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.