Photoshop Practice

So I decided that while I was off over the holidays I would start learning some Photoshop painting techniques, and I don't think it went too badly:

Its my first attempt at using blending modes to produce the light and shadow, so its a bit untidy and rough, but hopefully with a lot of practice I can get it to look as good as the professional's one day.

Self Evaluation for DP2: Moving Image Project

The main ideas I was trying to express in this piece of work was that the main character 'Andy' is a normal guy working a normal job going about his day to day life and he was reasonably happy even if it was monotonous work, and that the character of Vinnie arrives and disrupts his life and eventually leads him (Andy) to snap. The ways I tried to represent this in my piece was that in the beginning of the film the sun is still up and the scenes are much lighter and brighter. This is also shown through the music and the slower calmed cuts between shots. However when Vinnie arrives the viewer knows immediately that something is wrong. The music changes to a darker tenser ambience, and the sun goes down making the whole scene dark and eerie. There is also the fact that as far as sound goes, Vinnie's arrival cuts through Andy happy existence as much as the loud thudding, electronic dubstep he is blaring out of his car cuts across the light-hearted acoustic music of the opening scene. This point is further pressed when Vinnie steps out of the car and the cans fall to the floor crating sharp high sounds, wrecking Andy's peaceful silence and the gentle hum of traffic below.

When developing my ideas I used a lot of research methods, including looking at existing film and comparing and contrasting different takes on classic literature, as well as reading about places and people that I could use as influences in my work.

Another method I used, for character design in particular, was to start from the beginning with the most basic ideas and themes, creating brainstorms of the characters based on what their histories might be and possible motives driving them to act the way they do in the film.

A problem I found while editing was that the sound of the dialogue was at times too quiet to hear, this was due to the fact that the actors were talking too quietly or that the mic was too far away from them. I attempted to rectify this by making the sound levels higher at these points, but there’s only so much you can do in an edit and by making the sound levels higher overall I was also increasing the background noise, making cuts between shots painfully obvious. I realise that the problem was that the microphone was not close enough to the actors and so did not pick up enough sound. The best way to fix this would have to be a retake, or for the actors to rerecord those lines exactly as they said them in the shot and layer them over, making them loud enough to hear.

I think if I was going to redo this project, I’d defiantly acquire better lighting equipment, perhaps take to a couple of those personal lights or use the car headlights on full beam in more shots. I would also spend more time making sure the props were better positioned. Another thing I'd do would be to spend more time learning how to use other equipment better, when it came to filming days I felt a tad useless as I wasn't very helpful setting things up like the sound or camera equipment.

My Film for DP2 Moving Image

Editing

I started editing the film after day two of shooting, I got the first half of the film off the Arnold server and edited it together as best I could up to where we had finished shooting. I left music and sound effects until I had the rest of the film, so that I didn't have to edit around sounds just yet.

After day three I took the rest of the footage and began editing in earnest. I started, as I usually do with looking through each of the clips, and labelling them appropriately, then I can clearly see whether they are outtakes, seconds of nothing or usable footage, and what is going on in each shot. I then organised the shots I decided I was going to use roughly on the timeline, trimmed off the 'action' and 'cut' segments and watched it through. I then cut out any useless footage, seconds of silence where nothing was happening, points where the actor had broken character by smiling or looking at the camera or there were unwanted background sounds. I then rewatched the film again to see where I was at.

At this point I just began tightening up the action, making sure that there was always something on screen that was showing progression of the story and shortening the film as much as possible, as it was still over the limit.

Next I had to gather together the sound effects and music I was going to use.  Most of the music and sound effects I ended up using were free downloads, but some of the music, such as the music used in the opening credits I would have had to get permission from the artist for if this was an actual film.

The hardest part during the sound editing was getting the music that played from Vinnie's phone to sound realistic. Because the original song I used was deep and bassey I had to manipulate the track so that it sounded distant and tinny as it would when coming from someone's phone. To achieve this I used another program called Adobe Sound Booth. I had never used this software before and it took some time to get to grips with it, but eventually I managed to manipulate the track into sounding like it was coming from a phone and echoing round a stairwell. If I had time I would have tweaked the sound slightly between the stairwell shots and the outside shots to get rid of the cold echoes, as it wouldn't echo like that outside, but it proved too time consuming for such a small change that would likely go unnoticed.

 A problem I found while editing was that the sound of the dialogue was at times too quiet to hear. I attempted to rectify this in the edit by making the sound levels higher at these points, but there’s only so much you can do in an edit and by making the sound levels higher overall I was also increasing the background noise, making cuts between shots painfully obvious. I realize that the problem was that the microphone was not close enough to the actors and so did not pick up enough sound. The best way to fix this would have to be a retake, or for the actors to rerecord those lines exactly as they said them in the shot and layer them over, making them loud enough to hear.

Trying to get the sound and especially the music and sound effects to match well with the visual element was the hardest part of editing, as it is harder to tell what point to start or stop the music compared to how you can clearly see when to cut visual footage. Because of this I don’t think the music and sound effects are as good as they could have been for my final edit. This is something I need to work on.

Production

We shot the film over three days. On the first day of filming, we found that our actor playing Andy had cancelled, telling us that he would suddenly be busy today and would have to make it tomorrow instead. We tried that day to shoot what we could of the film just using Vinnie, but this was difficult as there were not many scenes where he didn't interact with Andy or the girl, who, as it turned out, would also be busy that day. In the end that day turned into more of a practice filming, as we noticed when we looked back at the footage that because a lot of the shots were hand held due to space issues the shots turned out to be too shaky or over lit.

The shaky camera also made it look as though he was being watched because it looked like a first person view, so I ended up using this footage only once, where Vinnie actually does feel as though he's being watched.

The sound however turned out better in these shots than in the actual take, so although we fixed the visual aspect of the film, the sound somehow managed to get worse as we progressed.

The second day of filming turned out to be better, although it was not without its share of problems. For a start the actor that had assured us that 'tomorrow would be better' failed to turn up again, and so the owner of the spare car we were using as lighting had to step in and act as Andy, as we were running out of time and could not wait on the original actor any longer. Luckily the actress playing Vinnie's girl eventually turned up and that day we were able to shoot half the film, including reshooting the failed footage from the day before, this time knowing to use the tripod.

 The second day was also the day we filmed the majority of the car sequences, as previously stated we used aerial shots and location shots to plan out the route the car would take and to look at possible camera positions for the best scenes to show the car in action.

On the final day of filming we shot the last half of the film. The most difficult part of day three and indeed of the whole shoot was the elevator scene, where Vinnie is tied up. This was because we were using a public car park and didn't know whether a customer was trying to use the elevator or not. The doors kept trying to close and it was a rush to get people organised and the scene shot so that we could leave the elevator as soon as possible so as to cause as little disruption to the car park as possible. It also didn't help that the corridor the elevator was situated in was vey cramped and it was difficult to get a good camera angle in the small space along with the tripod, other equipment and the crew.

Film Research

In this module I looked at a lot of other films and film directors for inspirations and styles that I could use in my own film.

One of the films I looked at was No Country for Old Men. This is an American crime thriller directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. The film is an adaptation of McCarthy's 2005 novel and is faithful to the novels plot and themes, such as pessimism and nihilism.

The scene I found most useful is one where the main character is intimidating an elderly shop owner, purely using his presence, without using threats or raising his voice. I wanted the character of Andy to give off this feeling of silent power when he snaps and goes after Vinnie.

I also looked at the two versions of the film Romeo and Juliet. Originally a play by Shakespeare, this story has been adapted into film multiple times under different directors and with radically different styles. For example, comparing the 1968 version with the 1996 version:

We can see that the essential visual differences in the film prove to be complete opposites.   The 1968 version by Franco Zeffirelli, depicts a traditional Romeo and Juliet. The accustomed Renaissance setting was doused in neutral colours.   Costuming was accurate and conventional for the time. In general this adaptation stays truer to the way Shakespeare had intended.   In the 1996 version by Baz Luhrmann, the story of Romeo and Juliet is portrayed with a modern day twist.   The setting is a beach city where cars and buildings are vibrant with colour.   Costumes were updated with Hawaiian print shirts and casual styled dresses.   This adaptation was more appealing to the eye because it was not so bland.  

In conclusion, the modernized version of Romeo and Juliet had many key differences that changed a lot of the themes and characters. Many liked the modern version just as much as the original because of these changes.

Relating this to our film, by thinking outside the box, we could have looked at what the script appeared to entail on a basic level, and turned it around with a completely unexpected twist.

We also did research into what the main characters would be like, their personalities and mannerisms, and also thought about their histories and what was motivating them to act as they were.

Storyboards

So I used the shot list to create some storyboards of the key scenes in the film:

Moving Image

This modules title was 'interpretation'. We were put into groups and assigned a script which we had to interpret what we thought it should be shot as and the style the film should be.

In our groups we were allocated specific roles and had to make sure we researched and understood what our role entailed, and then perform that role to the best of our abilities.

Each group member, st the end of the five weeks, had to produce their own edit of the final film.

The roles that I was given in this project were Lighting, Props and Storyboarding.

For my role in lighting I first looked at how lights should be set up in an ideal shot, for this I looked at videos on YouTube such as these:

As well as watching many examples of set lighting, especially set lighting at night, as the film we would be shooting would be in the dark, I also read countless forums where people were discussing variations of set lighting and techniques that worked best for them, and read pages of information about the technological side of lighting, the best lights to get and how to handle them.

Self Evaluation for DP2: 3D Animation Project

In my environment I was trying to get across the idea of the terrain being as cold and barren as possible. The way in which I attempted to do this was to fill it with cold icy rocks and mounds of snow. There were no trees or plants growing, and I used the particle effects engine to generate heavy snow falling from the sky.


The other thing I wanted to do was to make the place look eerie and deserted. The way I accomplished this was to attach the only light source (other than the glowing reactor and portal) to the camera itself, so that the objects in the rooms would come looming creepily out of you from the darkness.


In my character design I was trying to express the fact that his powers were based in domination and control, and so I designed him to give him a look of strength and weight with a aura of darkness. This is shown in the design by my use of heavy armor covered in sharp spikes and large, formidable weapons.


Design methods I used, for character design were to start from the beginning with the most basic ideas and themes, creating brainstorms of characters based on simple shapes and ideas, along with notes of how each drawing would look to a viewer and how they might be improved upon, working up to my final design.
With my environment, I also drew out room plans and ideas of what the environment would be like and what it could contain, many of the ideas made it into the final design, however others were scrapped or changed.


Some of the problems I had during production were that the snow was not showing up on the final render at all, as there was too little of it to register.
In order to fix the issue I was having with the snow, I simply added more particle generators into the environment and angled them against each other to make it like more like a blizzard and for there to be enough particles to register.


While rendering the video, I followed the tutorial and saved the files starting at 00000, so that the files would number upward and be in the correct order for Premiere to import. However, once the files saved and I tried to import them into premiere, I found that the video it created cut off at 15 seconds.
To fix the problem with the 15 second video, I had to go into the jpg files and look over the file name, here I found that occasionally a random file number was missing from the sequence (eg. 00756) and this was causing the import to cut off when it hit this missing file. The files that were missing were saved under different names at the end of the sequence.I simply had to rename the files so that they took their proper place in the sequence and re-import the footage.


There are a few points in which I believe I could have improved on. The textures that used on my design I think gave a good insight into the image I had originally wished to portray, but if I was able to get access to more detailed library of materials and also a better understanding of how to manipulate these materials I feel I could have developed exactly the image I wanted. After doing more in-depth research into the program I was able to identify that it was possible to use higher-end and better rendering programs than the one I used, the only problem was that they were a lot more detailed and complex, If I had been able to gain a better understanding of these rendering programs I feel I would have been able to manipulate them to produce a higher quality Final Render.

Final Environment Images and Video

These were the four final high resolution screen shots of my 3D environment:

And this is the one minute video fly through of the environment: