my coursework

1. CONSTRUCTION OF THE
PRODUCT
Trauma

2. PROBLEMS FACEDWITH AUDIO
 Me and my sound guy, Bruno Gillick faced a lot of problems with audio:
The sound and the audio quality were hindered by the fact that neither Bruno or I
had powerful enough computers to be able to cope high quality audio.This meant
that we were forced to record into a compressed format, which hindered audio
quality.This is not really noticeable through normal speakers, but in a large
surround sound speaker system, the cracks would begin to show. Another one of
the main problems with the audio was that all the sound had to be done in post
production, which meant trying to recreate every noise with household items and
then finding the best way to mic them, then trying to sync them up to the video on
scene - a hugely tedious job which was not very gratifying, as nothing seemed to
work.The reason I decided to do sound in post was weather conditions, in terms of
dialogue, we only had one word that needed to be said, so it was more practical to
do it using ADR, but the results were not believable.

3. RESOLVINGTHE PROBLEMS
To fix the problem of badADR we added a lot of post production effects, such as
reverb and other such effects, this in its turn lead to the sound becoming more
believable, but still sounding rather amateurish.
 In the future we could improve the audio by micing more on set, rather than
leaving it to post production, and us doing a little more acoustic research into the
location for the film before shooting it, so the audio can sound good.

4. THE SCORE
 the music attempts to follow the film, Bruno did unfortunately have to rely on
playing instruments himself, record them to the pace of the film, and then add
effects.This lead to a more indy sound scape, rather than the percussion driven
one that we are so used to in a Hans Zimmer world.This is just a matter of
personal preference.
 for A2 Bruno will be capable of generating entire orchestras using synths and
therefore my A2 piece will have a traditional cinematic score to it.

5. FILMING GEAR

6. MY CAMERA RIG
 For hardware, I used my morphing shoulder rig, this was incredibly useful, as it
enabled me to get stable shots. And when i required a low angled shot, for scenes
such as 'waking up in reality', it would morph into a spider rig, which means that i
could get low angled shots without having to lie down.
Shoulder rig for
the higher shots
Spider rig for lower shots

7. CAMERA
 For cameras I used my Nikon D3500, I used this camera due to
the fact that it was my own. I have had experience with editing
with it, so i know its quality, framing and general feel so, it is also
compatible with all the other software (and hardware) i use. So
there was no way of me running into unexpected errors.

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY
 In terms of cinematography, in reality, I used two red top lights,
combined with a hazer and reflector.The reflector meant that i
could take the edge of the light, to create a darker lit screen.The
haze gave the alleyway a dark, windy atmosphere. Also it meant
that you could see the individual beams of light.

9. HEAVEN
 For the long shot of 'heaven', I used a pop up green screen, this
was really useful as when compositing oneself into green scene
footage, one needs to match the lighting of the footage that
you are adding yourself into. Since 'heaven' was out doors, it
would have been impractical to mimic outdoor lighting in a
studio, and taking the studio green screen outside was
impractical, therefore my pop-up green screen was useful
because of its portability and speed, setting up the studio would
have taken half and hour, and longer with the lights, whereas
the pop up took a second.This was a more effective use of my
time.

10. HEAVEN PHOTOS
AN IMPRACTICAL
STUDIO SET UP
WHAT I SET UP

11. SOFTWARE
Software wise, I used Adobe Premier Pro and After
Effects. Premier was use for editing the footage, After
Effects was used for colour grading and compositing the
effects.The reason I used Adobe instead of Final Cut,
was the interlinking between the two programs. Adobe
gives me more control over individual clips, and I can
send that directly to Premier Pro without having to
export it.This massively sped up the editing process.

12. EDITS
Firstly, I wanted to mimic depth of
field, to do this I used the masking
tool in After Effects. Here I would
mask out my subject, frame by
frame, and then add a blur to the
background.This brought my
subject into the foreground, and
served to hide the background, to
maintain the illusion that one was
in a heavenly place.
BEFOREAND AFTER

13. Colour grading was very important, as it was the main
tool I used to highlight the contrast between heaven
and reality.The main tool for this was 'photo filter',
which meant i could change how 'warm' or 'cold' my clip
was. For the rest, i would just change the brightness and
contrast, add vignetting which darkens the edges. On
top of this, I added a 'letter box effect', this served to
create a cinematic wide screen feel, by cropping out the
top and bottom. This extra cropping meant that i could
adjust framing in post production.

14.  Finally to pull off my long shot of heaven, I used keylight ( to remove the
green from the green screen) and then masked around that to prevent it
from removing green from anywhere else. I then used rotoscoping, which
is a program that automatically masks out a subject frame by frame, on the
parts of the actor that weren't covered by the green screen. Once i had had
added my background to the composition I used colour grading to match
subject to the background, added lens flairs, to create a sense of realism,
and used a light plugin to simulate light rays from the sun, which the birds
would then block out.The birds were royalty free stock footage, added by
me.