Development: Editing the clips and it's proccess

Here is a post about the editing stages and the process the final clips have went through for the show reel and presentation. Mark has been using Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects and syncing it up with the audio I've created for each scene. I've also included some foley sound to suite for each one for Mark to work with as well such as background noise for indoors/outdoors as well as some sounds of the puppets actions.

Mark imported the video files through Final Cut in order to trim and name them, then created a new project in Adobe Premiere Pro where they could be edited on the more powerful Uni. computers. For each video he trimmed trimmed them down to remove the "action" and "cut" points and leave only the performed footage.  To synchronise the audio tracks to the video he expanded the audio clips in the timeline to see the waveforms of the words and matched the first peak to the first movement of the puppet's mouth.  Because during a few of the performance some of the mouth movements did not exactly match the on set audio it was necessary to cut the audio track at points and match the waveforms to movements at intervals to achieve the best lip sync.

With the sound synced Mark colour corrected the videos with the Fast Colour Corrector to make "skin tone" consistent.  The colour was then graded to bring increase the sense of depth in the frame using Brightness and Contrast.  When there was a need to change elements of the scene Mark duplicated the video layer and used garbage masks to isolate areas of it which could then be altered independently of the main scene.  This allowed changes to background action (Tennis ball landing), removal of camera reflections from a window and reduction of highlights from cinema seating that would have revealed on set lighting.  

Adobe After Effects was used to process the green screen footage.  The "Keylight 1.2" filter was used to create the matte.  A photo was put below that video layer to serve as a background with a noise filter added to make it match the grain of the original video.  The finished videos were put into a timeline together in Premier Pro and any inconstancy in sound and video were adjusted with the previously mentioned editing methods.  Title and credits were added and the videos were exported for viewing.

The idea is to mash up all the clips together to create jump cuts between each one which has set the mood to being low when certain clips are more serious and then uplifting again for related clips with more upbeat tones of the conversations and how the puppets behave. We have found the flow to effect the viewers mood in this way after reviewing the order ourselves with also discussion together.
It jumps much in the way that creature comforts does with the same theme in mind but with various scenes and situations that compliment each other and keep the viewer's interest.

The idea was also to make the puppets look as if they did not notice the viewer and that it was us looking in on little snippets of their personal lives and their discussions about mental illness. Which got the more positive response in tutorials and others viewing them with us. We did also try other types of camera angels that were more direct and even including ourselves but they just didn't seem to fit as well as the non direct ones.
The only direct interaction with the viewer is the introduction and outro with Gair's puppet for the purpose of invitation to the viewer and allowing them to settle into anticipation of puppets to be presented to them.

This has worked out for the purpose of assessment show reel when we also have the intention of uploading all the clips to YouTube which would allow it to be in a much more random order but the clips to still work with jump cutting.

Here is some screen shots of the process of colour grading the scenes to tidy them up a little better.

Mark also used his television while at home to help with the work flow and also to see how it differed from being on a computer to a television screen as color and quality would be different.

Here is some screen shots of the final clips.

Here's also an example of one being finished on it's own to just show the finished result of it being through editing but also to see how it stands on it's own as a single clip.



It's all coming together nicely just a case of rendering and putting it on to dvd and getting the other bits ready for presentation at assessment.

Development: Week of filming for final 4 : Hannah McClure centre theatre

For our last shoot I contacted the Hannah McClure centre and got permission to use their theatre space which suited some conversations we had about how the art of cinema can help Marks depression. It turned out to be a great space for this and we had a lot of creative control for a few hours.

We were very pleased with the space but had to figure out how to do the lighting ourselves with a switch board as some of it wasn't working. It was a little tricky but we managed to figure it out enough to get some of the effects we wanted. We even brought our own reflectors just incase which ended up being sliver cooking trays since none were available from the university.

We also tried out different seating arrangements for the puppets for angels and to also hide oursevles it was also what best lighting worked out effectively.

Some lighting tests and also brought the puppets some 3D glasses.

We also had to make some readjustments to the puppets and also the seats with tape so the seats were held down by enough weight.

Mark ended up having to hide behind a curtrain to the side and had to control his puppet through bars while I hid under the seats with my arm inbetween them for mine. We also gave them some popcorn as extra props and to make the conversations more like a realistic situation at a cinema and in the context of the audio and environment. We also could hide the laptop in this way in reach of being able to mime the audio.

For some assitance since we had to stay in the same place ready to puppeteer Aimee Stewart was on hand for some help with direction, recording and lighting.

That's us shot all our conversations for assessment now it's over to Mark to edit it all together in Premier and handing over my sound files for him to place over the top of the footage. We also have plans for DVD as well as a poster and our set up for assessment displaying our work. But this plus finishing off the blog is what we will be working on in the next two weeks up to assessment.

Development: Week of filming for final day 2/3 : Sound studio

We did do our second day in the green screen room just for some extra shots in case our locations didn't work our well and for lighting. Mark said their was some quality issues with how the puppets looked on the high tek cameras with the green screen but eventually we found out this could be due to white balance from Malcolm. But we collected some more footage from their anyway and Mark said he would try to make it look better in the editing stages using premier. We went ahead the next day continuing filming again in the sound studio to do more conversations and because we knew how to get the lighting better with the Panasonic PMW EX1 from out tests.

We also found it easier to keep the puppets in position without help from an extra person working the camera or direction by placing the puppets on some spare lighting stands. This helped us keep the shot better while we could alter the camera settings and place the lighting differently and communicate with each other on how it looked. Also if we were in shot and hiding successfully and giving our arms a break.

We also used the laptop for our audio again and used the schedule I made to know what conversations to try out this time from the previous sessions. This also gave us the idea of how to possibly display the puppets for assessment by using some type of stand.

The session went quite well since we managed to get the sound studio booked for a full day and we had got some of the shots as successful as the test one. We now were going to shoot our next location the following day at the Hannah Maclure centre of the university of Abbertay.

Here's a sneak peak from the day of the improved original conversation from the first test.

Development: Week of filming for final day 1 : Tennis court and someone's flat

After editing and tidying up all the audio for a final shooting we were ready to go for it and film all our ideas for each conversation. I also created different sound files with different acoustics based on if the conversation sounded like a bigger room with a slight echo or if they were outside and the right format for Mark to take into the filming.

To help with the timings of our conversations I also created a small script with timings so Mark and me knew better when to speak and not for each audio piece. It helped a lot just as another visual aid of when to make the puppets speak in time.

We also got permission and equipment back in time for different locations and to do a full week of filming. To make sure what we were doing everyday and to keep us on target I created a little timetable so we knew that's what we were supposed to be doing and what equipment was needed everyday.

For the first shoot we did one based outside at the Tennis courts and made sure they were free so we had the whole area for angles and to be able to hide ourselves better. We did a certain conversation about sports days at school and thought this location would suite that.
We got Louise Mccusker to help us out again by helping us keep out of shot and to press record.

We tried out different angles and ways to make it not as direct as possible through the fence, bars and the tennis net. The lighting worked really well for us as well and was fine for how the puppets looked on film.

Somehow laying down to hide made performing easier on our arms.

It worked out really well performing outside when the weather is good and the assistance was a big help. We also went ahead and filmed some clips inside of Marks flat for a more domestic setting and the lighting still worked out from the windows. We arranged Mark's living room to to fit into the scene better and to hide us more easily.

Louise helped us out more by helping arrange our puppets and the blankets since we couldn't move away from each scene without disturbing the set up more.

We got a good few conversations filmed this way in one day which was great progress and worked out really well. On to the day two of shooting.