space's the place

Final Cut

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2nd & 3rd April | Second Cut

After showing our first cut during our last tutorial we made some changes in increasing the B story of the sound effects of the International Space Station, as well as quickening the pacing of the visuals in the middle to give it some rhythm. We’ve also colour graded and corrected the shots. 

While we were editing we also noticed how shaky the 50mm prime lens shot were, and we should’ve really taken out a monopod or steadicam in order to minimise relying on warp stabiliser.

We’re pretty satisfied with this cut however we’ll continue fine tuning any technical issues and colour grading. Such as the timelapse of the sun rise and set still bothers me as it jumps slightly because we could not manage a smooth timelapse, moving parts and shifting them around. 

We also realise we’re pretty messy with our editing tracks:

I met up with Farah to help out with sorting out the production file and getting it ready for submission. We talked through what we needed to put into the file and get ready all the documents from the past few weeks

Callsheets

Script

Script breakdown

storyboard

personal and location releases

Cash Claim

equipment list 

during tutorial we showed the rough cut and gotten feedback and what we can work on to make it better. Though we knew of certain technicalities that needed fine tuning but we got a few ideas or changing some of the shots as well:

 [sound]

- EQ, fix some of the foleys, VO competing with music in the middle

- there’s a subtle B story line of the ISS communication with the space control center, we could possibly add a bit more sound effects to enhance that story line further

 [visuals]

- too many generic day shots, put in some night shots? The day green shots don’t seem to be working as hard as the night shots (eg the grass, the flowers generic nature shots) why not have something different compared to the usual generic shots of nature that are pretty but everyone has seen already?

- Middle part with the Grandpa Music should pick up the pace, with visual editing

During the weekend as well I proceeded to look through the rushes and picked out the shots to be used. I think what we realised was that we had a lot more nice, day shots than night shots, while we were still concerned about the grain and all that from our night shots. We decided to simply threw together a sequence of day to night for the visual first before we met up together to get both the visuals, VO and music to one coherent piece. 

When Ian and I came together over the week we put together the rough cut and realised the the atmospheric sounds could play such a huge part in the film. As I was editing the cut without atmospheric sounds at first, there were a lot of times where the VO was not happening and it was slightly boring. The idea of throwing in the sounds of one of NASA’s launch and communication to the astronauts on the ISS was one of our favourite things to throw in, when it brought a certain charm to it, like the extra imagination of the girl, dreaming of being a part of that one day as he wrote her letter to the moon.

One of the toughest things while doing this was melding together to different tracks of music because our initial piece “Grandpa” though sounded amazing, was perhaps too stagnant in the certain tone, volume and pace throughout. We wanted to give it some pacing and breathing spaces and thus introduced a second track. It took awhile and we had to stop and come back the next day with fresh ears once more but we made it work for at least a rough cut.

After being introduced to Matty Brown I decided to research further into his style of films and watch a few more:

Matty Brown has a very distinct style of editing his work and I truly admire the way he focuses more on the emotion of the shots than to coherency of the shots. Its quite amazing the way he edits and makes it very attuned to how people can feel just by watching it. Music plays a big part in his editing which I get very inspired by as music often drives the way and tone that I edit in and I can truly look up to his style of filming and editing. Right down to the way he’s already thinking about editing while he’s filming, I feel like that’s something we needed to think more of during our time filming. That’s what we want to achieve as well, to make people feel something when they watch the short film.

During the weekends, Ian helped looked through sounds and music and catalogue the atmospheric sounds he recorded. He picked out a few music that he talk could work and made a break down of each music:

1. “Grandpa” / Puddle of Infinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSeQesGs8-Y

Such a cool sound. The beginning is absolutely perfect. It leads you in softly much like our script, and it just kind of floats around tonally. Very cool match to the concept of floating around in space. I’m not as huge about the second half where drums start to kick in and the chords get a little heavier, but we could probably manage to find a loop closer to the beginning and keep repeating it until the end.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

2. “North” / Silent Partner

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

This was the closest I found to Brian Eno specifically. It has this very nostalgic electronic kind of vibe like Eno has, and the beginning of this one sounds almost identical to some of his songs. Again, the second half gets a little off track from what we’re looking for, but we could make it work. This one is also a bit shorter, so we would need to work out positioning silences in the video or extending the song to fit the run time.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

3. “Big Screen” / Silent Partner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WCvlSHGCaE

This is probably the furthest departure I’ve found thus far from the original goal, but I really like the sound of it. It reminds me a lot of the mood board and the general aesthetic we’re going for. I love a simple piano piece and this one was a solid option to throw in there. We would definitely need to slow it down, though (the slowed down mock-up is also attached in the folder!!). It’s got a great melody for the feeling of reflection, but the pace doesn’t match. This would also help fill the run time because the song is just under two minutes.

No cost, no copyright conditions.

4. “Inexorable” / Kevin MacLeod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUZAlIsmu9k

I’m not as wild about this one, but it gives you another option as far as tone. This one is much more mysterious, deriving kind of from the same feeling as some of the more atmospheric kinds of songs on Apollo. It uses real effects and field recordings mixed with a very ambient kind of melody and it creates an atmosphere all in itself. However, this could also be a drawback. We don’t want the music to overpower the visuals and script. This is a longer piece, though, so we have more room to play around with its positioning in the film without worrying about elongating or looping it.

No cost, must include copyright with distribution:

Inexorable by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1200097 Artist: http://incompetech.com/

5. “Shadowlands”

http://www.purple-planet.com/reflective/4583971306

Bottom row, middle icon This is a pretty good one. It doesn’t seem to match up as well with the visuals we have thus far because it’s a little somber, but it could give the voiceover a more emotional kind of edge if we want the audience to really feel something. Pretty simple and easy to loop if we need to lengthen it.

No cost, requires license if screened at festival. Must include credit:

Music: http://www.purple-planet.com

6. “Relaxing”

http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free- music/track/relaxing

Definitely a simpler one, but I think there’s something special about it. It mainly is just chords fluctuating back and forth, but they’re kind of dissonant and give a space-y kind of feel. Plus, the description says it’s great for massages, so who wouldn’t be into that? It would be good to help the audience focus on the voiceover, and it’s a good length to fill the runtime.

No cost, must include credit:

Music: www.bensound.com

7. “Melodic Acoustic Advert Music”

https://www.audioblocks.com/stock-audio/melodic- acoustic-advert- music.html

Again, this one is further down on the list, but I wanted to give the team some different options. This one would come across a little bit cheesy and risks compromising the visuals, so the levels of the music would need to be very low. I like it because the acoustic guitar and especially the bells give a feeling of childlike wonder, but it’s getting further away from Eno’s inspiration. One of the others will probably work better.

Today in class we mostly discuss the problems we had during filming as well as scheduling our VO recordings and looking into music issues. We have discusses that we wanted a Brian Eno kind of vibe to the video and Sue showed us a film maker by the name Matty Brown and his work, and it was really inspiring to the kind of edit that we aim for. He conveys somewhat random and redundant shots into one solid cohesive feeling and even though sometimes the visuals don’t glue as much together in an obvious way, his films definitely makes you feel a certain way, and there’s that cohesiveness there. I think overall that is what we aim for.

Day 1 | 20th March

Ellie and I reached Shillington on Monday and began shooting the sunset as we got there as well as all the night nature and village shots. We were pretty happy with the decision of spending the money to take the train to be able to catch the sky while on it and the transition from city to country. During the early night we managed to walk around the village to get some night shots, also giving us an extra luxury of time to test again with the camera settings. Going there a day early was probably the best decision we made with the whole day raining, it cleared up the night amazingly. Thus it gave us our one opportunity to get the moon. However we made the one big mistake of not checking where the moon rise or the moon’s track in the sky and we placed and calibrated the telescope in Ellie’s garden at the back of the house which could not view the moon. Instead the moon was best viewed from the front of the house and that was probably one of the bigger mistakes we made on the shoot. However the telephoto lens did pull through as we managed to get a nice shot of the moon even though we couldn’t get any close up shots with the telescope. That night we almost planned for the shots for the next day and what to do when to try and maximise the time.

Day 2 and 3 | 21st & 22nd March

We slept from 6am to 11am and when the rest of the crew came we began most of the scripted shots. I think what we failed too anticipate would be too much daylight time, there were periods where we were simply waiting for the sun to lower to the horizon. We spent a lot of that time trying to get more atmospheric sounds doing timelapses and we tried to fill the time and then when it got to the magic hour, it was just a frantic rush to get shots.  The last few shots on the hills got harder and harder to take as we were running out of light and perhaps what we should’ve done we to not follow the timeline of the sequence of events in the script and actually go to the hills to film the telescope set up before filming all the house shots because the lights there were much easier to control. There was quite a lot of yelling here and there on the hills and it was freezing at 3 degrees, but of course, all the yelling was out of love! 

But it was stressful to try and fight nature and time itself. Not to mention the hail and rain that unexpectedly happened in the afternoon, nature was really not on our side. As night fell we slept from 10pm to 3am, waking up hopeful to get the moon, and this time with the telescope in the right area. And we woke up to clouds. Guess we had to be expecting that with the weather saying some clouds, but it was a bummer that we waiting till dawn with not even a glimpse of the moon. Most of the bad things balanced out with the good thing of coming in a night early or the whole trip might’ve been quite a pity. Nevertheless as Team B left both teams looks out at the beautiful sunrise we managed to catch, and we can’t deny that the shoot trip wasn’t a good one.

As a team we all bonded really well together, though even at the start of shoot we weren’t to certain on who would be good at what technical role, but we learnt along the way, Elisha helps greatly with gaffer and lights, Ian took control of the sound and atmosphere and helped as second camera, and I helped to handle most of the technicals of shooting at night having tried out astrophotography in the past. Our team wasn’t generally the strongest in our technical skills and that had us worried for a bit but I think overall we really pulled through and everyone was such a good sport about sleeping at the most awkward times and waking up at 3am just to see the moon (who totally stood us up).

Call Sheets and Lunar/Weather Data

Though it was the day before pre pro, we were counting on the filming schedule to be decided and completed by the producer, but things were still not confirmed and locked in. We had another production meeting with our actress in order to make sure things were confirmed and solved. 

Shillington Weather

Due do the weather, the initial idea was to film from 20th Monday afternoon to 22nd Wednesday Morning, however our actress could only make it on Tuesday onwards, but Monday was the best weather day and a few of us were adamant to go on Monday. Plus we also had the problem of transportation, Elisha’s car can only fit 4, while our whole team was 6, and a few were not too on board with spending money on train. Thus in this production meeting, we finally came to a solution to split into two teams Team A: Ellie and Shantel, Team B: Farah, Elisha, Ian and Agne

Team A, of the director and camera operator were to leave Monday afternoon via train to Shillington, costing a total of £60, and start filming unscripted shots of nature and the moon and location recce in order to make full use of the weather as the weather doesn’t wait for anyone. Team A will carry along the following equipment:

70D DSLR

VTP Tripod

DSLR Remote controller

50mm prime and 500mm telephoto lens

T ring and Adapter

Team B, with the rest of the crew and cast, will leave on Tuesday morning in Elisha’s car, which we will split the gas cost along with the train cost as a team. Once they arrive, we’ll begin shooting more of the scripted scenes. Team B will carry the following equipment:

LED Lights

7D Canon DSLR Kit

35mm and Hasan’s telephoto lens if possible

Reflector

On Wednesday both teams head back together on their respective mode of transport, Team B leaving earlier for Ian to reach his presentation in the morning.

The next night we decided to bring the kit out for a test shoot during dusk and if we could catch, the moon. We knew trying to film the sky in Harrow would be challenge but we would test everything else that we could just so that we could get familiar with the settings on the camera of each lens and test out the telephoto lens. Ian also began testing the sound with the zoom mic to bring it back and listen to the quality of it as we were very keen on using atmospheric sounds.

We found that the magic hours of dusk and dawn were ideal for us to film as it has that  feel of night time without being too dark which gives us the opportunity to work with an extra bit of natural light and being able to bring it down in post. But even then the window of time was very tight and we’d have to work very fast and the light would constantly be changing.

50mm prime and 18-135mm zoom:

500mm Telephoto lens:

Today in class we looked more into the idea of improving the ideation of the project asking ourselves a few questions:

Is it making you excited?

Is it topical?

Does it link to specific aniversay or day?

Does is satisfy me emotionally or physically?

What happens to kickstart the narrative?

who is the story about?

why should we care about the,?

what background info do we need?

what do your characters overcome the obstacles?

How do you want the audience to feel?

what do your characters want or need?

How can I make this even better

For us what we considered after looking at the list of questions would be to understand this letter to the moon, has anyone else written letters to the moon? What is this girl’s motivation to write a letter the moon? What has the moon helped her in her life?

During our tutorial we talked more technical talk as that was our biggest concern at that point of time. The script and mood board was completed and pre production was underway. 

We discussed a breakdown sheet and the specific types of equipment that we should consider adding to the list in order to shoot well at night. After discussion we have fixed on the full equipment list:

BOOKED AND DUE BY

VTP Tripod 41 : 27TH MARCH

2 remote controller for DSLR: 27TH MARCH

Zoom Mic: 27TH MARCH

Telescope adapter (BOUGHT) 

500mm Telephoto lens 27TH MARCH

50mm lens for canon DSLR 27TH MARCH

Canon 7D DSLR Kit 27TH MARCH

Battery powered LED Lights: 27TH MARCH

VO mic (Marantz): 31ST MARCH

Editing Hard drive: 6TH APRIL

We also discussed what settings would be best on the camera and looked at these optimal options that we can test out tomorrow: 

We were considering what kind of music we wanted and we knew that we wanted something similar to Brian Eno. The spacey airy kind of music with a sense of wonder and adventure but also contemplation. We looked into a few artists in order to get a feel of the kind of music we want so that we can either reach out to musicians to create the music or find royalty free ones that suit the music.

Brian Eno

Lights & Motion

Hans Zimmer

BOOKED AND DUE BY

VTP Tripod 41 : 27TH MARCH

2 remote controller for DSLR: 27TH MARCH

Zoom Mic: 27TH MARCH

TO BOOK

Telescope adapter** (T Ring + T Adapter-depending on eyepiece) (why telescope and eyepiece do we have?)

Telephoto lens: reserved from Tuesday 21st March

Battery powered LED Lights: 21st March

VO mic (Marantz maybe?) + sound booth: ??

32 / 64gb sd card if possible?: 21st March