SR: TECHNOLOGY: Green Screen #2

In January we got the opportunity to go visit a green screen room here in Luxembourg. It was a good opportunity because it allowed us to get some more footage and re-shoot some scenes with our black balloons, which we felt we had missed the opportunity on when filming our initial music video Follow You at the beginning of the year. We tried to film the black balloons from as many angles as possible, however the low angle long shot and the medium long shot on the left turned out to be the best ones and so we will be using them. 
Now after having filmed all of our green screen footage, we have been trying to work on what to layer it with etc. This was my first time in working with green screen and so I had to find out all the basic tools from tutorials on YouTube and also learned a lot from my teacher and a fellow classmate. 

From the beginning onwards, we had the idea that we wanted a lot of smoke, fire and color powder in our music video. These should be the main elements. When trying to work with the first green screen footage of our leadsinger Wayne, I tried to use a fire effect from YouTube, since Final Cut Pro X does not have one. I found an effect of fire and a burning car in the background, which I then tried to use.

First step before doing anything, is to remove the actual green screen by giving it a black background. This is done by using the special effect called "Keyer" in Final Cut Pro X. After that, I put the  footage of the burning car and fire over that footage and it looked like the footage above. What I then did was changing the opacity of the shot, which is possible under the word "Compositing".

However, the shot didn't look the way we wanted it to and therefore, I watched a YouTube Tutorial about how to layer fire onto green screen. From that YouTuber, I got the link to a page called Footage Crate, that allows you to green screen. Here is the link. 
It allowed me to register and download many different special effects that I can use to layer onto the green screen. It especially had loads of fire and explosion effects.

We will however also be using some special effects that we found on YouTube. 

Crossword

I've created a crossword puzzle which links in with the music video industry. I created it on Crossword Labs which allows you to create free crosswords. The crossword has 20 different words, if you would like to try it you can find it here.

TECHNOLOGY: Dolly

This week we experimented using a dolly. The spider dolly is just three wheels which you then connect any tripod to. Using this you can get some very smooth shots but we encountered one problem which was that there was a small crack in the ground and when the dolly went over it the camera shock a bit.  We did not use a track that the dolly was on but that might have eliminated the problem we encountered.

If you  use this on very even ground then it should work fine but if you are outside where there might be pebbles or gravels than there is on point as the footage will look even more shaky than if you where to do hand held. It was good to experiment with  and if used right can look very good.

TECHNOLOGY: Green Screen #1

On the 31st of January I and a bunch of other media students both A-Level and GCSE where lucky enough to be able to visit a Green Screen room in the north of Luxembourg, The facilities contained 2 rooms with green screen. 1 room had a 2 walls of green screen as well as the floor while the other room was just one wall of green screen. This was a great experience as we got to learn more about what it feels like to be in a study with big lights and professional equipment. It was very popular among students many saying it was a good experience. One student commented "Originally I didn't think I would need it but now I see it could really help my media coursework grade".

There where some complications along the way but everyone got to film what they needed and even though every one might not use it it there project it was good just for the experience and gave students a clearer idea of what goes into a film project.

SR: Reflection on pool shoot

Kristian and I went to shoot the pool scenes in a pool here in Luxembourg. For this we decided to use a waterproof GoPro so that we could not only get shots of him falling into the water from above, but also underwater. The underwater scenes turned out as the best ones in our opinion, which is also the reason for why we have included so much underwater footage. In conclusion, the shoot turned out quite well and Kristian and I were really happy with what we filmed that day. 

We got our inspiration for the underwater footage from two main videos. One of them being MVid EG9 - Runnin' by Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé on my blog and the other one being This is Gospel by Panic At The Disco, which Bronwen blogged on. 

After having looked at these two videos, I quickly came to the conclusion that we had to work a lot with special effects for the water to look like an ocean and more ominous rather than a general light blue pool. The picture you see here on the left, is the footage without any effects added yet, whereas the footage below is after I added effects. 

In Final Cut Pro I therefore decided to use one of the color effects called Tint. I had also worked quite a lot with the Tint color effect at AS and had a good experience with it. Hence I decided to go back to this special effect and work with it.

The bubbles that automatically appeared because I was underwater also had a really nice effect and gave an "extra touch" to the shot, rather than it just being shaky underwater footage. 

When working with Tint, it was really important to change the color and work with the amount of Tint there should be in it. If I hadn't changed the color it wouldn't look at all like it does above, since it would really have turned very dark blue and not have the desired effect of an open ocean. 

Due to this, I went for a very dark blue/green color that made the water look very dark. It took me a while to discover which color to use however after a while I found that this was the right one. We also got good audience feedback for it, because in Rough Cut 1 Draft 1, I hadn't worked with any special effects yet and our audience argued that it was to plain and that they wanted to see a lot more special effects, especially for the underwater footage. 

JP: Stabilizer

The school received some cheap new 3 axes gimbals for the media department. While they aren't as high quality and professional as a Steadicam, they cost about 10x less than one. A real Prosumer Steadicam Solo starts at around €300. These can go up to tens of thousands of dollars for professional film making.
For our needs in school the €30 AFUNTA Pro should do just fine. Kristian (a fellow student) and I began playing with and learning how to properly use and balance the gimbal. We made this short video on how to setup and use the gimbal with some test footage.