VFX INSPIRATION MOOD BOARD

For VFX I have been thinking for a long time what I wanted my title sequence to be. At first I wanted something colourful and fun such as My Little Pony or Hello Kitty, but that would require a lot of advanced skills to make the 2D characters 3D and a lot of effects that I am not quite competent enough to use yet. So I decided to have a look at some interesting tutorials on After Effects and text in After Effects and came across a neon sign tutorial. After completing the tutorial I felt that this was quite achievable for me to do and that I should find a way to incorporate it somehow into my work. So I had a look at TV shows or films that had used neon lights and remembered the Black Mirror episode San Junipero and remembered the neon lights in that episode. In the bar that thee girls both meet the neon sign in the background is pink and blue and very striking as the light falls on their faces. The later in the episode when they kiss on the beach they are wearing pink and blue as a running colour scheme. So I think I am going to use this throughout my live action filming and my animation work on After Effects. Pictured below are some abstractions from the episode and some mood boards and colour schemes/swatches.

pink and blue colour scheme

neon sign at the bar 

colour palette swatch

another colour scheme 

the two running colours in neon

blue swatch

pink swatch

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

AVID SESSION III

With this being our last booked in time to edit our films, the pressure was on. The Avid rooms are open until 8pm so if I didn't finish today I knew I still had time to adjust things and make improvements or changes. With my edit all in order, I decided to get to work on sorting out the audio. Some of the clips had talking in the background so I had to figure out how to make my own atmosphere track to cover the sound. I scrolled through lots of the footage to find a clip that had no noise, only the background atmosphere and I selected and cut that, the put it underneath the clip I wanted to change the audio of. Then I cut the new atmosphere track down to the size of the clip so it didn't interfere with any of the surrounding clips. I then had to deselect the video tracks, right click and select unlock tracks, by doing this it separates the audio from the footage. I then clicked on the audio and selected mute track. So when you play the clip through, it muted the original audio and instead plays the atmosphere track I put together. As some of the clips I was using had a lot of talking in the background I spent the morning sorting out the audio for them to make sure it was perfect. Then I decided that when the beginning of the film starts I should fade the music from silent to the atmos track so it doesn't sound all static and unprofessional. So I placed some markers on the audio timeline and lassoed them so they would both move at the same time. I made the first markers at zero, and then slowly build them up so you wouldn't notice the audio.

After all this was finished and tidied up I moved on to colour correction. This is my favourite bit as I adore taking something plain looking and natural and turning it super cinematic and colourful. So I started with going into the colour correction format under Work space in the top left hand corner. Using this work space is great because it allows you to see the clip your editing, the one before and the one after, so you can match your colouring and it flow nicely with your colour pallet. So I set off with the scene that had tungsten lighting putting a little bit of blue and purple in there, but reducing any green that I could see. This is what I did for the majority of the colouring for the tungsten lighting. However, when it came to the red lighting I had a different approach of course. I enhanced my red every so slightly but made the red chart have an S curve in the shape so the red peaked higher in the bottom left hand side of the screen and was more subtle in the middle of the screen. I also turned the master track up as that affects the exposure, and as some pieces were quite dark I just adjusted them ever so slightly. The was one cut away that was really orange for some reason, it was a close up of TJ's hand holding the chess piece, and as this was meant to be the natural tungsten lighting I enjoyed playing around to match it back to the lighting. I adjusted the reds a little lower and raised the blues and a bit of purple, then turned down the master track as it was a little over exposed. I had a lot of fun doing this but I am not quite finished with the edit, but I have enough time to spend a few more hours perfecting it and preparing it for being finished.

Colour Correction for Tungsten Light

Audio Control with Key Frames

Creating my own Atmos Track

Unlocking the Tracks

Creating the Atmos Overlay

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

LARGE FORMAT CAMERA INDUCTION

On Wednesday Peter Renn held an all day workshop on large format cameras, under the Fields and Frames unit. Beforehand I was really excited as I had never used large format before and I wanted to know how it looked and worked. Peter gave a presentation in the morning of famous photographers that use large format and why. We were shown some beautiful examples of large format work and it was incredible. The quality and definition you can get in the photo is incredible, and this allows you to be able to enlarge the images easier.

After the presentation, Peter got out some large format cameras and showed us how to set them up and make sure they aren't damaged and in good working order. He also told us what to book out if we ever need one, as when you book out a large format camera and a tripod, it doesn't come with the film paper slots, so you have to book them out separate. The setting up of the camera itself was fascinating, the care and time you take over the camera is important as it is delicate. We were also shown how to load the film, and how to set the camera up to take a picture. This was a lot of information to take it, but luckily I wrote notes. We were then reminded on the light meters and how they will come in handy whilst shooting. After this, Peter gave us some film paper and sent us off to take pictures of whatever we wanted and experiment. We got into groups and my group was me, Nina and George. we decided to go around uni and try and take a self portrait in the reflection of a window. but we accidently exposed the paper so it went completely white instead of capturing the photo. Sadly George had to leave so it was up to me and Nina to see if we could figure out how to take a photo and it work. After multiple attempts of it being over and under exposed we finally got there, and started to shoot some really pretty photos. I think it was easily one of the best and most fun workshops I have been to, I enjoyed the laid back manor and Peter allowed us to play and experiment and capture whatever we wanted. Pictured below are some of the camera and process.

Photo Paper

Failed Self Portrait

The Camera

The Viewfinder 

Darkroom

Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes II

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.