AC2- Risks
Limitations and Issues
One of the potential risks of filming in public was the risk of bumping into objects and people when filming, either people that are involved in the film, or people who are present in the location if filming in a busy area. The best way to tackle this problem was to assess the location and note down any potential objects and public walkways we may be crossing with, also considering the movement of the shots, for talent and crew, making sure that each potential hazard is noted.
There is also the potential risk of uneven terrain when filming in areas with naturistic scenery like in fields or in the woods. Our way of tackling this problem was to minimise movement in these shots, using these locations as the place for our still, more slow-paced shots.
Another risk we had to bare in mind was unpredictable weather. Before filming outside we made sure that we were regularly checking reliable weather sources so that we could time our filming well away from any potential rain, but there is still a risk of unpredicted rain when filming. To overcome this problem, we made sure that we had umbrellas on standby, enough to be able to temporarily shelter all cast, crew and equipment until we find stable shelter. This preparation meant that we were minimising the risk of damaging any equipment as well as minimising the risk of subjecting the cast and crew to rain, possibly leading to illness.
One of the financial risks that we had when planning to film this project was the permit fees that certain locations may subject us to. Before filming in public we requested permission from the local Birmingham council to film, but some properties that we could of filmed in could have permit fees that may be out of budget, or also may be unbeknownst to us until the day of filming which can cause conflict with property owners and the council. With this we decided that it would be easier for us to research the rules and regulations of filming in the areas that we had in mind, and adapting our ideas if any of them required a permit fee as it would be out of budget.
Another financial risk that we ran into when planning this film was transportation. With the large scale of cast and crew arriving to filming and not all locations being local to each person involved in this film, we decided to set ourself a maximum transport budget that we would be able to supply, which was £46. We contacted each member of cast and crew and confirmed with each person involved as to whether they can or were comfortable with arranging their own transport, if not, we would use this budget to help
Feedback
During the three production stages, I received feedback from my teachers and my client after my pitch, after my second sizzle reel that I curated after my first day of filming. The feedback that I got from my teachers after my pitch was that I needed to make sure that I had a strong plan and vision before going into production, this was because with all the different references and styles of filming I wanted to incorporate, it gave me more initiative to conduct more research for my film. I watched more music videos and also took inspiration from urban imagery with grainy archival style footage in a film called ‘Gummo’. This movie contains imagery from a small town in Ohio and shows the gradual urban decay in that town. These were themes that I wanted to contribute to my own films so I made sure that I included some of these shots in the mood boards I created to show my teachers.
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When choosing the songs for this mixtape, I had to work closely with the client. I have prior experience in creating mixtapes but the mixtape only required simple and smooth transitions so that the shots could be the main focus of the final product. The client chose the songs and the order of which the songs would play out. It was down to me to blend the songs together, I used Audacity for this, a timeless beat making software, short of cost too. In this step of preproduction I used transitions like crossfades, low pass filters and spinbacks. These are all basic level transitions but for my skill level and the nature of the production, these basic transitions went well. I had to change assets like tempo and pitch so that the mixtape could play out well and not feel like any transitions are too harsh or any songs are out of place. I created my first draft that I sent to the client and they came back to me with a list of notes that they had written whilst listening that I applied to make a second tape which would become our final draft. The feedback consisted of requests for different transitions, tempos, and a slight rearrangement in the song order after listening to it through.
When editing I also worked closely with the client. Majority of the time when I was editing I would do it in my own home but seeing as the process of editing was gradual over a month I had frequent meetings with my client as we shared our new ideas and implemented them into the edit. I created a rough cut with just the shots that were colour graded with video transitions, these were ideas from myself but also the clients prompts laced throughout to make the project authentically ours.
AC4- Roles
My roles for this project were Director, DOP, Camera operator and Editor/VFX. These roles were all managed by me as the project has always been a personal project to me and the client, any help that I got during the production process has been my peers pledging to help out. My main role within this project was director:
My role as director meant that I, alongside my co-director, the client, had full creative control over this project. This is a big responsibility as it meant I had to always be mindful as to what would be beneficial to the project or damaging, aspects such as shot ideas and colour grading.
As a director I had to pitch the idea of this project to my peers and teacher, almost as if they were a company deciding whether they would invest in this project. The pre-production was entirely down to myself and some parts the client. I had to create shot lists, sizzle reels, an AV script and work out the analytics of budgeting and cast/crew management.
On the days of production I had to direct the cast and crew so that I could bring the shots in the shot list to fruition, I had to manage time to make sure that we were getting to each location on time and I also had to direct the cast in any spontaneous shots I wanted to get.
During post production I had full creative control of what effects and transitions would be added, as well as the placement of clips. I still had to refer to the client for these aspects, but I got to call the shots as to what ideas were initially going into it.
My role as director heavily assisted this project's workflow, as I managed the time aspect and decided when we should be filming to align with our deadline. I put my ideas and style of film into this project and made references to media that has inspired me. I furthered my skills within directing, camera operating, production management and visual effects. In visual effects furthered skills within this subject such as rotoscoping and the usage of After Effects as a software.
One of the technical limitations that we encountered was our limited choice of equipment. When we were planning the most anticipated filming day, we were going to use a Black Magic camera, a 13-35mm lens, 18-80mm cine lens, a gimbal for mobile phones and an iPhone 13. We were only going to use the iPhone for tracking shots so that the camera work could be less shaky with the gimbal and the gimbal is only compatible with phones.
Unfortunately, we had an error with the Gimbal on the day of filming that meant that we couldn’t use it. With this, we decided to adapt the shots that required a gimbal so that it could be done handheld, and for the shots that we thought specifically needed a gimbal to succeed, such as long tracking match cut shots, we came up with new ideas to replace them with shots we could accomplish.
This issue did effect our project as we did achieve shots that we were happy with, but the shots that we had to let go because of this issue were still regarded well between myself and the director and I hope to accomplish these shots in a future production.
One of the other issues we encountered was insufficient manpower when managing equipment from location to location. We were filming in parts of Birmingham which weren’t within walking distance and we had too much equipment to take onto public transport. With this, I decided to plan my day of filming incorporating me driving down to the first filming location, this was my mode of transport for filming and the equipment was moved from location to location this way.
This problem effected the production days only, as we had to arrange to meet up with crew and cast at each location rather than travel together, meaning it slowed the filming down ever so slightly, but it didn’t effect the final product overall.v
Experimentation
The first experimental factor I did in this project was camera operation on the first day of filming. I have had some experience in camera operation and practiced it alone before, but I had never operated a camera to retrieve footage for an actual project that would be shown to people. Though I had already practiced before, I decided that since I would be in temporary ownership of the equipment that we were using, that I should practice some of the shots we intended to use. My sister was the subject for these test shots and we filmed them in my garden. I believe that this precaution was beneficial to the project overall as there were some camera operating techniques such as focus pulling and dolly zoom that were going to be used in the project but I didn’t quite have them fully mastered by the time I was practicing, though these techniques were still tricky on the day, practicing them first made picking it up a lot easier.
Another experimental asset to this project was the overall production length. Although, the final edit wasn’t any longer than previous projects that I have directed, it definitely had the most shots out of any of my production stages. This is due to the fast paced editing techniques that I used to achieve the music video style filming. The project was filmed over 3 seperate days and each day of filming took around 5-6 hours. Although this wasn’t something that was frightening to me as I was only focussed on the quality of the final outcome and I knew that the project needed this amount of filming to achieve that quality, it definitely took a toll on my energy during the filming. The client and I decided that we would carefully plan the filming days separate from each other, with as much as 2 weeks to a couple months in between some of these filming days. Our reasoning for this is both of our creativity was the driving force of this project and we wanted to be able to come up with plenty of new ideas in the middle of filming, as in my opinion nothing will inspire you more for your film than filming itself as you can see with your own eyes how things are going and what the film requires. We also didn’t want to run the risk of burnout, as we didn’t want that to translate in our film.
AC3- Equipment and Set Up
On the first day of filming, one of our locations was a big white brick wall, the sun was shining down on that day and the client requested that for the more serene parts of the film, that we get some high exposure footage. We decided that the white wall would be a great place to do so as the detailing on the wall would be less apparent making our models seem like they're in a vacant dream like setting. I utilised the camera settings for these takes so that the footage would be highly exposed from the beginning, but made sure that I tweaked the colour grading so it all felt cohesive for these shots.
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On the third day of filming we used our 18-80 cinematic lens for some of our wider shots. This lens is great for wide shots as it assures that each point in the shot will be equally illuminated, making for a better quality looking shot overall. Majority of these wide shots were used as b-roll, as we didn’t have models in the shots, only objects like lampposts and wheels to accentuate our urban imagery.
For a lot of the shots where we filmed indoors, we made sure that there was lighting on our models as we didn't let much natural light in, this spotlight style lighting was achieved by me wearing a headlight on my head whilst filming, almost as if the light is coming directly from the camera, this method of lighting meant that the models in focus were heavily contrasted from their surroundings.
Editing
In the beginning of the post production process, which slightly overlapped the production process so that the client and I knew where to pick up when filming next time, the only shots that I had were the ones that were highly exposed and the only shots we got indoors. At this point, the client and I had already discussed where these shots would be implemented, some at the beginning and some at the middle. The songs that contained these shots were Little Star by Madonna and Fire Alarm by Lil Uzi Vert and Snow Strippers.
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During this stage I was experimenting with colour grading and transitions and placements of each clip. Throughout filming I added more and more clips that correspond with the timestamps of the soundtrack, such as a shot I got underwater with my GoPro during Cc by Ecco2k. I was experimenting with different effects on Premiere Pro such as colour emboss and analogue delay.
After the final day of filming was when I felt my strongest drive to edit, as I was aware of every last shot I had obtained and I knew officially what I was working with, I changed the speed, opacity and pacing of each shot so that they would all marry the music that was playing. After I had pieced together the entire string of clips that had been colour graded with heavy contrast which is becoming a staple for alot of my projects, as well as all of the tweaks I mentioned prior.
I still felt as if all the transitions, effects and splicing I had done wasn’t enough to match the energy level of the mixtape, so I decided to take the project to After Effects which was something I had only dabbled in once for my Peter Pan audio and visual project. I referred to one of my peers, Joe, who has a lot of experience in After Effects, to see if he could offer me any tips. Joe sent me his YouTube playlist which had multiple videos explaining different VFX tricks you can do in After Effects, a lot of them related to music video style visual effects too.
After watching a few of these I downloaded some plug-ins that the youtubers that made those videos put in the description, these plug ins are downloadable and you can upload them onto After Effects, sort of like an arrangement of effects you can download.
One pack I downloaded which featured heavily in the VFX was a pack called Omino, which had glitchy and distorted style effects throughout.
A skill that I had to refine during this VFX stage was rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is essentially cutting out the subject so that you can apply the effects onto layers behind it but not onto the subject itself. Using the rotoscope tool took a lot of trial and error as I had to guide the tool to sourcing out the subject frame by frame. After altering the feathering so that the lines weren't as harsh, I was able to apply effects onto the background directly.
After exporting each clip in Adobe Media Encoder to make sure that each frame was rendered correctly and in H.264, I implemented these effected clips and incorporated them in my final edit.
Responsibility
One of my responsibilities in this project was to source together inspiration to create this entire project. I got inspiration from music videos, horror films and visual effects from music videos by artists like Ken Carson, who uses a lot of the similar glitch effects that I put in this project. This ensured that the project was successful as I was able to control the narrative of this project and made sure it all made sense together, making it authentically mine and the clients in the meantime.
Another one of my responsibilities in this project was to source out cast and crew. I wanted to make sure that everybody that was involved with this project would see the vision, I chose peers that have created similar style projects like this such as Music Videos and visual effect heavy projects for my crew. For the cast, I wanted to make sure that everyone would be comfortable in the designs that the client had created, so I chose cast that are close to me who have furthered experience in fashion, one of them is a runway model who has modeled for esteemed brands such as Diesel. Ensuring this meant sure that everyone within this project ‘made sense’ in this project and was able to add their own flare to it.
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A different responsibility that I had in this project was to assemble all the clips into places where it made sense for the music. This ensured that the clips all streamed together nicely and didn’t feel out of place.
Organisation/Proffesional Ettiquette
When managing time for this project, I had to consider what needed to get done before we had a day of filming, certain assets such as location recces, AV scripts and shot lists had to be completed before we pressed record. I made sure that I only chose a day of filming when I was almost finished with this document so that I could allow myself enough time to accomplish everything that I needed to do as well as give myself contingency time to add anything new that I felt like the project required before filming. When it came to choosing a day for filming, I had to decide amongst the client which models and locations we wanted for each day. I had to be the source of contact with cast and crew and make sure there was a day where all of us could be at the set locations for filming. This was a tricky process and took a lot of trial and error. I decided that the most efficient way to do it was to ask each member of the cast and crew who’d be involved in this project at all and select a day where we had the right cast and the right crew. This proved be a slightly faulty method as time went on though, as it meant that I wasn't giving cast and crew long enough to book certain days and time off of any other commitments they may have. During post production I had to hold meetings with my client and show them how much progress I was making, this was helpful as it meant that the client and I were able to micromanage different aspects to this project and make sure we were both happy with what was getting done.
Meaning to Audience/Meeting Inentions
My chosen media format for this project was a music video. Music videos have many codes and conventions that give this style of filmmaking it’s own definition. One of the codes and conventions is the ‘style’ of music video, this music video in particular has a lot of symbolism and referencing to psychedelic drug usage. Themes of drugs and psychadelics are common within a lot of music videos and it is commonly assisted with trippy visuals and visual effects. This is a theme that I had within my project but I wanted to delve a bit deeper than just trippy visuals, I wanted to translate with mise en scene, colour grading and emotions from the cast what psychedelics feel like to a person. Camera angles within music videos tend to have a sole subject, usually the song artist but in this case it’s our models. Music videos tend to have establishing shots but fast paced moving shots to keep it entertaining and quick paced for the audience. This was something I incorporated in my project for the entertainment value of this project and to keep the viewer entertained.
Platform and Distribution
The platform that the client and I chose for this project was Instagram. The restrictions of this platform are to do with time and framing. I mentioned previously in AC1 how I adapted this project to fit these requirements and we were able to upload our project without any issues, addressing the intended platform early on was definitely beneficial as it meant that we were able to shape our project around these restrictions early on, rather than change things around last minute. I exported my project in 4k as any other time I tried to render it in any other way I wasn’t happy with the rendering and quality, I allowed myself enough time between me finishing editing and the release day so that I could play around with different export settings and ultimately choose which one was right for the film. My project can be seen as a reel on @enjoii.i
