refining details

As time is quickly running out I decided to go over what I’d done so far, because I was starting to rush the editing, so i could refine certain details and make sure all the representation of this genre was shown through colour, camera, speed and anything else etc. One thing that stood out obviously was the fourth transition slide – the colours were quite bright almost pastel like >>>

So, obvious as it seems just changed the colour and the brightness/contrast because although it’s the simplest option, its very effective – I slightly changed it so it was darker and the tones more defined and I changed the colour so there was less red/pink and little more green and more blue so that the bluey tones were carreid through the trailer consistently. What I also like about the colours now is the blue looks quite luminous, because of the change i contrast the light tones against the dark look almost ghostly, quite mysterious and paranormal which I like very much >>>

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Trailer timings

I’ve spent quite a while drawing out my storyboards but because of the mysetry of some of my shots i haven’t been able to pre plan certain shots so there are some gaps at the moment; this meant that for the shots I did manage to film I needed to work out what time they would appear so that I could palce them in hence not wasting any time. This seemed impossible but because of the parallel with the Pan’s Labyrinth trailer I could set that up in premiere elements and slowly note down the times that different shots came in and what transitions were used. I don’t want my trailer to be exactly the same as the pan’s labyrinth one so although I’ve copied down the exact timings and transition it’s totally open to change because I don’t want it to be an exact copy – it’s just guide for me to use because they are evry similar genres and storylines.

For the end half of my trailer the shots become very quick paced which builds up the trailer to the climatic end however after adding some shots to my trailer on premiere elements and then watching it back the shots are almost too quick, but i thought maybe it was because there wasn’t any sound and because i was so focussed on the film i noticed the pace more, so i watched the pan’s labyrinth trailer without the sound on and it did have a similar effect but im still unsure as to whether the timings look a bit weird so I’m going to carry on for now but i’ll definitely keep an eye on it in case it becomes alot more noticable.

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First sequence of shots

I mentioned in a previous post that my first few shots and have been chosen, put in place and edited, finally! – I am going for a pan’s labyrinth style trailer so am following a similar structure to that trailer, the first section of shots are all pretty quick and as it’s a teaser trailer it doesnt really have to make much sense which made choosing which shots to use a bit easier. Obviously in the first shot i wanted to introduce my main character >>>                                                                    

This shot didnt really need editing, I did make it a little darker because the sun that day was particularly bright and my film needs a darker tone.

The second shot is one that makes even less sense because it’s not introducing anyone new but because it shows the girl running frantically downstairs it’s gives you a sense she’s fleeing from something therefore setting the tone >>>

Again this one didn’t really need editing (apart from selecting the time), it fit in well and the tone was how i wanted it, not too bright but light enough to see and quite dull tones.

In the third shot I introduce a new character, it doesnt give alot away other than she’s wearing white and her expression is unreadable. >>>

This shot did need some editing; the original image was quite bright where the light from the building behind us was reflecting onto her face and it looked even brighter because it was so dark outside. I used contrast/balance change the tone a bit more, to make the dark parts even darker. I aslo used crop to eliminate a glow from a light in the distance which, when on screen. was quite distracting. Another trick I used to be very subtle is when the shot fades in the person is actual in colour, there’s a subtle hint of blue/green however very quickly i fade it to black and white which although is really hard to see could be quite effective.

The fourth and last shot before the title screen appears is another one which sets the tone and feel for the trailer and movie, it’s the main charcter running from the top the nearly the bottom of the screen on the right coming out of and into darkness >>>

Like on most of the others the only editing done on this shot is the transition from it into the title screen which is a fade to black, it works well because it makes it look even more like this girl is running into darkness.

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More text editing

At first I was happy with how the text on the title screens were looking, however, they looked more and more like they were blending to much with the background and it was quite difficult to read what it actually said so I tried experimenting with some other ideas. I kept the shadow there and just played about with the distance and angle; for the actual text and put an outline around the edge so the letters looked a little more defined and easier to read and then the centre colour, instead of using a gradient, i used one solid colour but taken from the background so it still blended in. I think in some ways it looks better than before but it’s also still not quite finished.

I really wasn’t sure what looked wrong about the text so i carried on experimenting and eventually came up with what I have now. I elimiinated the drop shadow in the end because although it added dept it also blended badly with the swirling patterns of the background and i did keep the text colour and edging how i’d just put them which actually fits quite well because they almost dissolve in the background at points but are readable too. With the third title screen I moved the position of the text from the centre of the screen to far at the bottom because then it didn’t look so obvious and in your face as it did in the centre and they look alot better now.

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Title screen text

The font and style of the text i’d inserted onto the title screens, i thought, looked unfinished and not quite right, they looked too 2D, there wasn’t enough depth to them; I liked the zoom i’d put onto them so i kept all the original transtions and changed just the style. I added a shadow behind the text and edited that so there was a bigger distance however i couldnt change it’s colour or tone. I also changed the colour of the actual text because the pure white stood out quite a lot so i used a 4 point gradient to add subtle tones of the colour of the background to the text which made it fit in a bit more and seem less obvious and standout – ish. – However, it now blends in too much and it’s difficult to read what it says, what I’ve also found quite fustrating is that i couldnt change the colour of the shadow to make that blend in a little more.

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teaser trailer so far . . .

Ive been continuing with the editing of my trailer rather than concentrating on more filming and i finally feel up to speed which means i can plan another shoot! – I’ve begun to fill in the gaps around my title screens at last, the gap at the beginning to the first title screen is complete however the next gap will hopefully be filled with new footage once i’ve done that; an order is beginning to form! I’ve managed to find a piece of film that fitted nicely into the space after the second title screen which has also given me ideas for what next to film. I’ve also put the text on my title screens and have edited those to zoom in over the whole shot but also to fade in and out with the background; the text reads, ‘what if innocent dreams gave in to darkness’ however i’m open to changing that if i feel it could say something different.

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continued editing

After a lot experimenting and changing colours and using different effects, this effect managed to appear – i really like it but it definitely needs to be worked on some more. Initially the bigger image of the girl was going to be appearing out of colour or out of the darkness as she’s walking forward and that worked for a while but the different colour backgrounds were quite pixelated. We used chroma key to delete parts of the background in certain colours and we used the blend tool within chroma key to layer and blend the original piece of  film with another.  The second piece of film used i picked because of the contrast in colour and light – i knew it stand out a bit more. I really like this effect, it looks like it’s part of a dream sequence or as if the girl with the emotionless face is thinking about a happier time – the ‘happier time’ fits well with the piece of film because of the lighting and colour – likewise with the original piece of film because its quite dark however the colour of her where the light is shining makes her look a bit pink so I used tint to change this.  It does make a bit of difference, the tones are definitely colder and gives the shot a colder feel however it also means that the clips of film from the lighter shot are also tinted blue but hopefully i’ll be able to work around this.

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more recent trial edits

I managed to get a bit more filming done over the weekend which means I now have more footage to work with. One of the shots is of the girl walking away from the camera with doll in hand into the darkness – however, when i finally filmed the shot exactly how i wanted it after many tries the location which we were at was also being used by other people and so I have faint outlines of cars and reflections from the lights on my film which i really don’t want so i tried editing it on photoshop. I was shown this page on the ehow website which told me how to use garbage matte to get rid of anything i didn’t want : http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_5192582_remove-background-video-adobe-premiere.html?cr=1

However, part way through got a little difficult to follow and didn’t quite make sense so we tried looking on help on premiere 2 but again it had a stage we couldn’t really figure out at first but i managed to find it in the end! :

 This is what I ended up with – one of the frames in this shot was cut out which is just what i wanted! However when i played it the cut out shape stayed the same but the image kept moving which really didn’t work and wasnt actually what i wanted – if i wanted this effect i’d have to edit each frame! which would take too much time, it’s easier just to go out and film the scene again without the cars in the abckground which is what i’m going to do.

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editing experiments on premiere 2

I really needed to start editing my trailer, or what filming I had done so far so I opened a few of my shots into premiere and played around with some of the video effects to see whether i wanted to use them. At the beginning I was just playing around to see what effects looked like and here’s some of the things I tried, most of them i probably won’t use but they’re still useful to look at:

This one was the bend effect, it could possibly be used if the shot was part of a dream sequence or maybe had something to do with aliens and although my film/trailer is meant to be quite weird I don’t think it’ll be suitable.

 This one is the ripple effect, similar to the previous, again there are circumstances under which this could be sued especially to portray something weird, or to portray a scene that creates a ripple effect however I don’t think it’s suitable for my trailer.

One my shots in thr trailer was going to be the shadow of a teddy bear/ animal like thing as a way of introducing new characters but in such a way that i stayed within my genre, even following conventions of the genre however to keep the feeling of it dark the lighting was quite dark and I wasn’t majorly happy with the outcome of the shot, the shadow is visible but the light had a yellow tint to it which i actually wanted as dark blues and greys however, i managed to solve this issue using editing on premiere 2 and on photoshop.

This is the first thing I tried, i started by changing the contrast so that the shadow was slightly more defined/visible then I used the ‘colour tint’ effect – i gave the image a tint of dark blue, almost grey, i wanted to colours in this bit to be colder to reflect the creepy, fantasy genre.

I created this image on photoshop using the gradient control and picking the colour myself, like in the above, i chose the blues so that the shot is filled with the colder tones. I then put this image into premiere elements and changed the opacity of the shadow shot and layered them.  It kind of works, I think the ‘colour tint’ works better but I think this is a useful technique to know in case I ever decide to use it and if I did use it I would probaby be more exact with colour and opacity so that it would look as best it could.

This was the third technique I tried, also on photoshop. I opened up the shot in premiere 2 and saved the frame which I then opened up in photoshop, I edited it as if it was a photo so I used contrast to darken the shadow, I then used channel mixer to pick a main colour which was a purply blue and then went through the different types of light effects on the channel mixer, overlay was the best because it created this eery supernatural like light – it looks almost ultra violet. I then opened this back up into premiere 2 as a still image and added it to the potential sequence of first shots – it looked ok but you could definitly tell that it was a still image rather than a piece of film.

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