However there is one element that I would like to change and that is to make the beginning clips, where the elements are at their most extreme, shorter and more drastic with the cuts. But now unfortunately the window of opportunity has passed because Spring is now upon us and the forest does not look the same as it does in the rest of the film. There are more leaves and flowers and greenery within Little Stone Wood that would make the beginning aesthetically at odds with the rest of the film. So I have decided to stick with the original idea of having each clip 15 seconds long.

But I do feel that the film does demonstrate the calming affect of nature and with the transition from stormy conditions to peace and tranquillity being the central quality of the film highlights how important having our own sense of space and contentment is.

There is one final point I would like to make. Originally I also planned to shoot a film in one continuous shot over the space of an hour at sunrise. This would demonstrate the transition from state into another, from night day, but I found I was limited due to technology. My DSLR does shoot video, it is what I used for making the film, but will only shoot up to 20 minutes per shot. I then checked with the equipment store at the University and discovered the only piece of equipment there that could shoot for an hour was a Gopro Hero camera. But the drawback was it could only record for an hour in a lower resolution plus the Gopro angle of view is very wide, much wider than what I had used for the stills. Consequently I decided against using the Gopro, the aesthetic didn't fit with the project plus the quality of the video was less than what I felt was acceptable.