Practical skills

First Shoot and Practice edit

My first shoot was on the 17th of April as I had complications with getting actors all in the same place at the same time. So I did a studio session scene where Blythe did some lip-syncing. Very basic shot but I think it was really useful to see Blythe perform the song and how the colors would pop. I also edited the footage for a practice edit and showed blythe and he really liked it. While I was on set with Blythe recording the studio. We spoke about what dates he was free and we plan to do a shoot on Saturday.

Initial Conclusion

I think the practice edit turned out great and has really helped see what the rest of product will be like. It did get me worrying about what more I could animate and want to have more unique.

Thumbnail/Cover Art

Before the Monday shoot I also set up a small photo shoot for my self to take pictures with a thumbnail in mind i used RGB Lights on purple and edited and added to the image on photo Pixlr online. The photo came out ok for and was good practice when it came to make one with Blythe. I took a screen shot from the video and used that. I cut out and made a layer separate from background and then zoom blur the background and it gave a really nice motion blur effect

Shoots

Studio Session Scene

I decided to go ahead with a studio scene to get something recorded as I was panicking that I couldn't get my actors and wanted to get some footage so I se up a couple of shot stationary hand held. I used the lighting to accent the videos theme and create a motif of purple red and pink colours.

All the shots were improved from the date scenes in the shooting script as I didn't think we could get the actors to do the location so I wanted a different location still and I think this was a good alternative.

As I didn't have much to do at college as I was still organising the other shoots I used the time at college to animate over the footage I already in case I wanted to use it and also helped saved animating time later on in production

Party Shots and Intro Shoot

I only had 2 actors for the party shots scene. I had Blxthe and Serie Arrive at the same time. While Serie was getting changed and ready I decided to shoot the intro which included the walk up from the car into the house. The camera did a good Job of recording audio but the downside it captured my breathing so I had to play around with the edit. Using EQs and limiters in adobe Premier. I wish i had payed more attention to audio production in this project as this could have bene avoided and sounded better

When Blxthe walks through the door it was a really awkward scene. But I had really good fun with lighting this scene. I lighted the hallway with colour and lights but made the room he walks into dark. It looks really good and love the way it came out. I got lots of different takes in case this didn't work.

Initially I wanted to have them 2 staring off and the title appear in between them but after looking at the footage it didn't look good at all and came out to look really weird and unnatural so decided to cut it in the edit and replace it with B roll. The B roll was of the moon and made the video feel more dynamic and a lot smoother as we return to the imagery of the moon and the location of saint andrews hill

I tried to make the most of the time I had which wasn't long we started at 20:00 and lasted till 22:00. I decided to do the mirror shot and kitchen shot , they were improv shots. This makes me feel far easier about the project and gave me a lot more to work with.

After I had all the footage I added it to a rough cut and see what I had with what I had recorded. This wasn't enough as it felt trapped in the locations. I needed another location like I planned to make it more dynamic

Saint Andrews Hill shoot

We organized to go to the shoot for 8:00 and sunset was at 8:30. We started shooting at 8:40 I started recording in order. I started with the shots of Blxthe and Serie walking down a path with some leaves in the foreground I loved this shot and it looked great. I got multiple of them walking down and I also asked Blythe to give Serie his Jacket which I think made it more natural and believable.

I also recorded multiple handheld shots that follow them down to the hill. These shots were really difficult and came out quite shaky. If I was to do this again I would want some sort of gimbal or get my actors to walk slower.

I loved the shots of them sitting on the hill and looking over the town. I think it looks really good and does a great Job at bringing the video to an end and also wrapping up the relationship between the 2 characters having them together.

Production did it go planned

The production defiantly didnt go as planned as there was problems with actors and was stressful. I didnt get the extras I wanted for the party scene and didnt get the location for the scene but I used the ideas I had applied them well to the adaptions for locations sets , actors I had. So although it wasn't what I envisioned I used what initial vision to drive the production to still have the same vibe and story as much as I could

Post Production

How the edit started

I made a rough as I received the footage. When I had started using all the footage the project really started coming together and felt far better. I definitely feel that the Saint Andrews hill shoot made the video far more dynamic and flow better. It gave it more of sense of going somewhere. The rough was annoying when I didn't have all my footage i got really anxious about its quality. But I think I defiantly made the best out of my locations for this project.

Problems in editing

My biggest bug when it came to editing was audio and making it clean and also actually creating it. I didn't have much planning in the audio Production stage. I think if i had more time put into audio and what that would be and sound like. Including research for different examples as well as how to create those sounds I would have a more effective audio side to the project and less hassle when editing the audio.

Colour grading

Colour grading was a request from Blxthe and I really tried to make the video pop out with colour and think I executed this really well. Although it took some time to get used to colour grading I got the hang of it and it will be something I can take into further projects and really enjoyed learning and using this technique

Rotoscoping

This started slow and I was feeling un easy about this as I felt like I was reusing the same animation ideas of the heart breaking but I still think it worked. I would've liked to plan this out better and also have more animations for the Hill scenes and these don't contain any. I did try to animate some stars and shooting stars but it was difficult to animate and found it to be a waste of time so I didn't continue down this path and used what I had. I think the key to success was that I had a lot animated from the first shoot which really helped speed up the animating process.

What happiest about

I'm happiest about the use of framing and the b roll. Compared to the last project which was heavily lip synced I didnt want to do it again but as i had a lot more b roll of the shoots and people it helped drive the story or engaged the viewer with new imagery rather than repeating the same lip synced performances.

How I feel about the Final Cut

I'm happy with the final cut. I wanted the quality to be better but I think at times as the aspect ratio was boxed it made a fit some of the lower quality scenes and does a mazing job at keeping this VHS theme in contrast to the bright colours which isn't very conventional for a VHS style video.

First Cut , (without shoot 3)