The challenges

One of the most challenging parts I have had so far is to be able to take action shots. As Melbourne is now winter, it means that there is less time during the day to shoot with the good natural lighting for good photos. I’ve been quite struggling to capture the moment in fast pace environment. Most of the time I shoot during the day, depending on natural lighting and now that I have to shoot at night and to be able to get the right shot is near impossible. However, it is actually getting better in time. The more I play with the menu, the settings, the better the quality is. I find this part as the most difficult because as somebody who hasn’t been working that long in photography, it can be quite challenging.

However, the longer and the more I learn to use the settings properly for the kind of action shots I wanted, I could see the style of the photos I always end up taking. At first, I wanted my pictures to be more of action, sporty style but now that I find it quite not my sort of photography I like, my aim is to be able to combine action, sporty shots to urban photography. I would like my photos present the other side of lifestyle in Melbourne, the urban side. As Melbourne is also well-known in terms of tourism, I would like to capture the other side of the city where most people don’t usually think of. I also want to stick with how I like to out a little hint of streetwear fashion into my photo book as it is something I’ve always enjoyed doing.

Colour grading

featured_image-elisapie

After having a play with colour grading today, I found that colour is really influential in filmmaking. However, it is not as easy as I thought it would be. My plan is to see whether colour can affect the mood of scenes or not, which I found it quite tricky.

Yes, colour is affective in filmmaking, however, different tones and colours may show the same kind of feeling and emotion as well. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t need colour grading in filmmaking. After working on colour grading, even just a slight change on the video, it can make the whole film look better and even more interesting. It pleases the eyes of the audience and can also enhance the drama of colours. It helps the audience know where to focus and what exactly the director trying to tell in particular scenes.

As I have been working on tinting, toning, and a whole lot of other stuff related to colouring, green tone seems to match with my theme of laundromat the most. I also found that, when shooting a shot of shadow and using a lot of exposure, blue tone works best for that kind of scene. The video below is a brief of what kind of colour and tone I’ve been working on. When the scene is bright, warm tone makes the shot stand out more. Blue tone is suitable for a darker scene.

 

So far so good?

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind facts

On Tuesday, we went to suite and learnt how to do colour grading and a lot of other techniques for this semester, to finish our projects as we planned.

As I am the only one who uses Final Cut Pro for editing my film, I found it quite challenging for me to catch up with other students as they are already used to Adobe Premiere Pro. However, after having a play with it with Allison, it’s not that hard to do and surprisingly, it’s as easy as Final Cut Pro. I watched Allison’s work a little bit in class and she gave me some ideas of lighting issue, which is what she’s working on. It’s interesting to use each other’s works to explore and see how we can improve our work.

I decided to put voice over of a scene from a movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry as a guide. My ideal voice over for my video is a conversation between two people talking about something, would be best if it’s quite personal and a bit emotional in order to include feelings and emotions to the work, not only decent moving images. the video below will be show how it is with the voice over, without colour grading.

Overall, my project is going really well. Now, what I need to do is colour grading and creating a voice over of my own, or even find a legal voice over one to finish my work. I also need to shoot more shots with different angles. I have a lot of wide shots already, and all I need now is more close-up shots. Hopefully will finish shooting by this week so I can work more on colour and voice over.