In this week’s tutorial, we gave short pitches of the person sitting next to us on what they intend to do for their final assessment and area of research. Coincidentally, I was grouped with a fellow “True to Form-er” who was thinking of exploring the uses of sound design and foley in a particular sequence as well as the movement of camera going through walls done in Adobe After Effects. I gave some thought, and decided that it would be a good opportunity pairing up together to shoot a sequence of shots that could exhibit and experiment our respective areas of research. Me exploring the uses of colour and the letterbox, and him the uses of sound design, foley and camera movement in After Effects.
2 heads are better than 1? Might be a little too early to say, but I am pretty excited for this collaboration, as I believe we can cover more ground and be exposed to more challenges in our development in becoming filmmakers. However, collaboration comes with a new set of obstacles that should be addressed at the early stages, before the entire process begins. Issues such as, commitment, scheduling, working habits and ethics, should be discussed thru in order to accomodate each other. So far, we’ve discussed several topics and ideas to incorporate both our field of interest, and it’s looking pretty good.
Only time will tell how this partnership would pan out, but I remain optimistic with this approach. Putting myself in a scenario where we have to work with people in the industry where we don’t really have a choice, unlike the present, where we are given the option to fly solo or work as a team, or as pairs of our own preference, that is probably a privilege not everyone has, especially when you’re new to the industry.
We are slowly approaching the middle of the semester, and we should be finalising on ideas or concepts that we would like to research and explore for our final assessment.
So far, I have decided to focus on achieving the cinematic look with the use of colour grading and applying different aspect ratios. Next week will be quite a big week as we will be pitching our ideas to a panel (and Paul), and see what feedback, comments, criticism, advice we can get from the guest lecturers. Personally, I’m pretty nervous, as there are so many aspects and factors to making an image cinematic. There is lighting, composition, DOF, production design, make up, costume, the whole list goes on. I guess, I would mainly focus my research and experiments with the use of colours and also applying different aspect ratio to see how it will affect the image as a whole.
Currently, after going through several weeks of practices with the camera, sound recording equipment, and just having a feel of shooting on set, I have confidence in taking on the next step which is to come up with a simple narrative or plot for my experiment to take place. This would definitely comprise of brainstorming ideas for location, cast, crew and so on. I may even collaborate with a fellow studio mate, someone who is exploring a different field, however, using the same medium or reference to exhibit his/her findings/experiments. This could be achieving the cinematic look, but exploring lighting, sound, or cinematograhy, or even something more refined such as, writing, genre, or visual effects.
The road is long, and the light at the end of the tunnel, is not even peering through yet, but I believe that with time, and certain amount of experiments, I would be able to uncover what I have set out to explore, or even pick up a few things along the way. At this point, like Paul has mentioned many times before, the main goal is not to shoot a short film or anything of that sort, but a series of shots to represent what we are exploring. With that, I hope to establish a folio of shots, where I can look back upon and reflect easily, like how I would do so looking back at an old drawing or painting I did during kindergarten.
We were given time to carry out further exploration and investigation on areas we wish to pursue to for our final assessment.
A fellow classmate and I decided to carry out some experiments and play around with different depth of field and how to achieve the nice bokeh around the subject. There were quite a number of variables, type of shot, focal length, camera zoom, as well as getting the right exposure. We had to maintain a constant and just play around with 1 variable, ie. a same shot with different focal lengths. Hence we tried several set ups as follows.
Close up shot, Long focal length, camera lens zoomed in
Close up shot, short focal length, camera lens zoomed out
Close up shot, long focal length, camera lens zoomed out (we decided to skip this, as it would mean the shot would become a wide shot)
Close up shot, short focal length, camera lens zoomed in (we skipped this set up as well, as it would have become an extreme close up on the subject)
So obviously, with different variables, we have different outcomes. After transferring the footage into my computer and going through them in post, the results turns out that in set up #1, we have a very nice blur of the surrounding around the subject, which is actually what we aimed from the beginning. However as we pulled out the zoom from the camera, and have a shorter focal length, there seem to have more detail on the surroundings, and they appear to be more in focus as compared to the first set up.
This concludes that in order to have a nice bokeh look around the subject as most cinematographers would like their shots to have more texture and layers, they would have to set up their camera further away from their subject and zoom in on them from the camera. The aperture should be kept constant to achieve the right exposure, however, if need be, the scene should be lighted up if there isn’t enough light entering the camera.
While I was going through the footage, I decided to grade them as well to see how the colours could be enhanced in an objective point of view. I understand that colour grading can be really subjective depending on the mood of the scene or the director’s wishes, but I tried to be as neutral as possible to bring out the colours a little more and balancing the contrast between highlights and shadows, blacks and whites. I did not want to dive into applying too much colour or over do it, as it would be how I would want it to be and no longer and objective standpoint. Decided to sweep through the before and after grading to show the contrast and how much colour could be enhanced to make a shot more aesthetic. My next step to aim for would be experimenting adding different colours into the highlights, mid tones, and shadows, and see how the image would turn out from there.
If anyone has seen Ted the movie, they would know this still image was taken off the scene from the film where Lori wants to reconcile her relationship with John (the guy in this picture) after receiving a prep talk from Ted.
Although the film is as silly as it sounds, a grown man with a talking teddy bear going through life, this scene stood out to me from the entire film. It runs for barely five minutes, but I get the feeling that this is the turning point of the film. Two former lovers coming together in a diner engaging in awkward small talks. It’s not like it is bad acting, but we could tell that both of them are playing a charade in front of each other. Personally, I have not much experience directing and no experience at all acting, but I get the sense that it must’ve been pretty hard to play out this scene, particularly for John, played by Mark Wahlberg. Emotions that I would presume was going through John would be surprise, to see Lori appear in the diner, depressed, due to their relationship situation, and some anger, as he messed up badly this time. As an actor, that’s quite a handful to emote. But is it necessary to show all at once?
This still was “screen grabbed” just as he glances at the door of the diner to find Lori standing there. And his expression just exhibits those 3 emotions that I described in the above. And I strongly believe it is not purely from Mark Wahlberg’s acting, but how the filmmaker composed this shot. The emptiness of the scene with the isolation of John from the other patrons, the absence of a cook or a waitress, the use of contrasty look between blown out whites, and the deep blacks. You could almost feel the grime of a dodgy burger joint, smell the grease of overcooked patties on the grill, and charred coffee from the coffee pot that’s been sitting on the burner for ages.
The scene carries on with a simple 2 shots, over the shoulder of Lori and over the shoulder of John. And of course it was cut to whoever was talking, with some reaction shots of the person listening, especially on Lori, as she had a different agenda coming down to the diner. However, after listening to what John had to say, she had some conflicting emotions, and was just left in the diner to reflect, and the scene ends of with John saying “Thanks for coming by.”.
This might be an idea worth experimenting my use of colour and letterbox. Maybe not in terms of the location, but the whole situation of one party willing to reconcile a relationship, but the other is more or less over it. The location of where this takes place is crucial though, as there are definitely places that might be off limits, for example, maybe a shopping mall? Or a circus? But then again, it would be interesting juxtaposing the location with the situation, so that’s worth having a look at and considering the options. It’ll be an interesting shoot.
The first workshop of the week, we had a mini consultation with Paul in groups of 5 to express our ideas that we would like to explore for our final assignment.
To be brutally honest, I came out of the discussion with more questions in my head than going in. Which may not be a bad thing actually? I went in with this idea on working with the letterbox and how it functions in making something look cinematic. However, I didn’t have much of an idea on how am I going to experiment with the uses of a letterbox other than shooting something cinematic and slapping on the letterbox and see how it goes. (Obviously, that’s how it works…)
I’m thinking of exploring the other factors that makes an image cinematic, and I would use the letterbox as a platform or an aid. The previous exercise, made me realised the use of colour could cue various settings, mood, environment, and so on. For example, the colours yellow or orange, could be related to warmth, happy, peaceful, or accomplished and the colours blue, or green, could be related to being cold, hostile, eerie, or sick. And striking a balance of HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Lightness), is definitely something not to be taken lightly in the cinema world, or in any video production. Hence, I would attempt to explore using colour and the letterbox in a cinematic image to see how they function as a whole, and also as individual elements of an image. At this very moment, I’m still struggling to come up with an idea of what I am going to shoot, or how am I going to shoot, but I would like to employ some basic lighting techniques to achieve a properly exposed image, to allow more headroom for colour grading, instead of just adjusting the contrast to the right exposure.
In my last post, I’ve uploaded a short edit of what we shot on Tuesday with the uses of water, reflection, and shadows. Upon editing and doing a bit of grading, I’ve had the chance to watch those shots over and over again, and reflect on what could have been done differently or what turned out better than expected.
Firstly, the reflection shot of the gentleman talking and smoking. The idea came from a fellow group mate, and she thought it would have been cool to see his smoke appear on the reflection of the surface of the water. However, I was worried that the reflection might not turn out as clear and crisp, let alone the smoke coming out from the gentleman’s mouth from smoking the cigarette. Furthermore, getting the right exposure for the shot was rather tricky as you wanted the ground to be correctly exposed, as well as the reflection on the water. What I would have done differently though would have talking towards the water instead of at an angle the way it was shot. Obviously, this was done on improvise, and it was not intend at all. So hopefully we could “remake” the whole scene again and playing around with the orientation of the subject’s reflection on the water.
Second, was the shot of the shadow smoking. Unlike the reflection shot off the water, I knew this would turn out great even before bringing it into post. Just the idea of using sunlight to project an image, ie. the shadow, on a wall presents such an artistic feel to the sequence. Although this was not part of a narrative exercise, and the shot has no relations to the other shots in the video, I felt it was a significant one in the edit. What I think this shot would function as really well, would be a crime or even horror shot, where the “murderer” or “ghost” is not revealed but you could somewhat see a figure to represent it. How I would direct this would to have my subject smoking while being on the phone, and we could hear her voice, but not see her fully, and only her shadow. And that’s when the murderer or ghost might attack. And because it only shows the shadow of my subject, the murderer or ghost would not have been revealed.
The third and last shot, that I thought worked really well, would be the shot of the little “dance” in the water. Although it turned out really beautiful as a stand alone shot. I found it a challenge to fit such a sequence into a narrative script or storyboard, unless if it was a musical or a music video. I decided to intercut the whole dance with some point-of-view shots for extra texture and to give the viewer a feel of being mobile instead static. The feel of making the audience getting involved, is, I believe, crucial in bringing out feelings or emotions in a particular film.
After going through this exercise, I realised the need for colour grading, especially for cameras that are build for video, ie. Sony EX3. Although the white balance have been set before our shoot, the colours tend to be dull straight out of the camera, and there seem to be a “grey” hue over everything. I understand that this is done, as it would be easier to bring out certain colours during the stages of colour grading. Also, I was setting the contrast of the different shots, and that alone brought out so much colour, hence, this “dull-grey-ish” looking footage straight out of the camera look is really just a blank canvas for colourists to have more headroom to balance, grade, and/or correct during post.
The letterbox was used back in the days to “convert” (and I use this word quite loosely) from widescreen format to 4:3 in order for the programme to be broadcasted and be presented on CRT television sets.
Before the use of the letterbox, filmmakers used this technique called “pan and scan” to “convert” their feature films, that were shot in a widescreen format, to a “TV friendly” aspect ratio which is most often, 4:3. This however, crops the frame by a fair bit and in a very selective fashion, shows what is most important in the frame. (Ie. the action that is taking place in the frame.) This method of crop frames means a lot of negative space and information have to be left out. Viewers do not get the whole picture, quite literally, and might not experience the full effect of the filmmaker’s use of spatial manipulation, camera movement, and the mise-en-scene.
These days, the letterbox is just added on to achieve a cinematic look more often then not. Photographers use it on their stills to give their work the effect like it’s been taken a screen grab off a feature film. However, not many people understand the uses of it these days and the struggles past filmmakers had to go through to convert their widescreen format films to something that can be shown on TV.
After attempting to edit and apply a basic colour grade on the footage we shot on Tuesday, here is the outcome after having gone through post.
I’ve included a before and after video with and without the letterbox and colour grade, to see the effects.
The first half of the week, we’ve been tasked to head out to shoot some ideas that we might have prepared over the weekend. Personally, I planned to shoot an action sequence such as a chase scene or a fight scene between two strong male. However, due to a twist of fate and how the universe and stars were aligned, I was grouped together with 3 other girls from the class. No offence or disrespect to the girls, we did a wonderful job shooting what we set out to do for the day, just that I could not realise my experiment or idea, not for this exercise at least. This grouping was just for this exercise and it was done in a random manner, and I don’t have any objections to it, I just thought how serendipity could play in this exercise.
Having the weather to pour just right before class started, the streets were wet and the skies were still gloomy by the time we were out shooting. We thought of taking this opportunity to capture movement of water and reflections off the puddles of water that we don’t normally see during dry weather. This shimmery effect on the grounds, trees, leaves, gave an extra challenge to get the right exposure, adding that with the gloomy weather, I can see what the camera operator was having a hard time adjusting the exposure. I assumed the role of the sound man, and I set off to record water dripping, footsteps on a wet ground, rushing water, and anything that I could think of that could relate to rain, or water.
Throughout this whole exercise, I was thinking to myself how am I going to compose a shot that could have a letterbox applied to it and something that looks cinematic. As we were shooting some footsteps walking down a flight of stairs, our director thought it would be a good idea to make use of the sun, while it was peering through the rain clouds. We did a quick roll of the sound and camera of our talent smoking, but instead of shooting her, I thought it’d be interesting to use her shadow that was made by the strong sun. That’s what I thought I might have something to experiment with in post. Applying a 2.35 : 1 letterbox, grading it, and applying some sounds that was recorded with it, and see how does that go.
At this point, we were contended with the shots we have taken, and we decided to just shoot whatever we can with the remaining amount of time… We thought nothing bad could come out of this, as long as we keep shooting something for us to work on in post. Of course, there must be some sort of direction and no just random rolling of the camera.
The group came across this water feature on campus and out talent did a little dance with her legs in the water. Again, ideas ran through my head thinking how am I going to make this shot cinematic under the given circumstances. And I thought the shot should be composed from the ground to focus on our talent’s legs with the running water flowing right at the camera.
At the end of the day, we transferred the footage and audio and went our own ways. I, personally, was looking forward to editing and seeing how the shots would turn out after having gone through some processing. Will update when I’m done with editing and grading in post.
On the second workshop for the week, we were given a little “writing exercise” by Paul. For the first time since week #1, we actually stayed put in one classroom for the entire duration of the workshop, which is very rare, as most of the time we would head out for a shoot or to the edit suites, or to record sounds around the campus.
During this exercise we were given a blank piece of A3 paper and some texters to write some of our ideas. Most of us, if not all, are not born writers and we might find it hard to get started on writing something for a short film or maybe even just a single scene. Hence, we were given sort-of-like-a crash course to writing, which I found really unique. As Paul said for himself, it is not one of the courses where we will walk out of the room feeling like we’ve just written a world-class novel or script, but just a simple exercise to get the juices flowing. And I thought it was really just that, getting the right juices flowing and starting on something. Even if it’s just a little spark, it could ignite to an explosion of ideas.
Over the timespan of 2 hours, my brain was bombarded with ideas and topics I wanted to explore for our final assessment in Week #12. One of which may sound like a rip off from Paul, as he did mention about trying out the use of action cameras in a sequence. And I have had place an order for a Chinese made action camera (too poor for an original GoPro), and I feel like there’s a whole big cloud of experimentation and exploration right there, on the uses of an action camera, right from the basics of how to use it, when to use it, how to mount it, where should you mount it, what should you shoot with it, and a whole lot more.
Another idea would be the use of lighting for different scenes, Paul touched on off side and on side lighting on a particular documentary he showed a segment in class. Lighting is something I feel I have never really gotten the chance to explore or get a good basic foundation on the functions of lighting. Hence, I thought maybe this would be a good opportunity to shed some light on that technical issue I have with myself?
One more, and I think this might be a winner, I can’t entirely remember when or what sparked this idea, however, I got into thinking what makes a particular shot cinematic, and the first thing that came to my mind was the letterbox. These days, the letterbox has been used widely by filmmakers to give a cinematic look, and they are not the only ones using this visual tool to achieve the cinematic feel. Music videos are employing the letterbox too, which I believe are aiming to achieve the same outcome of the cinematic look. Personally, I have very little knowledge on the letterbox and how it came about, so I believe I have substantial amount to research and experiment on. The history of letterbox-ing a shot, the science that gives us that cinematic feel, the uses of the various letterbox, as I do know it comes in different sizes, and the standard being 2.35:1. So, I would say I’m quite excited on gathering these knowledge by the end of this semester, hopefully.
Over the course of last summer’s vacation, I’ve gotten into taking time lapse videos from still images. The result may turn out to be really rewarding, or sometimes unnerving, depending on how you’ve set up the camera, and it’s setting.
I personally do not own a fish-eye lens, which some people might feel that it’s an essential if you’re going to take time lapse shots. And while I was back home in Singapore, I did manage to borrow one while I was shooting a time lapse of the stars moving across the sky. I rotated around several venues, some turned out stunning images, and others, not so. I complied a few of my favourite time lapses into a sequences and exported it from Premiere, and this is the result.
ps. You have to watch in HD to really see the stars move.
Coming back to Melbourne, I thought I wouldn’t have the time to do such things, especially well into the night and early morning with the new semester kicking in, but I could not curb my urge to go out and shoot random stuff. On a side note, I consider myself to be quite a photography enthusiast, but no where near being a professional or aspires to be one. Moving on, in the second week of the semester, I decided to head out to the streets of Melbourne, to search and seek anything that might catch my eye or attention. I used to take long walks around the city and shoot at various things, subjects, spaces, anything that I could think of, however this time I was pretty fixed on a location, and that was Princes Bridge, linking St Kilda Road to Swanston Street going over the Yarra River. I had no intention of taking a time lapse at that very moment, as I was more interested in doing stills, and trying out a new “technique?” that I’ve just learned from the internet on making a cinemagraph.
However, while I was shooting various stills, I got the feeling it’s an opportunity that I shouldn’t miss, and given the fact that I’ve not tried shooting a time lapse in Melbourne before, and why not try it for once. And here’s the outcome.
Music used was purchased from iTunes, written by Moog of MightyCarMods.
These time lapses are just the ones that I thought are pretty decent, and I dare say that I am happy with, however there are still quite a number that I believe still needs some work to improve on, or maybe even a re-shoot (if I’m lucky). There is so much that goes into making a brilliant time lapse, and the ones that I’ve seen on YouTube or the internet makes me wonder how much does one have to invest into making just a short 30-60 seconds video. Obviously you have to invest a lot of time into it as well, while I was shooting this time lapses, I was on my phone calculating the duration my camera has to be shooting in order to achieve the desired duration of the final time lapse playing back at 24fps, also considering the amount of storage I have left in my camera’s SD card. Not to mention, the exposure, while shooting over an hour or so, the lighting of the sun is bound to change with cloud cover and the Earth’s movement and all the science behind it, it’s hard to maintain a good exposure on the camera, and I know there are methods of getting a consistent exposure by doing it in post, but overall, you would still want a decent level of raw images to work with.
A perfect example of exposure changing over time would be this week, when a group of friends and I decided to head out to Westgate Park to catch the pink lake and see what’s all the big hoo haa about. I left the camera to shoot over a shorter period of time, as compared to the other time lapses I’ve shared in this post as my friends and I were getting a little too hot from the heat and the sun, but I thought it’s a good example to show how often the light changes just over the span of 20 minutes.
Music from Free Music Archieve, under the Creative Commons.
These examples are just what I have been messing around with lately, it does occupy a lot of time, both during the shoot and in post. However, I am still not entirely sure if I would like to take this topic up as an investigation for my final assignment, but it’s definitely a developing idea. Moreover, I am not too sure how this would sit in the realms of filmmaking, or is it considered more towards photography?
Recent Comments