Pre production

Now that I had researched My ideas and projects techniques it was now time to start my Pre-Production and planning before my pitch. I first wanted to test out my capabilities with the B-roll technique to see what gaps I needed to improve and what part of the technique I was good at. So I came up with the idea to create a cinematic B-roll for the creation of a cheese toast, I picked this food as it is something small and easy that I know how to make. To begin I first created a shot list on my notes app so that I could visualize what this idea was going to look like. Originally I wanted to incorporate a segment where my actor would pour a glass of apple juice to go alongside the toast but unfortunately did not have any on the day that I started filming. Here is an image of what my shot list looked like.

I then politely asked my sister to help me film, Which she kindly said yes to. With this sorted I could now move onto filming. For this test footage I used a Sony ZV ELOM2 I had tested this camera during my research and had found that it worked well as a high quality beginner friendly camera. I decided that for my test footage id try film hand held as I had heard that this was a good way to film this technique from the tutorials I had researched. With all this in mind I started filming, the filming went fairly well but with a few re-shoots due to some scenes looking off or not fitting the pacing of my video. Once my footage was filmed I took the footage back to college and compiled all my clips together. Here was the rough test footage I was left with. 

For this test footage I added a slow motion effect and color graded the sequence. Unfortunately however, the color grading has not worked the way i wanted it to leaving me with mismatched footage. This isn't to big of a deal though as I am likely going to improve on this test footage and the slow motion effect is the technique im mainly trying to practice here. Speaking of the slow motion technique here is how I created it in premier: 

I first cut the segment of the footage that I wanted:

I then right clicked the area I wanted the be slow motion then clicked Speed/Duration:

I then adjusted the speed to 40% then set the Time interpolation Optical flow:

After this I then clicked onto sequence, then render sequence to render the slow motion making it feel a lot smoother:

Rendering works by using the frames of my video to generate extra frames that can allow for my video to be a lot slower and longer while looking smooth and not choppy. Unfortunately however if there are not enough frames for the computer to generate from you are left with issues such as warping, ghosting, and stuttering. Which has slightly happened to me during this test footage, to fix this in my proper footage I will film my raw footage at 50 fps in the cameras settings. As this will give my camera more frames to render from. Once I understood this I decided to test this feature of filming. First of all here is a slow motion video of a box falling shot at 25 fps. 

And here is a slow motion video of a box falling at 50 Fps 

As you can tell the box falling in the 25 fps video has a lot more ghosting, stuttering and warping. Then in the 50 Fps video. Along with this I noticed from this test footage that motion blur can have a big effect on slow motion video. To fix this in my main project I must adjust my shutter speed and make sure it is not low. As a low shutter speed means that more light enters the camera per frame which can increase a videos motion blur. I don't want to change the shutter speed to much however, as I will need some motion blur for some of my transitions. 

In the mean time I sent my test footage out to my tutors to try and receive some feedback on what they thought of my project. Here is what they said: 

It seems that the transitions work well but are sometimes a bit disorientating. To fix this I must use less aggressive camera movements as well as a utilizing more fluid transition techniques such as speed ramping. I must also make sure that none of my shots are wonky and that whatever I'm trying to focus my viewers attention on stays within the rule of thirds. This will allow my viewer to be less confused on what is going on. Here is a video I watched describing the rule of thirds. 

To try and improve my transition techniques I decided to practice some speed ramping in the the studio. Speed ramping is a technique i saw being used in almost every B-Roll footage that i researched, The technique speeds up footage usually around cuts helping them to link better together as well as giving the footage a more professional fluid look. If im going to make a cinematic food B-roll it is necessary that i learn this technique as it is the most commonly used effect in this kind of footage. That being said here is first attempt. 

And here is how I made it. 

I first clicked on Fx then Time Remapping then Speed on both my clips: 

I then press P to get the pen tool then choose where I want footage to be speed ramped:

I then moved my speed up to 250 on both clips:

I then grab each half of the marker and pull them towards the other clip

After this I twist this thing to make the speed ramp steeper 

With this technique now learnt, I decided to add some speed ramping to my original test footage along with this i added another technique known as a boomerang repeating. This technique replays a clip then plays it back again creating an engaging effect that focuses on the product for a little longer. I added this effect as my tutor recommended that i focus on my product for longer to avoid my video containing to much footage that doesn't focus on the product (he gave me this advice in my feedback). Here is my original footage this time edited with a boomerang technique and speed ramping technique as well as a transition i found online.   

And here is how i made the boomerang technique in premier pro.

I fist cut the clip at where I want it repeated:

I then deleted the end of the clip and made a copy of the original clip:

After this I reversed the copied clip by right clicking the clip going into speed/duration I then clicked reverse speed: 

I then reverse the copied clip once again so that it is facing the right way. Leaving me with this footage 

Overall i think this test footage is a slight improvement over the first. However the editing is quite awful in some areas and you can defiantly see where i have been testing my editing techniques (for example the shot where the actor places the bread over the sandwich is repeated multiple times by accident). But the main issue with this test footage still lies in the raw footage itself. most notably this shot here:

This shot is most definitely the worst in the sequence. my idea for this shot was to be an overhead view of my actor assembling the sandwich, but this has failed for many reasons. To start the camera immediately goes upside-down which is why i believe in my feedback a lot of people mention how my footage seems disorientating and sickly. It doesn't fit the rest of the footage and doesn't give the viewer enough time to adjust to what is going on. What doesn't help is that my camera does not line well with the product and the angle is just a bit off which adds to the unnatural feel. and to finish the shot ends with a transition that i have over used. With this in mind i decided to reflect on my this test footage and figure out how to improve and what to do next:

What have I learnt and how can I improve 

• I need to film my footage at around 50 fps to that my slow motion footage looks nice and smooth 
• I need to keep a consistent pace while filming and make use i done move to fast 
• I need to avoid cramped spaces while filming otherwise my footage will look to zoomed in (this happened on the shot where my actor pulls out the knife) 
• Boomerang repeating is a great technique that can help me improve my videos engagement but i shouldn't over use it 
• Speed ramping is also a good technique to use in my video but i think i sped it up a little to fast in my final test footage which makes my film feel a little disorientating 
• I need more practice with both speed ramping and boomerang repeating 
• I think its best to avoid overhead shots as I dont want to mess up the angle again
• I dont think my footage needs to move as much as i did in my test footage
• I need to keep a grid on while filming so that i can stick to the rule of thirds 
• I should try use less vertical and forward moving shots as they dont match the cinematic B-roll technique seen in some of the footage i researched by Daniel Schiffer and other creators. instead i should try record at a more curved angle that focuses on the product.
• If i am going for a more curved angle i should avoid making steps as i do not have access to a dolly. This was something i noticed in the test footage i recorded for my speed ramping test. 
• Maybe i should experiment with blocking 
• A lot of my footage relies on whip pans that leave the camera focusing on things like the wall for to long to fix this i should try and practice some in-camera transitions
• I need to keep the cameras concentration on the product more 
• I need to see if there are and other editing techniques I can use 
• I have learnt how to coordinate my actor during a cinematic B-roll 
• I have learnt that creating a shot list is important to creating a good cinematic B-roll food video. 
• I don't have to link every shot together making every transition link together can feel repetitive I should try experiment with match cuts or just fast paced cuts

After reflection I decided to learn and practice some transitions to try and make the transitions in my video more satisfying and fluid. While doing this I also wanted my test footage to feel more professional than the test footage I used for my speed ramping. So this time I asked my friend Emily to act for me instead of doing a transition of a simple object. 

I first re-watched this video on a simple in camera throwing transition (I got my sister to help me with this one because I couldn't be bothered to bring and cut food in college). Here is the video along with my attempt: 

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I next wanted to try another in camera transition this time it was a match cut this technique is simple and an easy one to try in different ways. Here's my attempt along with a more professional way i can use this technique:

After this I decided to try another transition this one is known as a post whip pan. This transition is essentially a traditional whip pan where you move the camera incredibly fast to cut to anther clip. but it is instead shot in post production while you are editing. Here's a video I watched on how to create it along with my attempt: 

In hindsight I probably shouldn't have used the match cut footage for this transition as the camera doesn't really move with the transition. But at least I now understand that I need to still move the camera for this transition. So overall im glad I made this mistake during my testing rather than in my actual project. It's at this point in my project that I'm really starting to understand how important it is to gather test footage. This was something I needed to improve on during my previous project and I'm glad that I made that decision as I am really seeing the benefits of gathering test footage. In the meantime however I wanted to practice more in post transitions so I decided to have a go at a zoom transition. Here's a video I watched to understand the technique along with my attempt:

I liked this zoom transition a lot and thought it would work really well with a B-roll cinematic food video. But I did think that the blur could do with some increasing. I next wanted to try out a prism transition. This is where you swipe a prism across the camera to create a satisfying cut as seen in this video.

unfortunately however I did not have a prism available to use so instead I tried to find an effect in premier that would achieve the same technique. Thankfully I found this one:

And here is my attempt at this transition:

After this I had a talk with my tutor about my idea and she gave me some feedback on what she thought. She mentioned that while she liked the concept she didn't think viewers would be able to understand what was going on. To fix this problem I decided to add some dialogue to the start of my project to give the viewer a good understanding of what was going on. Here is the dialogue I wrote for this idea:

Script Template.docx

While writing my script I wanted to try and parody traditional Samurai movies and TV shows. To do this I first researched the codes and conventions of a parody then researched the codes and conventions of samurai media. I did all this research on this Miro board. I gained a better understanding of both genres during my research which led to me testing out some of the techniques I had seen in these videos starting off with the impact frame and flash technique I had seen in the "way of the blade video". Here is my attempt:

While I was very happy with this technique this test footage did leave me a little worried about my fight choreography for this project. Up until this point I had only been studying the work of Sage Brandu taking notes on what parts of his choreography made the footage feel engaging and entertaining. Here are the notes I made:

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This however did not feel like enough research to direct an entire fight so I decided to do more research on the techniques and skills I could use in my footage. This is where I came across the glide cam. The glide cam is a tool that creates smooth satisfying footage by limiting the amount of hand movement needed to record a moving shot. This slow smooth movement can be used to build suspense for the build up of a scene that will lead up to a fight. Here is an example of a glide cam being used to build suspense. 

As you can see the effect is being used to create a lot of suspense in this ad. It slowly moves towards the focus creating an unnatural, claustrophobic, uncomfortable feeling for the viewer. As if someone is to close to you or moving towards you in a threatening manner. This builds suspense as the viewer anticipates what will happen when the camera gets to close. This effect can work well with so many genres for example in horror it can make feel as if a character is being chased by an invisible supernatural force only presented by the camera. Like in this scene from the shinning for example:

Its as if the director Stanley Kubrick is using the glide cam (also known as steady cam) to enhance the story by adding an element that can be interpreted by the viewer sub-consciously. I looked into this and found out that this technique is a form of visual story telling. Which is a method that uses the images on the screen such as, the shadows, camera techniques, color, and editing techniques to help tell the story rather then the dialogue or narration. This technique is very common and has been used in many more ways then just the glide cam. For example the use of color in the film inside out (an animated film where emotions are depicted as living beings that inhabit a persons head) is used to depict what emotion each character is representing. This is why the character of sadness is shown to have blue skin while the character of joy is shown to have bright glowing yellow skin similar to the sun which is often associated with happiness. 

A great source that i used to research the effects of visual story telling through color was this video.

This influenced me to experiment with colours alongside my glide cam to enhance my videos visual story telling. However I want to approach this cautiously as in past projects i have experimented with things like colour symbolism and came to the conclusion that that i had run into it to quickly to the point that it became too symbolic for my target audience. To avoid this problem with this project i want too dial it down a bit, and use colour as a much more simple visual story telling technique. To do this i will use the most simple way visual story telling can be told. That being using colour to represent what side a character is on, this has been used numerous times most notably in the star wars franchise where characters morals and side are represented by the color of their weapons with blue being used to represent good and red being used to represent bad. 

For my project I currently aim to achieve this by making one of my characters wear blue while the other wears red which indicates that these characters could be rivals. While this technique is very basic it is extremely effective at adding more visual story telling to my idea. Along with my suspenseful glide cam that indicates the fight that is about to arise between the 2 samurai i believe that id of created a good demonstration of visual story telling for a beginner such as myself. 

With my visual story telling worked out i decided that it would be a good idea to practice my skills with the glide cam so that when it comes to filming my final video i will be fully equipped to manage the equipment as professionally as i can. Thankfully there are plenty of videos that teach people ways to practice with a glide cam. Here are the videos i watched to practice my technique:

This video helped me get the right movements for operating a glide cam which I practiced in the studio in this video here:

During my practice I tried my best to focus my camera on the cardboard cross seen here:

after @@@@ attempts here is my best shot:

Now that I had some experience with a glide cam and transitions. I wanted to further develop my b-roll filming skills to see if I could make a video that was an improvement over the cheese toastie test footage. To do this I brought a the Sony  ZV ELOM2 home with me during the Easter holidays and created a cinematic foot B-Roll of my mum making a roast dinner. This dish was a lot more complicated then my previous test footage but also offered more opportunity for me to test out all the new techniques i had learnt. Unfortunately however I was not able to bring the glide cam home as it had already been signed out. This wasn't too big of a problem though as it just reminded me to make sure everything wasn't already signed out for when I came to my actual filming. To begin just as i did with the cheese toastie test footage I created a shot list for making a roast dinner:

I then filmed each task and planned how id want each one to look just before I filmed it. Looking back I'm not to sure whether or not this was a good idea as I did lose track of which clips followed each-other. But in the end this was the video I had created once all my editing was complete.  

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The editing for this video went fairly well but before any of it started I ran into a big issue. The camera I used shot in 4k while this greatly enhances my videos quality it also makes editing footage a lot more difficult as my computer cannot handle the high quality footage. This made editing impossible as my computer would constantly freeze and lag. To solve this issue I had to convert all my high quality footage into Proxie files. Proxie files are lower resolution versions of an original file that switch back to a higher resolution once you export the footage. The lower resolution allows your footage to be edited without lag making them very useful. Creating them is also very simple as all you need to do is right click all your files then click proxy then click create proxy then set it to "H264 QuickTime Proxy"

Then you'll need to wait a for Adobe media encoder to create the proxies. But once it does they should all be ready to edit.  🎉🎉🎉

With my shots now editable I began by trying to add the tittle zoom feature that I had seen in a lot of the footage I had researched. I did this by first Adding cinematic black bars to my footage to do this I started by clicking on sequence then sequence settings.

I then take these two values and divide them by 2.39 as this is the cinematic wide aspect ratio:

Once that Is done I should have a cinematic barrier over my video. now that's done I can move onto creating the moving title. I start by adding the "track matte key" effect to my video. Then chose the track that my video was on which will turn my screen to black. 

I then want to select the text key by pressing "T". I Then write whatever it is I want for my text then I can change the font by double clicking the text layer then changing it to Arial Black. 

I now have the outline of my text so it's time to zoom it in. I did this by key framing the scale on my text layer. First click the stop watch to start the key frame. Then move to where you want the effect to end and zoom in creating another key frame. I hd to create a keyframe for my position as well as my scale to make sure it zoomed into the right place. 

Once that was over I began compiling all my clips together. Then linking a few of them with some of the transitions I had learnt. At a certain point however I wanted to try and add a transition that I had never tried before. This being a slash transition that i felt matched the samurai theme of my project. I added this transition by first creating a duplicated clip of the section I want to be transitioned. I do this by holding down alt and moving the clip up.

I then create a mask with the opacity effect on the clip that I duplicated. 

I then set the masks feather to 0 then copy and past the effect onto my bottom clip.

After that I press the invert effect and bring back the blanked out footage.

I then right click on both the clips and press nest. A pop up will then show up with I click yes to. each clip should now look green. after that I add a transform effect to both clips.

I then click on the top nested clip then go onto effect controls. I then key frame the position making sure that it's on the start of my clip.

After that I move a few frames forward then change the positions X and Y values to 0 making the mask disappear. 

I then right click the key frame click Temporal interpolation then click ease in. To make my transition smooth. I then move the second key frame to the end of the clip.

I then disable "use composition" and change the shutter angle to 180 to add motion blur.

I then go onto the bottom clip and key frame the position again this time though I must double the X and Y values.  After that I adjust the shutter angle again.

And finally I simply place the original clip under the nested clip tolling them both together. 

And with that the split transition should be done. all I did after that was add a sword slashing sound to enhance the transition. 

The final part of my editing was my sound. While importing royalty free sounds from Pixabay. I tried to switch up some sounds with sword slashed to try and fit the reimagining theme even more. But while doing this I realised that some of my original sounds were a lot more satisfying than anything I could find on any websites. This led me into researching how sounds work in film, after a little research I came across Foley. Foley is a way that sound designers created fake sounds to make them more noticeable to the audience while also cutting out any unwanted noise from any footage. Foley would be great for my project as it would allow me to create some of the satisfying sounds that I couldn't pick up in my filming. Here is a video that better describes the process of foley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97HXE2N-mLg

After looking into this technique I decided to try it out for myself @@@@@

With my editing complete I rewatched my original footage and realised that there was something off about what I had created. After studying my video I came to the conclusion that my footage was simply too long. Once I discover this I looked into how I could improve this issue, by doing this i came across the term "dead action". This is what happens when the camera is focusing on something that is not moving. This can ruin the momentum of my project leaving the viewer bored and uninterested. To resolve this I must cut out parts of my video that lack movement or are too slow. 

During the holidays I tried to practice as much as I could with creating cinematic B-Roll style videos and also made this other video where I am making a pasta:

Unfortunately however i ran out of help while making this one which is why some of the shots are a bit wonky as i had to try make them myself. Despite this however my main goal with this footage was to see if i could create a good match cut sequence influenced to me by the one in this video:

Overall i think......

In the reflection mention how i should use ingredients as blocks influenced by this 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ8sm7ohlPM

During the holidays i also though it would be a good idea to test out locations. My idea uses 2 locations for filming with one being a kitchen and the other being somewhere in nature. For the Nature one i chose a field behind my house since during the summer there is sometimes a very cinematic purple sky that would create great lighting as well as a silhouette of my actor which is a common feature seen in samurai films, The reason i chose a natural spot is linked to my research where i noted how lots of samurai films and shows often depict a lot of nature to represent peace and harmony. Here is the test footage of this feild location:

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I think it looks pretty good, as i was a big fan of the natural lighting and purple sky. It feels very cinematic and is definitely the kind of scenery i can see in a samurai film. While i was here i also tested out my blocking skills as i had a door way that worked as a great test for this. Here is that footage: 

And here is a video i watched to understand blocking: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUmZldt0DTg

Overall i think @@@@

However as well as finding a location for my scene in nature i also must decide where i want to film my kitchen scenes. For this i have to options 1 being the kitchen at my home that i have been recording all my test footage in or the kitchen that is located at college. If i were to use the kitchen at college i would likely have to cast some new actors as my mum and sister would not be able to film in college. While this problem could be solved by contacting somebody on the catering course. Id much rather film at home since i am more used to the area and it would be easier to film the shots i need outside. 

MENTION LAG