RYU APISIT TECHAJIRASIN
A2 MEDIA STUDIES BLOG
CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION
After we had filmed the food scene, I carried up all my camera gear up and place them in my locker and brought out the SD card from the camera and brought out my laptop and external hard drive to import in the files into. Luckily I've got a new laptop this year which eliminates the need for the SD card to USB device as the laptop has a SD card slot of its own which is really convenient when storage are filling up.
It wasn't until later in the day when I get home that I started to put together the footage. It took me around 40 minute to assemble all the footage and label them with notes within the editing software and label which lens were used. Music, sound effects and colour grade had not been applied in this version of the film as this will be done in later stage of production
FOOD SEQUENCE EDITING
In this section, every editing will be in chronological order and links to the production tab. Also, instead of showing an entire screenshot of Adobe premiere pro, I will be only screenshotting the timeline of the edit and placing them below the video itself unless I have to show something important.
Enjoy how the team and I assembled this film little by little!
- Apisit Techajirasin (Ryu)
EDITING ENTRANCE SEQUENCE
Once we finished with the filming, I proceeded with the same routine of transferring all files into my external hard drive. This time we went straight to editing as we were all free at the time.
We found a quiet space away from all the people in order to be able to hear the audio properly. This edit with the help of Richy only took me around 40 minutes to put together. I then proceeded to changing the labels to the lens I used for the shot. After that I would go over it once again to note down on the wide screen margin on what lens I used and extra things post production wise.
Editing for this sequence will be much more difficult to do without Richy; he is really good music and he helped me sync up the footage with the music we were going for which was Happy by Turtles.
EDITING BED SEQUENCE
We were seriously late for our lesson. We headed back to the SIxth Form to get our bags and get moving to the next lesson. I kept all my camera gear in my locker, rushed up to media classroom and ran my way to the secondary building to business studies.
Later, when Richy and I both had a free period we proceeded on to editing the project. Richy took care of most of the edit. As for me, I cleaned up the tiny details such as a little delay on continuation in order to make it seems more seamless and added effects and warp stabiliser on it to make the edit more professional.
As seen, most of the filming today was mostly shot on the 10-18mm( orange bars) due to lack of time we had but we were pleased with how far we got. All that's left is the Social and the Toilet sequence!
EDITING TOILET SEQUENCE
After we were back from filming and celebrating by eating pizza that Toy had ordered, we packed up all our stuff and went back home right after.
It wasn't until I got home that I can finally sit down and edit. I put together a rough idea of where everything should go to show Richy the next day. Once I showed him, he took my laptop and made some changes that I wouldn't be able to do myself! We then came across this scene when Richy was putting up a wet tissue and we need a sound to signalised the change from it to the newspaper. I looked up for futuristic sounds on YouTube and came across this video with this sound effect
Richy also wanted a sound effect to go alongside the scene when he sits down and jumps up. I have no idea what to use for this and took a quick break by going to the toilet. Right... Going to the toilet while editing for the toilet scene. Whilst I was away for a few minutes, Richy took my laptop and opened Audacity (a voice recording software) and recorded his own voice which is now used as the sound for the invisible entity. When I got back he told me to convert the file to .mp3 and put it in the edit. I did not know what it was at first but then when I heard it for the first time it sounded like a jumpscare! I was pleased with it and stuck with it!
After that the editing for this particular sequence is completed!
volume warning
EDITING SOCIAL SEQUENCE 1
From what we had film today, I was really pleased with Richy's and Toy's performance in that they followed my instructions of not crossing their arms beyond which point in the frame or else would've been difficult to edit it. This one wasn't too challenging to edit as there was only one of the Richy's that I had to mask manually. Here is a diagram that outlines how it was put together.
EDITING SOCIAL SEQUENCE 2
Today's filming isn't too difficult as it was just the matter of placing the camera on the tripod and hit recording and timing it so that they turn at the same time so that it would be easier to sync. The editing this one however was the most challenging one yet! I had to mask out all and even key frame some of the layers. This took me 4 hours of dedication but I was actually giving up in the first 2 but Richy motivated me which kept me going after I sent him the first draft which had less duplicating that the video.
During all this, I was also capturing my desktop at the same time. Unfortunately it only recorded the window which means that it does not show the task bar which is so unfortunate as the time cannot be seen :-( Anyways, the video to the right shows the process of me editing sped up so much.
After all that tiring editing, I went for a quick shower to then edit the rest of what we had filmed later that day. This part wasn't so difficult as it's just like any other edits and took me way less time to edit. Then I combined the exported duplicating sequence with this sequence I just edited and I can say that it looks absolutely awesome! I am proud of what I have accomplished today. Especially the dolly zoom!
GRATIDRAFTS
This is official! we are finally able to merge all the 5 Sequence together into one! One problem... It is way too long! 6 minutes and 15 seconds in fact! I created a list later that day of what to improve for the next draft.
With most of the small changes made, I am able to make the time go down drastically to 5 minute 38 seconds. This was an amazing decrease as I was really reluctant on what to remove. I had also started to add some sound effects into the film as well.
11/12/17
12/12/17
12/12/17
14/12/17
Draft 3 nothing major had been changed. I added the school bell sound effect and that was pretty much it!
16ish17ish/12/17
In this draft, there are many new additions to the film such as how I added the Good, Bad and Ugly soundtrack to the Toilet Sequence by having 2 separate black videos key framing towards each other. I was against the idea of them travelling at different speed but Richy likes 'em so I decided to keep it that way. I have also managed to keyframed the 'GratiFly' and combined it with a fly sound effect
Remember when I said I won't screenshot my premiere unless I really need to? Well, here it is!
IMPLEMENTING IN THE 'FLY'
THE RESULT IS AMAZING!
17/12/2017
In yesterday's draft, I added in the opening credit and it felt a bit bland when compared to last year's. As I was changing the video of Richy swatting way the GratiFly above to a GIF I realized that 'Giphy'(the GIF maker website) can actually insert text in the GIF itself and it is also allows for customization of said text. This allows me to insert a bright green background to act as a green screen effect. I then imported the GIF into Adobe Premiere and did like what I did to the GratiFly back in the pre production stage of copy and pasting it over and over so that it loops as a video and export it as an .mp4
[Last year's credit sequence]
In GratiFly we already left blank spaces for where credit goes and it's just all about making it more interesting.
28/12/2017
Today is the last official day of 2017 that I will be editing for GratiFly. Reason being that from the 30th onwards till the 2nd I will be away on a trip to Taiwan. Therefore I spent half my day after a session of Business Studies revision to relax and get my head back into the film. I started with adding ambient dining hall sound to the Food Sequence then adding in sound effects of Richy using the cutlery. However, there are some which I prefer to use the actual sound of the cutlery picked up by the camera microphone therefore I must do a very quick fade in fade out in order to only allow the sound needed and not any extra white noise. This took around an hour of adjusting original audio, downloading sound effects and placing them into the sequence. I encountered a problem of the ambient sound provided had talking after a certain point. This lead me to cropping the audio just before the talking then trying to loop it seamlessly.
Took a quick 15 minute break to the toilet, grabbing some snacks and continued with the edit. Now I moved on to the sound of the Toilet Sequence. Ever since I edited that Sequence, the audio hadn't really been touched upon. In favor of convenience back then it lead to some audio being cut off; I'd replaced them with the audio directly from the original clip and sync it up. On the previous drafts there are some bits that I muted the audio completely because audio was unusable. I came up with a quick solution of slowing down ambient sound of other clips to make them sound like it's the actual audio. All that's left for the audio is for Richy to compose and revoice some bits.
Here are the videos in which the sound effects are taken from. (Please note that you will not be able to click to view the videos)
Now on to the more "visual" stuff. It was finally time to COLOR GRADE! I downloaded a LUT (Look Up Table) which is a color grade preset from IWLTBAP which is a company that makes color grade for film makers that I've been looking to use one of their free products. I applied the Sedona to my film and I absolutely loved the look of it on GratiFly. It wasn't a night a day change but it made a more of a day to noon effect. It made the whole film looks more cinematic rather than just footage from a camera. All that's left is some minor color corrections.
NOTE: Above is Before & Below is After
Without further ado, here is THE LAST DRAFT OF 2017! This is also the first time I uploaded in PAL format (25fps).
Seems like one of our friends didn't realised that they were supposed to write on the other side...
FEEDBACK 11th January 2018
Today we were able to get GratiFly Last Draft of 2017 shown to both Media class. Beforehand, Richy and I created a feedback sheets for people to write about what's good about the film and how our film could be improved. We were thinking to only print it for ourselves but then we started to feel a little guilty so we printed it off for the other groups being shown today as well. Here are all the feedback from both classes combined.
I then proceeded on to creating a graph for each sides in Microsoft Excel. I forgot what I was supposed to do as I haven't used it in a while so I went to look for Excel formulas online and in definitely bring back some memories of when I took ICT back in IGCSE.
So what I was trying to find was COUNTIF and I felt proud that I did it!
From this, we can see that my cinematography and editing was on point! Which I was so glad to see once the results were compiled.
Richy's acting was also one of the ones that stands out above the rest.
Some people seem to get the concept and like it; however, we can see that the majority did not quite understand the narrative of GratiFly.
Sound FX was to be expected as we haven't finalised that yet and some people wanted to see more fly or didn't understand what it was for.
This data is literally pure gold and provides me and the team with valuable data that we could used to make GratiFly the best short film ever!
Sound FX Recording Session
8 out of 16 people in the feedback sheets mentioned that sound needed to be worked on. and improved upon. Richy and I borrowed a RODE mic from Mr Simpson, our Media Teacher asking him for it. This mic was supposed to go on top of the camera, however we decided to instead plug the mic into the microphone jack on my laptop. Initially Richy said that this will only take us around 15 minutes to record all sounds needed. However, this was not the case as we spent 2 hours on the first day and another 2 the day after. We made a little VLOG in our first 15 minutes but decide to gave up on the recording a video idea as it takes up so much space and I'll have to edit more that I already need to. What we did was essentially open
up a program called Audacity which records voice; hit record then have a small window of GratiFly playing in the background so that Richy can sync his foley actions with the recording.
This was very challenging as I'm still quite new to sound and I am in no mean an expert in the area. I would loved to explore more on this but I think for now it had been great!
Door
Slam
We got most of the Sound FX needed, although there is one sound that I really wanted to add which is going to be add in this draft/ final product of the film. This is when Richy shoots the windex a fly will fly up and hit the window and slide down. That's the exact sound I wanted, the sound of the fly sliding on wet glass. I tried several attempts at doing this to the glass wall but it wasn't what I needed. I did not know what to search for either because I don't know what it's called!
Then, I remembered that I watched a Sound Behind The Scenes/ documentary of the 2014 Gareth Edward's Godzilla and it showcases how the sound of the MUTO's (monsters in the film) were made. I remember this specific clip where they slide there wet fingers on drums and created this effect. I did not have my hands on drums or anything that is similar. The best way to do it is just take the sound straight from the documentary itself!
With this, I think I can say that Godzilla saved my life. Anyways, I then import all these sounds into premiere and started placing them into the timeline. Richy then told me to download advertisements sound files off YouTube and he'll go ahead and edit the rest himself. We watched the film one last time before we were about to export what was supposed to be the
FINAL DRAFT OF GRATIFLY!
