Deciding about Campaign!

In week 6 tuesday’s class, all of us had in our minds (well at least what i thought) about project brief 3. Two to four members will have to devise a campaign strategy about any idea to be realised. It was then of our classmates suggested that it would be better if we all work on a single idea and divide roles between us. We all agreed to it and Mark gave a green signal as well, but the question was as to what idea we should work on. Couple of us gave some ideas and all of them were workable, it was then Dylan’s idea that we decided to work on. So the idea is simply to make a Mockumentary on the mishaps happening in university life. We unanimously divided ourselves into groups of management, content, production and social media. I’m paired with Nathaniel, Yuxin, Aravindha and Aref in production team.

I’m quite excited to work in this group, it is always challenging when you work with new people every semester for a studio and I’m fully committed to perform best and be a key player. I’m not sure as yet what role will I be doing in production, I’ll know that in next class when all of us will sit down and discuss our next move.

Pitching Screen Australia

Yesterday all of us had to pitch our ideas which could have potential to send it Screen Australia (but it wasn’t necessary). Everyone had different unique ideas to put upon. My idea was of a documentary on a Pakistani traditional style wrestling called “Kushti”. It was two years ago when I actually experienced with my own eyes. I knew what it was and saw couple of pictures but never live before. My friend’s father passed away at that time and it was then I saw these wrestlers at the graveyard doing training. I was amazed that of all the places why would they pick such a place for their training, I started talking to them and getting more information about its sport and where it stood now and what they do when they are not wrestling. I took some pictures of them and thought to make a documentary someday after carefully studying them, but the project was postponed as I had to come to Australia for my education. Who knows maybe I go back someday and make a documentary on them. Some may think it’s a cliche idea as mentioned on one of the feedback I got in class, but I’m hopeful that it’s not something we have seen before, many have tried and made documentaries  on what it is and how it is done but never they thought of its dying popularity and the people that are trying to save it; what do they do when they are not training? What are their views on it? These are the questions that I wish I can get answers one day.

Another Semester, Another Studio

Due to clash with my contextual subject, I had to change my studio to “The Digital Director’. To be honest I’m not sure what is going to happen, all I know is that I have to give my best in this studio. In this week, we were introduced to Digital Filmmaking and had a chat of how is it changing the landscape of cinema. Mark Poole mentioned there are three streams of Filmmaking, the technical side, the audience stream and the director.

We also got to watch a bit of ‘Side by Side’ by Keanu Reeves which compares and contrast the film camera and the digital camera. In my view, filmmaking should jump to the digital realm now for numerous reasons, the production cost is lower as compared to using film cameras, in case of bad shot; the film reel goes to waste which increases the production value as compared to digital cameras where you can live view the scene you are shooting at the same time recording it.

I would definitely prefer digital camera for my projects; as being a student, they are in my price range and with the post production now portable (editing softwares on tablets and smartphones), it has become a life changing and easier to produce a film.

Collaboration post

Collaboration is an important aspect when doing or creating an artifact of some sort, all of the best minds gel in together and make a possibility of creating a masterpiece. But in Film 3, Collaboration is was in terms of providing assistance to each of our individual projects. Everyone had their brilliant ideas that wanted to approach and it would have been a shame if few of the ideas were to begin with. So it was decided that we would help our class members with their projects. In my film, I required an actor and an extra camera person to shoot while I’m acting, so Brydan and Mitch helped me out. To be honest I never thought it would run smooth as this is the first I was working with this guys, but to my astonishment we wrapped the whole shoot within the time frame. I guess it was our chemistry and seriousness towards the project that made it finish quickly.

That being said, we had mini exercises as well throughout the semester and all were based on some level of collaboration. I remember the first time I was Paired with Constance to shot a silent video of a random scene happening outside, I didn’t know what to do by then and made silly mistakes like bad camera angle or not following proper instructions of the class exercises. During week 2, I remembered I was paired with a group of students and we had to do an act of professional and someone copying it, My blood boiled at one point when they didn’t listened to me properly even though I set up the camera and white balance for the purpose of shooting and they wasted the time by setting it again only to reset it again by me, later I calmed myself and realised that mistakes do happen and we humans tend to it often so it is better to bury the anger, listen and look what they are trying to do and continue with the exercise. With this exercise, I learned that listening is important and the moment you don’t, your downfall is just the beginning.

With this studio, I don’t think there were any pitfalls as Robin was committed to our ideas and approach towards media making. I guess I can say and it is agreeable that students weren’t committed as such towards this studio maybe because due to their other commitments, but I think what is important is that the time selection of this studio was awkward as well, in between lunch time and consecutive two days being Thursday and Friday, so any work that was given on thursday couldn’t be done the next day and friday is always the day when people always rush towards home for the weekend. So it is best for the future that there should be some gap between the two classes for this studio. Now with Bonuses, everything I learned in this course is a bonus for me, things that I knew were polished like editing and camera work but I’ll always appreciate the lightning exercise, I really wanted to know how light system works in the film world and all of us collaborated and made a good scene with Farina’s soft skin on the screen.

Until we meet again 🙂

Color Grading

I don’t use much of color grading, just fix the brightness and contrast of my projects. So just for the sake of this exercise I did different color grading. It’s fun to play around colors and gave a different meaning to it.

Here is the original snapshot from the clip:

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 3.32.43 AM

 

 

This is the first grade:

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 3.33.06 AM

 

I changed it to a bit cold tone to give a bit spooky feeling. I think this justifies with the screengrab. Mitch has expressions of fear so cold tone suits it.

This is the second grab:

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 3.33.23 AM

 

For this, I made the highlights a bit blue and shadows a bit green just to have the both warmness and coldness to it. But I don’t think this is suiting my screen grab. I was just experimenting.

This is the third grab:

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 3.33.48 AM

 

For this I changed the brightness level to low and put highlight to red. I wanted to see if it gives a surreal feeling to it. As if the character wakes from his dream but doesn’t feel like he is back to reality.

 

Using Shortcut keys for editing

Today in the class we looked at color grading and some editing guide. Although I’m aware of how to edit but it is always good to refresh and learn something new along the way. Today I looked over some shortcut keys and two of them I found very useful which I may have used unconsciously but didn’t realised until now. I use Final Cut Pro X for my editing and the two functions that I found useful are Enable/disable clip (shortcut ‘V’) and expand/collapse Audio components (shortcut ‘Control-option-S’).

Shortcut ‘V’ is mainly used to enable or disable a selected clip of your choice. I usually deleted the clip which messed my timeline, but this is handful when you are overlaying videos and you can decide which video is useful for your purpose and you can always come back and enable the other one. The other shortcut ‘Ctrl-Opt-S’ is used for expanding or collapsing the audio of the selected clip. It is handful incase you require just the audio of the clip and be used to overlay interviews and manage the justifiable images with it.

Robin’s Feedback

After showing Robin my assembled project for FILM 3, He praised my efforts and advised me to carry on with the edit. He also suggested that the voice over I used feels like it has been heard before (it does somehow reminds me of Darth Vader), I’ll experiment and see if I can make it a bit spooky, but most importantly, I need to find some royalty free music for my project to be used as background score. I was also thinking to edit one mini version of it like of 30 seconds, apart from that It is important that I should focus on the 3 minute version, hopefully the length of it will be around that.

A minute silence for Chantal Akerman, german filmmaker, who pioneered in feminist and experimental filmmaking as she died recently at the age of 65. Today in class we watched her work ‘I’m Hungry. I’m Cold’. A bit of slow paced movie but something worthwhile to watch, two ladies who want to find love and they also seem to explore their gender roles in society. At Least that is what I think the story was about.

Depth of field

Today we learned another key element in filmmaking universe, depth of field. Depth of field basically means a distance between a closer and further object. It really depends upon what the cinematographer is looking for if he/she wants a shallow or narrow depth of field. Robin asked us the three main things for which the depth of field depends upon. I knew two of them which is the focal length of the lens and the aperture. The focal length determines the distance between the image sensor and the lens when you focus on the subject and the aperture determines what kind of field of view you are looking for. If we want a shallow depth of field to focus on one particular object then we decrease the number of F-stop for example F2.8 and if we require a narrow depth of field to focus on wide area in the frame then we increase the number of F-stop for example F16.

The third factor which I wasn’t sure was actually the distance between the object and the camera. In today’s exercise, we had three different cameras, DSLR, Sony EX3 and Sony Z7. We had to focus on the same subject but interestingly each one us had different focal length. DSLR was about 80MM, EX3 was on 20MM and Z7 was on 25MM. It is because of the different sensor size that each camera offers. Each does have its pros and cons, like DSLR doesn’t have a particular viewfinder (you can get a third party hardware and attach to its live view) but it gives less noise as compare to others. Ex3 although does face noise issue but certainly has all the features needed for the film making and as for Z7 I’m not sure as I haven’t used much but I do know that its focus pull is infinite and causes problem when marking the focus.

This weekend I’m shooting my film, booked dedo light kit. Wish me luck 🙂

Testing lightning

Unfortunately my memory card failed thus I couldn’t record anything. But I did check though the screen of my camera and it is suiting my purpose and location seems to fit what my story requires. I used dedo kit for lightning but I guess it would only fit for my final scene of the film. My 90% of the shoot requires natural light source and house lightning. But then again, I would see what deems fit and if any extra lightning is required, I will use Dedo kit as a fill light for my actors.

I’m really excited with my project, I just hope it goes well. I’m nervous as well but what I’m really looking forward to is does my story engage with audience.

Lightning

Lightning is an important element in cinema’s visual aesthetics. It creates an emotional impact. Contrast of light and dark influences the ways audience responses to the narrative. With deep shadows, it means that scene may reflect horror or some confusion in character’s personality whereas bright lighting may mean assurity in character’s personality and creates an impression that this subject can be trusted in the film.

Careful considerations should be made before shooting by cinematographers as to what kind of lightning equipment should be used. Black-white and color cinematographer each has its own perks but each of them uses different lighting techniques. One thing is for sure with black and white cinematography, the cinematographer only focuses on the brightness and shadows of subjects, whereas with colors, extra push is required with the white balance if the scene requires to be warm or a bit colder image. The angle of light is another aspect, by using mix of light sources in a scene also creates a dramatic effect to it.

In yesterday’s class we also learned some important terms regarding lightning. Back lightning, which means a light source coming from behind the character and its purpose it make a mysterious appearance of character. Key and fill lightning, which is the main light in a particular scene, while fill lightning is used to soften the harsh shadow effect.

While writing about the lightning, I’m thinking of creative ways to use what I learnt in class exercise for my film. Instead of using a huge tungsten light, I’ll be using dedo lightning. I have a small space so tungsten light won’t be useful. Although we didn’t experience dedo lighting, I think I can be expressive with these small equipments for my film project.