This week, we headed back with Helen and Trong to the location where Reza and I scouted last Friday.

We wasted no time and started shooting for a good 2 hours or so. Each of us rotated roles being the cinematographer, camera operator, and director. Since there isn’t any dialogue as this scene was mainly chasing, we didn’t find the need to have a sound man as Reza would be doing most of the sound effects on foley and sound design.

Initially, I found it hard organising the shots that we want. Trying to do too many things at once always lead to nothing positive. Hence, we chiseled down our experiment to our main objective and that was just to have a chase. Don’t really care how many times we were going to shoot it, we were just prepared to shoot multiple takes, from multiple angles, multiple shots and just nailing down all possibilities of shooting a chase scene between a zombie and a human. We had a great location with very little distraction or people (the occasion office worker would walk by to their car and drive off), but other than that, we pretty much had the whole roof top of the multi-story carpark to ourselves. We came up with a short storyboard and just started rolling.

Trong and I brought our DSLR, and this gave us options to shoot 2 different shots at once. I began by shooting Reza as he was looking and searching for a girl, played by Helen, while Trong shot close ups of Helen, as well as shots of her running and hiding. I don’t know if it’s the norm, just because I’ve not been on many shoots as I would like, I’ve always been stuck behind the computer operating Premiere or something, even while on my internship, but it seems like we would start off slow, and then develop some sort of rhythm as the brain juices start to flow. Initially, we’re shooting and reviewing the shots, I’ll be condemning my camera work. “I should have done that, I should have done this…” “Why does it look so bad, why does it not turn out the way I pictured it to be…” Stuff like that… But the more we kept going, the lesser the harsh comments came, it soon turned to, “That’s so cool..how did I do that…” “I’m going to try that shot again on some other experiment/shoot/film”. There were moments where I was actually dumbfounded with myself, like, “Did I actually just did that?”.

In particular, there was a shot in particular where I was tracking Reza’s legs as he was walking like a zombie in search of the girl (Helen). I must stress that, I did not come up with this idea, I was just going through a bunch of tutorials on how to use your tripod as a steadicam, and one of the videos I found online suggested extending all the legs, and opening out 1/3 of the legs, while close the other 2/3. The camera mount should be twisted at a 90 degrees angle. The video below taken by me showing Trong operating his DSLR would illustrate better than me trying to explain it with my lack of vocabulary.

Though still not as steady as a steadicam with counter weights and balance, it still provides a very smooth tracking image. This customisable set up allows you to reach down to low angles, or if you invert the mount of the camera, high angles. And since you could adjust the length of the 1/3 leg that is opened up, you can get a good grip while maintaining stability.

These little moments of “I can’t believe that worked out so good” is what I mean by getting the juices flowing and then realised we actually did something like that. And it just keeps wetting the taste buds for more moments like this when u want to try that same set up on a different shot or a different scene and see how that pans out.

All in all, the group was really happy how the shoot turned out. Looking forward to going through the post-process where then I can actually start exploring more editing/colouring options, something more in my element.

Having gone round the city recce-ing various multi-story carparks, Reza and I settled for one along Little Bourke Street. It has good access to the building, and the lift goes all the way up to the roof where there were a few cars scattered around. It didn’t seem too crowded at the time we were there, and it had a very nice view of the city scape from the roof. And, if we were lucky, at the right time, we could get the perfect lighting from the Sun passing through neighbouring buildings, or reflecting off glass panels. We would have to play by ear, or in this case, by our eyes, on the day itself when we’re out here shooting our experiments to see how the lighting conditions will be like.

At the same time, we took the opportunity to brainstorm ideas for our zombie chase scene. I decided to take on the approach shooting this like a trailer. After all, we are required to submit a 30 second screener at the end of this semester to showcase to our fellow studio mates. Hence, I thought the trailer concept would be the best way to exhibit several shots, our areas of interests/research, all in one sequence. For example, I would do a colour grade over this sequence as how a zombie apocalyptic film would look like, and Reza would do his foley and sound design base on the chase scenes. (Ie. Footsteps, zombie grunt, screams, ambient sounds…)

Since there isn’t much told in a trailer, we would not be so tied down on the narrative or a plot, just a basic storyboard of a zombie chasing a person. Maybe if we do get the time, we might do a little background story of why they’re chasing and how the zombie became a zombie, but that is probably as far as we would go in terms of writing a narrative, as we intend to focus on the area where we would like to experiment. As for Helen and Trong, we believe they could have great input on zombie movement, camera movement around the zombie, and the overall mood of the trailer to see if we can achieve the zombie apocalyptic feel overall.

I’m also glad to say that I’ve managed to get a mate of mine who’s in Singapore to do a basic film score over the trailer. My approach to this is to get a proper piece to show at the screening at the end of the semester, and not something rough, hence I believe music is a key element in trailers and teasers to drive the overall look and feel of a film. This overseas collaboration not only boosts teamwork effort, but also bring recognition to people (for what it’s worth) not bounded to RMIT. I am pretty sure in the industry there are instances where local companies collaborate or sub-contract their work out to overseas production houses for a torrent of reasons, budget, production, location, people, or even politics….the list goes on. Of course, this comes with its own set of challenges, such as having to put my point across, it would not be as easy to telling him face to face, I might have to draft a spot list with proper timecode to cue him when to insert music or when to dial it down, if need be. Looking forward to another set of collaboration, with an overseas partner this time.

Happy times are ahead, and we’re slowly but surely drawing closer to the end of the semester. Heat is up (not so much literally, it’s getting cold by the day), and everyone seems to be crunching their way through this time of the semester and very soon that little shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel will eventually blow up into the surrounding.

So this week, we had little consultation with Paul in pairs and we showed him our little test shoot from our abandoned building. Apparently it is our best interest that we acquire the right permission to shoot in such a venue, or in any other venue for that matter. Safety would be the main reason, if anything happens, who should be accountable or responsible, IF for an unfortunate event were to present itself. And that’s where all the nitty gritty insurance terms and conditions would apply. Of course non of us would want that to happen, and we would like to approach this whole assignment with peace of mind, knowing that everything is covered administratively and artistically. So if any of the two does not meet the requirements, it would mean that we might have to find somewhere else to shoot or go through the right channel and fill up proper paperwork for us to get the green light to use such a inspiring creative space.

Apart from that, we collaborated with another pair who’s area of research is on the zombie genre. This helped open up ideas for storyboarding our chase scene since now we have a good direction and genre. The pair we’re collaborating with would be Helen and Trong on their little Zombie adventure. So Reza and I sat down with the group to see how are we going to work this out combining our ideas together. Basically, Trong was interested in our locations for his Zombie shooting experiments, and we needed some form of narrative or storyboard to shoot at our location to exhibit our experiement (ie. for me, colour grading, and Reza, sound design and foley recording).

Personally, I feel that the group is getting a little crowded. And for an assignment that consists of mostly experiments and exploring of ideas, there might be too much to handle. But I’ll remain open, not shooting down any floating ideas or suggestions that any of the group mates have. Currently our main focus is to secure a location, as I strongly believe it is the most crucial for what we are doing for our little chase scene, or rather a more up to date version, zombie chase scene.

During our discussion, we brainstormed various locations that we can find around the city, and one that came to mind was a multi-story carpark. In substitute of an opened abandoned warehouse, the carpark has ample space to play with, different levels, small stairwells and pockets, hence it would be pretty versatile shooting in that environment. Though not as versatile as the abandoned building, it should be able to pull off our zombie apocalyptic chase. Reza and I planned to do a little recce session later in the week to find a suitable multi-story carpark.

So last weekend, I carried out an experiment shooting in RAW and in h264, mp4 that the original canon eos cameras record in.

Unfortunately, due to some technical difficulties, I could not get the camera to record in RAW for some reason. I’ve tried following the steps provided by online tutorials on youtube, forums, suggestions, tech geeks, all over the web, but to no avail, the camera would lag and stop recording after a couple of seconds after I hit the record button.

There are several factors that could lead to this problem. One being the camera’s abilities to cope with the amount of data that’s it’s taking in. In other words, it’s writing speed. From my extensive research, my Canon 650D, has the capability of writing at 40mb/s, and the SD card inserted into the camera is a class 10, 32GB, and it’s able to read/write at 80mb/s. As far as I know, the card is more than capable of doing this, however the camera might be a little on the slow side for recording in RAW especially for a FHD 1080p video. On another forum that I’ve read, it suggests to tweak the video resolution down to 480p while maintaining 24fps. This method works, however, the image is literally cropped down to accomodate the 480p, hence capturing very little visuals on an already very small cropped sensor. And, with very little luck, it would automatically stop recording after I hit the record button for a few seconds, but still longer than the previous settings.

Ultimately, I decided to just go along with recording in Canon’s stock h264 video mode. This format is well known for its notorious compression, though it being able to record in FHD 1080p, you will lose details in highlights and blacks. Another cool feature of the magic lantern interface, is that it allows you to apply zebra patterns on the screen to show you what is getting blown out in exposure. I’ve set the zebra patterns percentage to 75%. And tried to keep the zebra patterns low in the image while I was shooting various shots.

When I’ve imported the footage into Premiere, and did some editing, before moving on to grading the shots, my assumption was right about losing a lot of detail from the heavily compressed h264 mp4 format straight out of the camera. This led to some disappointment, as there was really very little room to grade before the image gets grainy.

The learning point from this whole experiment would be, if you can’t shoot in RAW and your only option is to shoot in the heavily compressed h264 mp4, your exposure has to be dead right to prevent any crushing of the highlights or blacks. It can’t hold a candle to recording in RAW, but I guess that’s the best way to get out of a dslr. Another alternative, that may incur heavy cost would be to record on an external recorder such as an Atomos Shogun, or Ninja. This fine products record in any format you desire from h264 mp4, to Apple ProRes, or RAW formats. From my experience and understanding, people tend to overlook the importance of video codecs and formats and just look at resolution to judge image quality, which is really quite a pity. The container that will be holding all your data and information is just as important as the pixels that goes into them.

The video below would illustrate how bad the compression does to the picture, even with low ISO and FHD recording.

As the picture from my “Wall of True to Form” suggests, (Week #8C), there’s a list of things to be covered in the upcoming test shots with Magic Lantern. I’ve done some self-experiments with my DSLR around my apartment, just trying to familiarise myself with the Magic Lantern interface and functions to achieve proper exposure, follow focus, and shooting in RAW. Now the next step is to actually shoot a sequence and see how that pans out.

I’ve arranged to shoot at one of my mate’s apartment where she will be carrying out a mundane routine and I’ll just keep shooting the same routine over and over again to experiment different types of shots, angles, technique, and maybe even explore the use of lighting. The whole point of this experiment is to see what type of shots work in order to achieve a general cinematic look, and steering away from the “home video” feel. Things to consider in making the look cinematic would be, focal points, exposure, lighting, camera movement… Since it’s a mundane routine, I can rule out any narrative or plot lines that may or may not influence the image of being cinematic, and just focus purely on constructing the shots. I know this might backfire, as the narrative and plot would drive what makes an image cinematic as well, but I would like to focus on the technical side of things first, before diving into the creative writing aspect.

Currently, I’ll put the abandoned building idea on hold first, and roll out the kinks on shooting on a DSLR with Magic Lantern, before returning back to the same place for more shots and experiments. The place is a little out of the way for both Reza and I, therefore, we need to have something solid to shoot and work towards, the next time we’re there. Now that we have a good idea on the location that we are going to work with, we can slowly brainstorm ideas for a storyboard and script for our next shoot at the abandoned building.

So I’ve acquired this free software that is written and developed by the good people from www.magiclantern.fm. As the website notes, it is NOT a hack, but it works as an enhancement and operates along side with Canon’s firmware (unfortunately, or fortunately for me, this programme only runs on Canon EOS cameras, so, sorry to Nikon or Sony users out there). This extraordinary programme opens up the capabilities of the DSLR by so much more, taking your photography/filmmaking skills to the next level. It has features such as, onbaord microphone levels, unlike the standard Canon firmware which does not show you any peaking of audio levels, cropmarks/overlay templates for times when you plan to shoot in 2.35:1 or applying the rule of thirds. Even an intervalometer for you to shoot beautiful time lapses, without busting your wallet on a remote control shutter release.

However, all good things comes with its downsides, and this is no exception. One of the key features of Magic Lantern that got me salivating was that it could shoot in RAW video. Yes, RAW. That’s full HD, 1920 x 1080, RAW. Or at least that’s what I thought.

On a standard Canon EOS DSLR, it is capable of recording in HD, 24/25/30fps depending on your camera settings. However, it is limited to only writing in h264 format. This is handy as it’s a compact format, easy to transfer files around, compatible with most video players ie. Quicktime, VLC, Windows Media Player… However, if you’re a colourist, it’s a nightmare to deal with, as it compresses the living sh*t out of the image, hence having the highlights blown out and crushed blacks, not forgetting grainy images in low light conditions when you bump up the ISO by a bit.

Hence, in order to carry out my experiments, it would be optimum for me to shoot most, if not, all of my footages in RAW. Currently, I am still new to this whole Magic Lantern thing despite having it installed in my camera for the past year or so. Therefore, much research has to be done, experiments to be made, footages to be shot. I’m currently going through forums, YouTube tutorials, self-exploration, to understand the workflow of Magic Lantern and how to operate it. On top of that, just getting used to shooting on a DSLR and using a tripod as a counterweight like a steadicam.

Fingers crossed, I’ll device another shoot this weekend, just purely experimenting using Magic Lantern to shoot in RAW, and various camera movement, angles, and getting into the right headspace during a shoot to plan the shots.

Over the weekend, Reza and I went round the South-west of Melbourne looking for abandoned buildings to carry out our shooting experiments, and we chanced upon this abandoned warehouse in Yarravale.

The place was littered with spray cans, rubble from renovation works that might or might not have taken place, old furniture, walls that have collapsed, ceiling that might have fallen down, and there wasn’t a wall that has not been artistically marked with graffiti on it. This was the perfect location for our little experiments to do some chase scenes, fight scenes, or just tracking a subject, as we need a big wide open space to play around with the movement of the camera, as well as the subject.

We spent most of the time taking still images (I’ve uploaded a couple at the bottom of this post) to capture the different pockets of space and area, in order for us to draft a script or storyboard for our upcoming shoots. The building sits on quite a big foot print, moreover, the actual building has several “compartments” and a main warehouse where we have a huge opened space with a high ceiling tattered with holes that allows sunlight to peep through into the building. If anyone has seen the movie Chappie (2015) directed by Neill Blomkamp, the building reminds me a set out of the movie where Chappie, the robot was raised by gangsters taking shelter in an abandoned building.

The above is a little test shoot that we did to see how it looks on camera. Though it’s nothing much, it is a good starting point for us to brainstorm ideas for the next few shoots that we plan to carry out on our upcoming visits back to the place. I did a test grade over the footage as well. Since it was only our recce shoot, we were equipped with only our DSLR and tripods, hence achieving a proper exposure in a dimly lit warehouse with pockets of sunshine was quite a challenge. Therefore, I might consider bringing a couple of lights in our future visits. In the colour grading process, I tried to maintaining a balance mixed of colours, not biasing to any in particular, but generally trying to achieve a more saturated look as compared to the “grey-ish” look out of the camera.

I understand that shooting on a DSLR has its limitations of having the visual compressed into H264 format, and that leaves very little “room” to work with during colour grading as the highlights would have been blown out, and the blacks might be crushed, due to the compression. Hence, in my next couple of experiments and research, I would be looking up how to use Magic Lantern (a free software created for Canon EOS cameras) to shoot in RAW, hopefully losing less details in the compression and maintaining a higher bit rate.

Ultimately, I am happy with the location we have found and we would definitely return back for several more shoots in the upcoming weeks ahead. Feeling inspired by the space and emptiness of the area, if the walls could speak, I wonder the many stories they would tell about this building that now serves as a hideout, shelter, hangout, and now featured in a little student project.

My landlord isn’t gonna be too happy bout this, but I’ve sticked the little A5 sheets of paper on my “Idea Wall”, to see everything as a whole big picture.

I know you can’t see much from the image above, but the pieces of paper on the left arranged in a grid are organised by week, so each row represents a week, and each column is a part, so it starts from Week #7 part C. And continues onto the next row, Week #8 part A, and so on. Pardon the chicken scribbling handwriting. This is still in it’s preliminary stages, and it’s just going to get more messy from here, or at least I’d like it to be.

The other pieces of paper on the right are running ideas for experiments such as, locations, plots, narratives, general ideas of what is going to take place. All these to target the “Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How?” posed in my previous post.

I believe that as the weeks go by, and as the wall gets plastered with more and more bits of paper, my concept and idea of filmmaking would be clearer and a little bit more defined, as compared to when we first started in week #1 of the semester. This however, does not serve as a gauge or some sort of measuring tool, to see how much I’ve learned, but more as an aid to check my progress and to see if I might have left any stones, rocks, or boulders unturned.

Upon coming back from the much needed Easter break (which went by like a breeze), we were tasked to do planning on little A5 sheets of paper. One piece representing one part of a 3 part week schedule. I guess it’s good to pen down everything in order to see the bigger picture, and we’re not limited to the 13-15inch laptop screens we swear by using them.

Right from the get-go, it was a little hard coming up with plans and ideas. Not sure if it was the combination between the lack of sleep or not meeting my daily dose of caffeine, but I had trouble penning down ideas that contributes to the progress of the final assignment. I am definitely not one who has the capabilities of thinking on the spot and pouring out ideas onto pen and paper. Ideas usually come to me while I’m doing something completely unrelated, like walking from place to place, preparing dinner, taking a shower…(you get the idea). Hence, I would store these ideas in a memory bank somewhere in my brain, and churn them out into the little A5 paper that Paul was referring to.

Though ideas are stored in that internal memory bank, they still have to be put into hard copy in order to place them into context and a timeline so that they can be executed in a timely manner. And somehow when I think of an idea, it would lead me to thinking of another, that may or may not be related to the original spawning concept. These ideas then spark more research on the topic, which then leads to generating more ideas. Seems like a never ending loop of questions and answers, and more questions.

Therefore, I’ve decided to tame my loose control of thinking, and curating them into categories of “Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?” Once placing ideas into this “Bins” on those A5 sheets of paper, I realised that organising and scheduling seem much more simple. I decided to approach the weeks into 3 parts, A, B, and C, just as how Paul suggested.

Part A – would be proposing a “challenge” for that particular week, also reflecting on findings or shots or just basic research materials, to see how it can be incorporated to the following week’s challenge.

Part B – would be generating ideas on how to tackle the “challenge” posed in A.

Example, Challenge: Recce, and scout for locations for shooting experiments.

Equipment needed for shooting experiment? Generate shot list? Test shots? Location recce shots?

Part C – Post-production on test shots, editing, grading, possibly layering music.

And then back to part A where I reflect on the findings. Of course, along the way, there would be other challenges and questions popping up such as, how to operate a DSLR while tracking or following subject? Pulling focus on DSLR? Shooting in RAW instead of the heavily compressed h264 format… Little kinks and bumps that should be ironed out by the end of each week to improve as a filmmaker.

On Tuesday, we gave our (3 minutes) pitch to a panel, and gathered some advice, suggestions, feedback, and comments. Unfortunately, almost majority of us went over the 3 minute mark and those with first names starts with letters towards the end of the alphabet, had to, well…stick to our 3 minutes plan, and receive our comments in the form of an email instead of face-to-face. Which isn’t really bad thing, as it could be a little intimidating to some.

I’m not sure about my studio mates, but I tried timing myself to keep my pitch 3 minutes short. What I did was to play a song roughly 3 minutes long and started talking to the computer with my notes in front of me. Once the song hits its last chorus, I would wrap it up, and try to finish it before the song ends. Out of all the attempts, I didn’t manage to finish my pitch before the song ended, however, I would say I managed to keep it under the 4 minute mark?

More often than not, most of us tend to digress and go off topic while presenting to an opened audience. Others, try to rush through everything just to get it done and over with, getting rid of that built up anxiety leading up to the actual presentation. While some, could just wing it through having ample experience talking in front of a crowd or just plain God given talent.

I know this blog post has nothing related to my experiments or film related for that matter, but I believe that how you portray yourself and conduct presentations, whether to multi-national companies or to little focus groups, really affects the results of your initial intend of why you’re giving the presentation in the first place. Spacing out, using pause fillers, large unnecessary hand movements, are tell tales or little barometers of your level of preparedness, as you start to assemble your one man army against the crowd of 3 or 3000.

Since my name starts with the letter ‘S’, and so happen ‘S’ is somewhat close to the end of the alphabet, I was the second last to present, and hence I got the email treatment oppose to the face-to-face comments. Looking forward to what the panel has to say, and more so, to the much needed easter break, and what’s to come ahead after that. Happy holidays.