Day by day, the light at the end of the tunnel seems to get brighter and brighter.

Everything seems to be taking its shape, I’ve managed to change the colour of Reza’s skin to make him look like a zombie, and tried matching grades across all the shots. My mate, who has been a legend this whole time, has sent me a couple of tracks of music for me to mess around with to elevate the sequence, adding some elements of suspense and thriller. Reza seems to be doing well with his foley and sound design, we have a couple of issues with the audio levels, but nothing too major.

I’m just trying to put everything together, hoping that it won’t fall apart. You know the feeling of making a sandwich or a hamburger that’s been stacked with layers and layers of patties, bacon, lettuce, and what have you, and the finishing touch of a sesame sprinkled bun on the top. Your main goal now is to put that burger in your mouth without all of the middle crumpling and falling out. Yes, that’s how I feel, maybe in a much less dramatic manner, but I have all the ingredients with me now, and it’s just matter of shifting things around, adjusting audio levels, fine tuning colours, fine tuning Zombie Reza’s colour, and just keeping everything together now.

It’s often overlooked where the “finishing” happens, and that’s where all the work of various department go to, to be put together in one final timeline. Sound from audio post, graphics from visual effects department, coloured visuals from the colourist, and maybe more? And usually, the editor would be the one assembling the final product before it goes out to the cinemas, or broadcast, or whatever mediums the client requested for. And I feel like I’m right in that seat right now of assembling one final burger to be served up on the Thursday/Friday of week #14.

In terms of production, I think the team and I have put in the hours to achieve what we wanted. I couldn’t ask for better group mates to work with. Looking forward to what’s to come ahead.

I taken on the challenge to change the skin tone of Reza to a more pale looking, cold blood, flesh eating zombie. I had no idea what I was putting myself through.

I am pretty sure there’s a much easier way to going about doing it, but I’ve not dug deep enough into researching or finding how it is done, but I did it by manually keying out and masking the face, legs, and arms of Reza and then applying a colour grade to his skin to make it look like that of a zombie, and here’s the meanest part. Frame by freakin’ Frrrame… 

Apparently most of the tutorials online are mostly teaching people how to achieve flawless skin tone, or perfect skin, or proper colouring techniques, which is cool and all if I’m learning how to grade for a TV commercial, but there isn’t one on how to change the skin colour of an actor. Either no one has done it before, or everything is usually done with makeup (which is my guess). So, I think I’m travelling into unchartered waters here, or it may very well look like it.

There was definitely a learning curve to it, and it took me all afternoon picking it up, and the rest of the day (and night) to colour change Reza into the zombie for the entire length of the video. There’s is the tracking function for the key mask, but it’s not accurate, and I would have to eventually adjust the points again as shown in the video I’ve recorded my screen. It’s been fast forward at 300%, so you could imagine how long it actually took to do the entire length.

I’m not merely as done as I would like, as some of the key point are still bleeding, and the discolouration is spilled onto the surrounding visuals around Reza, making him look all heavenly or in some ways radioactive with a glow around him. Definitely got to fix that.

At this stage, I think I’m all into post-production right now. We have pretty much shot all the necessary footage we need, it’s just the matter of us going back to our research idea and developing it. In my case, I started out from working with the uses of letter boxes, and realise there isn’t much to experiment in that field, and then moved on to colour grading and everything the revolves around it. Camera, exposure, resolution, file format, all plays a part into grading footage. And then there’s the creative approach of making something look good or making something look a certain way, or cue a certain emotion.

I’ve been experimenting with different grades to the footage, and as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the thing I found most challenging was to match grade from shot to shot. My research shows various methods used by professionals in the field. I gathered that, there’s no hard and fast rule into colour grading, everyone has their own method around it, so long as it achieves a particular look the director or filmmaker is going for. Some resort to using LUT (another realm worth exploring) as a base platform and then working their way up from there, while others just worked from scratch doing a basic balancing, correcting, and then to the actual grading.

For me, I approached it the old school way, starting from scratch and then work my way up to colour grading. It might not be the best method, but for someone who’s never done this before, I think it’s a good starting point. I did a bit of research with using LUT and it got a little complicated when you have to take note of the various cameras and model that you’re shooting for the LUT to compensate for the colours straight from the camera. I do, however, would intend to use that approach maybe in my future projects for sure. Just not this particular one. For me, I approached it the old school way, starting from scratch and then work my way up to colour grading. It might not be the best method, but for someone who’s never done this before, I think it’s a good starting point. I did a bit of research with using LUT and it got a little complicated when you have to take note of the various cameras and model that you’re shooting for the LUT to compensate for the colours straight from the camera. I do, however, would intend to use that approach maybe in my future projects for sure. Just not this particular one.

During my internship as an assistant offline editor, I’ve managed to pick up a thing or two during my down time with the colourist working in the company. And he gave me some tips and tricks on getting proper exposure in post. One of the things I took away was to set my contrast in black and white, eliminating all colours from the picture. This takes away some distraction from the eye which might play some bias to some colours, hence making you think that region is brighter than other. It’s quite an old school trick than very few colourists use today, but an essential one to getting a proper exposure to the picture. It works for both video and still images, like how you would do colour grading or matching on Lightroom or Photoshop.

Also, the limitations of shooting on a DSLR really shows when you’re in post-production, as the grain would be substantial the moment you start cranking up some of the dials such as the blacks, or saturation, or even some of the colour wheels. But we have to work within our limits, and I’m a person of “less is more” kind of thinking, so I guess it’s good to work with some limitations before you go into the full blown RAW experience (pun intended).

Growing up, my family never really spoke Chinese (Mandarin to be exact, they are fluent in their respective dialects) in the household. We were more accustomed to English, as both my parents were English educated from Malaysia. Chinese lessons back then were pretty much just storytelling or teacher addressing the class in Mandarin. Nothing too formal with exams or tests like we have today. Hence, that minute Chinese vocabulary was then passed down to my brother and I who struggled, a lot, in our primary school days where Mandarin, or in broader terms, our Mother Tongue language was compulsory for all students to study, and pass.

Having a group mate who’s from mainland China has some consideration, worth exploring. During our shoot, I suggested to Helen speaking in Mandarin (her first language) or in Cantonese (her dialect that she was raised with), and I’ll add subtitles on screen with both English and Chinese characters. I figured it’ll be more natural for her to speak in her native language, and it would translate (no pun intended) into her acting. Something that she would be more familiar and comfortable with. Although it’s just a small role, or even line, where she’s on the phone with a friend, before she bumps into the zombie, I could imagine it playing in my head if she’s speaking in English, it just doesn’t seem natural, like eating a banana with a pair of chopsticks.

Also, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to brush up on my Chinese as well, while I’m doing the subtitling, I tried as much not to refer to google translate. With technology literally right at our finger tips, it’s always so easy to revert to some sort of translation back to a language you’re more familiar with. Mind you, my speaking and listening is slightly better than my writing and reading, in other words, I had no problem understand what Helen said, it’s just putting it into the subtitles and finding the right Chinese characters.

Having moved to Melbourne for more than a year now, I finally found an identity and have learned to appreciate my background. I’ve learned to view things at the bigger picture and understand things with a slightly different perspective. Also, learning to appreciate the little things back home such as having fresh laundry done everyday, or home cooked meals on the table (done by someone who’s actually experienced in frying with a wok) and not just microwave food for students on a tight budget. And it’s all these little things that helps you get by day to day, and overall, in life.

This post might seem a little far fetched from filmmaking, but again, it’s such experiences and lessons that inspires filmmaking. Only when we’re pushed to our boundaries do we see results that we wouldn’t even dream of.

At the beginning of the semester, Paul introduced us to this quote saying, “Filmmaking isn’t about making film, it’s learning about filmmaking.”. And there’s a Chinese proverb that goes, “活到老，学到老。” which translates to, one is never too old to learn. Like my basic conversational level in the Chinese Language, which I would one day hope to re-connect and bring it up to certain standards to be proud of, I’d like to see my filmmaking techniques and ideas not just improve, but evolve with the times, as no one can predict what’s in the future for such an ever-changing landscape like the media industry.

We went back to the multi-story carpark and with haste we commenced shooting, as one of us had to rush off to work after.

You might think it’s really easy to act as a zombie or mimic one, but when it comes to directing, plotting, or choreographing how a zombie should move, act, walk, maybe even talk, it requires quite a lot of thinking. Personally, I’ve not seen enough zombie films or The Walking Dead episodes to act, let alone, direct someone to be a zombie. Thankfully with Helen and Trong on board, they gave some really relevant details on how Reza should move, walk, or stand. In our previous shoot, there wasn’t much directing, since it was just merely a chase and I think Reza pulled off the zombie chase pretty convincing. However, for this shoot, we had to think how a zombie would act, react, how did the 2 interact or come into contact…

I know all these should have been figured out in pre-production, but since this shoot was planned like just 2 days before the actual day of the shoot, we had not much time to work with in terms of the story board. What we did cover though, was the shots we needed to add on to the current chase scene we have. Hence, that was our main motive, and gave us a list of questions that should be answered on screen. The video below might illustrate our little discussion on how we went through things. Of course, we had to go through a couple of rehearsals before actually going for a take.

1. How did the chase begin?
2. What was Helen doing?
3. What was Reza doing?
4. How did the both of them meet?
5. Are there other people?
6. How did Reza become a zombie?

Some of these questions got omitted, as we think it would have been obvious or we just couldn’t afford the time to explain it on screen due to the 22.5-30 seconds screener. Since each of us are entitled to 22.5 seconds, we decided to submit two, 45 seconds to 1 minute videos from our group. Trong and Helen will be screening their experiments done at Trong’s apartment with the beautifully shot of dirty dishes, gory hand movements and more, while Reza and I would be concentrating on this chase scene sticking to our initial concept, with the help of Trong and Helen, of course.

Back to “how to direct a zombie”, we had to brainstorm how Helen discovers Reza is a zombie and we came up with two approaches. Either Reza stalks Helen, and the chase begins, or Helen sees Reza just idling at a corner being “zombie-like” and approaches to offer help, and then the chase begins.

We settled for the latter, as it would establish both characters best under the short given amount of screen time. Recounting back to the days when I was playing Left4Dead, zombies are usually idling, stoning, or doing nothing much until somebody startles them or approaches them, and we were trying to remake that, but instead of being a computer game, it was in film.

On a side note, I think music plays heavy with this particular sequence. The suspense of Helen approaching Reza, unaware of him being a zombie will be amplified even more with some suspense music to thrill and excite the audience. I’ll be liaising close with my mate in Singapore to compose a piece that would fit the sequence.

This week is all about getting comments and feedback from peers and tutors.

Having shown my rough edit and grade to the team, we were all pretty contended with what we have so far. Reza would continue with his foley experiments, while Trong and Helen would carry on with their zombie experiments.

I think what needs to be addressed now is our presentations and how we are going to screen our works, as all 4 of us have 4 different opinions on how things should be done, and things can get really complicated really fast. For one, from my understanding, we are required to screen a 22.5 seconds screener for the studio presentation, but since we’re collaborating as a group of 4, do we screen just 1 video with all our works? Or do we submit 4 individual versions of our work? The latter runs the risk of people seeing the same shots 4 times, just used differently at different lengths or in a  different sequence.

I might have mentioned in my earlier posts about collaborating with people comes with a tricky set of challenges and it’s all about compromising and accomodating. Seeing what can we give, or take. And I dare say I am really fortunate to have the most accomodating group mates, who have been such a blast to work with. I don’t think there was a point where either of us felt like we were being out of place or not having enough say in the matters. I’m not speaking on the behalf of everyone else, but it’s just my personal opinion.

Having said that, we did have our challenges. Trying to come up with a date that can fit everyone’s schedule was quite a challenge, half of the group have work 5 days a week, and the other half has other commitments outside of this studio. But, we managed to pull through and squeeze in a good 3 hours block for our second shoot at the carpark for some establishing shots prior to the zombie chase. Since we’ve already got the main bulk (the actual chase), we just need a few more shots of how our zombie started chasing the girl. Which we should think of how to compose the shots, now that we have gathered a little bit more experience shooting and playing our roles.

As for the rough edit, I gathered feed back with some of the shots looking a little out of place, and might need to continue tweaking the in and out points, before and after cuts, and several other kinks that should be rolled out. With the extra footage that we’ve planned to shoot, I think we’re getting closer to an actual piece of work we can say we’re happy with. Of course, I wouldn’t want to jinx it, just yet.

I decided to call my edits like how software companies label their updates. With every couple of months releasing a new update to fix bugs, glitches, and what have you. I think I could never settle for a “final” edit at my first attempt, heck, maybe even my first 20 attempts. There’ll always be, “This part feels funny, that part needs some tweaking, why does it look so weird….”. Hence, this version I’ve embedded to this post is probably versions that has taken some form of shape, but no where near a solid form.

The team and I decided that we should head back to the carpark to gather more shots, just to establish some context on how the chase begin and experiment more with shooting on my DSLR and then grading it. Overall, I’m happy with how things are going, but I still believe there’s much more to do, much more to learn and acquire, before this reaches it “final” edit. It may be by the end of the semester, or by the end of the year, it’s an ongoing experience, and maybe in the distant future, when I look back at this, it would feel like how I would look back at one of my drawings I did during kindergarten days. It’s not so much of the actual product, but the memories, experiences, and journey it encompasses.

I’ll leave this here to ponder, while I’ll get back to editing more rough cuts until I rid of the “bugs and glitches” in the edits and till I achieve one smooth running OS. But until then, here’s ver. 1.1.2.

ps. There’s no need to restart your computer for this

*CAUTION*

*Long post ahead!*

Coming from a post-production background, I’ve heard this phrase tossed around too many times from the DP, AD, Directors, AP, even Producers saying, “Fix it in post!” This cry for help when it comes to digital processing can solve the problem to a certain extend, but definitely not 100%. While I was still studying for my Diploma in Music and Audio technology, I had a lecturer that goes by this rule when we’re recording anything in the studio, “Sh*t goes in, Sh*t comes out…”. And I’ve stayed by that rule till today, and when I’m out on shoots such as the one we did at the multi-story carpark, I was trying to avoid having Sh*t recording into the camera.

Over these past couple of days, I’ve been working on the edit from the recent shoot the group and I did. Since we focused on just a small sequence, the actual duration of the clip is just slightly longer than 30 seconds. Which isn’t really a bad thing, as the final screener we have to submit is 30 seconds each. I also did a basic colour grading, trying to achieve the post-zombie apocalyptic look by boosting some greens in the shadows to bring out the “hospital” “sick” look, and then boosting a bit of yellow/orange/brown on the highlights to give that dusty, deserted, sandy look you get from sci-fi films such as Elysium, or I am Legend. However, since it was shot on our DSLR, the compression from the h264 mp4 format didn’t really give much room to work with, but I did what I could to achieve an overall grade.

I was in awe to find that I took rather long to colour grade than editing the 30 seconds trailer. Tweaking sliders, colour wheels, adjusting different values and parameters took up a lot of time, especially when you’re trying to match a grade to the previous shot that you have already applied an overall grade. A common misconception I get is that most people think that once you’ve applied a grade to a particular shot, you could just copy and paste the effects setting to the next shot. That is just a lazy and poor quality way of working, as every shot has different lighting conditions. More so that we shot on 2 very different cameras, a Canon EOS 650D and a Nikon (not too sure what model Trong was using), but both manufacturers would debate who’s camera is better in colour and so on. Therefore, I approached colour grading this trailer, shot by shot, trying to achieve an overall balanced piece. I really hoped I’ve done that, and even if I failed, at least, I could go back to the sequence again and tweak a bit more here and there to achieve that. I had to go by eye, as that’s the only way I know how to match a grade from shot to shot. If anyone could suggest any better way, I’m all ears.

Just to sidetrack a bit, I’ve given up on shooting RAW on Magic Lantern, period. As I find myself diving into another world of formats, compression, bitrate, writing speed, resolutions, aspect ratios, and so much more technical geeky stuff, which one day I would love to find out more, but in the duration we have for this assignment, I don’t think I will be able to accomplish everything all before our deadline. It may or may not be my fault in time management for not getting all these covered, but then again, going into this, I didn’t know what lies ahead of me and how much information I had to dig out before I could actually start rolling camera and start recording in the format and resolution I want. It just takes more time, practice, experiments, trial and error. That doesn’t mean that I have given up all hope, it’s just maybe not for this particular assignment. I’m glad I’ve taken on this path, but sad to admit that I didn’t finish what I started, at least not for now. Currently, I’ll just stick to shooting on the stock Canon h264 mp4 format, which means it would limit the headroom I get to play with when colouring in post. As long as I know my limitations and know when to stop pushing the highlights/shadows/blacks, it should be fine.

Sidetracking a little more, in research on newer DSLR cameras, there are quite a few that are able to shoot in AVCHD which is similar to shooting in RAW. (Ie. very little data will be crunched during compression.) Being a student on a “student budget” I know the industry standards, Canon 5Dmkiii, Nikon D810, Sony A7R, Panasonic GH5…. are way beyond my price range, and hence not worth looking at, as ultimately, they are the industry standard for a reason. My main interests would be those of a lower tier, being on the cheaper range of the scale, and seeing what kind of technology comes along with that slightly lower price tag. And I must say, some of this inexpensive cameras are catching up with the industry standard, being able to record in 4k, or in AVCHD format, 120 fps for doing slow motion sequences, and so on. I think it’s safe to say that my interest in photography might overlap with what we’re doing, and it does come to aid in some cases. I just hope that I don’t break the bank even before I get my first pay cheque.

This week, we headed back with Helen and Trong to the location where Reza and I scouted last Friday.

We wasted no time and started shooting for a good 2 hours or so. Each of us rotated roles being the cinematographer, camera operator, and director. Since there isn’t any dialogue as this scene was mainly chasing, we didn’t find the need to have a sound man as Reza would be doing most of the sound effects on foley and sound design.

Initially, I found it hard organising the shots that we want. Trying to do too many things at once always lead to nothing positive. Hence, we chiseled down our experiment to our main objective and that was just to have a chase. Don’t really care how many times we were going to shoot it, we were just prepared to shoot multiple takes, from multiple angles, multiple shots and just nailing down all possibilities of shooting a chase scene between a zombie and a human. We had a great location with very little distraction or people (the occasion office worker would walk by to their car and drive off), but other than that, we pretty much had the whole roof top of the multi-story carpark to ourselves. We came up with a short storyboard and just started rolling.

Trong and I brought our DSLR, and this gave us options to shoot 2 different shots at once. I began by shooting Reza as he was looking and searching for a girl, played by Helen, while Trong shot close ups of Helen, as well as shots of her running and hiding. I don’t know if it’s the norm, just because I’ve not been on many shoots as I would like, I’ve always been stuck behind the computer operating Premiere or something, even while on my internship, but it seems like we would start off slow, and then develop some sort of rhythm as the brain juices start to flow. Initially, we’re shooting and reviewing the shots, I’ll be condemning my camera work. “I should have done that, I should have done this…” “Why does it look so bad, why does it not turn out the way I pictured it to be…” Stuff like that… But the more we kept going, the lesser the harsh comments came, it soon turned to, “That’s so cool..how did I do that…” “I’m going to try that shot again on some other experiment/shoot/film”. There were moments where I was actually dumbfounded with myself, like, “Did I actually just did that?”.

In particular, there was a shot in particular where I was tracking Reza’s legs as he was walking like a zombie in search of the girl (Helen). I must stress that, I did not come up with this idea, I was just going through a bunch of tutorials on how to use your tripod as a steadicam, and one of the videos I found online suggested extending all the legs, and opening out 1/3 of the legs, while close the other 2/3. The camera mount should be twisted at a 90 degrees angle. The video below taken by me showing Trong operating his DSLR would illustrate better than me trying to explain it with my lack of vocabulary.

Though still not as steady as a steadicam with counter weights and balance, it still provides a very smooth tracking image. This customisable set up allows you to reach down to low angles, or if you invert the mount of the camera, high angles. And since you could adjust the length of the 1/3 leg that is opened up, you can get a good grip while maintaining stability.

These little moments of “I can’t believe that worked out so good” is what I mean by getting the juices flowing and then realised we actually did something like that. And it just keeps wetting the taste buds for more moments like this when u want to try that same set up on a different shot or a different scene and see how that pans out.

All in all, the group was really happy how the shoot turned out. Looking forward to going through the post-process where then I can actually start exploring more editing/colouring options, something more in my element.

Having gone round the city recce-ing various multi-story carparks, Reza and I settled for one along Little Bourke Street. It has good access to the building, and the lift goes all the way up to the roof where there were a few cars scattered around. It didn’t seem too crowded at the time we were there, and it had a very nice view of the city scape from the roof. And, if we were lucky, at the right time, we could get the perfect lighting from the Sun passing through neighbouring buildings, or reflecting off glass panels. We would have to play by ear, or in this case, by our eyes, on the day itself when we’re out here shooting our experiments to see how the lighting conditions will be like.

At the same time, we took the opportunity to brainstorm ideas for our zombie chase scene. I decided to take on the approach shooting this like a trailer. After all, we are required to submit a 30 second screener at the end of this semester to showcase to our fellow studio mates. Hence, I thought the trailer concept would be the best way to exhibit several shots, our areas of interests/research, all in one sequence. For example, I would do a colour grade over this sequence as how a zombie apocalyptic film would look like, and Reza would do his foley and sound design base on the chase scenes. (Ie. Footsteps, zombie grunt, screams, ambient sounds…)

Since there isn’t much told in a trailer, we would not be so tied down on the narrative or a plot, just a basic storyboard of a zombie chasing a person. Maybe if we do get the time, we might do a little background story of why they’re chasing and how the zombie became a zombie, but that is probably as far as we would go in terms of writing a narrative, as we intend to focus on the area where we would like to experiment. As for Helen and Trong, we believe they could have great input on zombie movement, camera movement around the zombie, and the overall mood of the trailer to see if we can achieve the zombie apocalyptic feel overall.

I’m also glad to say that I’ve managed to get a mate of mine who’s in Singapore to do a basic film score over the trailer. My approach to this is to get a proper piece to show at the screening at the end of the semester, and not something rough, hence I believe music is a key element in trailers and teasers to drive the overall look and feel of a film. This overseas collaboration not only boosts teamwork effort, but also bring recognition to people (for what it’s worth) not bounded to RMIT. I am pretty sure in the industry there are instances where local companies collaborate or sub-contract their work out to overseas production houses for a torrent of reasons, budget, production, location, people, or even politics….the list goes on. Of course, this comes with its own set of challenges, such as having to put my point across, it would not be as easy to telling him face to face, I might have to draft a spot list with proper timecode to cue him when to insert music or when to dial it down, if need be. Looking forward to another set of collaboration, with an overseas partner this time.

Happy times are ahead, and we’re slowly but surely drawing closer to the end of the semester. Heat is up (not so much literally, it’s getting cold by the day), and everyone seems to be crunching their way through this time of the semester and very soon that little shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel will eventually blow up into the surrounding.