Finishing Off Trick of the Dark

I have edited Trick of the Dark now for the past two days and am just going to update you on the things that i have added, and at the end evaluate the film.

Two New Scenes - 
The biggest change to the story is that i have added the tow extra scenes into the film that we shot this week. For the wife scene i decided to stick to the one scene only of her sitting on the bench trying to get through o the phone to our main character, i have then placed this scene in between two cave scenes, im not really sure if i think this works or not, but if anything it makes the film make a bit more sense so it needed to go somewhere. With the other shoot i edited it practically the same way it was shot i just removed the last shot as it just wasn't necessary for the scene I also managed to test out some LUTs and managed to find one that with a bit of colour correction, gave the feeling of night time. There is a light issue i the final shot as when we pan down there is a lot of light in the background, this isn't something i have to time to fix now, but maybe i will look into masking this section after deadline. The scene itself is now place before the scene where you see the wife in the hospital, and also helps to explain the worried look the the main actor has on his face at the time.

Music - 
I was hoping that the sound operator on this film would get the music for me as he had said that he would in the past, but i was two days before deadline ad still no music, so i took it upon my self to get the music for the film. I wanted 4 tracks of music, one for the opening scene, one for the scene where the actor sleep together, another for the fighting scene, and finally one for ending. I wanted the song for the opening to be kinda spooky, so i found this short music clip of spooky music it even had a radio sound effect on it and a heart beat meaning that i could fade the music out over the first hospital scene and the heart beat in the background, would mix the two together. The music for the sex scene, was one of the first tracks i found i searched in betrayed on audio network and found a sound that was literally called betrayed, that fit great with the scene, as i had no audio for the hospital scenes i have the music starting over the first hospital scene it then gets louder of the scene itself before finally fading out over the scene with the wife in the hospital, this then fades into the music for the fighting scene, this music was more difficult to find as i wanted something what was going to build, but a lot of the songs where two long and the scene was only short, i did find a music piece that worked for the scene it adds just the right amount of atmosphere to the scene , without over powering the scene. Finally i have the music for the ending for this piece of music i new that i wanted some kind of heart beat in the background like the music at the beginning, so i found a song called Cardiac, this song works really well over the scene and gradually fades out after the credits.

Transitions -  
I have also been looking at different ways of transitioning between the hospital scenes and cave scenes the first effect i went with, was a ripple effect, but when i showed this to my directer he didn't like it, i do think the effect looks great, just maybe isn't right for this film, i then tried out an idea that my lecture had where he wanted me to use the static of a TV to fade between the two i did this as well, but me directer said it was way to over the top. In the end i went with a much more subtle effect of having all the cave scenes start in black and white and fading into colour, this effect is hardly even noticeable, but does trick the audience into believing the cave scenes are actually flashbacks and not jut in his mind.

Graphics - 
There isnt much use for graphics in this film apart from the title and credits so i wanted to make sure i got the font right, so while my director was at work i was sending him images of different fonts that i liked, until be finally agreed on one. I then showed him tow different layouts of the title to see which he preferred, i even messed around with effects for the title, but in the end we just went with a basic fade in and fade out.

This is the film that we have handed in for deadline, i am very pleased with how the film looks and am glad to see that we could make something out of what we had filmed. I should be saying that i wish they had gotten it filmed earlier so that there was more time for the edit, but if this was the case then i probably wouldn't be the one editing it, so maybe everything happens for a reason. Sound was my biggest issue for this film and i get that it was always going to be an issue as we where filming in a cave, but i feel like more tests could have been done to achieve better audio. I am happy with how the colour correction came out especially when matching the studio and cave and think that the music really brings the film together, I dont really think the film is held back by the fact that is is only just over 5 minutes long, as it still manages to tell a story, that even if you dont get the message you still understand.

Trick of the Dark Last Two Shoots - Shoot 2

This shoot day was something that i had originally planned on not going to as i wanted to focus n getting the editing finished, however when the sound operator for the film didn't show up i had to step to do sound, i was fine with this as at least sound was one of me roles meaning i was at least getting marked on the work i was doing. The scene itself was suppose to be a night shoot but our actors where only available during the day, so i will have to look at some LUTs to see if i can give the effect of night time. In the scene we see our main character sleeping next to the female that is stuck in the cave, she then turns over and kisses him, before he manovers his way on top of her. Sound was a bit of a problem as the crew had only got a 1m XLR cable out meaning i didn't have much room to work with and as this ruled out the possibility of booming over the camera, i had to get smart so i climbed the rock right next to where we were filming and boomed from above, this actually gave me quite good audio, and even though there is little dialogue in the scene i did manage to pick up movements and actions quite well. I did suggest that while we where at the cave we could completely re-shoot the parts the where shot in the studio, so that they matched better, but my director thinks they match fine and didn't see a reason for this.

Trick of the Dark Last Two Shoots - Shoot 1

As we have a extension on this film we have decided to get some extra scenes filmed the first of which is a flashback to the main characters girlfriend calling him up to see where he is. This was a scene that i really didnt see how it was going to fit into the film, i get how it fit into the original narrative, but with this new structure this seemed like a weird scene to get. Never the less we headed down to my directors house to get this scene filmed, it did take us a while as we drove all the way down to middlesbrough from hartlepool just to realize that my director had forgotten his keys so back up we went, this put us about an hour and a half behind schedule meaning that it was dark by the time we started filming and we had no light with us. So instead we used a spot light that was in the back garden of my directors house to get the lighting we needed, We then got the scene that we came for, and the battery of the camera died, but my director still wanted to get some other shots of different scenes in case we needed them for the edit, so we switched over to a DSLR camera to get the rest of the shots, they also filmed a scene in the kitchen and one in a bus station, but i dont think i will be using these as i cant see where these two small scenes would fit.

Editing Trick of the Dark

The hole crew of Trick of the Dark including me have been given a week extension, so that we can get this film finished. I have worked on the edit since getting this news though so i will be talking you through that. When i was looking back at the footage i was really unsure how i was going to make a film with it as it was only 4 scenes, originally it was suppose to be all the cave scenes and then the hospital scene, but as i had really no way of making the cave scene match up and the scenes in between where missing o decided to put the hospital scene at the beginning so while my director was at a meeting i edited the film so that instead of the cave stuff looking like a story that is being told, they now looked like flashbacks and then i would cut back to the hospital after every scene. When my director got back he loved the edit and was shocked that i had somehow made a narrative film out of what they had shot. There where obviously some problems, where scenes rather didn't have working audio so that i had to use the scratch audio from the camera or where audio was never recorded in the first place. My director had set up a session for the cast to do some ADR, so i exported the clips that needed replacement audio for them, unfortunately when i got the ADR back most of it was unusable as they had had the actors way to close to the microphone meaning you could hear way to much of there mouth movements, I did place it into the scene, but when me and the director watched it back we both decided that the scratch audio worked a lot better.This means that the only part of ADR in the film at this moment is in the ending scene, where they are presenting a children's show, this is because i didn't have the option of using scratch audio for this as it was never recorded. To make the audio sound a bit smoother i added a wild track that i had found on the internet of cave sounds, i did also want something like this for the hospital scene, but couldn't find the right track. The last thing i did on this day of editing was mess around with colour correcting as some of the shots where filmed in a blacked out studio and others where filmed in the cave.I think i managed to get these shot to match up well, but there is discussion about giving the clips to our colour correction expert to see what he can do with them.

This is a similar sound effect to the one i used, this is just obviously a lot longer.

These are three close ups that i colour corrected the top two where filmed in the studio and the bottom was filmed in the cave, apart from the fact that you can see the cave in the background of the first one i think that i have made the lighting match up pretty well.

Finishing of My Name Is John

My name is John was pretty much finished for the group crit we had a few weeks ago, though i have made some changes to the film since then, I have added a title to the film that appears when we first see the self help group it fades in and then fades out again before john stands up, i have also added credits to the film i already had my actors credits sorted, so i did the default scrolling text for the crew and any special thanks we had, these are good as well as it allows the song at the end to continue.

Another big change is that i finally managed to cut down the pub scene to do this i cut about half the dialogue ad then sent out my camera operator to get some cut aways from inside the pub, unfortunately only one of these was usable as the rest where rather two boring or the lighting just didn't match. I only needed two though and i was able to use one that we had got on the original shoot so it was all good.

 This was the only one i saw that was usable.

Some much smaller changes are the removal of the audience cutaway before the interview with john, i did try different places for this shot, but non seemed to work so i completely cut it and dragged the audio from johns interview over to the pub scene, so that the to scene blend together better, my director watched this change and saw why i did it and was fine with its removal. I have also added an small ouch i the background for when john drops the bowling ball, and after weeks of arguing that this wast going to work i am glad to say i was wrong and me and my director managed to find a noise that worked but wasn't too over the top.

This is the film we handed in i have a full evaluation in my evaluation, but overall i am very happy with how this film turned out and even if it isn't laugh out loud funny i am glad to see we at least have some funny moments in there, saying how hard comedy is to right.

Finishing Of The Animation

The animation is now complete so in this blog post im going to be disusing what last minute changes i made to the animation as well as talks i have had with me director about the animation. First off last Friday i had a meeting with my lecture about the film in general and i showed him the animation he liked the animation but saw problems with it fitting into the film. To show me what he meant he showed me a music video from Pink Floyd called The Trial, where in the opening of the video they go from live action to animation simply by continuing the action of the door being opened. He also told me to look for this in another music video my Pink Lloyed, but i have had no luck finding what this video is.

This kind of effect is much more difficult with my animation as it is only 2D, but we have had a discussion with my director on how to the animation fit more into the film. The biggest thing i think we can do right now is to do something that my lecture suggested and that is to have a shot of a spider walking around in one of the previous scenes. This may not work perfectly to make my animation match, but it at least foreshadows to the spider, so at least the contents of the animation make more sense. At this moment though i do not believe that they will be able to get this shot in before deadline and as they haven't filmed the scene that was suppose to be following my animation, it isn't going to fit at all in the final film.

When i got back to the animation this week all that was left for me to do was export the animation and put a black and white filter over it, however i still had this issue with the mushroom, and as i had to render the animation every time i wanted to see if i had fixed the issue which took around 20minutes, this turned into a longer task that planned. After 7 renders i finally managed to fix the issue by just taking the mushroom animation back to its still image and re animating it.

Once i had fixed this issue i exported the hole animation and then imported it back into after effects for the final time so that i could bring the saturation way down to give the animation that back and white tone i was originally going for, before my camera made all of my grey's brown, but when watching this back it still didn't look that good, but then i remembered a conversation with my lecture about somehow making the animation a bit more cinematic. So to do this i created made the animation so that the camera would pan across the screen with the girl it would then get faster as we see the spider and then finally zoom out as she flies away. This is something that i wanted from the start but was unsure if i was going to have the time to do it, but i am glad to see that i did.

This is what we have for hope for deadline, again i do not think the animation fits, but am very happy with how it came out and really like my directors choice in music for the background.

Editing Trick of the Dark

Today i got quite a surprise as i was brought into a meeting with my lectures to ask if i had the time to edit another film as the original editor could not manage both films she was on. I said yes to this as not only was it the film i had originally wanted to edit, but i also love a challenge, and boy was this a challenge, we where two weeks before deadline they had only filmed about 1/3 of the original script. and do not have enough to get across the story they are hoping for. The film it self is suppose to follow three people trapped in a cave, two males and one female, with the ocational other male that brings them supplies, but the twist of this film(cause all films need to have a twist) is that the end scene sees one of the people in the cave wake up in the hospital confused, he then looks at the TV to see both of the other people that where trapped in the cave presenting a children's show. I think from what i can remember it is suppose to be that he has had a failed suicide attempt and his imagination has made up the hole cave stuff using things around him, this is especially implied when you see that the guy that was helping then with supplies i the cave turns out to be the doctor. I am very excited to get a look at what thy have shot of this film to see what i can do with it, i will probably not use what has already been edited, by the previous editor as i like to start from scratch to that i can get a good idea of what the story is suppose to be.

My Name is John Editing Updates

Sound Effects - 
Since last blogging i have gotten the sound effect that i needed for some of the scenes, these included a different beep for the shop scene for where he touches the screen and when they do contactless payment, as i was getting feedback that the scanning noise wasn't working or these parts, I got his my simple getting out a microphone and gong to the corner shop and recording the noise as i paid for something with contactless payment, i have then used this noise for when he touches the screen. The other sound effects where an applause, to do this i got my year group to clap for me, finally i got my director so give me some ouches, though i have not added any of these yet as i really dont think these work.

This is the scene where i added the beeping noises.

This is the scene where i added the applause.

Music - 
As well as sound effects i have also managed to get some music for the film, i used audio network to get the music the ending music for the film was very easy to find as i new i wanted something that started off sad but gradually got happier, there where a few that sounded good but in the end i decided to go with a song called Cheer Up Mate by Lincoln Grounds, this song also inspired me to do something unique with the actor credits, but i will talk more about this later. This piece of music starts at the very end of scene 6 and plays though out scene 7 and 8, it will then also play through the credits. Music for the beginning was much more difficult to find as i really wanted the beginning song to song to be happy, but this did not match the scene so i ending up going with a much slower song, that was just very quietly in the background through out the first scene. The song itself is called Fraulein Oh Fraulein by Jeff Lardner & Mark Allaway

The music at the begging of the film.

The music at the end of the film.

Graphics -
I have also added some graphics to the interviews and to establish when we change days, finding a font for this was surprisingly easy as i was really just looking for something that looked a bit fun with soft edges. I have yet to put a title in as unsure where my director wants it putting, but i have created some actor credits, that i am happy about. I have always wanted to create credits like this but have never had a film that these kind of credits matched, but finally i do. I went through most of the takes we had to find some out takes where the actors where laughing. I only included actors with speaking roles, but did have to cut the two women at the end as i didn't have any outtakes of the scenes. For a final joke at the end of the film, I also have my dog in this style of credits. I did end up changing the name of the two friends as i had forgot what there names where so i put the names Paul and Barry in as a filler, but then my director saw this and liked the reference so we kept it like this.

Colour Correction - 
Colour correction is something i did quite a while ago but haven't really discussed. I have never really bothered with colour correction in the past as it really never seemed necessary, but the new cameras we where using take out a lot of the saturation, leaving the clips looking grey. I did all of my colour correction in AVID, as when discussing with our technician, he was describing what kind of things i could do with Da Vince Resolve (which is a software based around colour correction), the biggest was the ability to bring out certain colours in a scene, but this seemed to be more focused to are beautifully shot films, where as we where going for more of a documentary style meaning if i had enhanced the shots two much them it would have looked to cinematic this is the same reason i avoided butting black bars the film. I do really like how the colour correction came out though, i especially like the which scene where she is say down as this shot looks beautiful with my colour correction.

Group Crit - 
This final thing to update you on is the fact that we had some free lancers in to watch our films and give us feedback, these where Marc De Launay who is a producer, director, writer and Chris Campell who is an editor, though i would appreciate any feedback from Marc it was Chris who i was most excited to hear feedback from. We watched all of the level 6 films plus 2 of the level 5 films, they had great feedback for everones films. There where a few things they said about my name is john these where:

Pub Scene 2 Long - this is a problem that i have noted in the past, but now that i have had it confirmed by a professional editor, i am going to look at how i can do this.

Audience walking in shot should be placed over Johns Interview - This is something that can try to do i wasn't sure if they meant that they wanted the shot to just have johns interview over it or if they wanted me to cut to john first then go back to the audience. I will at least try both to see if any work better.

Sound needs Remixing Quite in some places - This was a problem i didn't see coming as the film had sounded fine through my headphones, but when put through speakers it was hard to hear a few of the scenes, especially Scene 1 and 7.

Apart from these three things they said they loved the film and the idea of it.

Butterfly animation and Green Screen Update

At this current moment i am yet to receive the other shots from the scene that they want me to green screen over, and there no schedule for the scene to be shot for my butterfly animation. My director has said that these scene might be getting filmed after deadline, so i have just came on here to show that i have created the butterfly, but unfortunately i have nothing to animate it on so it seems redundant. I created the butterfly by printing out two of the butterfly's i had made on photoshop i then stuck them both to card and cut around them, and before putting them together i got a thing wire through the winds and down the back so that when i bent the wings they would stay in place instead on bending back. Then i put them together. All that was left then was to have a base on the wire what would keep the butterfly up while animating i went with a large piece of blue tack as not only did it have the weight i was looking for but it also stuck the butterfly down meaning it wasn't going to move so much.

Front

Back

Creating Animation

The week has finally come that i need to start animation my silhouette animation, i already had a concept so new what i was trying to make it look like. Before i did anything i emailed my old lecture at my college to see if it was possible for me to book out a rostrum for my animation, he said that this would be fine and told me i could pick it up whenever. Once i had picked it up i went to a shop called hobbycraft to buy the card that i would need i got 4 different shades, White, Light Grey, Dark Grey and Black, i wasn't sure if i was going to be using all 4 at that moment but i thought i would be better of being safer than sorry. Once home with the card i drew some quick sketches of what i was trying to achieve, i was originally suppose to be having someone draw these for me as im not the best drawer, but they never showed up so i did them myself.

I then used these sketches to cut out the pieces i would need to create them later as i was going to be bringing them animations together in after effects i only created one limb for both the girl and the spider. for joints i used some split pins that i had bought a while ago with this animation in mind. I the also cut out some other things for the scene including a blade of grass, a mushroom and a flower. i think these came out great.

I then animated all of the different parts i did this on a green piece of card that i have left over from my minor project. I then put the images into a gif creator to just get an idea of how the movements would look once animated. The animations looked great and i looked forward to bringing them together the next day in After effects.

Now that all of the practical work was done i moved onto working in aftereffects the first thing i did was create the scene, i used the grass, flower and mushroom to create a path that the girl could walk down as well as a path the the spider could walk up. The problem i had with this was once i had created this there were over 100images that needed to rendered out before i could see any changes i had done, this wasn't a problem now but it was soon going to to become one. I then moved onto a different composition so that i could create my spider i tested around with the spider as i couldn't work out if i preferred the spider with 6 or 8 legs, but in the end i decided spiders do have 8 legs and the concepts that my director had should me of the metal spiders in the park also had 8 legs.

I then had a problem with the fact that when i had keys out the green on the leg some black still remained in the corner meaning in the animation there are black lines at the bottom. To fix this issue i created a mask over the bottom of the animation then all that was let to do was o reapply the green screen so that i could put the spider into the scene i had created earlier.

Then i moved onto the body to create this i started with the body animation of the dress going back and forth, i then added two legs i made one leg start at the back and one at the front so that she would have dynamic movement this is the same thing i did with the hands however one of the hands was placed behind the body, so even though you dot see it that much it does give the effect of her swinging her arms. At this current moment the animation looks a bit fast, but once it is exported and placed onto the scene i can put a time warp effect onto it to slow it down.

Once both of them where exported i imported them onto the scene i started by animating the spider, i didn't want the spider to start moving straight away so i got a still image of the animation so that the spider could stand there for a few seconds before it began t walk, once the spider was animated i brought in the girl i had been informed by my director that she wanted the animation to end with the girl escaping with a flying mushroom, so i had the girl walk across the screen she then grabs a mushroom and it taken up with it. At this moment i have keyframe issue with mushroom that i need to fix, but i though i would be better of getting the animation done first. I then rendered it so i could see what it looked like and it looked awful the movement of the girl was still two fast for the scene and it also seemed to drag on forever so instead of a minute i shortened it down to 30 seconds, this meant that the girl had a shorter time to get across the scene which fixed all of my issues with her movement it also helped with the spider as it meant i could make him faster two so it didnt look like he was just walking towards her.

60 Seconds

30 Seconds

All that is left for me to do next week is for me to fix the error with the mushroom and then put it in a black and white filter.