Wednesday 1 March 2017

Rough cut one- test grade and storyline



This was a very rough cut in order for me to see how the story flowed together and was also an opportunity to test out colour grading and making the scene seem as mysterious and gloomy as possible despite shooting in daylight. I didn't add any music or foliage as I wanted to also see how the sound of the water and surrounding traffic would sound. I feel the location worked very well to set the scene and music would definitely help  mask some ambient sound. From this edit I was able to identify weak points to the story where there are gaps in which need to be filmed. I think returning to the location to shoot some more B-Roll would be a huge benefit for this video as a whole as I found from this rough cut the betrayal does not carry out as much impact and shock as I wanted and this point of the scene almost runs too quickly lacking suspense build up which although can be reinforced through music and sound design could be introduced more strongly through the cinematic of the video. I feel I focused too heavily on the camera movements and sound and should have paid more attention to detail on how the story is going to be presented.

On the other hand I feel the colour grade works very well in masking the daylight of the scene and creating the gloomy atmosphere I desired for the scene I de saturated the image which relates to previous crime films I had studied and helped add a more gritty and raw feel to the image. I also reduced exposure to bring down the overall light in the video creating some menacing shadows which I reinforced through decreasing the blacks. I increased the highlights of the footage bringing out the white which give a more glamorous feel to the video and gang life. I added the faded film also in order to give a more hazy mysterious effect and also retain some shadow details.

Next steps: return to location to shoot some B-Roll to increase suspense and help to compliment some of the ambient sound present in the sequence. Finish shoot on the moors with driving and help to pad out ending to the opening.

For the blood hit (gunshot) I used After Effects in order to create a more realistic feel to the shot. I used the Rotoscope tool to mask around the subject frame by frame then duplicated the layer so only the talent was on the top layer meaning I could put blood behind him which would make the shot more realistic as it gave almost an exit wound. I then thought about exposure as when the gun would fire the muzzle flash would light up the subject so I created a mask one frame long of the talents face then increased exposure to give the illusion the gun has been shot. Combined by a gun sound which I will add too as I go further into post production I feel gave a more realistic feel to the shot creating something relatively realistic and almost shocking.

Once all my footage has been saved I will then be able to string the whole story together to hopefully come to the final piece within the next couple weeks.  I might even look into dubbing over the original dialogue to make the scene more prominent however before doing this I will look into some similar tension scenes to see what famous directors do, The Godfather for example Coppola uses ambient sound volume to create suspense when Michael is about to shoot the policeman and other gang member in the final sequence.

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