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.