In order to experiment with various settings of music and a lack of any music whatsoever, it was important for me to create a base video that could be used to trial a certain number of conventions on.

I had previously done this before, with the linked video below:

Yet clearly, there are some problems with this video I created, the main one being that nearly all the shots required colour correction.

So, I began to work on individually correcting the colour of each shot in order to create a dialogue scene that is more in the realm of what I wanted to use.

First I began working on Max’s dialogue shots. I first tried increasing the dark input levels and reducing the light input levels.

Now I had something I was happy with, so I put it aside, and then began trying a different option, which was to create a cold mise en scene similar to that which is scene in Prisoners.

 

I attempted to do this by bringing all saturation to a level of 0.00, and then slowly increase it in an attempt to create a cold mise en scene. However, the result was simply too dark and too fake for the realism that I wanted to achieve.

Now it was time to work on the matching shot of Matt, I began by simply pasting the attributes.

I decided that this looked too dark and unrealistic on Matt’s shot compared to how it looked on Max’s.

Instead I reduced the light input levels, this was much more successful.

One of my other problems with the previous dialogue scene that I had created was that the subjects were framed differently and did not match. To fix this in my next video, I cropped the two to similar scales so that they could look like they were filmed to be matching shots, this was successful. I then noted down their motion attributes, so that I could paste them on further shots of dialogue.

I then began to work on matching the other further clips by pasting their respective motion and colour attributes, this was a great trick to learn in order to match effects quickly and efficiently.

Now that the two main shots were corrected and cropped to my satisfaction, I began to work on an establishing shot that could begin the scene. As I had noted in a previous post, the original front on shot I had captured was beyond repair (I am going to be getting it right in an upcoming reshoot), so I instead decided to use my newly colour-corrected side on shot to establish the scene.

I realised at this time that the lighting on the first side on shot was simply too different to the other two, so I began to fix it. Yet as I was halfway through matching the colours, I realised that Max was actually wearing a different shirt to the matching dialogue shots, and I was forced to find a new establishing shot.

I now decided to work with a new shot, the back facing shot I had previously deemed unusable. In cropping out the unwanted microphone, I then pasted the colour attributes of previous shots.

 

I realised that the previous colour attributes were simply too blown out for this shot.

I then worked with different shadow and light input levels, and also injected a small amount of amber midtones and highlights into the frame in order to get a more suitable colour scheme. I also used an earlier sound bite for this shot, in order to lose the ignition of a chainsaw at the end of the original shot, as well as adding a zoom effect in order to create an establishing feeling for the audience.

Now that the bulk of the scene was complete, the only thing left to do was to add on a final clip in order to fully convey the emotional tones of sadness in this scene. I decided to use Matt’s reaction shot from a completely different clip, where we ran the scene without dialogue. After pasting the scale and colour attributes of the previous shots, the sequence was complete.

However, listening back to it, I realised the shots still felt disconnected in terms of audio, this was even with me adding constant power effects in between each clip. To solve this, I added a bar of environment sound from a scene we had shot without dialogue. This was successful, as when I watched the clip with this added, the whole scene seemed to flow a lot more smoothly.

 

It was time to export the clip.

Below is the final exported scene, please ignore the extended runtime, the actual video only goes for 30 seconds.

Looking at the exported scene, I have to say I am really happy with how it turned out. The colours match in a way that is nowhere near as difficult to look at as previous shots, and the whole thing flows really quite smoothly.

I can now analyse how the emotional tones of sadness are conveyed in a scene without any music whatsoever in the location of a car. It seems, looking at it now, that the talent of the actors as well as manipulative abilities of the dialogue (if said in the right way) is successful in conveying this tone. My main criticism would be that it can come off as somewhat of a tone of disbelief instead of a tone of sadness, however, that is only a minor criticism, and overall I think the emotional context has been successfully manipulated in this scene.

 

This format of scene creation and colour correction is now something I will be using for the majority of my experiments in order to compare them purely based on the two main elements of music and dialogue, as well as location. I can’t wait to experiment with diegetic and non-diegetic music, as well as a lack of dialogue, and to see if this changes the way emotions are presented in each scene.