First Editing

Ok, I'm an amateur editor but even an amateur editor can put together amateur footage. 

The screenshot below is of a scene that I haven't shown yet! But it is fully edited outside of dialogue (even the foley sounds are done) and is fully color graded (check out that weird S-curve). This particular frame that I decided to take a picture of was controversial amongst my actors, some of them told me the initial shot was too dark and you couldn't see anything so I played around with the curve until his face was visible but the scene was still dramatic, this particular frame is pretty important within the story and it's meant to portray him in a way that makes the audience question their allegiance to him as the main character.

Some funny foley tales are the peculiar patterns of my actors, within this scene, two people hug it out and one of them have a very strange rhythm to their claps. I had to sync up their claps to the foley sound and that was annoying, another actor decided to swirl a water around in his glass and that was also difficult to make noise for, especially because it's not meant to be heard yet it was necessary in my mind for the immersion. 

What you see here on Premiere is only half of the editing, I did most of the cuts and added in the foley in iMovie and wow the amount of storage that downloading all those audio files took. In any case, I actually had to do a lot of the editing while multitasking at my workplace which extended the time spent during my process from maybe two hours to the entire day. By the time I got home, I was just putting the finishing wraps on editing and that warped my perception for a while and I was in a rush to edit, but as I've gone on, I've gotten better and quicker and more knowledgeable. I can now edit much quicker and make things look the way I wanted them to look much more but most importantly, I've been able to shoot the scenes WITH the editing in mind, not just how it would look to a disembodied ghost on set. So that's been going great for me as well. 

 This is the final stretch, the culmination of a year, yet I don't find myself nervous or seeing this as a conclusion. This is just the beginning of my journey and though I know where I'm starting, I'm more enthused to think about where I could be going.

I (already) Tried Color Grading

As outlined in one of my previous posts, I wanted to dabble in color grading to really nail that filmic look to give my project some oomph. If I could just have the color look right, that'd be an automatic stand out, I thought. So, here, I tried color grading but unfortunately, this was the one I ended up color grading outside of Premiere Pro so it's more amateurish than the one I did in Premiere Pro. Still, it was a preview for what's to come and I intend on saving off color grading until the very end. 

A few questions I did ask myself was, is the brightness too harsh? I'm honestly not sure how it came out here on Blogger but the actual footage itself is quite bright and if not saturated, at least has some weird highlights. I liked the way the sky looked at the end and since I used a lower end color grading service, I couldn't break the clip up into different color settings (ahem, I may or may not have just used the camera roll on my iPhone). I thought the contrast on it was fine and made his outfit pop against the background but not necessarily his face, something I wasn't too happy about. 

All in all, it's still a learning experience but I was happy with how this one turned out, both in terms of how it was filmed and the look of it. I'll say the handheld camera was intentional because it did end up serving a purpose in the narrative but this was an impromptu scene I was randomly inspired to shoot and I happened not to have my stabilizer at the moment. But for all purposes, this was certainly a meticulously done scene. Yep.

 

The Final Stretch: TITLE SEQUENCE!!

One of the biggest challenges I've encountered while working on this project is that it's easy to get streamlined into one aspect of production and that even as much as my ego hates to admit it, the filming might not even be the hardest part.

As a kid who admired cinema and matured into a flourishing mini at-home critic, I'd be lying if I said that my mind was ever on editing or marketing or, you know, anything besides raw footage. Funnily enough, you don't even get to see the raw footage for most movies. So I grew up with a huge misconception. To my dismay, my mindset continued to be this way even AFTER learning about the importance of such roles, I couldn't relate to an editor and so even though I heard the words and saw the screens that editors would work on, they just made it seem so easy that I was never impressed. In that fashion, I attribute this problem to the incredible immersion of the majority of movies, they're all so professional that I never realized I was watching something manufactured—the product of a long, long, long list of steps.

But here I am with a lot of my filming done and a million things learned in filming later and I only now realize—I have to make a title sequence. Fine, let's go to Premiere Pro and get this done. 

I get there and I have no idea what to do.

So let's start here. This is a tutorial for simple titles and oh, wait, this isn't a title sequence. It's just taught me how to put text down on the screen but hey, that's a pretty good thing to know, considering I'll likely have to do that later on anyway. Onwards with the recommended videos on the sidebar!

This one was pretty cool and honestly, it makes me want to use this effect. It has a lot to do with using layers and...matte? Yeah, I guess it'll be hard but definitely worth it, I've never believed that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, especially considering the bush in this case in transparent. I have a clear way forward and I can most certainly watch this tutorial over and over to get my title screen looking prim.

But on the off case I don't want to use that and give in to my baser instincts, I might want to use this effect instead.

First of all, those shots are beautiful and that's what really captured me. A large reason I even like making media is that it's just the most me that I can be. There's only one real story I can tell and even if I put it in a new context, it will always somehow branch back to me. The one thing I have always been aware of is that a creator is behind everything and me, myself being one such creator, I've always wanted to express the beauty of the mundane and capture it in a cinematic way because that's how I viewed my domestic life. Sure, home might be boring, but years down the line when and if I leave, won't I look at it with fondness? I wanted to capture that feeling, the indescribable emotion of advancing and reminiscing and really define what creates the lightning in the bottle, because somehow, somewhere along the line, it got there. 

So maybe I want my title as a backdrop instead. To remind the audience that my film is just a story but one that lies behind some universal truth—at the very least, my truth.

 

Application

 So for this scene, I tried my hardest to remember the compositional rules that I learned from the video as well as lighting tips. Particularly, the idea of shooting shadow side and well as casting the lighting from the top to create a downcast, relatable and empathetic picture of a character resonated with me. 

I think I also did a really good job (or at least better than what I used to do) or adding depth and background lighting, especially because in reality, I lacked the props to add either of that to the scene. I utilized the natural little lights on the ground to create the background lighting and as for depth, I shot the house and there is one moment of the scene where a door is flinging open from the wind (though this is less obvious as the foley is not edited in yet). All in all, I’m proud of how this turned out and I’m also content with the usage of the lighting, something that I struggled to really effectively control in some of my other scenes. 

Composition and Lighting Research

 Ok, so I've got the color grading down sort of but for some reason or another, I'm still bored out of my mind with my shots. Why is that? Even though I've gone through the trouble of using a lighting kit, I'm not understanding the best way to utilize it and therefore, I end up with ugly shots with the huge issue of unmotivated lighting that threatens to tear apart the natural feel of any given scene. I'm going to be honest, a large part of why I did not do this research earlier was because I had too much ego as an individual aspiring artist to ever get directly inspired and in such a blatant way as to watch a video. I thought my analysis skills of cinema were good enough to make it so that what I understood in other films, I could translate directly to my own projects. But that wasn't the case and my scenes lacked a natural rhythm that professional scenes seemed to have, the cuts were awkward and the lighting made things look worse than better. 

What was going on? 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0suVZjz3_Uw&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KVBc2Pg81rw&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Though I love the visual arts and I like spending my time analyzing visual media, for some reason, I never thought to add depth to my backgrounds or even background lighting. The rule of thirds was something I haphazardly followed with no idea of if I was adhering to it correctly and my shots were completely devoid of any semblance of leading lines. And when they did incidentally appear, they would always look weird. 

I learned about the concept of leading lines from one of the videos as well as background lighting that adds depth to a scene. In addition, the concept of motivated lighting which I had already implemented into my filmmaking process. The rule of thirds seems like such an easy way of framing shots but it's something that quickly becomes monotonous, especially if you're not aware of its actual storytelling implications. Subjects in the center are strong, subjects that occupy the one of the four corners of the middle third are in focus, but certain films will play with these ideas to tell a story. And that's something that even though I've considered, have had a very difficult time with. Because now, it's less about shooting and more about setting up the shot and truth be told, it's not a super exciting process, especially when I don't have to budget to make the sets I want and get the props I want.

But in the end, these tips have massively helped me understand just how limited my toolbox is—and what kind of things I can do to improve. I'm looking forward to applying some of these skills in the project and future works.

Color Grading Research

 So, editing isn't just splicing footage in a way that's easier for the audience to understand...huh. The more I work on this project, the more ambitious I become, and the more ambitious I become, the more I realize that I know so little about the post-production process of filming. I suppose it's because while anyone can shoot a film, not everyone has access to an application that lets them go really in depth and it's only recently that I realized the true potential of Adobe Premiere Pro—this beautiful thing resting at my fingertips.

A little context, I always struggled with not just the composition of my shots but also the look. Sure, I'm not working with any fancy cameras, but it still doesn't make sense why my footage is coming out so grainy and bland and tasteless. It wasn't until I saw this color grading guide that I realized what crucial step I was missing in adding the vitality to the scenes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2jtaeoJLC8&t=471s

This link leads to a basic color grading tutorial that tries to show how to make digital footage look more "filmic". For an amateur like me, this kind of assured promise sounds incredible and I did in fact come away from the video with more knowledge than I had going in. 

For instance, halation plays a big role in making lights seem ethereal and interesting and this is something that is commonly done in the color grading process. Creating contrast with your characters from the background isn't just done by mise-en-scene and lighting but also color grading as you adjust the contrast of your scene or the blacks and whites to end up with a serviceable result. 

I mean, is it even a question which of these two shots look more dramatic—more professional? I also learned about the hilarious blockbuster orange and teal look which I never realized was so present in films but now that I know, I can't help but think about the role color grading plays in film. It used to be a process I wouldn't even think of but now, with almost everything I see, I admire the work put into the visuals on the post-production process too.

Script

 Attached below is a script I gave my actors for the opening scene. It included directions that I wanted to remember myself as well as their lines and the way I imagined how the character would deliver it, not that I wanted to trap them inside of a box regarding performance. 

I've been having a lot of difficulty with one of the actors who has a difficult time understanding his character and honestly, I understand the struggle. Perhaps it's me who is not understanding the way he interprets the character but certainly, some sort of dissonance is happening that is making the film opening hard to shoot and match my imagination. Still, I'm ready to work, work, work until this thing is fully realized and getting my actors in line is just one step. 

Also had some difficulties with shooting location which had to be changed last second but that's less of a concern, there's a wealth of locations and exploring different places isn't so bad for garnering inspiration.

Excited for next week and definitely hoping to get the filming done as soon as possible.

Character List

 Attached below are segments of the larger character list I created for my actors. 

After I made the lists, I also met with the actors to try to help them understand the character better. I asked them questions and made them answer in-character while helping them along but not giving them any concrete information. I realize that once I wrote these characters and my actors have read them, we no longer have the same interpretation, it's not just my character anymore and that's fine. The challenge is now, helping them develop their interpretation to a level where I think it's good and to where I can tell they understand the character and the space they occupy. 

Anyway, I do intend on making a performance and character-centric film and to do that effectively, I need to develop their acting chops as soon as possible to a high level. I'm doing things like this character list and 1-on-1 meetings to try to help them and I've actually been seeing significant improvement. At this point, I'll have a ton of DiCaprio's running around on set pretty soon!

Group Meetings

 On Monday, in my class, we held group meetings to discuss our ideas and listen out for new ideas from our peers. It was quite an interesting experience where I got to adopt a ton of novel concepts and developed my film opening idea further along, we were sat in a table of 5 and I heard each of them talk about their individual plans and research. 

One thing I noticed was that they were all very focused on making something happen in the first two minutes, which I definitely understood the appeal of. Still, I think hearing their film opening plan made me think extra hard about the pacing of my own. 

Something else I appreciated was how critically it made me think about the shooting process. Since everyone has different visions, it's easy to get caught up in your own visualization of a scene, but when you realize that other people aren't quite getting what you're describing, you have to exert more effort into making a clarified scene. One way I took this to heart was changing my entire premise which then transformed my opening scene from more atmospheric to both atmospheric and a set up for the future events of the movie—a more effective hook basically.

While I might have found their push for certain ideas a little off-putting, I think it ultimately made me consider many different perspectives that I otherwise would not have wanted to confront out of stubbornness or a lack of imagination. When I asked the others questions about how they would make action sequences not cheesy or where they'd shoot, I internally asked myself those questions and had to be more meticulous in my arrangement. 

All-in-all, this was a great experience and it's just reminded me of how important feedback from your peers is. More importantly, I'll focus myself on how to translate the lessons learned from the group meeting to the film opening, which is becoming more and more realized every day.