BLOG NO.8 Production Records

As I've previously made videos and is interested in it, I am the Director of our team, and I did the majority of filming, lighting, editing and sound for our movie opening.

Some photos from the set:

From Left to Right: Arthur, Bobby, Richard (me)

Arthur cleaning the window for our car scene

Me shooting at the car scene

Initial Reflections:

What have I learned from the task?

Although I've had some experiences in video making prior to this, making a film/movie is a lot different to what I've imagined and expected. It is not all about showing off crazy editing skills as well as fancy shooting techniques, it is more about telling an intriguing story and to express the thrilled emotion going on in the plot to our audience. (links with genre-thriller) Besides, taking the leading role of the Director as well as the rest of the production process is not that simple as it takes a drastic amount of time and effort to organize everything. Thus, in future filming/productions, I would likely to be spreading some of these roles to my teammates so that work can be produced more efficiently.

What equipments have I used?

I've used a Sony A7 DSLR along with an F4.0 24-105 zoom lens to film. I find that a professional camera equipped with a medium-large aperture zooming lens is ideal for our filming because it not only achieves a sharpe image in medium to low light condition, but also allows me to zoom into different focal lengths without losing too much detail during the shoot to get the ideal composition.

Two LEDs with the ability to change brightness&color temperature are used as fill lights-to illuminate the dimmer area in the capture e.g. face of the characters, and also to create either cool/warm ambient lighting to increase the contrast between the normal and odd scenes (like when the devil appears...).

I've chosen not to use a gimbal/stabilizer mainly because as our film genre is a triller, the use of hand-held shots can better present and emphasize the imminent and tensional atmosphere to the audience.

What skills did I utilize (and develop)?

Previously when I was recording/making videos, I didn't really pay much attention to lighting, and I would just focus on how to get the prettiest scenes into my camera. Well, as this is my first attempt to make an actual film mainly consisting with actors and conversations, I tried a long time through experiencing different angles&settings of the LED to get the wanted effect of thrilling scenes. Through this process, I've developed knowledges and skills, like how should light be shone to fully illuminate the actor's face without overexposing, and how different color temperatures will turn out in the camera & how will it affect the mood.

What have I learned about editing? What difficulties did I encounter, and how did I overcome them?

From editing the first draft of our film, I've learned that it's a lot more efficient if I have everything shot first before I start the post-production process. Although from editing the footages that we've shot earlier in the filming process gives me and my team an overview of what the film can look like, it creates some problems for me like having issues aligning the separate tracks (including film, sound, caption, etc) and different opinions appearing within my team like wether we should reshoot a shot or not. Therefore, in future productions, I would choose to film everything to an agreeable standard before editing, so that many of these problems will be smartly avoided.

Next Steps:

What needs to be done now?

Me and my team have finished shooting the initial footages, and now we are on a stage of putting everything together in the editor, and looking closely at the footages for any missing pieces of film and parts that can be reshoot to create a better outcome.

What problems have I noticed in my footage?

In the footages I've shot, I noticed mainly that there's the problem of shaking/vibrating film due to the lack of stabilizer/gimbal. Although I purposely chose not to use a gimbal, some of the footages are just too shaky to be used in our film. Therefore, in the editing process, I've added A.I stabilization to these footages, so that they can actually be included in our film opening.

Do I need to reshoot any scenes?

In our first attempt of shooting the car scene which involves the conversation between the protagonist (Bobby) and the devil (Arthur), it turns out that the dialogues did not make sense when put together. Therefore, a few weeks after the first attempt with several meetings of our group discussing this issue, we came up with a more wholesome conversation and gets the second chance to shoot it again. We all think that now it makes a lot more sense to the audience.