Reflection 1:
Reflection 2:
Scene deconstruction:
Colour Grading:
Updated Idea Development:
Month: May 2019
Small Things Assignment 2-Reflection 1
Reflection 1: Making my bed
For this exercise, we were requested to make a video illustrating how we go by our daily routine of making our beds after waking up in the morning. The video I made is quite simple and right to the point which is like most things I make. While shooting I had to go through the difficulty of having to deal with a very small room where it would have been difficult to get wider shots of the action of making the bed so, I decided to use many close-ups being limited also by the big mirror on the wall in my bedroom which would have reflected the image of the camera reflecting on it.
Another challenge I had to face was being able to get a nice frame without having a tripod at my disposal and to overcome this, I used a chair where I stacked up a bunch of other objects on to hold the camera at a higher position and record the scene.
Even for a small project such as this one, I went through a preproduction phase where I decided and experimented with various camera positions but many of the ideas I had did not end up appearing in the final product. For instance, what would have happened if I decided to incorporate music or give the video a more comedic mood?
I decided to start off with a cut in action because I wanted to experiment with that technique and see what could have been done with while paying attention to the sound of the sheets moving from one point to the other. Perhaps if I get more time and with the right equipment, it would have been easier to deliver something that would have made even a simple action such as the one portrayed in the video, more interesting and enjoyable to watch as some of the videos produced by my peers.
Small Things Assignment 2-Reflection 2
Reflection 2: TV Scene Script
This reflection will focus on the group exercises where we were asked to produce a script of a scene idea made by one of our classmates. My group and I were tasked to shoot the script made by Francesca talking about two friends watching television.
We began by storyboarding the shots we would have liked to use, planning carefully where the camera position would have been with a birdseye view. This helped us plan and consider a large number of ways we could frame and see many options available to get the best result.
Storyboarding was something I never really had done before that time, and so I never was able to grasp how important it was, but after this exercise finally opened my eyes to the benefits of going through this phase which also helps your personal visualization on paper of what you are going to shoot in real life.
How it is obvious from the first video embedded in the post, we had some problems with the white balance. At the beginning of the shooting, after we found our location, me and my group members adjusted the white balance helping ourselves with a white piece of paper but probably during the shooting someone must have mistakenly reset the value and the footage we recorded from there on out had an accentuate yellowish tone to it, and no one noticed the mistake until it was too late to reshoot. Nevertheless, I did my best to solve the problem in editing with color grading thanks to some video on YouTube, to make sure the colors were consistent throughout the whole video with satisfying results.
One thing I learned going through all these class exercises must be that not everything turns out as planned in preproduction and that, of course, something is going to wrong and might not work as you envisioned it, a thing I will surely keep in mind going forward in the future.
Small Things Assignment 2-Scene Deconstruction
Scene Deconstruction
The scene I would like to deconstruct comes from a TV series I watched recently on Netflix called The Umbrella Academy. The show is one of the best shows Netflix has produced this year in my opinion and has many great scenes throughout the episodes, one of these is a dancing scene present in the first episode which helps understand the characters and their personalities in a variety of ways.
The scene starts with one of the main characters, Luther, setting up a vinyl to playing the song I Think We’re Alone Now which is the first of many instances that shows how one of the best aspects of the whole show is the choice of music and the soundtrack in general, all the songs are accurately chosen and fit the scene perfectly in most cases. Luther and his brothers, the other characters in the scene, just had a fight and decided to isolate themselves from the others but when the music starts playing the echo reaches the rooms where the other protagonists are located.
The scene begins with a close up of the diamond and as soon as it touches the record, the music starts playing and then we see a medium shot of Luther enjoying the song, and a long shot of our second protagonist, Allison. Nothing special about this shot which could have been done in a more interesting way, maybe emphasizing with a medium close up on the way she looks annoyed by the song playing and then laughs looking down. The next sibling is introduced in the next scene with a birds eye shot from the ceiling with a dolly movement towards the character while also slowly spinning. This might have been done to give a mild sense of confusion to the viewer since the same character assumed drugs in the previous scene. We see the other characters reaction to the music with still shots and then they all start dancing, slowly at first, but as the music becomes more intense, so to their choreographies and the music goes from being diegetic sound to non-diegetic.
After various back and forth cuts between the characters with relatively simple, but functional, camera movements, we are presented which what in my opinion is one of the best shots in the series. We see the camera moving away from one of the main protagonists, Vanya (who will be very important later in the season) and breaking through the natural confines of the house, presenting us with a shot that frames the entire building split in two giving us the chance to see all the characters at the same time dancing together, while they are completely ignorant of what is going on in the other rooms.
Small Things Assignment 2-Colour Grading
CLIP 1 V.1
In this first edit, I just raised the contrast and lowered the exposure so that the light would look more intense while the shadows would result darker to give more volume to the scene.
CLIP 1 V.2
In this second one, I tried to make the scene less yellow so that it would almost look like it not sunset yet, but still, midday instead even though the sun is low in the sky, to achieve this I did the opposite of what I did in the first image.
CLIP 1 V.3
.Here I just tried to mess around with the colour wheel to give a more blue tone to it making the scene more surreal.
CLIP 2 V.1
In this one there is not much difference since I just tried to make the colours a little more vibrant raising the tint, and lowering the temperature.
CLIP 2 V.2
With this video, I was again experimenting with creating a scene that would look like a romanticized version of the little towns in Italy as portrayed by most of the movies which portray these places.
CLIP 2 V.3
In this one instead, I was aiming to give the scene a more normal, cinematic look by tweaking the blacks and the whites as well as the colour temperature.
CLIP 3 V.1
Since this video is recorded on an old steam train, I wanted to give it a look of an old film making the scene more orange overall thanks to the shadow tint wheel and some adjustments on exposure, vibrance, and saturation.
CLIP 3 V.2
As it is quite noticeable, the image here looks rather blue. To do this I first lowered almost completely the temperature and raised to almost the max the temperature, just to experiment and see what would happen. I also tweaked the shadows to make the image softer and raised the saturation
CLIP 3 V.3
Here I just faded the image as much as possible while giving a pink tone to the film, I just thought it looked nice and set a good mood.