Colour Grading

This time, my task is using Premier Pro to colour grade one of my video clips of my projects to make it become different from the original. We have not finished our final video clip for digital story project so I decided to use some of footages that we have done for that project. I have not tried to colour grade video clips with professional editing software before. I only use applications on my mobile to do it because those apps are very simple and do not require technical skills.

I have chosen 5 different clips to edit and below are my final results:

Unedited

This one I used three-way colour corrector to create the painting effect. To do this, I kept the grey, white and black levels at low numbers, as well as increasing the input black and output white levels. I also changed the brightness a little bit and increase the contrast because the original seems too bright.

With the influence from Instagram, I tried to make my clip have the same effect with this app so I decided to change all of shadows, midtones and highlights by using colour wheels. The final result seems really cool and natural because I also fixed the tonal range definition

Unedited

With this clip, I wanted to add more colours to my interviewee and surrounding stuffs so I simply changed the saturation of the clip. With the rise of shadow and midtone, I believe it brings more vitality to viewers.

I thought the surrounding stuffs were messy so I changed it into black and white to make them some how seem invisible. However, it made the yoga teacher look boring and lack of energy.

Unedited

Suddenly, I was interested in making the viewers feel cold when they see the light instead of feeling warm. Therefore, I adjusted shadows, midtones and highlights wheels to produce this green light.

I preferred making the colour inside the candle holder stand out so I applied leave colour effect. I used the pen to choose specific colour I wanted to leave and adjusted both tolerance and edge softness to get this final effect. However, the colour might change when I played the whole video clip because it also depended on the moving of the light.

Unedited

Once again, I chose to make this one have colourful comic and painting effects. Before changing clip’s saturation, I also adjusted brightness and contrast.

In the original, the houses on another side did not appear clearly and it had too much light. Thus, I decided to change the saturation to reduce the brightness and make houses sharpen.

Unedited

I did not like the background behind my character so I tried to adjust the master wheel of shadows into more blue. Then, I continued changing shadows in terms of hue angle, magnitude, gain and angle as well as increasing the master and highlight in saturation. I was quite happy with the result because it not only added in more colours but also drew viewer attention to the character in stead of focusing on the busy background.

Without colours, what my character will look like? To know the answer, I tried to use the leave colour effect to make everything become grey except the grass. Besides, I adjusted brightness and contrast because it was little bit dark behind. The result made me surprised and I did not like it. Although it emphasised my character but she seemed to not belong to the clip. It also did not reflect the powerful energy and joy that yoga could bring to people.

Overall, this is one of exercises that I enjoy a lot. I can do magic things with my final products although it is quite hard to achieve and require a lot of time. It also helps me realise the important of colours in making film because they could create different moods and change feeling of audiences.

Abstract Exercise

My exercise for this week was using Pr to combine both audio files and footages in order to produce one-minute film. Below is the process of making my second short film.

The shoot

• Audio

For the audio shoot, I worked with YoYo and we decided to record random sounds that we felt interested in rather than stick with rough theme for the abstract exercise. Most of our sounds were recorded from outside such as alumni courtyard, streets. I was the one who listened to the sound quality as well as control the level of sounds. At the beginning, I faced with technical issues in terms of increasing or decreasing the sound level of the recorder and confusing about the rehearsal/start button. Thus, our first results were not good when we listened to them again and we had to start again when we knew clearly how to use the recorder. We tried to record simple sounds that surround us such as bird, trams, waterfall etc. As the one who wore the microphone and heard the daily sounds through the small recorder, I felt quite strange and also excited. Although these sound were really familiar to me in daily, I did not notice where are they come from. We gained various kinds of sounds from outside but it also was the problem because the outside was really noisy and combined many ground and field sounds. Thus, it was very hard to record good quality of sounds that we wanted so I had to increase the maximum level of the recorder to have the best sounds. Another problem was we did not have the enough length of sound to choose and when we come to the editing part because we only recorded them from 4 to 10 seconds. Thus, I did not have the flexibility to select the best period that had good sounds to add in my film. The last problem was not applying specific theme for our recordings. Thus, it was quite hard to me at the start of editing part to find the way to unite all sounds. Thus, I think we should plan ahead if we have a chance to make it again or do new audio project in order to have a clear vision and direction to follow and stick with it. Also, noticing on the length of sounds also is very significant because we can have plenty of choices to edit if we have long sounds in good quality.

• Video

For the video shoot, I worked with another team so it definitely was a challenge for me. Due to the limited of time and the heavy of the camera kits, we could not produce a lot of footage as we expected. However, our footage had various angles and I was quite happy about that when I used them to create my one-minute film. We tried to move the camera a lot to shoot from the bird eyes view, worm eyes view, wide and long shot. We also explored many different levels of zoom functions, exposure and shutter speed to bring the differences into our footages. Besides that, we also had the same problem with the audio that we did not plan the location as well as what was the specific theme we wanted to shoot. Moreover, we were not in the same audio group so we could not be able to link our footages with the sounds that we already recorded. Therefore, we decided to shoot whatever we can to practice out shooting skills with the Z5 camera. We took turn to capture the outside of RMIT, the trams and people walking on the streets. We also moved to the 8^th level of building 80 to have high angle for out footage. Overall, I was quite happy with our footages and we already did the best as we could during the short period of time. However, for the next shooting, no matter what time we could have, I believe I should have to spent 5 minutes to plan what I suppose to do in order to avoid the issues I made in this part.

The edit

This was the second film project that I used Pr to produce so I felt more confident than my previous one. I already knew basic steps so this process was quite smooth.

The most difficult things in this part I believe was choosing the appropriate Haiku for my film because not only Haiku poem was completely new to me but also I had to create the link between my footage and the Haiku in order to make my film become meaningful. To have the connection, I picked the Haiku first and found appropriate footages to combine later. I tried to stick with simple idea as much as I can. During the process of exploring footages, I found some of them can be applied the opacity to support my film effects. I really enjoyed the opacity because it brought colorful elements into my film. However, it was quite hard to use this function logically. I also used the transition effects to make my cuts become smooth and reduced the gap between different rough cuts that the audiences might realize. Besides that, adding the Haiku texts on the screen was quite challenged to me because I wanted to add simple animation effects to them in order to make it less boring. Thus, I watched some tutorials on Lynda website to find out the way to do it.

For the audio of my film, I used both of original sounds and sounds I recorded. I chose to add sounds for some specific footage such as moving trams, green light signal, bird, bicycle’s bell etc. I use the original sounds for footage that I did not have specific sounds for them and try to reduce the sound level because I also used a song as a main theme for my whole film. Due to the fact I chose the romantic theme for my film so the music also was a key element to make the viewer could read the Haiku and feel it as I expected. Moreover, I believe adding the daily sounds help to reduce the cliché when they watch and listen to the song because I use the song without lyrics.

Overall, I am satisfied with what I have done for my film. Although it still has mistakes but I believe I am able to do better in the next time through lessons and tutorials I have and will learn more in the next couple weeks.

References

Chris, Z 2012, The 49^th Street Galleria, Free Music Archive, viewed 2 October 2014, <http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Undercover_Vampire_Policeman/05_-_The_49th_Street_Galleria_1620>.

Your Dictionary, Examples of Haiku Poems, viewed 2 October 2014, <http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-haiku-poems.html>.

Reflection on Lenny Project

Last few weeks, I had a chance to make my first project for Industrial Media course that called Lenny with my group. The project is like a new experience in process of film making to me and I really enjoyed it. There are three main stages that I will have a reflection on in order to review again the quality of my work.

Pre – Production

Due to the fact that my group had not have enough time for planning to shoot a short film containing 3 scenes. In those intensive days, we were completely new to making film projects so we did not know how to create the good plan for making film. The plan might contain many things such as roles of each other’s, the acting etc. Although we did have specific roles but we still did not know what were all necessary elements that we need to consider for creating film making plan.

Besides that, the location was our trouble because we were in our first semester at RMIT and we did not really know which were the best places in the nest of buildings for us to shoot Lenny in terms of setting camera angle, light, sound ect. Thus, we discussed about it and came up with building 14 because one of my teammate had experienced that place before. Although we reviewed this location through photos in her mobile phone, the reality was quite different from those images. We had to deal with some issues with this location. The first was there were two mirrors in both head and tail of the corridor. Thus, when we tried to test the camera, we could see clearly the crew in the mirror. Due to the lack of time, we could not change the location immediately so we used some posters around to cover those mirrors and start to shoot our Lenny.

With these two key issues in the pre production stage, I believe that spending more time on this stage as well as planning process would improve our project a lot. Although our process at this stage was not smooth and had trouble at some points, I think we did have some good solutions to overcome it and did not give up. If we had a second chance, I would suggest our group to experience the location before shooting, do the timing for each shot and spend more time to practice on the script. In general, I think those issues helps me to gain experiences for problem solving skills and avoid to make again these mistakes.

Production

We were in the big group that had 8 members so we could not have enough time to switch between different roles. At the beginning, I was the second AD and supported the first AD as well as Director. As we made film in school time so many students walked through the corridor and it disrupted our process. Thus, my role was standing behind the wall at the head of that corridor to ask for students to stop for a while when we was shooting film. It was not easy for me because the corridor was quite long and I had to listen carefully to my director when she said “action” or “cut”. In the second switch, I tried to hold a boom operator and it was quite hard in order to make sure that I held it in correct way to collect the best sound from our actors as well as tried to not make it appear on the frame of the camera. If it had more time, I would like to become sound recordist in order to experience the process of making good sound for the film that is really hard to adapt through the theories without practicing.

In this stage, we also have two main issues to deal with. The first was running out of battery of sound recorder in the very last moment. Actually, it supposed to be back up batteries in our bag but it was not and our mistake was not checking the package again to make sure that we got the extra batteries. Fortunately, we already shoot most of the film so this problem did not affect on the whole film. However, due to this reason, we missed sound for one important scene and I faced some challenges in post production stage to fix this issue for my video. Secondly, with the short period of time, my group only was able to shoot the third scene of Lenny script in two different angles in terms of wide shot and close up shot for Lenny character. I quite like the wide shot because that can show the long corridor as we expected and the location where did Lenny come from to make our script clearly to the audiences. In contrast, with the close up shot, camera only marked Lenny’s face without Van because the corridor was quite small and we did not have enough space to change the camera’s angles.

In general, through this stage, I learned that checking stuffs and having back up plan for everything are extremely significant to avoid unwanted issues such as running out of batteries like my group. If they happen, they will have impact on many stages such as making film and editing project due to the lack of key ingredients such as sound. Moreover, I believe timing for every shot that we intend to shoot also is an important factor that we need to consider to make sure we have enough time for shooting all shot that we need.

Post Production

This is the most difficult stage with me due to my lack of experience in using Premier Pro. In the first editing session, my head was blew away because of many new technological terms I did not hear before. Thus, it was really hard to me to catch up with the tutorial if I did not work in pair with one man and he has IT background so he helped me to do basic steps and get used to shortcut terms of the software.In the second tutorial about editing, I faced backing up data process. Last time, I left the classroom early so I forgot to back up my files. Thus, I had to edit my project again and it took a lot of time to adapt new editing techniques and redo my video at the same time.

Also, I had to deal with the sound in the begging of my video clip because as I mentioned above, our group did not record  specific sound for that. Thus, I had to look over all of my footage to find the sound that can match with this scene and try to do many cutting times to make sure images and sound are synced. However, this method did not work and I still cannot fix the footage that did not have sound so I decided to leave it with no sound. Thus, it also is one of my weaknesses of my editing and I will need to take time to learn how to fix it in the next project. Moreover, we did not think about how to match and unite all scenes together when shooting it. Thus, it created the issues for post production stage that I can not match all of the footage together in logical way because our Lenny sat down on the left side of the couch but he sat on the right side in the next scene. Besides that, trying to make any cutting and adding sound in the most natural way also are hard to me because I am still not familiar to work witch sound effects as well as how to cut footage at the right time. In order to reduce this issue, I tried to watch online tutorial via Lynda website and it was quite useful because I can minimize my gap a little bit.

In general, with the final video, although there are some problems that I cannot overcome as I mentioned above, I feel quite good about it because I did put my effort to explore and learn how to use Premiere Pro with basic techniques and tried to edit sound for good quality. In next days, I definitely need to learn more as well as practice more to reduce the gap between me and Mr Premire Pro in order to improve my next assignments throughout this course.