Sorting footage.

Once we had the footage, I uploaded it all to my PC, I then created folders for both cameras and also created a folder I could place random footage in. The task was to sort through footage and find what was usable, and also to connect footage from each camera for each scene as we had two rolling at the same time. It was obvious when we left filming for the day that we might not have enough footage, but when I dwindled it down it was clear that we only maybe had 1 min max of clean cut footage. This is not enough for what we want. The next step is to get together as a group and discuss whether we do another day of filming, or we look at taking another approach.

This is a image of the cameras we were using.

This is a concept for the opening sequence I had been working on, it maybe only a couple of seconds long, but took nearly a day and a half to complete.

I first did the smoke title, which was done by a tutorial on Youtube. This may sound simple but I still had to add in my own calculations and attributes to create the smoke, I also had to have each letter transforming from smoke into a solid letter with the use of key framing a mask at the precise time the smoked moved across the letters. I then flattened the worded title, and placed the footage of Aly picking up the flower. This was a learning step as the footage was very shakey and I had to apply the warp stabilizer VFX to stabilize and get the best footage I could out of that shot. Once this was all done I imported the file to Final Cut pro, and gave the footage a 'orange and teal' filter. This type of filter is similar to the colour filter they use in Micheal Bays Transformers movies and give the footage a dark vibrancy which I quite like.

This is the out come of that work.

 

Filming

Early monday morning we all meet at Tupare gardens as planned. Logan and I took care of bringing the cameras that we needed for the day, Kate and Alyse brought props that were made for the film, while Pastel brought her niece who we were going to shoot in our short video. While me and logan set the cameras up, Alyse was in charge of makeup for Aly and pastel got her niece Charly ready. Kates props were perfect, she had made daisy chains, homemade boats made from sticks, flax, and leaves, and a stunning cross we were planning to use for our final scene.

We commenced with filming and shot as much footage of Charly as we could, it was difficult to keep track of her as she moved very quickly, it was also difficult to try and get her to do what we wanted, but we expected a bit of that, and there was no real pressure to achieve perfect footage on a days shoot. 

The day was very tiring, for both the group and especially Charly, but we managed to go the full day only having to stop once we felt it was enough of Charly. We felt we had some good footage and called it a day. 

The best part of the day for me was trying to capture something beautiful, and Aly with Charly dressed in white while in a green environment looked stunning. 

Here are some shots of the day.

Location

Our next task was to seek a location to film our piece in. First we had an idea of heading out the back of the Witt institute where a graveyard is located. We took a walk on a nearby path that ran close to a river and then lead back around to the graveyard. We found that the scenery just wasn't what we were after, we wanted something a little more colorful and open. We decided this was not the place.
That same afternoon we went to another location, Tupare. Straight away we knew this was the place.
Tupare is a landscaped garden that over looks the Waiwhakaiho river on the outskirts of New Plymouth. The propertys original developer was prominent businessman Sir Russell Matthews who brought the land in 1932. The properties landscaped garden contains majestic trees, a water feature and extensive plantings in different settings.

These are some photos taken on the day we were scouting.

Thoughts

Our initial thought was to do something with Pastel's son Elan. We thought of how the world would look through his eyes, how his daily routine determined his emotions, We thought of how he might feel lonely when Pastel has to go to study or work. We talked of making the story sad until the end when he hears his mother opening the door after she arrives home from a long day away. We then wanted to develop the story more and we had an idea of Aly watching Pastels daily routine, and then her having a vision of herself reenacting Pastels life. This was great, but we needed to follow the brief and let the story evolve itself. We had other ideas to come.
Our next idea was to film children and have a spirit attached to them. This was no major idea really, just a thought that we abandoned shortly after.
Our next idea was as simple as someone putting on her shirt inside out, and for the rest of the day going through a series of unfortunate events. We then stepped it up and  had an alternate version to go with it were it showed that person having a normal day if she had put her shirt on the right way.
This was a great idea from the team.
Our last idea was discussed over a picnic at the zoo with Pastels son and her 2yr old niece Charly. This is what our group needed and we came up with a plan to film Charly and Aly. Pastel had an idea of them walking through a path and coming to a graveyard. The idea was that once they reached the graveyard Aly would disappear revealing that Charly was actually walking through a path with her mothers ghost.
We decided to go with this last idea as time was wearing thin and we needed to make decisive decisions.
We also left the idea as that. We still needed to allow it to evolve on its own.

Videos

Our group has a facebook group page where we keep in contact regularly and do most of our research and decision making. We also view images and video through there as well. As we had decided on doing a film a while after was an explosion of short film clips from members of the group popping up on our news feed, Videos we liked... that had emotion, and that just had some great shots in there.
These are some of those videos.

Idea

Very early on we had the idea of making a short film. we had the experience of piecing together images to form a "motion picture' I guess you could say, in our first project. This was done by creating images from illustrator and moving them over to after effects enabling us to be able to manipulate each image and also give them the dimension of time.

A while ago Pastel had shown me some short films, Instantly I was inspired by them, and had thoughts of creating my own short film, that would be in a similar fashion. These films were simple and elegant,they made you feel emotion towards the characters in a short amount of time while giving the audience a sense of  openness and space (not throwing everything in your face/or cramming).

Here a two that were the most inspiring to me.

I guess the idea for making a short film came from wanting to push ourselves from the last project, and saying, "hey, lets do a real movie".  

Our task now was to incorporate 'Inside out' and let that mold itself into a story we could film.

Inside out

We started with a class brainstorm determining exactly what is 'inside out'. There were many ideas from members in the class, birth, death, disease, feelings or emotions, depression, I guess for me when I pictured 'inside out' all I could see was someone watching something or an event from behind a glass panel not being able to intervene but only could sit there and watch as what ever happened.. happened.

For me, 'inside out' leaned more towards parallel dimensions, death and/or afterlife, a spirit watching you from beyond the grave.

New Assignment-Inside out

Before this assignment started we made a decision that we all wanted to stay in the same group. This was due to the fact that we all worked so well together in our last project. We found each others strengths and gave one another tasks to complete each week, that were done without any fuss or drama. 

We also have an addition of Aly who we already know will gel with the group easily and will bring another dimension to our tight nip team.

Personally I am looking forward to working with a great set of minds again.