[Leeds]
Short Film 4: Leeds
[24th April - 14th May]
Research
During this time, I didn't feel that much of the need to do any extra research as I mostly referenced from the earlier research for the more practical skills and key binds that I missed. With that being said, there still were a handful of things I researched primarily about colour grading as it was my least comfortable area to do during the editing process.
As for the location planning, I was pretty happy with the selection of areas that I managed to note down, and I feel comfortable going forward with the shooting day.
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Because of some misunderstandings about which date the shooting day, unfortunately, my friend that was supposed to accompany me wasn't able to come because of his work shifts.
Because of this, I will again not be using the Gimble and focusing on handheld operations.
Filming
During the filming, I felt a lot more comfortable than I did when filming in London. Because I packed significantly less than on my other trips, I felt less fatigued and sore.
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During this trip, I found that it was limiting how I can't travel too far from the city because of transport. And also because of the size of the city compared to the other projects, some places require travel by car or taxi, which was too costly and unreasonable for me to justify. I will keep this in mind whenever I travel to a new location where I am unsure about the transport available.
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Fortunately, because I was still editing the music I was able to adjust the song to fit the number of clips I had gotten so I do not need to go back for extra footage.
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Editing
For the editing, because I have gotten a lot more comfortable with the software, I was able to further improve the colour grading process even. This included detailed masking around specific parts of the image to enhance the focal point of the clip and tracking of said subject to account for camera shake.
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To further challenge myself I decided to animate some of the footage in time with the lyrics. this included using the fusion tab and using the node map and also keyframes to animate the image. Furthermore, I have also decided to animate some kinetic typography with text to match the lyrics as well.
I quite enjoyed this type of editing process and for future reference, I will be focusing on this part of editing along side with the colour grading.
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Evaluation
Similar to Nottingham, I felt very prepared on what needed to happen during the shooting day because of planning ahead of time. I feel that given the minor setbacks with shooting day, I am very happy with what came of the short film. I explored some animation to add more interest and I think it turned out very well so if I were to make another short film, I will continue to explore in that direction.
As said during filming, If I am not able to drive or the budget is tight I will have to consider the cost of travel in and around the city during the planning phase.
Other than that I have chosen to not use the audio as I felt it will clash with the music as it turned out to be more vocal-based. This is both a Stylistic choice and also a limitation choice as I was not able to use the recorder because of others in my course were renting it at that time.