Wednesday
Friday
Additional Video Editing
Now that I have posted my first draft of my composition, I am going to talk about some other uses of editing that have influenced the final result.
I have made use throughout the video of using general colour correction, dulling some shots down so that they are not so whited out and have more contrast, as well as adding a slightly deeper mood to the shot. An example of this would be when the actor is walking down the stairs and to the door.. When whe walks in front of the door, a vivid blue is in the windows, so in order to dull this down I reduced the brightness and slightly increased the contrast as well as blocking out a small proportion of te white and dark extremities from the shot so that all of the colours are midrange rather than fully white or black. e.g. rather than having a red block in a part of a shot, its intensity would be brought down and it would look slighly more pink.
Another piece of editing that I had to do to this shot was cut out some (admittedly poor) acting from one of the actors in the shot. To do this I scaled up the shot and then positioned it slightly to the right so as to cut out one of the actors, and then carying on the zoom towards the door as the main character walked outside. I was lucky with this shot as the quality is relatively high, so pixelation did not become a problem after completing the virtual camera movement.
A problem shot which unfortunately I am litterally (and annoyingly) unable to reshoot or fix is the shot where we see the car pull up and the actor get out and stand just off the pavement (not road side) looking down and generally glum.
Still, over all of this editing, the most crucial, and by far the most difficult piece of editing was putting the mask over the mirror. Even now it is not perfect with a gradiented layer being masked around the actor, even with roughly a week of adjusting and correcting, the gradien't was just too difficult to manipulate throughout the shot as the natural light shining on the wall around the mirror changed as the actor walked past, making the superficial box a little more obvious than is desited.
I have made use throughout the video of using general colour correction, dulling some shots down so that they are not so whited out and have more contrast, as well as adding a slightly deeper mood to the shot. An example of this would be when the actor is walking down the stairs and to the door.. When whe walks in front of the door, a vivid blue is in the windows, so in order to dull this down I reduced the brightness and slightly increased the contrast as well as blocking out a small proportion of te white and dark extremities from the shot so that all of the colours are midrange rather than fully white or black. e.g. rather than having a red block in a part of a shot, its intensity would be brought down and it would look slighly more pink.
Another piece of editing that I had to do to this shot was cut out some (admittedly poor) acting from one of the actors in the shot. To do this I scaled up the shot and then positioned it slightly to the right so as to cut out one of the actors, and then carying on the zoom towards the door as the main character walked outside. I was lucky with this shot as the quality is relatively high, so pixelation did not become a problem after completing the virtual camera movement.
A problem shot which unfortunately I am litterally (and annoyingly) unable to reshoot or fix is the shot where we see the car pull up and the actor get out and stand just off the pavement (not road side) looking down and generally glum.
Still, over all of this editing, the most crucial, and by far the most difficult piece of editing was putting the mask over the mirror. Even now it is not perfect with a gradiented layer being masked around the actor, even with roughly a week of adjusting and correcting, the gradien't was just too difficult to manipulate throughout the shot as the natural light shining on the wall around the mirror changed as the actor walked past, making the superficial box a little more obvious than is desited.
Wednesday
New Treatment Sheet (+Script)
As I have changed my storyline, here is the new treatment sheet that I have written up, although significantly shorter, there is a reason for this explaind within.
I have not included a script for this new movie opening as there is no diologue, this was not to get out of doing a script, a soundtrack just seemed a lot more appropriate than using the diologue that I already had recorded.
Masking
Within my project it was essential for me to learn how to mask.
The reason for this is rather embarassing as I thought it would be a good idea to video one of my shots oppoite a mirror, so whilst the shot itself was good, the camera man plus camera are also in-shot. In order to correct this i had to match the wall colour with a rectangular mask over the mirror, and then track mask around the actor as she walked down the hall. The overall finnish is a lot better, however i was unable to hold a steady match on the wall as the light intensity on the wall changed when the actor was near and so the shape becomes more distinguishable the later on in the shot it gets. But all in all I would say a great improvement considering my lack of experience with the program (AE), but then again this would not have been necessary if I had got the shot right in the first place.
The mask is particularly obvious in this screenshot, however there is not a lot more that I could have done to correct this mistake. Fortunately at full speed, the mask is barely noticible if you are not looking for it.
The reason for this is rather embarassing as I thought it would be a good idea to video one of my shots oppoite a mirror, so whilst the shot itself was good, the camera man plus camera are also in-shot. In order to correct this i had to match the wall colour with a rectangular mask over the mirror, and then track mask around the actor as she walked down the hall. The overall finnish is a lot better, however i was unable to hold a steady match on the wall as the light intensity on the wall changed when the actor was near and so the shape becomes more distinguishable the later on in the shot it gets. But all in all I would say a great improvement considering my lack of experience with the program (AE), but then again this would not have been necessary if I had got the shot right in the first place.
The mask is particularly obvious in this screenshot, however there is not a lot more that I could have done to correct this mistake. Fortunately at full speed, the mask is barely noticible if you are not looking for it.
Friday
Change!
I have made the decision to change the theme of my movie opening sequence. Rather than doing an opening based on a gunner and a target I have chosen to redo my project in the theme of a drama, specifically on a teen who is going through tough times, and decides it is time to leave.
The problem that I had is that after I had shot the footage and put it together in simple 1 after the other sequence with no real editing it was evident that there were far too many clichés and that the footage was just not of the quality that I would like, as well as having a significantly higher number of areas nearby which are a lot more relevant to my storyline.
The problem that I had is that after I had shot the footage and put it together in simple 1 after the other sequence with no real editing it was evident that there were far too many clichés and that the footage was just not of the quality that I would like, as well as having a significantly higher number of areas nearby which are a lot more relevant to my storyline.
Sunday
After Effects
AE is an advanced piece of software used by professionals to edit pieces of footage features like colour correction or chroma-key.
I spent about five lessons based solely on the use of After Effects, learning the basics with the aid of my teacher as well as the use of videocopilot basic training videos.
In class we worked on some test videos as well as making some compositions without using footage and using the features of after effects to make some animations. This went well and I was able to make my first composition which was not filmed with any great quality, however the use of after effects allowed me to put together a short clip which is able to be followed quite easily.
In order to continue my work at home, and so that I could spend my own time working on my own projects I installed After Effects CS5 on my home laptop. This allowed me to practise my skills when out of the classroom.
Here is a short composition that i made in my own time:
I was also given the opportunity to use a program called final-cut pro, installed on the Apple Macs at my college, however there is no support for windows opersting systems for this program as of yet so all of my editing and sound (inc. sound effects) was completed in Adobe After Effects. Many people say that After Effects is no good with sound or sound effects, but I found no problem with this and would hapily use it in the future for even just solely editing sound as it is easier to use than most other programs thate are available for this specific purpose.
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