Printing Complete

Today I got my printing completed. 2 A3 Project books, 4 A3 Poster and 1 A0 Poster. I can see the finish line.

Project Book

Today I finished my project book. The only thing I have to do now is get stuff printed which I will be doing on Thursday.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Never did I think I think I'd reach this moment. The film is finally finished, edited and exported and its amazing to be able to say that. For 8 months I've been working on this film and to say it's finished is incredible. The journey I've been there to get here is one I won't forget and hope now that people like the finished film.

Why Do Exports Hate Me?

Once I fixed that 'noise' problem, I came across another. Once exported, there were times when a loud crack in the audio could be heard. The frustrating thing was, everything it exported, it moved position so I couldn't hone in on the problem. I tried opening the file in CS6, exporting different codecs, edit the audio in Audition but nothing seemed to work. I then came up with the idea of nesting the audio so it was on one track. This way I could export the audio alone and sync it back with the video. I exported the audio about 30 times. This allowed me to remove the audio glitch and replace it with audio that was clean.

Exporting Error

So there was an error that came about while exporting. When the film was finished exporting, there were some clips are there was audio noise and then it would go. After doing some research, it appears that this is a bug in some Premiere softwares. There is a 2 second delay on the effect operating. How I got around this was dragging out the audio clip, and keyframing the audio so it starts when the clip starts. This why the audio was at -100 and it allowed for the denoiser to work. Once it reached the video clip everything worked out. However it was very tedious.

Finished Editing

After weeks of effort, sleepless nights, and and endless cups of tea, I had finally finished the edit. Although that needed to be done was the export and the visual diary. Nearly there :)

Poster

Here is a working poster for RAPTO, 18 days to go, almost there

Other Shoots and Editing

I finished filming last Thursday and I'd like to think now I've given myself enough time to make the film the best it can be. I have enough time for pick ups but here are some images from the remaining scenes.

 

Cafe Scene

The cafe scene was filmed with the guys and actor Darragh Water in the middle of March in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. A rough edited was cut as well which came together nicely.

Even More Filming

More filming will be done on Saturday. I managed to get permission to film in the Cafe in the Civic Theatre so I will be filming that scene early on Saturday, then once that is done I will head to my other location and shoot some more of the house stuff.

More Filming

On Monday the 29th of Feb I filmed some more footage in my Gran's house. 2 smalls scenes were filmed of me finding some pills that Joseph didn't take, as well as the 2nd bedroom scene. Also since the last blog post I have been syncing footage, as well as finding possible locations for the car park scene, the cafe scene and  getting my hands on a Garda outfit.

Some Updates

Today I spent planning out what I still need to shoot and try plan around my actor as well as the others guys in my year as I'm acting in their films also. I've calculated I have 8 scenes to do some which require Colin, some that don't. It was very helpful for me to do this because now I can organise myself and plan accordingly. I also did a small rewrite to some of the scenes in the script to make it flow better, as well as syncing the footage from a shoot we did the other day.

The Christmas Break and Getting The Ball Rolling

Over the Christmas I watched a lot of films and TV that related quite a bit towards my film. From Broadchurch to Making A Murder, Legend to ROOM, these films and TV shows helped me create some new ideas and shots for my filming.





This put me in good stead to start filming. Myself, Anthony, Stephen and Colin all headed to set as we filmed some exterior shots as well as shooting some indoor stuff as well. The performances by the cast and crew were great and it set us up nicely for the next shoot.

I also synced the footage which also allowed me to look back on the footage. I think there is enough there to work with and makes me confident moving forward on the project. It felt great that the project is finally underway and I'm looking forward to push it on.

The Finished Teaser Trailer

Here is the finished teaser trailer for my FYP "RAPTO".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPmp0_znjzk

Some Updated Photos of My Location

Here are some photos taken while myself and Anthony were at the location shooting footage for the teaser trailer.

Finding A Composer

I went out into the real world in an attempt to find the composer for my film. For finding a composer, I started with people who I knew wrote songs and are well accomplished on their instruments. Darragh Waters, who is a friend of mine was one person who I talked to about composing for my film. We are in a band together and I’ve known him my whole life so I knew he was capable but I ruled him out. He didn’t have a set up to record proper audio, and the software he uses to make his music pieces is computer based, which I wanted to stay away from. 

The second person who I got in contact with was Joseph Thomson who is my neighbours nephew who has been writing songs since the age of 11. Trained on piano and guitar, Joe has travelled Europe performing his songs and he to is very accomplished on guitar as well as singing and piano. I found that his songs are mostly acoustic pop songs and I just felt that the tone of his voice and style wouldn’t suit what I wanted. Even his piano playing is quite bouncy and I just wouldn’t feel right using him.

 The final person I looked at and the person I decided to use is Colin Hurley. There are a number of reason why I chose him. Firstly, he has composed for short films before including our recent film “PSYCHODELIC’. He has been playing music for 20 years and I have heard many of his scores. He has a professional set up and the main thing that swung it for me is that he is in the film. He will know the tone of it and what I want so we can work closely together to get that score. He will see the footage as it is occurring and just by being there will get an overall sense of what the film is and how it should sound and that is why I picked him. It was a good experience though looking for another aspect of telling my story as I would usually find royalty free music so it was a good process to go through.

Test for Colour Correction

Before you do any colour grading however you must ensure that your video is colour corrected. I used the Three-Way-Colour Corrector in Premiere to test and see if I could clean up the test footage that I filmed with Stephen.

It gives you a lot more control by using this plug-in and as you can see it makes a difference to your image. Another handy thing I learnt as well is using an adjustment layer while colour correcting. Using an adjustment layer means that you can grade the adjustment layer and place it on top of any clip you want instead of colour correcting every single clip which is a handy thing to know. 

Test for Colour Grading

Many Irish dramas use greys and blues in their colour grading and again it ties into this dark element that is about to occur. I was looking at was looking specifically at colour and colour grading for my film. This is something that seems to get overlooked by many students and is something that even when it is done, isn’t done well. I find that seeing a film using colour to drive the tone and story makes the film better because it’s using a subtle technique to tell the audience information without spelling it out. It tells the audience something bad is going to happen and it does, and that is what I want for my film. Here are some examples I did using both Premiere and Final Cut Pro. 

Testing Editing in 50fps

Here is a small test I did editing in 50fps. At the end of the film there is a montage that is shot in 50fps. I have shot video in 50fps however I had never edited it before so this was a good test for me to try.