Three Steps

I woke up super early today and guess what: finished! I'm done! No more! 

The car footage didn't end up working out, but I filled out the timeline with some random cool looking shots I got elsewhere. I rearranged some stuff to make everything flow better, finished up mixing, did the credits, and now I'm done. This was honestly a lot more straightforward than I thought, which can definitely be attributed to my plan to go for the montage route. I think I effectively accomplished what I set out to do and the result is pretty good. The part I'm happiest with is the footage I got for the credits sequence, though, and I made a little mini short with it scored by one of my favorite spoken word pieces. 

Here's the opening in my export queue (exciting!) and a frame from the
credits (I ended up going with Vinyl for the font).

Now that I'm done editing and everything I just need to finish up the script for my CCR and get to filming. I feel pretty accomplished and satisfied with the entire project at this point.

Here's an embed of the short I made with scrap footage as an extra treat:

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You

I shot some really pretty footage of the palm trees in front of my house today with a 135mm lens. I love how they came out and I just finished editing them together to make up the 'credits' portion of my short. I also went through the entire timeline and added some jump cuts and crossfades to connect shots together, and I'm happy with how those transitions came out. In addition, I mixed the audio for all the footage I have too, and I think the volume levels of the background noise and music are balanced well. All I need to do is get the car footage for the beginning and I'll be done besides credits, which is what I'll mainly be discussing in this post.

Here's me working on a crossfade.

Anyways, it's time to think of a good font for my credits. The footage I'm placing them over looks like the screencap below for the most part, so I want to go for something with a strong contrast to break through the patterns made by the leaves.

For placement I already know I want to fill up the negative space between the leaves, so all I really need to figure out is fonts. The first thing I want to do is look at my main inspirations and see what types of fonts were used there. I didn't even realize this until looking back at some of my favorite films' opening credits but a lot of them feature landscape or nature shots with text over them; I guess that was a subconscious inspirational move on my part, but it also helps in deciding on text options now. The examples I looked at use sans-serif fonts, almost always white, sometimes with a shadow to distinguish further from the background, so I think I'm going with something like that. 

(That fourth example is probably what my credits are gonna look like LOL)

It's worth noting that one of my favorite uses of text in an opening is the one for Gummo (third example): I love the contrast between the more contemporary slim bold sans-serif and the red blackletter in lowercase. Maybe I'll incorporate a second, more elaborate font as a dedication.

With all this brainstorming, I think I'm going to use a white sans-serif font in all lowercase to fit the contemporary teenage relatability I want to create in my opening. I'll add a shadow to contrast the sky blue background and put the text in the negative space between the leaves in my shots. The main fonts I'm considering on Adobe Fonts are the Trade Gothic Next family and Vinyl OT Regular. I'll try out both on top of my footage and see which one works best.

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XS

During the latter half of Spring Break (cutting it kind of close), I'm going to finalize my project. I have most of the footage I need, I'm just missing the car shots and the road-to-sky credits take which I'll try to get this weekend. The credits one should be really easy to get in the morning, but I might have to work around the car parts depending on whether my parents can take me out: this wouldn't be the end of the world, honestly ... I've kind of come to not like the idea of those shots as much.

With the footage I have, I've been making the full timeline flow more cohesively. I added the background noise from one of my longer takes underneath the entire mix, making it pretty quiet but loud enough to fill in some ambience and make it "natural"-sounding. The entirety of track 'A2' is this noise, and as you can see in the mixer in the second screenshot I've been adjusting the sound levels in comparison to the background noise in my outdoor take as well as the music track. 

As you can also see I've been experimenting with cropping some of my shots, which really helps to finalize the look I want to achieve. 

After I finish up the footage tomorrow and over the weekend all I really need to do is research a font for the credits and put those in (shouldn't take long seeing as I did literally everything besides the music, whoops) plus mixing the sound more which has been super easy. This honestly feels like a breeze and I can feel the end coming, sweet relief. I've also been working on my CCR, so I should be able to finish that up soon too.

post titled after this song (robbed at the Grammy awards, how sad)

Waterfall

Super glad I switched to resolve. The color and light editing look insanely complicated at first but once I got used to them it was so cool to mess around and get all my shots looking how I wanted them to!

Here are some before and after examples. I'm going for a more pinkish look than the tan-brown I had in mind at first, solely because of how most of my takes turned out lighting-wise without shifting things around. I like the kind of stuffy warmth that the lighting gives off in most of my shots, and I have to keep editing the top example to make it look more like my others (I might just retake it, honestly). 

I'm going to start looking at fonts and my credits in general, which should be the easiest part of the entire project considering how I did everything myself. The footage I have right now along with ~5 second placeholders for my missing takes puts me at about 1:35, and the song I'm using is 1:46, meaning I'll probably have to trim down some stuff to get everything I need within the needed time.

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Xerces

I cut out a lot of the shots in my storyboard, especially the ones with my cat; not that I don't love her, it's just too much of a hassle to get her where I want. Also, the shots I did decide to use are pretty good and what I want to go for.

All my shots are in Resolve now, and I'm figuring out how to place them. I got a bunch of cool-looking shots of the room with the big mirror and this horse statue that we have, plus I retook the bedroom shots and am keeping the rainy window that I took on my phone. I want to start experimenting with sound mixing, and one of the takes has a really nice white noise that I'm putting underneath the rest of the mix. I also decided on what song to use -- it has a really nice melancholic atmosphere and that analog white noise in the background that I want to feature in the film -- and am playing around with timing to fit it.

Now that I have more footage I want to focus on finishing up takes so I can work on editing in a broader sense. I'm also going to work on color correction like I mentioned and started last week, definitely going for a darker look due to the weird exposure I got on my camera.

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Cradle

So the editing software I was using decided to stop working for some reason. Had it on my computer since like ... 2016? And it just doesn't open anymore? So I installed Davinci Resolve, no problem, I'm gonna redo that outline template thing with the pictures that I had before so I can keep working and inserting new clips.

In the meantime, I got out the camera that my mom gave me a few Christmases ago. I never got around to using it for anything, and decided that this project would be a good opportunity! It's a Canon Rebel T1i and comes with two lenses. It took a while for me to figure out how to shoot video on it but once I did I used the 55mm lens to shoot some stuff in an area of my house with a cool mirror.

Although I did figure out how to record, I still don't really get the exposure settings on this camera. Some shots / parts of them looked good but others were way too dark. I guess I'll fix it in post but I'm worried it'll look weird and grainy.

I also want to retake the shots of me in my bedroom and fix up the framing and stuff. It's hard to plan that out with the camera since there's no viewfinder so I have to trial-and-error it. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. 

post titled after this song; Ten Mile Point is now on Spotify, shameless plug for my friend, woohoo !

Machines

After shooting some footage I decided to set up an editing timeline in my video editor to get a sense of how long to make each shot. I drew some rudimentary sketches of each shot on my phone and imported them to my computer along with the footage I actually shot and put them over the song I chose to use.

This is what the timeline looks like with the sketch shots replacing the shots in my storyboard that I haven't filmed yet. I also replaced the sound in one clip with the extra rain sounds that I recorded in case the sound in the video itself was too quiet (which it was).

I've also been practicing how to use my editing software so that when I have more footage I can put it together easily. I think doing a little bit of everything right now instead of focusing on each step individuality will help in the long run.

Now that I've had time to stare at the footage I shot while 'editing' it, I definitely want to try to reshoot over the week. I wasn't able to shoot anything today as I had other stuff to work on but reshooting and getting new footage shouldn't be too hard with all the planning I've done and now that I have a better idea of how I want stuff to look, I guess.

I started some color correction on the footage I already have, in case I for some reason want to keep it after reshoots. the software I have has some cool color correction stuff, with lighting levels and a white-replacement option and RBG curves and stuff. I want to go for a really tan-brown look, but still more cool than warm. Something that feels really wintery. 

Here's a before and after playing around with the color settings. I can definitely do better, though, and I'll keep practicing so that I can get my final footage looking how I want.

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Doe Deer

After making those changes to the storyboard in my last post, I began shooting inside my house.

I got some of the shots that took place inside my room, the ones of the main character sitting on the bed and playing around with the necklace. It took a while to get the framing right and I might re-film with my actual camera (I used my phone, just wanted to get a sense of how it would be to practicalize the storyboarding I've done) to make the shots look better. I also got some nice recordings of my backyard and a rainy window with some extra sound recording in case the sound from the videos didn't sound good enough.

Something that's come up as a concern now is lighting ... I could do some color-correction on the video software I have and I generally want to go for something warm and natural but I don't know how good everything will look once I shoot it. I'll have to experiment between the phone, the camera, window lighting vs room lighting etc. and work it out.

Here are some stills that I thought were decent, especially the first shot. The color looks fine too, I want to continue with similar grading and palettes but I think that's something to worry about at the end once I actually have the footage done.

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Min Dag

So although I said I would try to get some footage shot on SAT day that didn't work out (oops).

I've changed some shots in my storyboard and kind of shifted towards a more indoors-oriented 'plot' for the opening. I also drew some rudimentary little keyframes for each storyboarded shot and put them into my editing program so I can plan out transitions and everything within that.

The shots that I replaced are highlighted in this new storyboard.

I chose to change the shot of people from the car to just one of the road while driving by; I failed to consider the possibility of asking people if I could film them, plus finding people just walking around in my neighborhood seems too tedious. I also incorporated this cool giant mirrored wall in one of the rooms in my house, shooting our piano and changing the shot of my cat on the bed to her on a couch in front of the mirror. Less important of a change but I changed the ambiguous "shot of boxes" to a specific shot of my dresser wrapped in plastic. Also wanted to include a shot of a rainy window since I thought it looked nice. Everything else is the same besides that, just wanted to make some practical changes now that I'm actually filming.

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