Paul's Movie Making Blog

Eating Crisps at 10 in the morning...

2006-08-23T15:23:00.000+02:00

...I've been working on the sound effect to this project and trying to get imaginative about how to create certian noises. This led me to eating crisps at 10 in the morning to simulate the sound of a demon eating a frog (don't ask)...

Sound is an interesting part of video work. It's often ignored and yet when you add sound effects and music to a film, it allows the visual aspects to take on a whole new life.

It took me longer than I thought to source and make the various sound files that I needed. Plugging them into Audition and creating mini multi-track timelines using the video as a reference.

On the other hand, it too me a lot less time to add the music, simply because I cheated and used Sonic Fire Pro to create time based music that is the exact lenght I need it to be. The results are astonishing to say the least. Adding together the visual queues with the Sound FX AND now the mood music, creates a feeling of looking at something a lot more professional than you would think could be produced just from a home computer.

Jobs left to do now are to alter the light levels of the various clips in order to create a little more mood with lighting....

I'm about 2 to 3 working days from a completed timeline.... Its been a long road and I've learnt a great deal about film making and the software I am using.

Of course, there is still a DVD to make....

Re-Shoots.... Avoiding the pain...

2006-07-02T18:13:00.000+02:00

Re-Shoots are probably invertible in any production and they should be avoided if at all possible.

The problems is that, which ever way you look at it, a re-shoot is a repeat of that great day everyone had out there filming on that lucky sunny day. Larking about and having fun (hopefully) with a camera, putting 110% into 8 hours of filming madness. The actors probably finished the day with the smile, happy that their work is done and they only need sit back and wait until the editor (you) has worked him/herself into an early grave getting the final draft of the film finished....

Then they get the call saying that due to one thing and another, the light being to bright or to dark, or the focus being to soft, you need to shoot a whole load of those shots that previously (one the day) you pronounced as ‘perfect’…

This can bring a variety of responses (didn’t we do that already?) and a small amount of frustration. It’s like having a really cool party and then inviting everyone back a few weeks later to fake some photos because the original film wasn’t quite as good as you wanted it to be...

Re-Shoots can be avoided by careful planning, by storyboarding, by not changing the script while you are editing and by crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. If none of that works, then you will need to go and beg your cast for a second crack of the whip.

Some pain of a re-shoot can be avoided by thinking about exactly which shots you really must, without a shadow of a doubt re-shoot. Hopefully this wont be all of them - if it is, then you have to ask yourself if your project is really working all that well.

Once you have decided which shots need to be taken again, divided the shots up into characters and try to work out which scenes require the minimum amount of actors.

In the example film – The Accidental Knight – I had two cast members. The Demon and the Knight. Most of the Knights shots were clean, apart from one or two shots where his sword was held differently causing some odd continuity errors and some shots where Tripods and ladders could be seen in the background.

To fix this, I called back just the Knight actor and took him through 10 shots that would correct these problems, and while he was there I took a further 10 Knight-only shots which I want to use as additional cutaway shots of the Knight reacting to the demon in various points in the film.

This made the world of the difference to the shoot. There were only two of us at the location and that meant I could take my time thinking about and setting up the shot I wanted.

The entire event was done and dusted in less than 2 hours, which is less stress on the actor (the chain mail he wore weighed 11 lbs in the blistering July heat) and less stress on the camera operator (me). The shot list was completed relatively quickly and although I still have another days filming ahead of me with the Demon, I do have a set of shots that will enhance the movie no end and allow me to see how many Demon-Only shots I really, absolutely need to re-shoot.

Current length of film is 6 minutes and 33 seconds.

Total footage filmed is currently 56 minutes of original plus 14 minutes of Re-shoots creating a total of 70 minutes raw material.

Now that I am further into the project, I can set a completion date for (gulp) the 31st of August!

Editing can be fun...

2006-07-02T17:38:00.000+02:00

....if you can stay sane between mistakes and crashes and trying to decide whether or not you are deluding yourself that the project will ever be finished.

Since my last entry there have been dark times and there have been times of joy. Such is the life of an Editor. Like Rain, a little grief must darken the skies of every project.... It can be very soul destroying to work the whole day on 3 seconds of material, only to discover at the end of the day that you hate it. The secret is to get back on the horse and get it back up to a gallop, even if you need to trot for a while to do this...

Very visual I'm sure you will agree.

However, the project has progressed now to the point where I needed to get one of my actors back for some re-shoots. This I will discuss once I have had some coffee...

TIP - If you don't drink coffee, don't become an editor. Its like a shark hunter being afraid of long sharp harpoons...

Budgets & Preparation

2006-05-08T15:11:00.000+02:00

A word on budgets: The budget is so far running at around 50€ including a pack lunch I put together for my trusted crew.

This low cost has been achieved simply by using whatever was available, ready at hand. The actors had there own costumes used for LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) and they knew a LARPer with some weapons. Make up was provided by one of the LARPers girlfriends and the camera was borrowed from a friend. All other equipment (tripods, GreenScreen and ladders) was either already owned, borrowed (a DV to AC converter for charging the camera battery while we had lunch) or (in the case of the steadicam) built from bit and bobs available at my local hardware store.

Filming like this will have its limitations. The actors are not professionals, just friends having fun, and the equipment (particularly the tripod) did not do, possibly, as much as I wanted it to do... But, if you do try this, I can guarantee you will have fun.

A word on Preparation: Of course I did make some basic preparations, like preparing a shooting script, scene for scene and I think this helped the LARPers to quickly get into the project and to have fun too. Certainly there wasn't much sense of time passing, even though we actually spent 6 hours running around in the sun getting burnt, while we immortalised our efforts on video.

I didn’t use a storyboard, partly because I cannot draw and partly because I need to allow the LARPers a little manoeuvring room. They are, after all, not actors and if you are using friends and family, this is probably something you should take into consideration.

In the main, I sat and thought for some time what I wanted to see, but then on the shoot, I didn't get too hung up about it if it didn't "visulise" exactly as I wanted it too. One problem was with a Pull Focus that I wanted to shoot. For various reasons (light problems and not being as familar with the camera as I could have been) this wouldn't happen and rather than keep my LARPers hanging around in the sun while I twiddled the camera to no real effect, I moved on (with gritted teeth - I really wanted that shot) and go the film done in the time I had allowed.

If needs be, I will go back and reshoot that scene, but first I'll look at what I can do with the material I have...

The "Shoot" takes place!!!!!!!!

2006-05-08T14:30:00.000+02:00

The shoot took place a week ahead of schedule, which initially threw me, but then after some frantic scurrying around, I managed to get the gear together and we were ready.

In all I shot 60 minutes of HD quality video, which is destined to become a 4 minute short film. Having reviewed the shoot, I can already see there are about half a dozen shots that I missed, a few closes ups that I overlooked and my coverage (wide shots to fill in the gaps between the close-ups) is clearly weak.

The picture quality of the camera I used, the HCR-HC1,is of course stunning. The bright sunlight of the days shooting suits this camera and the built in Zebra function (showing blown out areas) made setting up the light levels both easy and hard to forget. Sudden amounts of zebra patterns filling the view finder is a good reminder to check the aperture setting.

For the most part I had the camera on Manual Focus, which appears to have worked out okay. The material I have reviewed so far, looks sharp, some of it unbelievably so.

I've now spent most of the day capturing and reviewing the footage. Tomorrow I hope to start picking out which scenes will make the final cut and which ones will end a grisly death in the editors trash can...!

A little bit of test footage

2006-04-21T20:36:00.000+02:00

I've now reached the point where I cannot usefully do anything more with the test footage. It was cool to have in order to see what changes would be needed in the script, but I now need to move on and do the real thing.

The link here is to a small sample clip, which will be one of the scenes from the movie. Sadly, due to the background traffic noise, the orginal background audio had to be stripped out. Hopefully I can find a better location that will not suffer from this problem.

Click here for test footage

I used a combination of Premiere, After Effects and Audition to create this 90 second clip; After Effects created the Demon appearing (actually the same actor as the Knight, but masked off) and Audition was use to tweak and filter the sound effects. The various parts when then brought into Premiere, where a color filter was added to the Demons 'view point' and the Knight clips were desaturated slightly to give it a bit of mood.

Over the weekend I will post a few more test clips which show other special effects in action.

Early days....

2006-03-30T16:29:00.000+02:00

It's been slow going getting the test footage into some kind of state where I can start looking at it from a practical angel. The main questions are; what kind of Special Effects will and will not work and can perform some simple re-writes to ease this situation without sacrificing the project?

One of the things that I have learnt straight away is I didn't film nearly enough footage and I also "crossed the line" on a number of occasions. Not to bad when I am just dealing with test footage, but I really need to think about a good solid shooting script. The shooting script I have now is simply a director’s version of the actors’ script. Clearly, I need something a little more focused on each scene and how I want to film it, making sure I have enough long, middle and close up shots...

The screenshot shows my actor playing two parts, the part of the knight and the demon. I used AE and a garbage matte to pull this off, feathering the matte to cope with the slight change in contrast caused between shots (probably caused by the Knights white vest). Both characters were then placed over a reference shot of the background.

This was fun to do, but I won't need to do this on the actual shoot, as I will have two actors then.

Odd thing is, without intending to I have created a false perspective where the Knight now looks taller than the Demon, only thing is, I actually wanted this to be the other way round... Back to the drawing board them....

Sundays Filming...

2006-03-21T22:54:00.000+01:00

....Went fairly well. Got some good test footage, reasonable light levels (could have been better) but I have some cool shots to play with over the next few weeks. What did become obvious was how static so many of the shots appeared to be, clearly I am going to need some kind of Dolly if I want to liven things up. Possibly a chair on some wooden boards? Might do it...

Anyways, I've got some footage to go through now, about a months work to see what can and cannot be done, what the software can give up and what needs altering in the script to make it possible within the arena of filming and editing...

Hopefully, by the time I finish the test footage and the 3rd draft of the script, the weather will be warmer... Hopefully....

Over the next few weeks I'll post some test footage and some screenshots of my progress.

Sunday Filming... We're off....

2006-03-19T10:55:00.000+01:00

...Sort of... Just rang my Larp crew up (woke them up in fact) and once they have fed themselves, we are going to be ready for action. The weather is cold, but dry, so it maybe that we can at least get some stuff done today... Still not sure what equipment we will have available and locations are still a problem. A big one in fact. The problem I am having is finding a small grassy area with a wooded backdrop. The problem being that most grassy areas I have found simply look to well kept... I need something a little more wilder... I have a feeling I am not going to get that today, but the major point of todays shoot is simply to get some test footage with which I can see how far my dreams outstrip my editing abilities...

Whether the weater....

2006-03-18T22:54:00.000+01:00

...I'm kinda hoping to get some filming done tomorrow. Just some more test shots, but I really need to get outside to acheive anything meaningfull. WWW.Wetter.de says its going to be cloudy and cold. The forecast over at www.weather.com is a little better, but still cold, and there is far too much snow still laying about, potentialy there to screw up my white balance...

I wonder if Lucas has these sorts of problems...

Anyway, if there is no rain and my LARPers are willing to freeze their wedding tackle off, we should be on. Assuming that is the camera can opperate in such tempratures...

We shall see...

Early shots

2006-03-15T14:02:00.000+01:00

Now these shots are fairly crap. The light levels were not working at all for DV as DV suffers under low light levels. I am posting them so that I can then compare these screenshots with later, hopefully better, ones.

Status Report - Screenplay - 2nd Draft

2006-03-15T10:58:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I met with some LARPers (Live Action Role Players) who will be my cast. All two of them. The story is primarily a fantasy one, with a touch of humour, but a short discussion with the LARPers revealed a small hole in my knowledge of fantasy creatures.

There are two parts - an accidental knight - a tough demon.

I had the demon fighting with a sword, matching the sword of the knight. But, my LARPers seemed to think a sword was a little to wimpy for a demon and suggested an Axe. I really like this idea, the axe as a brutal element to the demon that I was looking for, but failing to find, in the screenplay.

They also suggested the demon should conjure fireballs (yes its that sort of film) from his hands, summoning the energy from within... I'm keen on this idea too, and the screenplay wont need that much altering to bring in these suggestions.

I've also managed to get some test footage, although the room I filmed in (bad weather caused the location shoot to be abandoned) was a little too dark. Hopefully I can get some fresh outdoors footage later this week, or at the weekend. Sadly the weather is a problem. Snow, snow and more snow.... Very atmospheric, but not so good for my camera, which dies in the cold weather. The LARPers are okay, I can just pour alcohol in them to keep them frost free, sadly this wont work for my camera ...

Opening Scream

2006-03-14T22:29:00.000+01:00

I'll create a Bio later, but to kick off, I have a passion for NLE (non-linear editing) to the point where I have written two books on the subject (see links). Creating the books means a lot of theory without putting too much of it onto practice. Rather like pumping the tyres of a bike so someone else can use it.

Oh I've not be slacking on the film making front, in fact I've already created several short "personal" pieces, some training videos, covered concerts with multiple cameras and of course done the obligatory wedding videos (I am over 40 so I can admit that). But now, now I'm keen to complete a short film, something I can really getting my teeth into, something laden down with special effects and so complex to create that I will regret the day I ever started the project.

To this end, I have written a small Fantasy script that has the working title of "The Accidental Knight." I'm not keen on that title, but hey, let’s get the film in the can before we start worrying about the details.

This blog will detail the day-to-day process of creating that film (and hopefully others), with links to the resources I discover on the way. If I can figure it out, I'll post some pictures and some short clips as they come into existence.

Mood = Excited :)