#wherecurrentsmeet

Where Currents Meet Reflection on the Final Film

This project was a challenge for me because I was pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but I'm so happy I did this. I know I have an eye and intuition that are good for cinematography, I just need my confidence and then experience to follow suit, but both are of course things that come with time. I feel we worked well as a group and everyone tried their best to get us to where we are now. I believe we made the film we set out to make on our own terms and true to our creative dreams. I hope we have created what Bethany wanted and that she knows she can be proud of the world she has created.

I did my best and I am happy with that and I'm very happy with the shots themselves and how they turned out. I am less happy with the grade, but this again was a learning curve with many things to take away with me.

I feel scenes 1 and 2 at the beach did not turn out quite how I hoped in terms of lighting consistency and colour grading, but as I have previously mentioned this is due to different positions to the sun that were unavoidable due to positioning in relation to the water from a narrative point of view.

I feel scenes 3 and 4 at the bus stop and pavement were both quite different, the lighting in scene 3 at the bus stop was rather cloudy and thus easier to manipulate both on camera and in the edit. The only shot here that I was unhappy with was of Kallie where I feel she is over-saturated and over-contrasted. In scene 4 on the pavement the sunshine was beautiful but there was an inconsistency in sunshine as it kept moving in and out of the clouds, this meant it was not fully consistent when it came to the grade, however here I feel like the grade is letting the image down a little bit because the shots are very pretty, I just couldn't seem to find the right balance and again have a little too much contrast.

Scene 5 in the woods is a little inconsistent in the grade, here again, I am happy with the shots especially the two-shot from behind as they are walking. Sadly as I said the grade is a little inconsistent and has a clear difference in wash and tone to the previous scene and thus has a different style. I feel the grade between shots here does not quite match.

For scene 6 part one at the river and part two at the bridge, I am overall happy with the grade. I feel like the river scene would have benefited more with a two-shot as it would have shown the actors interacting with each other. However, the two-shot that I did as shown above (ungraded) is much lower than and does not match the singles. I had done this with the intention of being the water that they looked into, but this did not edit with the other shots how I thought it would. So I had thought it through but it did not turn out as planned. For part two at the bridge, I am happy with the shots and the edit even though I feel it again shifts in tone with the colour grade in a lighter wash than the rest of the scenes.

For scene 7 in the bedroom, I am pleasantly surprised with how it has turned out, I think in spite of poor lighting the scene is exactly what I hoped for it to be. The grade is far from perfect here but it definitely aids the image a lot.

Scene 8 is my favourite scene and I think it has turned out very beautifully, but I'm afraid the grade is again quite different to the rest of the film, but I feel it is very pretty by itself. I think I missed a shot here in the shot list where there could have been a closer two-shot of the two of them for more of the scene.

Here is an ungraded example of what I mean:

It is a shame that we removed the final part of scene 8 even though I understand this choice was made for its reasons which is very valid as one of the leads was too cold and could barely hide it, this is where we removed both actresses from the water and brought them home to warm up. This was for their safety and would have felt unethical otherwise. I do understand the decision, but feel it greatly affects the film losing this scene.

Overall I wish there would have been more of the two shots because I like seeing them in frame together and how they respond to each other. I understand that this was a conscientious choice due to both creative and necessity reasons where there were issues with some of the two-shots. I personally prefer the two-shots, and I think it would have greatly improved the film overall if these had been usable in the final edit.

I appreciated working with the team of Where Currents Meet and I feel on set we really came together when we needed each other and I felt we were all supporting each other.

Where Currents Meet Colour Grading from Reds to Blues to Going Crazy

Colour grading is not my forte, to say the least. I had very little idea of what I was doing and I had little practice and awareness of how to do it. I usually go into it kind of figuring it out as I go and this was no different. I found this much less enjoyable than the actual filming and went quite crazy. I went for many different looks and approaches to the film over the days that I graded it, each grade had a very different feel to it and felt like a different film almost.

Bethany and I had previously talked about blue tones for the film and when I tried it in the grade I found that this was too sad for a film about romance so I went through the entire film adding a warm reddish glow to every scene. I thought it looked great, but wanted to see what Bethany thought. Bethany came in and we went back to the previous grade and went into that. She asked me to try blue and I tried this throughout and we agreed it did not work either so in the end we found a kind of medium which lay in the correct part of the graphs indicating how much of the image you are keeping whilst still going for looks that Bethany liked and that I had become happier with in time.

I found the initial scene hard to grade because the opening shot I had chosen I leaned into all of the reflections of all of my waterproof gear, because otherwise it would not have worked. But in doing this Iris looked almost like a ghost so I tried to bring her more into reality and make Kallie's single more dreamy.

I really struggled with continuity throughout but especially in scene 2 on the beach where Kallie comes out of the water and flirts with Iris. Kallie and Iris were always lit differently due to their positioning in relation to the sun and the water. But I tried my best to make them as similar as possible. Here in the photo above I think Iris is a little too saturated and slightly cold, but this was in order to fix the sand to match Kallie's sand in her image and I think this was achieved.

The following bus scene I felt graded relatively well except for one shot of Kallie that I could not seem to desaturate in the way that I wanted to.

Following this I found this image above turned out too saturated and contrasted as well, but it seemed the best way to get it away from the reddish tones that I dived into all too deeply.

In the following scene where Iris trips, I feel the two shots are different to the singles and offer a slightly paler palette that I did not quite match.

I was very happy with the river scene as I felt Iris really glowed in that scene.

This is a shot I really like and am happy about how the grade turned out. I feel at the bridge everything had a lighter wash than in other parts of the film but I felt it matched a dreamy tone that this scene has.

The bedroom scene as I previously mentioned was a bit of a nightmare on set, but I feel it was really saved in the grade.

In what is now the final scene, as the original final scene was cut, where the girls are sitting on the shore I am overall very happy with the grade here but I feel it again does not match the rest of the film.

I do feel that my biggest mistake in the grade is the inconsistency in style. I feel every scene is almost completely different in style of grade and I hope that this won't take viewers out of the experience.

I'm not very happy with the grade overall but I am happy enough and I know I tried very hard. This is because I think I could have done better or it could be better, but with my limited knowledge I tried my best and that was all I could do. I found myself very burnt out in the grade from all the shoots and the sound design from Saint Catherines and I think this also affected what I could deliver.

Prep for Where Curents Meet

For preparing for Where Currents Meet I do not have many photos of me doing it but I will include some screenshots of what I did. So instead here is a photo of me in one of our group meetings and for once I look goofy and not grumpy!

Anyway for preproduction and prep there were many things to consider.

I struggled to crew up. Finding camera assistants proved very difficult. I was last minute, but less last minute than on Saint Catherines and somehow I ended up struggling to secure and confirm ACs for the project. I reached out to all different years and nothing seemed to work. Eventually, I found my two main ACs Cal in my year and Tim a Masters student, and Tom in 2nd year also helped assist for two days of the shoot. They all helped me a great deal and without them I would not have been able to do it. I appreciated all of their help. Special shout out to Cal who was such a calming and kind presence on set, I really appreciated having him there with me.

I had some issues with planning equipment, as I had been so focused on Saint Catherines for a couple weeks I missed the boat on figuring out what equipment we needed until it was too late and much of what I wanted was no longer available. But we still managed to get a decent amount of equipment and I borrowed Natalia's shoulder rig which was a great help with shooting all of those handheld shots and definitely saved my back in the long run.

My greatest stressor but also my greatest desire for this film was the water cinematography. I knew we would not be submerging in the water but that was not what I would have wanted to do anyway. However, I was keen to do this as best I could and in a way that would ensure that the camera would be safe. I have to admit I was very sure we would not be allowed to go into the water with uni equipment but I was happy and pleasantly surprised that we managed to do this and were not limited in our creativity. To prepare myself for filming in the water I had a meeting with Andrew who instructed me on how to create a waterproof/splash-proof housing so that the camera was safe from splashes and droplets. He told me what I needed to buy and from there I knew I would figure out what to do. It was such a specific thing that I somehow could not find videos about it online. I ordered everything I needed that Andrew had told me about ready to build when we were on set because the casing I had in mind would leave little room for being removed every day and thus would not be possible to make until we had the camera for shooting anyway.

Here are my notes from my meeting with Andrew, they describe what precautions we would take and what extra equipment we would need:

I also spoke to Andy about a worst-case scenario action plan and what to do in that instance so that I knew what to do if it came to it.

Here is that action plan in writing:

In our creative visual approach Bethany and I met several times to establish a shot list and storyboard. I found I would always cut things down to make it as doable as possible and she would always dream of more and plan for more elaborate edits. I hope she was happy with where we went in the end, and I tried to meet in the middle with a happy medium between her dreams and what I thought was achievable. But for the water scenes, I wanted to really bring it down to grassroots essentials because I did not want to have the actors in the water any longer than they needed to be.

Here is an example of the storyboard that Bethany drew when we were planning the shots together (it's from scene 1):

Here is an example of the same opening scene from our final shot list:

We also shot some of our shots as they would be on location using Cadridge so that Bethany could see what visual styles, lenses and focal lengths she preferred.

Here are some examples, that you might recognise in the final film: