Turning a still shot into a moving one
"Surveillance"
Experimenting with colour-grading and overlays.
WEEK II
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Tackling the narrative of surveillance, we wanted the audience to feel as if they are watched, yet not reveal the perpetrator until the last minute for a chilling twist.
We focused a lot on the composition of shots, and how we could use existing objects to create unique frames.
Ideation
Ideation
GOAL: Last week, I used a lot of text to emphasise the story - I wanted to switch it up and use no text, pushing myself to tell a story in a more minimalistic way. I also wanted to experiment with colour grading - something I didn't have much experience with before.
STYLISTIC CHOICES: Incorporating my editing style
AUDIO & SOUND
RAW FOOTAGE
Colour grading workspace in DaVinci Resolve
Used the colour grading method explained by Dunna Did It on YouTube
I've always loved creating abstract and experimental stories. Compiling the shots with only a focus on the colour grading felt too mundane and flat - a story that lacked suspense. I counteracted this including a 'glitch' effect, whereby cropping and overlaying two different scenes on top of another, I foreshadowed & implied the danger Forester is put into by the mysterious perpetrator. This built suspense and tension.
Linking back to the lack of text and my attempt it make it seem as 'natural' as possible, I sourced free wind blowing sounds from ProSound Effects to use as the background music. Preserving the original sound from the clips would create a choppy and disjointed soundscape, but I wanted to use natural sounds as the silence contributed the soundscape, by allowing viewers to feel as if they are in Forester's precarious shoes. The water sound was diegetic, and the glitching SFX was added to make it seem more believable.
COLOUR GRADED
> Colour Space Transform (from 'Use Timeline' to 'Blackmagic Pocket 4K Gen 4' to automatically restore the colour seen through the camera
> Fixed the white balance by choosing a white spot in the frame
> Fixed highlights and shadows through the curves
Editing process
Writing Exercise
A space that transformed you in some way:
It takes all my university friends by surprise when they find out how introverted I was in high school: no school participation, no voluntary attending of events, and outside my friend group, I barely struck conversation with anyone else, even if we'd been in the same class for almost three years. It wasn't from a negligence of socialisation, or any form of rebuttal against all the rules the school had set for us. Rather, small talk simply didn't come naturally to me, and it was never in second nature to chatter with those whom I barely knew.
Come university, and TikTok fearmongering had me convinced I would spend my four years here friendless if not for talking to others. So, for the first time, I coated myself in a shell of extroversion - something that had felt very uncomfortable to me - and pushed myself to start conversations with those in my new classes. It was only until last September, as my first year was coming to a close, when I finally felt like I had grown into this skin I had created for myself.
Theatre does that to a person - changes them, for good (pun intended, I someone gets it). It's probably the rehearsals that occur four times a week, for four hours a day. The high-school-esque environment of being forced to see each other most certainly breeds closeness and familiarity. But the most precious thing about joining my theatre production in Term Three last year were the people. It didn't matter if we were far from similar - music tastes so different that I was constantly reminded of as I heard loud, rowdy songs play in their car as my friends drove me home. At the end of the day, we were all here with the same purpose: to put ourselves out there, and perform on stage, and it was only within the support and comfortable space my friends had fostered, where everyone was allowed to be unabashadely themselves, that I was able to act my heart out. Even if one of my sketches required me to hit the Whip Nae Nae on stage.
I have a lot to owe to theatre, but most prevalently, it taught me confidence. The applause of the audience, and the praise of everyone, was clear proof that people would love you, if you were just shamelessly yourself.
Now, my second year friends ask me: how are you this extroverted? How do you have this much energy?
When they're about a week into knowing me, where a thorough Instagram search reveals pictures from the theatre production, they realise that they've found their answer.