Dance - Evaluation

Working with Tom and Lucy on this project, I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed myself and am extremely happy with how the film turned out turning out better than we had expected. A major factor that really helped is the fact myself, Tom and Lucy we were all very organised and had sorted our pre- production early on, thus making the whole production and post production process and in all the whole dance project easier. Only having one day to shoot, it went extremely well, and were lucky to have found dancer Amelia for this project as she was ideal for what we wanted and treated the project like her own we as a group had instantly made a working relationship with Amelia making the process a whole lot easier as well.

 

As a DOP - director of photography, being in charge of lighting, and assisting with camera , I felt I had done a good job in maintaining the lights in keeping them consistent to avoid continuity. Communication between myself and the camera operator Tom I found it really easy to liaise with him and in capturing the shots that I had created with help from Lucy. With lightning being a skill apart of the DOP I felt that the lighting, I was happy with the look of the film and felt that I had achieved the classical Caravaggio look gaining the skills from the photography unit I had undertaken. Creating unexpected lights in some of the shots which by accident really added to the piece, because in some of the footages we had shot the close ups of the Amelia's face for instance you could see green light, that looked like a green lens flare being unexpected but really made the piece unique. However I should have probably had taken more consideration into the lights as in some of the footages the dancers face were almost unrecognisable and meant that in post I had to lighten the dancers face by using an effect called animat which took ages to do to light her face up. However you learn from your mistakes and has taught me not to make this mistake again and not to rely everything in post.
 

As a Storyboard artist, Not being big headed or anything I think I produced an extremely detailed and professional storyboard. Portraying exactly what we as a group had envisioned. I will probably challenge myself next year no matter what film or style or genre it is storyboarding for other groups as well as for other courses. To further my skills in Storyboarding.  
        

 In post, colour grading and being an online editor, I felt I had delivered to my expectations and am happy of the final film. Although Lucy had done a re-cut of the first rough cut at the last minute which meant I had to with Tom's help completely re-cut the film in avid which meant that some of the effects shots that Tom had given me which I had put in had be scrapped but nonetheless the re-cut is far better than the first. I am extremely happy that we as group have made a high standard professional film which I am really happy with.

In all, I am happy with the final dance video the style, look, colour the story behind it.

I am really pleased with it and am excited to enter the film into festivals. I have really enjoyed working Tom and Lucy and would want to work with them again for future works. Being in a group with talented and hard working individuals it has made me push myself and I have defiantly leant a thing or two from both Tom and Lucy. 

And am happy to present our experimental and abtsract film.

Post Production Edit - Online Editor

After grading the films was done, with tom working on the effects shots Tom would pass me the effects shot and I would then add them into the cut. To make the effects shots work as well as giving me the VFX shot I also asked Tom to produce a matte of the effects shot as well.

This being the matte template above and VFX below.

When splicing the effect shot into the timeline I would layer the matte and VFX shot together applying a matte key on the matte shot to blend the together.

Layering the shots together from the timeline. With green screen shot first once ive been given the effect shot I would layer them on top of each other. So I would place the effect on a new video layer above the green screen clip, then I duplicated the effects shot and then put the matte template on top over the duplicated shot applying a matte key effect on this. The colour I produced I saved them as colour templates I simply applied the two different colours on to the two effects shots to get the split screen as you can see. if your reading this it sounds hard and difficult but its really rather simple . :)

Applying this same process on to the other green screen footages.

We had the avid edit suite booked and it was the same repeated process Tom would be doing the effects, Lucy would be in another room working on the sound and I would be in the same room as Tom doing the online edit. Tom would pass me the effects shot and I would put it together and splice it in to the video and at some points Lucy would come in and check on us It felt like working in a professional environment and felt like I was working within the actual Industry.      



Post Producton Edit - Colourist

Once everything had been transcoded and imported into avid I started the online edit and Colouring.

With Tom starting on the effects shots I started on the colour grading of the film. Speaking to Lucy the director on what colour she wanted the film. As Lucy wanted two different colours one warm and the other cold the warm colour being the reflection and the cold being real life. Lucy then started on the sound and left me to work on the colour.  

Setting the mode to colour correction mode , started to experiment and grade the film.  This was a fun process for me as it's an area I find really interesting and how colour can add to a film. using the colour wheel and curves to get the two different colours for the manipulator and the manipulated. trying to balance out the colours making sure the colours used weren't illegal. whilst grading the film there's different waveforms such as an vector scope etc displayed on the monitor.

On the different waveforms there's negative on the bottom and positive on the top and the colour has to remain balanced in between this, anything above or below the negative and positive lines the colour is illegal therefore not a broadcasting colour. However there were in a few shots where the colour was illegal so I applied an effect called safe colour limiter what this does is it compress the colour and keeps everything within the boundary so any colour that is off this effect keeps it legal.

The symbol above being the colour safe limiter which helps to keep the colour legal. Using this because when skimming through the clips it was to hard to find where the colour was being off so I applied colour limiter above the whole timeline to make sure the colour was safe.

This is the final grade of the film the top the warm colour being the reflection, the bottom the the cold blue being the real life. It took a while to produce these colours. Im pleased with the colour I have produced So was Lucy and Tom which we think best represent the different sides.

Final colour comparison below 

Post Production

Before we broke up for Easter we had booked out the avid editing suite so when we came back we could start ASAP however there was a mix up with the booking and Simon Allmark had booked the suite from 13th- 28th March instead of 13th-28th April so we just rebooked with Simon all was sorted. Lucy had done a rough cut of the dance video  over Easter.

Rough Cut below:

The rough cut being  made on premiere pro we had to transcode the video so that it would be editable in avid. So we exported the rough cut into different formats theses formats being EDL, AAF etc. So we could open these formats into avid. However these formats didn't work. Tom on his Mac took the rough cut into software called Da Vinci resolve and transcoded the rough cut, transcoding the video through Da Vinci resolve worked. We were able to open the rough cut in avid however we had to relink all the footages Lucy had in the rough cut which took a whole morning relinking and importing the footages into avid