The post-production work in 'Lunch'

This video is a part of 'Lunch' which is Roger's cultural differences task. In the video, the actor was played two characters at once. The reason why we do that is firstly because the realistic problem, we can not find another actors to act the role. Secondly, it shows one person experiences different lives between Britain and China. So making the video this way can deal with the problem short of actors, and present our theme in a supernatural way.

 

How we make it is that, when shooting, we do not change any parameter of camera, just keep it static, and shoot the same scene twice. One is the actor comes in from left side; the other is from right side. In the post-production process, I use the Rotobrush, mask the left side actor off frame by frame. Finally, I composite the left actor with the right one, it becomes to the video above.

 

From making this video, I have learned that post-production is like magic, it could not only make film reality but also change the way of narration. Besides, I have gained post-production experiences when making a film. It relevant with the supernatural events in my future project.

Lighting Session in Roger's house

This time we have been to Roger's house. What we have done in his house is practice the lights setting. Our group are in the room with windows, but the windows can not offer enough lights. So we use the red headlight as the main light. But if use the light directly, it will be too intensive, therefore, Roger taught us we can point it to the ceiling, then the diffuse reflection will made the lights more natural. And from this session, I know what is the usage of different gel. The blue gel will make the vision looks calm, The yellow gel makes the shot warm like sunshine, the green and red is to used some special situation that you want to demonstrate some weird thing. This session is a good chance to gain knowledge about lighting. And also to experience the cultural difference between Britain and China.

What is CG?

CG is short by Computer Graphics which is the outcome of the digital post-prouction development. It includes art and all the art creation such as presswork design, website design and so on. Generally speaking, CG film is mainly live action film but apply lot of virtual scene and special effects in. The ordinary method is add virtual scene, role and special objects to make film looks real and enhance the visual effects.

The narrow sense of CG film is that all the visual objects such as scene, role, object, special effects in the film are made by post-production. The visual effects are distinguished with conventional 2D animation.

No matter the feather flows in Forrest Gump

 

 

Or the virtual scene in Pearl Harbor, are all made by CG technique.

 

 

CG is widely used in film making, it is an important part of post-production, lots of fantasy film should use CG. It provide fully immersive to audiences.

 







Interview in Broadway





 This is another interview that about the cultural difference between our country and Britain. Each of us have chances to work in every part of this interview.  It is the first time I am interviewed by others, after the shooting finished, Roger teach us how to use Final Cut to edit these original materials. I thought Final Cut is hard to learn before the workshop, actually this editing software is similar to premiere.

From this interview, I have learned a new editing software, it is good for my future work in TV Company. I can not determin which editing software the company offer to me, therefore, the more software I have learned, the more opportunities I can get to work in my dreaming company.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button visual effects

Once mention about Benjamin Button, the fantastic visual come to audience mind. This film is one of famous film director David Fincher's works. The film is about a man named Benjamin who was born with weird disease, that is grow backwards. During the period of his growth, he endure frustrations and discrimination, however, he fall in love with a girl at first sight. The problem they should face to is Benjamin growing younger, he becomes a baby years later.

This is a fantasy story that throughout Benjamin’s whole life. How to shoot different phases of Benjamin’s life is the difficult thing. The post-production company Digital Domain firstly catches 120 facial expressions of Brad Pitt (Benjamin). Then, put this information into different 3D modules to create thousands of Brad’s facial modules, and composite them to different actors’ faces as the pictures below.

Besides, to make the modules moving, Digital Domain creates the CG modules frame by frame, and connects them to real actors. Therefore, before the youth age, Benjamin is not acted by Brad, only the face that is post-production composite.

From researching the post-production of this film, I found that post-production can make things reality, which is a way to ‘blind’ audiences’ eyes. Then, post-production should be the heavy workload when making a film, because Benjamin Button’s crew mentioned that the most difficult thing is recruit people does the post-production work. Nobody is interested in such a complicated post-production, even this is an excellent film. 

Reference research of fairy tale film and post-production (2)

Fairy tale films present with live action is usually incorporate with significant visual effects Greenhill and Matrix (2010). Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam are both famous fairy tale film directors. Although their film genre are the same, they are in different style. The key point should be the post-production way. For example, ‘Sweeney Todd’ is a black fairy tale film, the visual effect is dark and bloody, and the sound of it is horror and abnormal. However, Gilliam’s Brazil presents science fiction movie features, creates fictitious scenes and the sound of it was more nature than ‘Sweeney Todd’. These two films are presented in different way that is mainly because of post-production.

Korris and Macedonia (2002) has pointed out that many conventional film-making techniques are constantly replaced by digital nonlinear editing in post-production with substantial effects and tweaks made digitally. According to Greenhill and Matrix (2010) ‘Fairy tales are fictional narratives that combine human and nonhuman protagonists with elements of wonder and the supernatural’. To achieve the supernatural plots, post-production is necessarily to make surreal elements, such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, it used many visual effects and sound effects create the made-up story. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s movie Amelie from Montmartre consisted by warm colour vision and special effects to develop the fairy tale characteristic story.

David(1988)’s theory about narration film is that “’Narration of the subject’ is strictly identified with the formal possibilities of deictic representation in the film text, that is, its organization of point of view and its threading of the spectator’s vision therein”. In other words narration could present the subject of film by its structure and the connection with audience’s imagination. Fairy tale film is also requiring narration to create the fantastic plot that influence people’s thoughts about films even about themselves.

Reference research of fairy tale film and post-production (1)

These work above is the reference that relevant with my project, at the beginning, I want to research all the post-production fields of fairy tale film. However, when I narrow it to supernatural events, the editing and the sound effects can not work any more, therefore, this part is not present in my Learning Agreement, but from research these information. I can firmly know the general understanding of  post-production. And know what is fairy tale film, the progress of research reference is a improvement of my film theory. It helps me from confusing to clear gradually.  

Post-production is an important part of film. First of all, the narration of post-production is mentioned in many books. One of the most important ways to present the fairy tale film is the narrative method (Jack, 2011). Besides, John and Connelly (2011) rose that ‘editing is the main activity in post-production’. Post-production as a magical method, could stimulate the emotion of film by adding music in (John and Connelly, 2011). Then, the advanced technology of post-production is transforming the way visual effects are used in films (Cram, 2012). “One thing that modern effects have brought is the ability to be utterly perfectionistic” says Dixon (cited in Cram, 2012). Thus, editing, narration, sound and visual effects are significant elements of film.

Greenhill and Matrix (2010) explained about fairy tale film that, once the story has explained what the supernatural event is, why it has occurred, and its meaning within the person’s life, the fantastic then becomes either the “marvelous” or the “uncanny.” If the story attributes a rational explanation (such as drug-induced illusions or bad dreams) for the “apparently supernatural event”, it instantiates the uncanny. But if the narrative instead accepts the supernatural event as real and magical, it is marvelous (such as in fairy tales). If the narrative does not specify how the actions took place (as in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which offers no rationale for its supernatural incidents), the story remains simply classified within the fantastic (cited in Greenhill and Matrix 2010, 63). Hence, supernatural plots could determine the quality of a fairy tale film.

Real scene could hardly create supernatural events, so fairy tale film should be relevant with post-production.

Keith (2001) mentioned that ‘post-production involved the transfer of the negative to video, off-line and on-line editing, recording music and narration, and final track laying’. In my project, I would investigate the editing, music and narration of post-production.

AE weather change practice

The main part of my project is post-production. After Effect is the significant way to create post-production effects. Therefore, I make some particle effects in this video. The aim of making it is change the weather of a video. The first picture is the original photo That I shoot in Cambridge, it was a sunny day. I mask the blue sky off and add the cloudy in. Then I used the particle effects to create the smoke. After that, I want to present the rain drops put out the smoke, so I use the rain drops effects.

From making this short video,I learnt more skills of post-production. And I got the idea about how to create some supernatural scene by post-production. It is useful for me to make a fantasy film during my project researching.Although this video is just 9 seconds, I spent a whole night to do it. I know the post-production work needs patience, carefulness and time. I have confident to learn it well.

Ann's Grandmother Storyboard (2nd draft)

These sheets are the first scene of my storyboard-- Ann's Grandmother. I strictly rely on the requirement of storyboard writing to create it. Each of the shot should includes the picture(what present on the screen), the sounds(atmosphere, synchronised, effects, music, levels, fade in/out), the action of actor, weather, time, the transition(wipe, cut,dissolve, fade in/out) between each frame, the motion of camera(track, pan/right/left, tilt up/down, crab, dolly, zoom, static, pull)，the framing(LS, MSCU, ECU/BCU, XLS, XCU, ES, Angle, Focal Length, Composition), even the cloth of actor. In other words, storyboard is to present a film on paper. That is what I try to do in the storyboard bellowing.

After tutorial with Deborah, there is a jump cut between shot 2 with shot 3 because of the same framing, it is better to change the angle between the two shots. What is more, if the actor is moving, using some arrows to present the change of his position. Storyboard is created for crew who will work for this film, therefore, easy to understand and details are significant.

SCENE 1:

Shot 1~ Shot 2

 Shot 3~Shot 4

 Shot 5~Shot 6

 Shot 7~ Shot 8

 Shot 9~ Shot 10

 Shot 11

Summery of After Effect workshop

The AE session comes to the end, I have got many post-production thinking from it. This session is benefit for my project. In my previous script, I have wrote a Fantasy story. A grandmother become a girl who protect her granddaughter until she graduate from university. In the end, the grandmother become a star in the sky. I asked Simon(AE teacher) how to make this scene. He gave me a really nice idea. Firstly, when shooting, I should shoot the same frame twice, first is the background with no actor's in. Do not move and change any property of the camera, shoot the frame with actor. Secondly, when proceed to the post-production work, I have two method to mask the actor off, one is using Matte Difference, it will cut out the difference between the two frames automatically. However, if shoot in the outdoor, the clouds is changing, the first method would does not work. Another one is Rotobrush which is an useful tool to mask objects off, however, it would take long time to work, because I should do it frame by frame. But the outcome of the this tool is excellent.

AE have many useful function, The session is too short, therefore, I should learn it continually to develop my project.

Story board 1st draft

This is my first time to draw a storyboard, it is based on the scripts I have wrote in previous journal. I have finished the beginning eight shot of my scripts. The left side is the film frame, and the right side is the detail of the pictures. The the black mark is the tutor's comment which shows many disadvantages in my storyboard, the first thing is the sound, I should write each frame one sound action. Second one is the transition between each frame is important to write. The location of the scene need to be mentioned at the beginning. I always ignore details of storyboard and scripts writing, because the pictures are shown in my mind, so that I regard some details unnecessarily. However, that is the big mistake I have made. Because Jools mentioned in my scripts commets that storyboard and scripts is for the production team looking for appropriate actors, and other cooperative partners, so I need to present everything the film to complete the storyboard and scripts. So in the second draft of my scripts and storyboard, I will pay more attention to the details of my work.

Ann‘s grandmother script （1st draft）with Jools' comments

ETARY

Ann put a bound of lily in front of her grandmother's grave.

Folding her hands together and seems talking something.

Suddenly it was raining.

A lady passes an umbrella to Ann.

She raised her head.

ANN

Thank you!

The lady smiles and nods her head.

ANN

How can I return it to you?

LADY

My house No.XXX.

SCENERY SHOT (TRAINSITION)

LADY'S HOUSE (OUTSIDE THE DOOR)

Ann knocks at the door it was opened with a squish.

A elder woman opens the door, looks at Ann

ANN

hi, i just return this umbrella to the lady, does she live here?

the woman takes the umbrella and say

WOMAN

Thank you.

At the same time, she closed the door.

STREET (NIGHT)

Ann is on her way back home

a psychopath catches her and pushes her to the wall

Ann struggling, shouting and crying,but no one could help her.

Suddenly the lady appeared to beat the psychopath off.

Ann hugs the lady and cry out loudly.

LADY

he is gone.

ANN

who are you?

LADY

Siren. Your school mate

ANN

why I did not met you before?

LADY

because you always focus on study.

It is too late, I got to go.

The lady soon walk away.

SCHOOL CORRIDOR (DAY)

Ann walk in the school corridor, Siren walk forward and pat her shoulder and run quickly.

SIREN

I have a meeting.

ANN

could you please tell me your name again?

other school mate looks back and answers ANN

MATE

I have told you four years, but you still can not remember my name.

at the same time Siren says:"s-i-r-e-n, siren"

Ann smiled

ONE MONTH LATER BEFORE GRADUATION

SCHOOL DAY

Ann sit behind Siren

ANN

it is the last day before graduation, how about take a photo to mark our university life?

SIREN

EN...sounds good.

PHOTO STUDIO

photographer controls the camera

Ann and Siren stand in front of the background

PHOTOGRAPHER

3,2,1. good.

Come back 2 days later to get your photo.

GRADUATION DAY

Ann walk to Siren's classroom, her seat is empty

Ann find Siren every where, but can not find her.

SIREN'S HOUSE

Ann knocks the door anxiously, but no one answered

she ask the pass-by people

ANN

do you know where is the houselord?

PASS-BY PEOPLE

there is no one lives in for years.

Ann can not believe.

PHOTO STUDIO

the photos lay on the table, only Ann was in it.

ANN

Do you see the girl take photos with me?

PHOTOGRAPHER

Are you drunk? only you come here that day.

Ann can not believe it.

ROAD

she run on the road.

The suspicious scene come back to her memory: in siren's house, in the school corridor, in the cemetery.

suddenly, she got an idea,she go back to cemetery.

CEMETERY (AFTERNOON)

Ann runs to her grand mother's grave

Siren appeared to her,

SIREN

I know you will come back, but I can not stay with you anymore, because it is time for you to face your life by your self. I will always stare at you.

SIREN walk in Ann's grandmother's grave, and lay inside. She suddenly became the sun, and grandmother smile at Ann.

Ann turns back , tears dropped from her eyes, she dry her tears and says:" It's time to start my new life."

Actually I want to explain Ann's grandmother dead long time ago, she become a girl who others can not see to protect Ann. After graduation,  Ann should be an adult to face the society, so her grand mother can not protect her anymore.

Jools comment:

How do we know it is her Grandmother's grave? what tells the viewer this? Nothing written in this scene tells us anything about these relationships. Suddenly it was raining isnt the best way to tell us that the rainstorm is sudden. Is it severe rain? it feels like it the way you have written this.

You should write number not noxxx. you should alao give us a number. Why not simply make one up?

You need to write the transition (not trainsition) scene. We need a location. 'scenery' isn't a location. This document is for the production team as well as finding, actors, set and costume designers, so 'Scenery' shot doesn't tell us anything. You have written it as a 'scene heading' but perhaps it simply needs to be 'action' and not a 'scene heading'. Even so you need to tell us what we see.

'opened with a squish' I don't understand that.

a 'psychopath'. This is too easy. Imagine what we would be seeing on the screen. This is waht you shuld write. You write 'psychopath' as if this imeidately means something but it doesn't. psychopaths can look a number of different ways so be more specific. Every word is an opportunity to tell a story.

Your explanation at the end make sense and you need to think about the story and the screen. watch a film over the weekend, on television, that you can record if possible and then examine it to see how the story is told through dialogue and more importantly through ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. What the characters do and don't do as well as what they say

After Effects Practice

After Effects is a basic element of film post-production, it is useful for my MA project. The in class time is limited, so I make this tiny video to practice the After Effects skills. It is my first time to use it, and the old  AE edition that I got, therefore, this 6 seconds video shows a rough effects. I have used three pictures to make this video, it looks simple, but takes me 5 hours to do that.

This practice makes me more skillful with manipulating After Effects than before. I know how to matting, how to set the vectorgraph in video, and how to change to colour and so on. Matting is the most practical part of film-making, because it makes me possible to add supernatural scene in film, such as putting two same people in one scene. I think it is a good start to learn more complicated post-production techniques. They make most impossible plots possible, thus, I feel confident in making fairy tale film.

Three original pictures are as follow:

The Analysis of Tim Burton's film (1)

Tim Burton is a director and producer of the fairy tale movies. From the moment he appeared in the sight of all, he was loved by fans like the black humor and marked with the styles like solitary, bold, and dark and so on. Two dozen of his movies are mainly took the fairy tale materials, but he presented the fairy tales in ways of dark abnormally. His movies highlight not just the simple fairy tales but the irony of reality beyond the fairy tales field by means of Gothic style. The distinct contrast of beauty and fear formed the great art tension which is not only on visual but also on psychological.


It was because of the expression form of Tim Burton, which is inconsistent with the mainstream movie, so there has much incomprehension about him. Many people think that the existing of fairy tales is to meet people's aspiration of the beautiful life, to provide the children a good guide for the future life. The Gothic fairy tale is precisely the opposite, however, it takes the most "pure" things in the world to reflect the most "ugly" things, and set the hell of the background in the "Corpse Bride" to irony the beauty in world, this inevitably opposed by the people who hold the mainstream thinking concept. But what they did not aware is that the greater visual tension and dramatic tension present by this exaggerated contrast maybe could reached what the mainstream fairy tales can not reach.

5 Words and A Story

Ann have a good friend Siren, they are classmates they play together, eat together, go to class together.Siren always give Ann a hand when she faced some problem. One day before graduation, they go to photo studio take photos as momento. The day at graduation, Ann could not find Siren, she is missing. Ann call her but can not get through, Ann go to Siren's home but nobody in. A passer-by tell her this house is no one lives in for long time. Ann can not believe it, she back to photo studio to get all the photos. There is only Ann inside.

She ask the photographer: "do you see the girl photoed with me ? "

"No, you came here alone."

Suddenly, every suspicious memories come back: people's wondering eyes and so on.

Ann's tear drop fallen down to the photo, Siren suddenly appear on it, says:"you can find me in XX."

Ann come to the place at the expected time, but this is her grandmother's grave, she dead 10 years ago. Suddenly, Siren appeared and smile,then walk into her grandmother's grave. Ann turns back and closes her eyes, tears dropped from her eyes and says:" It's time to start my new life."

5 Words:  Happiness, Worry, Sad, Love, Growth

The Analysis of Tim Burton's film (2)

The Gothic movies are mainly about the strange and mysterious adventure stories happen in dark and secluded places (such as the deserted castle). However, the fairy tales are mainly faced to the children, they are always the fiction works with a strong fantasy color and shape the character images through rich imagination, fantasy, exaggeration and symbol tools to reflect the life, and the stories plot often be strange, intricate and fascinating. The Gothic fairy tale is a combination that it doesn't take the traditional subject of warm and nice, but a non-mainstream expression form. The appearance of Gothic fairy tale has brought the modern mainstream fairy tale another new narrative way which turns into the fairy tale didn't suitable for children. Moreover, the tension of the movie allows it form the effect of "1+1≥2" which is the original single element can’t reach by the collision of the two distinct aspect in drama and vision. It not only provide a new expression mode for the contemporary bizarre movies, but also offer the right understand way on the Gothic fairy tale movies to the audience. Most subjects of this style movie are focused on the human nature which is the satire for the dark side in society. They take the nice thing brought by the "ugly thing" to satirize the things looks beauty, together with the tension created by the contrast to sublimate the theme of movie and the deeper ideological connotation was reflected. This make the audience understand the meaning of beauty and ugliness from another perspective that not just from the visual point, but also from the heart to realize the truth, kind and beauty. In this way, the Gothic fairy tale gives a profounder psychological feeling which is the most significance of art tension in Gothic fairy tale.

The movie style of Tim Burton has very obvious features which is different with the aesthetics movie that it does not explore ideas by profound imagery, but in the form and content to rendering the audience on their ideology. The Gothic fairy tale is not the light-hearted fairy tale for children, but the instructive movies full of irony on real world which touch the people's heart, this black humor often appear in Tim Burton's movies.





His first movie of "Vincent" was treated as the prohibitive movie for children by Disney Executive and blocked at the moment it appeared, and it was this movie that has laid out his later movie style of fantastic fairy tale. There also have some bright tone in his movies, such as the "Big Fish", "The Chocolate Factory" and so on, but he continue merged with the fantasy and adventure plot into Gothic movies, and we can find this art tension generally exist in Tim Burton's movies. The development of Gothic fairy tales is rapidly growing and more and more audience turn to love the black humor. And from the movies of Tim Burton in recent years, the movie tone presents the clear and canty trend gradually, but still invariable thing is the human nature subjects, such as the "Alice in Wonderland", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Big Fish". We look forward that the art tension of Gothic fairy tale with the Tim Burton's characteristics will last long expressed in his future works, and perhaps his movie is about to become the mainstream.

The characteristics of Gothic fairy tale film

Combining with the fine works of Tim Burton to analyze the characteristics of the Gothic fairy tale.


The characteristics of sense of vision and hearing: the expression forms mainly focused on the black and somber tone of the screen, the exaggerated characters and magical scenes. The music style always is more bizarre and eerie. The vision, hearing and music combine together to form the strong special style of characteristics. These has reflected in many movies of Tim Burton, such as the "Corpse Bride", "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Sweeney Todd", all these movies took the dark screen style as the basic tone of the movie and the dark and sunless scenes throughout the whole movies under the weird background music to form a unique sense of Gothic.





The characteristics of drama: in the movie, a majority of the stories are the fairy tale theme of fantasy and adventure tours that they always happened in the castles, underground, and other dark, hidden and gloomy places. Set the bizarre plot of the background, based on the weird and different characters personality to consist the structure of the movies, as well as the satire on the complex reality life through the fairy tales which lost the innocence. At the same time, the designing of the character images is one of the major features of the movies. Under the character images who with the demonize appearance there always have a soft and kind heart, or the characters who looks kind will always do some thing be vicious, but the heroes of the movies must be kind hearted, the ending always give people with profound inspiration and form the effect of irony. In the movie of "Sweeney Todd", the distinctive Gothic opera add more color to the movie, it is the dark tone that instantaneously created the delicate dramatic tension which made the movie no longer rigidly in the Gothic style and also contained a dark and merry temperament.