Leanne Stone
Year1 FMP
practical Problem solving
camera issues
The issue: The first issue I had was with what I would use to record my film. This is because a week before recording my footage, I started to have problems with the camera and its quality. The footage I was getting seemed to be blurry and the camera struggled to focus.
WHAT DID I DO: Therefore I went through looking at a lot of videos trying to solve this and eventually came to the thought that maybe the quality of the picture is not the best I could get to. One video mentioned the difference between the camera and phone quality, this had me wondering if I could get a better quality result on my phone then on the camera. The camera appeared to have an amazing photo quality, however when it came to recording it seemed to lack quality. Therefore, I decided to do an experiment to see which had a better quality. Below is the video clip I recorded that made my decision on what to do.
Camera quality video
iphone quality video
Conclusion: In the end I decided that from these videos the Iphone camera quality was best. I felt even once the Canon camera was focused, it had issues with movement and focusing. Furthermore the warm filter over the camera was a problem. This has happened before and therefore effected the way I edited my movie. Although this would be a nice colour adjustment to create the warm lighting I'm looking for, I would rather had the option to do this in post then have to keep it like this. The ony downfall of using my Iphone is the inability to create some of the wide angled shots I would have liked to be able to create, however I'll have to think about the best way I can do this using my phone.
recording the flash-forward
The issue: This problem had two elements to it. First of all, after finding out that the camera quality was not as good as my iphone quality, I had to think about what was important. I wanted to use the camera so I could have the lens that blacked out the corners or I could try and add this after and go for quality of video. The other problem was when to record my shots for the flash-forward. I preferably wanted to record these at night with the strobe light as this would have given a better effect. However it seemed it would be proved difficult to get both my actors over to do this at night.
conclusion: In the end I decided I would use the camera for this scene, this means I can use the lens addition to create that black outline. Using the camera and having a lesser quality may also add to the flash-forward effect. I think it will create the illusion that this really is just a vision. It emphasises the idea that Gemma is out of it and everything she is seeing is blurred and confusing. With regards to how to record this, I decided to get as many options as possible. Therefore when I had Max over to record at night I did her part quickly but also when doing the day recording with both of them, I created a black background using the black side of the reflector and filmed as best as I could there. I will try and make this match my vision in post as obviously this will be too bright. If this does not work then I have the recording of Max so I can explain to my other character what I need and we can try and figure a way to get more footage from there, however if this works, it will be a lot more convenient and means I'll be confident in manipulating image to create what I saw in my head.
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Update: Having collected my footage and put together my first edit, I had the chance to try and edit the footage of my figure that I filmed during the day to make it darker. I jumped into After Effects, after feeling that Premiere was too limited for what I wanted to do. I actually found this quite easy after figuring out what I needed to do. I created a mask of the hand which when doing it on the video, I will keyframe and then feathered this slightly so it creates a darker outline on the hand. I then messed around with the brightness and added a colour offset to create a warmer tone. I am happy with this result however I will darken the button at the bottom and maybe create some highlights on the rings to make them stand out more.
before
after
creating the embedded stone effect
The issue: This was quite an unexpected and bigger problem that I faced during recording. When going to put the stone into her arm, we had problems actually making it look realistic and making it look like it actually was in her arm. We hadn't tested it yet so didn't know how to tackle this. We tried different options for trying to embed the stone into the arm however it always seemed too chunky and unnatural. I came to the conclusion that the stone felt too thick for what I was aiming to do, I should've got a flatter stone.
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what I did: When I was presented with this issue, my first instinct was to think about different ways we could help stick the stone to the arm without getting it as chunky. However, after messing around with several ways to put this in, we thought maybe the stone was too big. Whilst she experimented more with this, I got a video of her arm with blood on it and without blood on it and messed around in after effects to see if this was something I could add completely in post- production. After an hour I had two small videos rendered to see which I preferred and thought looked best. I had to bear in mind I hadn't had long to mess around with this and therefore had to allow room for this. Below are the two renders and versions I had come up with.
stone experiment 1
Stone experiment 2
conclusion: In the end, I decided using VFX to create the effect of a stone being there would be the best idea. From the experiments I had done in after effects, it looked much better then whenever the actual stone was embedded into the arm. I much prefer the second stone experiment. It is more unusual and intense, whereas the first is too subtle and you will be able to see underneath the stone. This was an independent creation therefore I can easily adapt my idea. I feel I need to add a stronger blue colour, other than that I feel in general that design works very well. It is made of colour vibrancies, glows and turbulent displace. My biggest issue here would be that I have to figure out how to do better tracking, this will take longer as this way I will be going frame by frame a lot. To help with this I decided to add a tracking dot in the centre for easier tracking. This design compared to the one with the stone will be a lot easier to execute, especially when filming with three people.
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