Image Factory - Dance Film - 2

DANCE VIDEO:

Our next project is to show our individual skills and interpretations through editing a dance video. We were all given rushes of two dancers that was shot a few weeks ago in the studio.

I am excited but a little nervous about this, as my strength is defiantly not editing. 

Normally I'm used to being more Directing or Cinematography based, it gives me the creative control for the shots and the film to look a certain way. Viewing the process from just the editing side instead of filming for once was a really different take on what I'm used to within the job roles for a film.

Although different, I think this gave me a little taster of how truly difficult it is to edit a film with raw footage you have no idea about. I didn't really know what too expect when looking through the footage but I feel that there was plenty of material to compose something visually pleasing to watch.

RESEARCH:

Before running off and doing whatever I feel like with a project, I need to remember to research other styles of work to enhance my own ideas and outlooks. Inspiration is key when it comes to creating something beautiful, hence the research:

My first video (I've been obsessed with since it's release) is for a song that was in the charts recently, I remember first seeing on TV in a coffee shop in London, as soon as I saw the video it captivated me and kept me hooked. Now I'm not a girl who typically listens to chart music but the video of this song caught my attention and accompanied this song beautifully. Almost as if it cleansed the song and stripped it back to it's true meaning, a powerful message about mental health.

Sia - Chandelier 

I have watched this video so many times, and each time I pick up on different things that add to the raw emotion of it. 

The music video for "Chandelier" was released on 6 May 2014. It features Maddie Ziegler, a young dancer. The video was directed by Sia and Daniel Askill, and was choreographed by Ryan Heffington. Ziegler shared her thoughts about the dance moves to New York magazine:

"I like the whole dance. It was really different and weird for me, because I usually don’t, you know, be a crazy person every time. It was so fun to do and it was really out of the box and it expanded me a lot, because I’m used to competition dances where you’re like, 'Point your legs!' But this time it was like, you just need to let go and feel it."

In the video, Ziegler wears a blonde Sia wig. Throughout the clip, Ziegler dances in a deserted apartment "while spinning, kicking, leaping, crawling, falling, twirling and hiding herself behind window drapes". An alternative one-take version of the clip was released in June 2014. Nolan Feenay from Time magazine commented that the dance moves in the "Chandelier" music video could be the best dance routine of 2014. "Chandelier" received nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year and Best Choreography, and ultimately won the latter.

 Salvation - Gabrielle Aplin

This video was another big inspiration for my edit, as it's probably my favourite dance video ever. It hasn't got that much choreography in it as my previous research, but the composition is so on point.
There is a similar theme of mental illness shown throughout this video along with a beautiful visual journey to accompany this.

I find this video refreshingly beautiful for the fact is doesn't follow a cliche storyline, it leaves room for the view to interpret their own meaning behind it and this really appeals to me when making a dance video, I'd like my audience to have the same reaction and for it to be a video that will be remembered.

EDITING:

For me, the editing process was tough. As I previously stated on my blog, editing isn't my strong point. I find it hard to put what I visualise in my head on screen, so this defiantly was a challenge.
I have found organisation is ever so important for a project like this. There was so much raw footage to sort through it felt like a never-ending task but eventually, I got there.

Looking at my previous research, the styles of editing are similar in ways. I love the atmosphere created and I wanted to use this in my own work.

I have been watching a lot of black and white films lately, which is what gave me the inspiration for the colour grading of my film. I feel that this works well within my piece and adds a sense of charm and character to it. I wanted my work to be different and go for a 'vintage feel'. I think I have achieved this and I am proud of the final product.

A still from Roman Holiday - Dance Scene

In premiere I created a simple edit I could add layers to and build upon, I think I work well like this and it gives me options to mess about and experiment with what I can achieve and what the best way to about it.

Colour Style: I decided to make my film entirely black and white. My decision to do this consisted of the footage and the way it was shot. Not to mention things just look lovely in black and white when there isn't much colour to a location. I find it brings out the subject more rather then their surroundings.

The footage taken by each group was shot in a completely different style, this broke all the rules when composing them together. I felt that in black and white, breaking continuity and degree rules weren't so noticeable as the background just merged into each frame.
For me, personally I feel that this draws your attention more to the subjects than what's going on around them, which was very intentional in my work.

As for my editing style, I originally played around with layering shots and adding effects to enhance each shot. After taking a break and watching it back, I realised that a routine like this needed to be more simple and gentle. I took all the effects back out and it felt so much more clean and neat.
Sometimes less is more, and for a routine like this I think adding too many effects will be such an overkill.

PROBLEMS: When editing, I encountered many unfortunate problems. 
As I was working from home on an older version of Adobe Premiere Pro (CS5) I didn't have the same presets as the new version so I couldn't link my projects together on different machines.

MUSIC:

The music for this had to be just right. It took me quite a while to find a track I felt was suitable for my film, searching high and low on Royalty Free Music websites.

Eventually I found a website called Indie Music Box (http://indiemusicbox.com) where I found many music tracks that I loved the sound of. 
I purchased a track called 'Old Photos' which is the track used in my film. I chose this because it had a melodic sound that suited the style and mood of the dancers.

In my film, I made a point of editing to the beat of the track. In dance videos, timing is very important. I think you can always tell when a soundtrack is just thrown over the top of something already edited and I deliberately didn't want to do this. 


Overall, I feel I have learnt a lot from this project and gained many skills in order to progress in the future.
Organisation is never my strong point, but I'm doing better.
In previous projects I have failed to make back ups up my work, which has come in very handy for this one.

I have enjoyed editing this film and if there was something I could have done differently, I would have prepared my editing software and spent more time learning about the things that could potentially go wrong before making an edit.

Image Factory - Dance Film - 1

IMAGE FACTORY DANCE VIDEO:

For this unit we are researching and planning a contemporary dance video using the following concepts:

*     Develop an understanding of fundamental concepts, practices and techniques in video post production

*       Develop understanding of key concepts in the interpretation of the still and moving image, and the relationship between theory and practice.

*   Develop awareness and creativity in the expression of your ideas through sound and audio

*   Develop a journal that evidences creative research, technical experimentation and reflective development of ideas and project work

For our first tutorials we we ale to practise using the camera equipment and experiment with different shot angles in preparation for our upcoming shoot. We were split into different groups and given different tasks to film in chronological order.

This made us really think about the shots we were capturing and the timing of them as this would be played back to the class with the raw footage. I feel this worked well for us and taught us a good lesson with framing and keeping to the point of our requested story.

For the next task, we were split in to groups consisting of half the class. I feel for this one, I really took charge as director as for the first tasks I was mostly in front of the camera.


This really gave me a feel for would it would be like to manage a large group of people and have complete control of a film. I really felt like I worked well being in charge as it gave me the opportunity to try something a little more out of my comfort zone.

I think my group responded really well to this as no one took control in the first place.


The cameras we were testing were a Canon XF 305. These were brilliant camera to use because you are able to control so many different aspects of the shot.
My personal preference with shooting is to use DSLR camera, although they are small, compact and great for achieving shots with the variety of lenses you can get. The quality lacks for professional productions which isn't good, so I think this was a learning curve for me and introduced me to different means of technology which I'd never used before.

Image Factory - Stage13 - Certificate of Completion

As I said at the beginning of my task,  due to some unfortunate technical difficulties I had to use a fellow students Lynda.com account.

Even though Laura Thomas’ name is on the certificate, my name is on nearly all of my work and there are print screens to show my process of working through each chapter of the tutorial.

Image Factory - Stage 12 - Project: Tracking and Advanced 3D

Unfortunately due to using a different version of After effects (CS5) I did not have many of the features covered. One I did look into was tracking however the tracker was different in CS5.

For the Tracker I used the corner of the eyes as tracking points as they are quite high contrast and are good points to use. Once I had a good track, I applied the key frames to a null object. This then allowed me to track things to the woman’s face. As an example I created a moustache using a solid, and added a picture of a hat I had found online. I parented these layers to the null and they moved with the woman’s head.

Image Factory - Stage 11 - Integrating External Projects

One of the great features of the Adobe package is its simple integration between programs, such as photo shop and premiere.

Here I used one of the photo shop files in Photoshop, and then imported that into after effects as a composition. Within After Effects all the adjustment layers and effects created in Photoshop had been retained in After effects.

Next I created a Premiere file, imported a few clips and then proceeded to link them to after effects using the ‘Replace with After Effects Composition’ option. Now when I make changes to the footage in after effects, such as adding effects, or in the example I’ve provided, added text, it automatically updates the file in premiere to have these effects applied. This is a very useful tool.

Image Factory - Stage 10 - Project: Keying Green Screen Footage

Using one of the video clips from the website of the woman on the Greenscreen, began to look into keying. To make the key easier, and not having to key any unnecessary information I created a mask around the woman, this is known as a garbage matte.  I then applied the key light plug in to this layer and selected the green as the color to be removed. While this looked good, It wasn’t completely right, so in order to tell what details the of the key was being removed I the effect view to screen matte.

This revealed that some of her face and jacket had been turned transparent from the key. In order to fix this, I adjusted some of the screen matte options. Specifically ‘Clip black’ & ‘clip white’ This gave a much nicer key.

To stop the edjes being to harsh and to get rid of any minor imperfections I adjusted the screen softness. To show how the key looked, I placed another clip behind the keyed layer.