Light and Lens

I am happy with the finished film, but on the technical side, I would like to improve my skills of filming in low light conditions while reducing grain/noise as much as possible. I had a rule of not letting the ISO go beyond 1600 in low light conditions and keeping the exposure between 30 and 50. Perhaps I needed better lighting.

The meaning of the film is quite abstract with many different elements that I hope will allow the viewer to create their own story. Has he been dreaming of this girl that he meets? Is this his ex girlfriend that he misses? Is she dead!? I want the narrative to be individually perceived.

The film was shot over three different shooting days and was usually postponed when people took up a table we needed to film by. I used After Effects to assist with some visual effects such as the bench scene and enhancing the colour of her eyes.

Light and Lens – Technical logs

Here are technical logs for some of the first few shots. Because of how long my film took me to complete, I haven’t got time to do this for all 80 odd cuts that are in my film, but a fair few should show my understanding.

I’ll start with the first few shots and then skip to the different lighted ones. These are screenshots from the raw .MOV unedited video files.

First shot
MVI_1943  
My own Canon 550D
f/3.5
  18 mm focal length 
ISO 100
Natural lighting 

This is the first shot of the film. I consider it an establishing shot therefor it’s not at all a close up, and gives the viewer time and the ability to see a lot in the frame. I didn’t use any optical filtration because I was going for the natural look of light to work with the natural grass, such as the natural optical flare in the frame. The film starts among the green and then moves very quickly to locations surrounded by buildings. I wanted to emphasise this contrast.

Second shot
MVI_1945  
My own Canon 550D
f/5.6
  55 mm focal length 
ISO 200
Natural lighting 

Here, the settings have been tweaked to adjust for a sharper picture that isn’t expecting as much natural light as the first shot to be coming through.

Twelfth shot
MVI_1959
My own Canon 550D
f/5
  40 mm focal length 
ISO 100
Natural lighting

In this shot, the depth of field has been adjusted to allow me to walk into the focus. This is the second shot in my film to do this.

Nineteenth shot
MVI_1963
My own Canon 550D
f/11
  18 mm focal length 
ISO 1600
Natural lighting

This is another establishing shot, so the lens is set for a lot to be in the shot, and the f-stop is adjusted so that everything is in focus. The ISO has to compensate for the high f-stop, but this has brought grain/noise to the screen.

Twenty Ninth shot
MVI_1975
My own Canon 550D
f/5.6
  27 mm focal length 
ISO 1600
LED lighting

As the second half of the film is inside, it’s all lit by a single LED light. I wish I had two at times but the Roundabout pub that we filmed in was extremely busy and we were getting in peoples way to no end, even making people move downstairs.

Storyboard

I don’t recommend even attempting to correlate these storyboards to the final film, but I assure you they made sense on the day.

Light and Lens – Production journal

Here is a test I did before I begin pre-production for this project. I’ve been practicing with the .THM files that are created along side the video footage recorded on a Canon DSLR. I’m using the japanese model of the Canon 550D. The .THM files are a kind of container that possess all of the filming details required to recreate the shot that it refers too. I had trouble opening these files but discovered that changing the extension from .THM to .JPG turns it into a thumbnail of the video.
Only then, for some reason, will the extra properties be unlocked for me to see.

After completing a concept and storyboard for something I could complete in the short time I had, I gathered a selection of possible songs and had three days worth of shooting footage. The third day of filming will be tomorrow for me. A few shots will be re shot and more will be filmed. The biggest problem I’ve been facing is the frequent changing weather conditions, as well as the short window of light available in the day. During the dark indoor scenes, I’ve been facing problems with noise/grain on the camera despite looking up how to avoid this in low light conditions by controlling the camera’s settings. I find the grain becomes noticeable when the iso reaches above 1600 in low light conditions. A small LED light helped counter this.

VERSUS – THE SEQUEL

Unused test shots

PASSWORD: Versus

This is just a few example shots (ironically longer than the film itself that I handed in) that I rendered throughout the course of editing the film.
They will be in the finished film in the form of characters motion, combat, or super moves. Some shots have been edited more than others. Here is a screenshot of how it was edited. The clips were segregated into their own sections and named according to what the action is and which character is doing it. In these test shots, that text is still present on the screen.

Versus 2 – Evaluation

Upon first hearing about the brief of expressing what I am about, I knew immediately that my area was editing, and I would like to once again challenge myself to create a more complicated edit than anything I’ve ever made. I do however realise now that I had jumped in the deep end, and the finished film will take me a rather long time to complete. For now, the finished product that I can hand in will be an unfortunately short trailer of the finished film.

My intentions for this film are to show my skills in editing that never fail for people to ask “Wow, how did you do that?”. I wish to do the third year and will be continuing this film throughout it if it takes that long. I will then use this film as an example for whenever I require some kind of show-real of my skills. My original intentions were to be a director, but I’ve realised I don’t have the gift of making people do what I say on set, so I’ll advance my skills as an editor.

The film itself is a sequel to a film I challenged myself to make for a final major project in the past. The original 2D video game style fighter homage was filmed in one day with a DV cam against a poor greenscreen that cut off everything below the ankles,  and my editing skills could only add a still image for the background of the fight. I briefly used After Effects purely for lens flare effects.

On the current film that I’ll be working on until it’s fully finished, all footage was filmed on either a canon 550D or 600D. The greenscreen shots were all filmed on the professional greenscreen in college. As I am fighting myself in this film, there are three different costume changes involved. Two for the different characters and then one extra costume chance for the video game style evolved special ‘rage’ mode of one of the fighters where their clothes change on purpose. The filming of the green screen was done over five different days. Towards the end of the recording it was just a matter of re-filming footage that didn’t look as good. Each day of recording involved jumping, running and shouting, over and over again. During my second day of recording, I must have worked a bit too hard as I spent my night in hospital due to some kind of pain that never occurred again.

The script I wrote is similar to that of the first Versus film I made, where the characters have their abilities and attacks laid out in an order that assists with filming and editing. The pacing and narrative, or lack of, was created entirely through editing in the first film. The difference with this latest film is that the narrative is planned out through the script before the edit. Scenes and location changes are planned out down to the second of the soundtrack. As well as filming abilities and attacks of the characters, I have filmed scripted moments that are outside of these moves. The first 12 seconds of the fighting for example, is all scripted. This is the only section of fighting that is shown in the trailer, as I’m still working on how the actual combat will look. I’m determined to succeed beyond the combat of the first film.

The last scenes that I had to record were the backdrops for the fight. Thanks to the pre-compositions of After Effects that I didn’t have available to me in Sony Vegas (Which I used on the first film), the backgrounds can be animated and fully changeable. For example, in the film, an energy ball is deflected towards Drake Circus’ car park. It blows a massive shockwave and hole into the wall where rubble is shown falling to the road. It all happens very quick, as the entire battle will be. I created the hole in the carpark in Adobe Photoshop and masked it into the backdrop of the film at the right moment. A more missable change to the backdrop are the skid marks across the ground towards the beginning of the fighting. The final film will be full of these moments as the backdrops get destroyed over time.

As a homage to the first film, the final version of this will feature a remix of the song I used in the first film. It will come in towards the end of the film with a surprise ending.

I knew from the beginning of this project that I was pushing myself greatly, but I always like to. I’m disappointed that I can’t hand in a three minute fight scene like I originally thought – I had faced so many problems throughout making this film. For example, the metal arm that Connor wore ended up reflecting the greenscreen so much that I was forced to cover his arm with a lens flare. The main problems with editing I found were that my home laptop became completely incapable of using to edit on as the project file grew more complicated. My only available option was to use an editing suite in college with my external harddrive. After spending full days and nights at home editing, I was then spending full days in college editing, as well as finding and installing the three plug-ins that my film relies on.  An entire day was wasted trying to export a portion of the video so I could put it into Sony Vegas to do the sound design. I was faced all day with this error…

I then later discovered at home after some research that all I needed to was have the Premiere project file on my local harddrive instead of inside the project folder on the external HDD. An entire day trying was wasted because of this.

During the group screening, I was facing even more pretty bad technical problems – problems that made the class wait about an hour for my film to export, which it did eventually. The only problem was that a watermark occurred every few seconds from one of the plug-ins, and a lot of the sound effects including the main soundtrack had failed to render into the video. I was forced to show it to the class by dragging the video into Premiere and playing the exported video along side the unrendered sound effects from Premiere at the same time. A mistake I made was that I showed it to the class with a still non moving background image for the fight which I was using for the sake of editing, to suppress the lag. I forgot to change the background to the moving video before I exported. Luckily the final video that I have handed in has no mistakes.

So, here are some comparative screenshots of the journey that the film has taken so far.

Here is the original footage

Here is the footage edited with simulated smoke created from a single image duplicated dozens of times with an added Wiggle command in After Effects. Full effects and animations have been added to the sword. I hadn’t begun filming locations yet so as a test background, I was using an image I captured from Google Maps.

Here is the completely finished and graded version of the film with individual background videos for each angle that I filmed myself.

The merge between video games and film

To collaborate my 2D Live action fighter film, I’ve been examining the recent merges with film and video games. While making the predecessor to this movie, I researched fight scenes in movies, but I don’t feel like it’s as relevant as I’d have liked. There’s a link to this in the blog address that I posted below a few posts.

As for the topic of video games and movies, I believe that the first step in the cycle was from video game movie adaptations. The first movie adaptation of a video game ever made was ‘Super Mario Bros: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen!’. A Japanese anime movie released in 1986. After a few years that included many animated Pokemon movies, the Super Mario Bros later saw a live action western movie in 1993.

In our modern times, nearly every popular video game series has been or is getting a movie counterpart, or a series of movies in the case of Resident Evil. Tomb Raider got itself two movies, and now is in pre-production for a reboot of the series, shortly after the video game universe rebooted itself lately.

So you can take my word for it that there are more than many film adaptations of video games, but how do they work as movies? Do they include the boss battles, or how about the health packs and game overs?

I think when it comes to Hollywood; the movies they create of video games can be watched with absolutely no knowledge of the video games existence. This way they can appeal to much wider audiences, as well as finding a good script writer and director that have actually played the games may be tedious. The movies are just like any other action movie, though I can’t think of a single video game adaptation that isn’t an action movie, or a racing one.

The Resident Evil movies are interesting because it started out being it’s own movie universe with its own characters, but by the third or fourth film, it had introduced a few main characters from the latest games, as well as the main antagonist of the movies is the previous villain who has actually already died in the game universe, and strangely enough dies in a completely different way in one of the movies. The latest Resident Evil movie is also quite questionable as it has more aspects of the video games than just the characters. It involves boss fights, and arena style areas for the bosses to be killed before they can move onto the next area – Just like a game.

And then we look at the reverse, video games trying to be movies. There has always been a slight element of this present in games with the cutscenes. ‘cutscene’ is the terminology used for the parts of a video game where the control is removed from the player and they are simply shown a video of the characters progressing the story themselves for a short time. This gets even more complicated however, as cutscenes have lately been on the decrease, with many game developers favouring the approach of never taking the control away from the player at all. This can involve the player wandering around a room controlling a silent ‘invisible’ character while all of the non-playable characters talk amongst themselves and are oblivious to you (the player) jumping on top of their heads and on tables.

The other approach developers have been taking with cut scenes lately are interactive ones, usually something called ‘quick time events’. These are fast action orientated scenes where a button prompt for the controller is shown on screen and the player has a mere second to press that button in time to ensure a positive outcome of the cutscene and allow the story to progress.

Some games are unfavoured due to being referred to as far too close to a movie for a video game. The video games from the company Quantic Dream are often spoken of like this. Three of their games; Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls all have an equally (if not more so throughout the games) climatic movie like gameplay style. To sum it up without going into detail about the gameplay, if people watch you playing these games, they often think it’s a movie.

Over a year ago, I made a film that parodies the video game ‘Heavy Rain’, due to it already being like a movie. It was well received by the internet, and to those who are familiar with the game, the likeness is definitely there.

 

Previous blog work

Here is the blog address with all the research and development concerning the previous 2D Video game style battle film that I made. It also contains an analysis of fight scenes in movies.

http://bkdfmp.tumblr.com/

Critical Evaluation

1.              What research or influence is the work informed by?

 

Every aspect of fighter video games influences my film.

 

2.              What were/are your intention when starting/developing the project?  What were you attempting to achieve?

 

I am attempting to surpass the similar film I’ve previously made.

 

3.              Describe the work in terms of visual aesthetics (materials, use of processes, etc)

 

The entire film is chroma keyed on a green screen, while the backgrounds are animated photographs. The music is a similar electronic tone and intensity to the original, as well as being similar to that of the video games.

 

4.              What visual understanding does/will the work exhibit? (How and why have you selected materials and processes, why have you developed some ideas but dropped others, etc.)

 

My film should show a good understanding of editing, and After Effects work. I have aimed to surpass my previous film, but have mostly dropped my intention to create 3D camera angle changing aspects. I have still kept the cinematic moments where the camera changes to show the pre-special attacks.

 

5.              What practical skill does/will the work exhibit (Have you pushed your making skills to the limit – how and why? What has this shown you? etc.)

 

It exhibits my work as an editor, and skills with chroma keying, as well as determination to get the perfect shots. I have definitely intended to push my movie making skills beyond my limit once again.

 

6.              What is the work’s main strength?

 

Editing, and ability with After Effects.

 

7.              Does the work have any weaknesses?

 

I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m trying to remove all weaknesses.

 

8.              Looking back to the 2nd question, how effective is the work that you have produced – technically, visually and conceptually? Have you achieved what you wanted to or have you changed direction, if so why?

 

This is the most technical heavy project I’ve ever made, which I think is the best way to test and prove my skills as an editor.

 

9.              Were you to produce this work again, what could you do to improve it?

 

I think this question could already apply to this project, as I am doing exactly that. I am creating a better and bigger version of a film I made over a year ago. Everything I wanted to change in that film, will be improved on in this project