After roughly 40 hours of editing, and three nights this week where I stayed up working until 4am, I finally completed my short film - montage assignment for school. I am so grateful for all the help I received from the actors: Andrew Parker, Mike Tanasychuk, Thomas Asselin, Veronica Neufeld, Alex Rohne, Ian Mikita, Bruce Berven, and Tim "Scratch" Friesen. I also want to give a shout out to Chris Gaudry and Robert Zirk for the Final Cut Pro editing tips that they gave me.
I learned a lot throughout the creation of this project, but the biggest thing was lighting. Obviously you'll see when you watch the video that some scenes are a little too bright, and some a little to dark. I had to trash a bunch of footage because it just didn't turn out the way I had hoped. But that's how we learn.
Although I played around with some filters which I will explain below, if the footage is no good, any amount of tweaking with filters and color balancing just can't polish a turd. You have to start getting great footage right from stage one for it to look really good. So watch your lighting and make sure the Iris is set just right on the camera. If you are shooting at school, pause for a bit and quickly check how the footage looks in an editing suite and then keep shooting knowing that it looks the way you want it to.
In the opening scene when you see Andrew Parker addressing the nations on tv, I used a filter called Bloom to create the effect of creepiness and to take down some of the bright light that shone off of his silver head. I used this effect later in the film during the marionette scene.
In the scenes where the men in black chase Veronica to her apartment, I used an effect called Relief to give the scenes an almost painted brush-stroke look. I tried to stick to themes when I used filters, as I was very concerned about over-doing it.
In the scene where Veronica gets arrested with the mask, the filter that made everything shiny was called Light Rays. I used this filter as my theme whenever someone got arrested or the masks were present and/or worn.
In the scenes where Veronica was writhing with the mask, I copied the clip twice, stacked them on top of each other, and shifted two of them slightly off centre from each other. Then I dropped the Opacity on the top two clips so the bottom third stood out. I had a lot of fun with Opacity actually, maybe a little too much fun!
I had a really tough time matching the interior of the mad scientists house to the exterior where Ian walks up to the door. It was filmed during the afternoon and I had my biggest issues with lighting. I used the RGB color balance filter to match the blue hue between the interior and exterior.
My favourite effect was Dazzle, which is what I used in the scenes with the mad scientist. All these neat little stars just showed up on the wall behind the actors in that shot. This filter takes reflected light and gives it a really cool sparkle.
The last few scenes where Andrew starts morphing from silver to white involve using Earthquake, Bad Film and Bad TV. The very last scene I added Solarize to the mix. Basically a cocktail of ridiculousness.
As far as all the effects go, I believe that covers it. If anyone has any questions just lemme know and I'd be happy to help out. Until then, click the link below to enjoy my short film!
j
I learned a lot throughout the creation of this project, but the biggest thing was lighting. Obviously you'll see when you watch the video that some scenes are a little too bright, and some a little to dark. I had to trash a bunch of footage because it just didn't turn out the way I had hoped. But that's how we learn.
Although I played around with some filters which I will explain below, if the footage is no good, any amount of tweaking with filters and color balancing just can't polish a turd. You have to start getting great footage right from stage one for it to look really good. So watch your lighting and make sure the Iris is set just right on the camera. If you are shooting at school, pause for a bit and quickly check how the footage looks in an editing suite and then keep shooting knowing that it looks the way you want it to.
In the opening scene when you see Andrew Parker addressing the nations on tv, I used a filter called Bloom to create the effect of creepiness and to take down some of the bright light that shone off of his silver head. I used this effect later in the film during the marionette scene.
In the scenes where the men in black chase Veronica to her apartment, I used an effect called Relief to give the scenes an almost painted brush-stroke look. I tried to stick to themes when I used filters, as I was very concerned about over-doing it.
In the scene where Veronica gets arrested with the mask, the filter that made everything shiny was called Light Rays. I used this filter as my theme whenever someone got arrested or the masks were present and/or worn.
In the scenes where Veronica was writhing with the mask, I copied the clip twice, stacked them on top of each other, and shifted two of them slightly off centre from each other. Then I dropped the Opacity on the top two clips so the bottom third stood out. I had a lot of fun with Opacity actually, maybe a little too much fun!
I had a really tough time matching the interior of the mad scientists house to the exterior where Ian walks up to the door. It was filmed during the afternoon and I had my biggest issues with lighting. I used the RGB color balance filter to match the blue hue between the interior and exterior.
My favourite effect was Dazzle, which is what I used in the scenes with the mad scientist. All these neat little stars just showed up on the wall behind the actors in that shot. This filter takes reflected light and gives it a really cool sparkle.
The last few scenes where Andrew starts morphing from silver to white involve using Earthquake, Bad Film and Bad TV. The very last scene I added Solarize to the mix. Basically a cocktail of ridiculousness.
As far as all the effects go, I believe that covers it. If anyone has any questions just lemme know and I'd be happy to help out. Until then, click the link below to enjoy my short film!
j
great work James, you put a ton of effort in perfecting this footage. this is good info to have, I'll def be coming to you for editing help next year!
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