When we worked on our first films
together as teams (both within the course and not), I was given the
tasks of focusing on colour correction and post-production of sound.
This meant that when actual filming was going ahead, I wasn't taking
any part of camera control or sound recording at all, nor directing
etc. I was strictly involved in the post-production section. Once our
editor had finished cutting the film together, I was tasked with
sorting out any colour problems we had as best I could, that weren't
able to be fixed during the shoot due to the lack of correct
lighting, or shooting in locations we were not able to use the full
lighting set-up. Unfortunately in some scenes this did not work out
quite as well as I'd hoped it could, as once you have shot a scene,
there isn't much you can do in post if the lighting is slightly
wrong, which goes to show that when shooting you have to make sure,
as much as possible, you are shooting it exactly how you want it to
look, which also shows that pre-production is so important to get
what you want when creating films. The second of my tasks was to try
and correct any issues we had with audio that had been recorded on
location. As we did not have time to do any ADR, this was a struggle.
There was a lot of background noise and hum, but I worked with what
we had and ended up with something that was able to be listened too
clearly enough. When the shoot was happening, I was there to give
some input to how the recordings should be created, both for sound
and video, however I didn't have the final decision, considering I
was not the sound recordist, nor the director.
During the first terms film production,
we had created both a storyboard and a shooting schedule, and used
in-camera editing to make the final product much easier to deal with.
Unfortunately, our shooting schedule ended up pointless, apart from
the order of scenes, with multiple people that needed to be at the
shoot were late. Due to this, parts of our storyboard ended up being
cut out because of tight time frames to create the video. These two
problems put together ended up making the film a lot worse than we
could have created. From this I learned that if you have no structure
to the film production process and no pre production, the end product
is not going to be what you want, and is not going to be up to the
standards you are able to create. Another thing you have to look at
in the process of pre-production is the health and safety aspects of
the filming. This includes things like making sure after you have set
up you leave no trailing cables around the shoot, and if there are
cables running across the area that you mark them out clearly,
preferably with hazard tape or something similar. Another hazard is
the tripod for the cameras and the stands for the lights. These have
to be clearly marked, so that no one accidentally trips over them or
knocks them over, as well as the areas being used for filming being
well lit. When operating lights you also have to make sure that you
don't try taking them down before leaving them to cool after being
turned off, so that no one touches them and ends up getting burnt.
Other things include making sure everyone tidies up after themselves,
and that no liquids get onto any of the electronic equipment, and
other trivial things that need to be kept in mind.
At first, we tried using the camera on
automatic, with the auto focus, however this did not give us the best
image we could have achieved. So after trying a few different shots
on automatic, we changed the camera into manual, and were able to
adjust the focus and aperture to get it looking how we wanted it too.
We used lights as much as we could for the scenes, however the
location was very cramped and the lighting wasn't able to create a
natural looking setting. We tried changing the power of the lights we
were using, and changing the placement as much as we could think of
(forgetting about the height of the lamps, through the panic of time
being short), and physically do in such a cramped area. We looked
into it further after shooting and realised we had our placement
wrong for our setting, and should have moved the lights to correspond
with being above the actors, as we were shooting and evening scene,
and the only lights that would have been used in reality were ceiling
lamps. We also did not have enough lamps to evenly cover the area,
which gave us weird looking shadows, so from now we now know what we
need to change to shoot in areas like that for a similar time of day.
We did however, keep the lighting consistent throughout the film,
even though it wasn't the best looking. We managed to make sure the
same amount of light and coverage was achieved in every scene to make
sure that it looked continuous and not like it was constantly
changing lighting.
From here we started working on getting
our scenes filmed, we did them in order with our shooting schedule,
which was also in order with our film storyboard. We worked in order
of the film story to make it simpler for everyone who was involved,
so that they understood where we were in the filming process easily
as we were filming all in one day in one location. This is pretty
much what you would call in-camera editing. In-camera editing is the
process of filming the entire film in order of every scene, and only
have the final takes, so when you take it from the camera it is
practically edited and complete as a film already. During filming,
making sure you write down file names for both video and sound is
important, so that when you get them off of the devices and into the
edit, it is easy to make sure that you are using the correct files
and in the correct order. Keeping these organised during the filming
makes the editors job much quicker, enabling them to have more time
for detailed editing and fine tuning, such as colour correction and
cleaner cuts. After the recording is all finished it can be removed
from the devices and placed on the editors computer. The editor has
to go through and makes sure that the video footage runs smoothly,
adding extra cuts when necessary, and making sure the audio syncs
with the video. You also have the addition of the sound, and in some
cases background music. Sound can either enhance or distract from
video, for example, when I was completing my transcription project, I
decided to not put any audio with my video, so that you could
concentrate on the messages in the images. Within it there are speech
bubbles in quotes that I wanted the audience to focus on, but because
of the amount of text involved I didn't want them to get distracted
with music. Whereas in comparison, if you look at the inventive
titles project for Scott Pilgrim, the music used compliments the
video itself, adding to it rather than distracting. It also enhances
the meaning of the piece by showing what the film represents in a
more subtle way than explaining it on the screen with text, which
sometimes happens, or even video in some other cases. After all of
the separate editing, including mastering of audio and colour
correction, you can finally tie everything together into one final
product.
No comments:
Post a Comment