It seems like rather than working towards one final product, I’ve leaned more towards creating a series of smaller experimental style exercises. This one explores my local main street at night, trying to capture some of the soft, romanticized atmosphere that I talked about getting inspiration from in the London at Night clip here. Here’s a quick edit of some shots I liked – a version with colour grades and other stuff coming later.
Night Tests from Jessica Xiao on Vimeo.
The main problem I had with this shoot was a bit of a rookie mistake on my part – the lack of a tripod. Whilst I actually quite liked some of the bokeh shots with the handheld effect, there’s a lack of continuity between the shots where I tried to be as still as possible and the ones where I intentionally wanted a slightly shaky shot. I think having uniform still shots would have worked better, as it does in most scenarios.
Another note – I shot with an f/1.8 prime lens, which captured more from the streetlights than I expected, and some of the shots ended up being overexposed. Also some of the shots turned out with a really redish tint and lots of noise, which I’ll try to fix in the next stage of this clip with colour grading.
