Reflection:
For my preproduction for this teaser, I tried to improve my process from past projects, as I was often unorganised which resulted in a lot more stress when actually filming the shots. I decided to be more thorough in my planning this time to make the entire process go smoother and hopefully end up with a better product in the end. I began by making up a rough storyboard for my initial ideas so that I could plan out the structure of the story and visualise it more easily, which definitely helped me get my story locked down quicker than trying to do that in my head. Because I am unable to draw anything, I attempted to create the storyboard using the website celtx. This process was put on hold, however, because I was locked behind a paywall and could only produce 5 shots in the storyboard-creating function. But, it has inspired me to investigate leveraging AI text to picture to develop a visual storyboard for a future project in order to optimise my pre-production process even more. The authors (Amato, G., Behrmann, M., Bimbot, F., Caramiaux, B., Falchi, F., Garcia, A., Geurts, J., Gibert, J., Gravier, G., Holken, H. and Koenitz, H), (2019) acknowledge that AI could be used in the process of content production, such as generating pastiches, generating photorealistic images from captions, generating anime faces, enhancing image fidelity, reconstructing damaged image or even constructing an intricate image from splices of smaller images. We have come to an age of such AI technology advancement that I felt, as a content producer, I would find a use for AI to support improving my workflow, and my greatest notion was applying text to image to help me construct a better narrative board. We must always learn and adapt to changing environments, especially in ever-changing industries such as entertainment; failing to grow would only result in the “displacement effect,” as the author, G. Petropoulos (2018), has analysed in his research since AI innovation is inevitable.
I then wrote an in-depth shot list, being meticulous to include multiple angles, transition shots, and what each shot is hoping to achieve. I scoped out locations and found reference images for what I was going for, which added more direction to which shots I would like to get captured. I then printed it out and brought it with me when I went to go film, which guided me in my shooting schedule on the day.
Both of these documents were immensely helpful in getting myself organised and focusing my project to be the best version it could be and getting all of my ideas out of my head and onto paper. In future I will definitely use both of them again, however, I think I will improve my shot list next time by organising it more into a schedule rather than filming things out of order on the day.
Screengrab: THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY – reference image
My production was similar to my previous projects, however this time I shot things on an actual camera rather than my iPhone, which made things a little bit more difficult as it was all new to me. I spent a few days before the shoot messing with the camera settings and meticulously reading through every page of the manual to familiarise myself with all the features, dials and buttons so that when it came time to shoot I would know how to make my shots look the way I wanted them to. However the tripod I usually use for my phone could not support the weight of my camera, and I did not have a zoom lens, so the shots I could do were a bit more limited than in the past. In future, I aim to fix both of those things but for now, I had to be a bit more creative with some of my framings to get the desired effects by hand. I also decided to spend more time on my shot composition and shot quality with less of a focus on VFX for this project, so I spent relatively more time in production rather than post-production.
Due to the fact I had better, cleaner shots to work with, I found my post-production work to be much easier than when I was shooting with my iPhone. The colours were much easier to change and I shot a few scenes in slow-mo which was better than trying to achieve the same effect in post. I dabbled in using DaVinci Resolve to try colour grading but I found I was taking too long figuring out the software and also had some trouble importing my effects from Adobe so decided to just continue working in the familiar Premiere Pro. I also took less time on VFX and more time on music and sound effects, which was a fun change of pace. In future, I will definitely try to use DaVinci and leave more time for colour grading, as I tried to do it fairly late in the process and it took me longer than expected.
The thing I like most about my teaser is how much I managed to rework my ideas after seeking advice from Cat. Initially, my shots were laid out more like a music video than a teaser, and it wasn’t very cinematic looking, however, Cat gave me many excellent tips on how to improve and now I much prefer the new version. I added narration, and title sequences and especially changed and improved the music all with the aim of making it look more like a film teaser and the results speak for themselves. Despite the fact that the process of locating music was excruciating, I continued finding acceptable tunes or sounds only to be denied by copyright and royalty systems. Contrary to popular belief, I am optimistic about the advancement of AI applications in music composition and production. The authors (Amato, G., Behrmann, M., Bimbot, F., Caramiaux, B., Falchi, F., Garcia, A., Geurts, J., Gibert, J., Gravier, G., Holken, H., and Koenitz, H) (2019) investigate how AI can now extract composition from existing samples and then generate new scores, creating new patterns in music and audio. Similarly, the current version of Premiere Pro now allows you to prolong and fill in music tracks for as long as you like through AI generation. Such applications would just make the life of a low-budget filmmaker like me much easier.
The colour grading is my least favourite aspect. I left it till the last minute and was hurrying to get the colours fixed and looking slightly better, but if I had more time, I would’ve wanted to work on it for longer and make every shot look consistent and of film quality. As it is, it appears adequate, but I intend to improve my colour-grading skills in order to make my work more cinematic and professional.
Post-production
References
Amato G, Behrmann M, Bimbot F, Caramiaux B, Falchi F, Garcia A, Geurts J, Gibert J, Gravier J, Holken H, Koenitz H, Lefebvre, S, Liutkus A, Lotte F, Perkis A, Redondo R, Turrin E, Vieville T and Vincent E (2019), ‘AI in the media and creative industries’, New European Media, 1:1-33.
Petropoulos, G., 2018. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Employment. In: M. Neufeind, J. O’Reilly & F. Ranft, eds. Work in the digital age: challenges of the fourth industrial revolution Identifying the challenges for work in the digital age. Washington: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, pp. 119-132.
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