Tuesday 18 June 2013

Chase Sequence 2!

                        
Soon I will upload a 'directors commentary' style voice over going through what we did :)

Monday 17 June 2013

Effects

 This is a screenshot from the iMovie editing area. I've cut all my clips and you can see I've also put in my music. We wanted a heavy metal song to play over the chase to fit with the fast paced tone of the footage, but also its intro is funny.



Here is the transition "cross fade" effect in the timeline. I used this because it fit with the humour and the cool vibe from the song; acting like a 'badass' montage for the main character.
 Here is a frame from the video where the crossfade is used. I think its a nice crossfade, because it fades between two one point perspective shots. (the first isn't much of a one point perspective shot, but it's close enough.)

This is my audio set up. I had to make the two seperate songs fade into one another, because otherwise it felt too sudden and forced when they placed normally. So I blended them together, creating a more fluid and natural flow between the two songs.


Colour Correction





The first image is a frame from the original video and the second one is a frame from the colour graded video. As you can see the the colours in the second image are different, although it is subtle, it looks grittier and more cinematic. To achieve this I alter the black and white levels slightly. Making the dark ares blacker and the light areas whiter then bringing the saturation down to takes some of the life out of the image. Then I shifted the white point to blue to give the overall image a slight blue shift, subtle but effective. Because we only got to use natural lighting, we couldn't alter the look of the image that effectively since we didn't have any control over the lighting while filming.


Thursday 13 June 2013

Editing, Post Production and General Thoughts

Post production has to be my least favourite part of film making. Well, it isn't actually that bad, but I find that the tediousness of the process shows through more than it does when on set and filming, because you're sitting there doing the same thing over and over again rather than moving about and doing different tedious tasks while filming.
 
That being said, despite the bore of fine tuning clips and colour grading every individual section of the sequence, I'm having fun. That's only because the chase itself is funny. Due to an excellent choice by Kaan, we have a song that makes everybody who has seen it laugh.

It's a short and simple chase sequence that doesn't really have any meaning so in terms on cinematography or mise en scene we haven't really achieved much to be honest. It's action and so the shots and editing are used to accommodate the humorous tone. If we had went for something more suspenseful or tense, we would have used the camera to actually do something with that. But, as it is, its a short and funny chase with only minor camera or mise en scene points that actually stand out.

I'm using iMovie to edit the film and it's both a blessing and a curse. It simple, accessible and does most of the things I want and need it to do, but at the same time, it is what it is: a free piece of editing software that has the basics and nothing more. The control over the colours, clips and sound are limited, but its instant playback is extremely helpful. I have a feeling that for my final project, it will be a mix of iMovie and Adobe Premiere for editing, as I feel more comfortable with Premiere and it can do a lot more.

As it is, the chase is sort of finished. I've edited all of the footage into sequence and moved things around so it all makes sense. iMovie also has a nifty feature that lets me change the colour balance and make it look more suiting. I'll do a later update on this to show the effects and upload pictures of before and after.

The last thing that remains is one song and some tweaking of audio. The song featured in the last part is in place, but I still need to put in the song that is featured during the actual chasing and one that conveys the tone we're trying to achieve, which is humour. Kaan, of course, is in charge of finding and choosing that music, because I don't know the difference between Lil Wayne and Little Mix...

However, I also have to edit the audio of the clips, but I'm unsure as to whether or not to keep the background sound or to have it solely soundtrack. I'll have to decide this tomorrow, when'll hopefully I've finished editing the video! :)

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Preliminary: Second Chase

On Monday our media class split into two groups in order to go off and create our own chase sequences. In my group there was Kaan, Ryan and me. 

To start off with we scouted around the school for locations, while brainstorming potential ideas. We found as suitable place to film that suited our short narrative and went and found some 'actors'. One of our friends who had a free lesson ended up helping us out, while me and Kaan opted to fill in the two other roles.

We all worked together on the camera, calling shots, suggesting alternatives and working the equipment. We filmed it in less than an hour, returned to the classroom when the battery ran out then went back out to do some additional photography, getting shots we didn't manage to begin with and thinking of new ways to make it interesting.

We also had access to a range of equipment. Since it was a chase we didn't really need any sound equipment such as a microphone or a boom; the plan was to overlay music to create the atmosphere anyway. However, we did make use of the tripod and the small handheld steadicam that was available. The tripod was useful for creating static shots and using a variety of angles. Although the steadicam was helpful in that it was point and shoot rather than a painstakingly long tripod set up, meaning we could think of a shot and shoot it straight away. The steadicam did have its limitations though, it wasn't perfectly helpful when we decided to run with it and the nature of the equipment meant we couldn't shoot at any angles such as from below or from above.

Tomorrow the idea is to edit it, which we will do on the Macs on iMovie. I'm going to suggest to my group that I take the footage home and colour correct it on my computer at home on Adobe premier to make the footage look a lot less bland. I haven't used colour correction or colour grading before, but I would love to use it for my final product to create a cinematic quality that will set it apart from other products. I have began to conceptualize the moving image that I want to make and I hope to make use of all the equipment available and go big!

Wednesday 5 June 2013

To The Max

 
This is the completed chase sequence. There's a lot I like about it, but there's a lot I'd change as well, later on I'll upload a post looking back on it!