From the week before, it would seem that I had forgotten to save my foley track, so without further ado, I started again. To be honest, I felt like I needed to redo it anyway as I didn’t really put a lot of effort into the original track. Thankfully, I had saved the majority of the sound effects I used so I didn’t have to go looking for new sound effects.
Also, this time round, I noticed a lot of things I missed sound effects for so I added some new sounds to my track, including glitching sounds for the title.
(I forgot to get screenshots for this next bit)
I finally had all my clips ready to start editing the main video, however with only an hour left of Wednesday, I only managed to do 10 seconds worth of footage. This is because I decided to crop and colour grade as I went along.
For next week, I shall hopefully have finished editing the whole thing so that it’s ready to be exported and uploaded to YouTube, granted it doesn’t get copyrighted!
So it begins, it’s time to start editing. At this point, I still need to film more of the main video so I thought I’d get started on editing the opening dialogue. I started by scanning through all my videos to find the ones that were worth using. It was quite difficult to find good clips because my actors spent half the time messing around. I had to figure out which order to put my clips into, and once I had done that it was simply a matter on adjusting the position of the clips to accommodate the cinematic crop, colour grading the whole thing and adding the backing music over the top.
I spent the majority of my time placing the clips and colour grading them, hence why this took me all day to complete. I was really happy with the colours I managed to achieve for my opening dialogue. I chose quite dreamlike purples and pinks. It sets the time of day (evening glow) whilst also contrasting to the main video, which is to be coloured in reds and blacks.
WEDNESDAY
With the scene all colour graded and edited, I could get started on gather sounds effects for my foley track. I used “freesound.org” to gather my sounds; I started with a basic ambient sound of birds and wildlife and started top build up the sound effects as I see fit. Having used Adobe Audition before, I opted to using this as it would be easier to add reverb to my sound effects that way.
One of the biggest problems I faced during this project is how hard I found it to document my ideas. I knew I couldn’t just DO my work, I had to find a way of showing how I did something (which is also why I’m having such a hard time writing my research blogs). That being said, one of the most difficult tasks I faced was trying to decide on whether to use a script format or shot list format to document what I needed to film for my video.
In most cases, a script would make more sense to use; it looks more professional to start with, as well as being the more popular to way to explain what is needed of the actors in certain scenes. Not to mention, in more first draft of my proposal, I stated how I wanted to write a script for my opening dialogue.
However, I didn’t take into consideration how useful a shot list would be to my final production. Firstly, it didn’t take anywhere near as much as effort to format correctly: no need for fancy fonts or specific formatting, nor much need for it to be in chronological order. A shot list would mean I can keep the dialogue ambiguous, and it also means I can just jot down any ideas that come to my mind.
Practically, in this case, it made more sense for me to do a shot list as there wasn’t going to be much speaking, due to it being a music video (UPDATE: there ended up being no dialogue whatsoever anyway due to my terrible memory and bad time keeping)
I have only one word to describe my day on Saturday: stressful. I only have myself to blame, however, as I wasted the time I had to do some last minute planning the night before by watching Ru Paul’s drag Race instead. It’s becoming more and more prevalent throughout this FMP that I will need to start planning and working well in advance for my second year FMP to avoid this stress next time.
That being said, I have also found myself with a lot of problems which were out of my hands during this filming day and, I feel, I have handled them as professionally as possible. Needless to say, I was drained by the end of Saturday, and I hadn’t even got all of the footage I needed. I can’t exactly blame myself for calling it a day on filming as by 10:00pm we were nowhere near finished, I wanted to sleep, as did my actress.
I booked out a Canon 800D, as well as a camera tripod and a Rode mounted mic for the session. I wanted the best quality camera I could book out and this was my best option.
Although, pat on the back, I did get all of the opening “dialogue” done and the final part of the video completely recorded, even if some adjustments to the final production had to be made.
Because my dumb body likes to mess with me, I, of course, woke up with a migraine come Saturday morning, and thus my planned morning of setting up the back drops and lights was tossed away like yesterday’s jam (if you get where that’s from, we’d probably get on). I slept the rest of the morning off, I wasn’t due to start filming until mid afternoon after all. I woke up an hour before my bus was due so I opted to wait until I got back to set up. I needed to go into the city centre to meet my friend Kirsty, who offered to be my PA for the day in exchange for mozzarella sticks and hash browns. I also needed to pick up some fake blood from the fancy dress shop for my video, as well as meet Esme, my actress, from work.
Whilst at the fancy dress shop, I got the idea to pick up a masquerade style mask for £2.99
Although I didn’t really have a specific dress code/costume in place for this video, I knew that I wanted to keep a creepy and sexy feel to the whole thing. And with my colour scheme being a cool palette of reds and blacks, this mask was the perfect choice to try and incorporate into my video. Even if I didn’t use it, it was only £2.99 and would make a huge dent in my personal funds (I did end up using the mask and it was very effective).
Now onto the second problem of the day: buses. I was due to meet Esme at 2:45pm, catch the next bus home and complete all the main music video shots before 6pm when I was to meet my other actors Izzy and Luke. However, as you can imagine, this did not happen. Esme’s bus did not arrive in town until 3:15pm and then two of my buses didn’t even show up. By the time I got home, it was 5pm and I had an hour to set up my set and film all of my video before we went out to film the rest of the video. I did manage to set up the backdrop and camera/tripod and film some scenes, so go me.
Since the beginning of this project, I’ve been wanting to experiment with all sorts of techniques I haven’t been able to with past projects, and with most of these new things being post-production, one thing I was certain on trying was experimental lighting. I really wanted to use a red light for the final part of the video; it’s the most sinister part of the whole film and I want it to look the part. I looked into getting some red cellophane to put over my house lamps however I found a way more reliable option in my basement
Considering the location of this scene was in the bathroom, this meant I wouldn’t take up the little space I had by trying to fit a whole lamp into the room as well as a tripod and camera. By having these bulbs, it meant I was able to utilise the lighting that was already in the bathroom. I did find that during the daylight hours that the red light wasn’t anywhere near as visible and so I made the executive decision to wait until night time to film the scene in the bathroom.
And, if until now you thought I was having a bad day, just wait for the main event. It was finally time to meet up with Izzy and Luke when several problems came to light. The first of which being that I had left my mic at home on the table. Not that this was a huge problem considering I never finished the script but this now meant I wasn’t able to record any speaking whatsoever. However, all hope wasn’t lost at this point as I reminded myself of the Foley project my class did last term.
This task went really well for me, I was very, very successful and, considering the dilemma I’ve left myself in, I could have been left worse off. This gave me a chance to show off my skills in create foley tracks, and my confidence in using Adobe Audition.
Amongst these problems, I also had to sort out a new main male actor due to Luke being too nervous, changing set location because of general public being in the way and in general having work with novice actors. This was my main problem for this day of shooting as only Esme took the role seriously. This has given me a few warnings for when I come around to doing my second year FMP; next time I will definitely look into casting actual theatre students and, if I have time, I will conduct a casting day before filming.
All in all, I wouldn’t say filming was a complete disaster, however there were some clear problems I had to work through. I was so stressed out from working on this film, I couldn’t film everything I wanted to and thus I will have to run another filming day, and this time I will only work with Esme and not have so many people show up.
India's FMP Blog 2019 