Concept Video - Critical Reflection

Below is the concept video shot this week. Filming and editing this video was challenging for a number of reasons, but also showed me the areas that I need to improve, but overall I was very happy with the final product given the time constraints.  It was my first time in a while being the one operating the camera, and I chose to rent the  JVC JY-HM360E from the uni as it seemed to have the most simple functions as I'm not very experienced in knowing how to control ISO and other settings, so it was nice for me that you can simply set the exposure to low, medium, or high. This was limiting in some ways as it made slight adjustments to these settings not an option, but these things can be mostly fixed in post. It was also not great for filming in low light, which some of my scenes were, as you can see this left the shots with a lot of noise, and I will be looking into ways to fix this next time I use the camera. Another feature I really enjoyed was the zoom slider on the side, which as you can see in the first shot creates a smooth zoom. I did have some trouble with this shot as I had to adjust the focus at the same time as the zoom, but got the hang of it quite quickly. I did like how most of the handheld camera looked, but the shots of the plants could have benefited from a tripod. 

I also rented some lights and gels from the uni to try out the lighting concepts I mentioned in the previous post. While some of the shots, like the one of her on the couch, had a really nice two tone effect, making the color saturated enough for the effect I was going for didn't seem possible with the gels we were using. There was a light wash of color no matter how bright the light was and changing its warmth affected the color but not its overall saturation. I think that for the next film I will try layering up gels of the same color. The room we were in also did not have curtains so maybe having a completely dark filming space to start with would have helped with this, as some light came through the windows even at night. I didn't mention this in my original plan but during the shoot we had the idea to have the actresses' eyes lit up in the same way that Morticia in the Addams Family does. We tried a few different ways to make this happen, including covering up parts of the big lights, then a lap, and my phone flashlight, but were unable to get the effect we were looking for. I'll be doing more research into this. I believe this would be a pretty day effect to do in post so I may try that if I get around to reediting this concept video. 

I'd originally mentioned the Kaleidoscope effect as seen in Psych Out. I did manage to make a simple version of this that I was quite happy with, but next time I'll be attempting to have all of these videos be individual layers, and having the ones in the corners move slowly in a circle. 

The element that I think suffered the most with the time constraints and me being over ambitious is the animations I originally planned on doing. I've only done simple animations before and the two that I managed to do were simple, but could have looked much better. The first animation is the lines on the plant appearing and disappearing. There was originally meant to be more frames for more of a rippling effect, but when I ran into my first problem I ended up simplifying the animation a lot. As mentioned before, I didn't use a tripod for any of these shots, so using a png of the lines over the shot and tracking the movement of the camera was something I tried using key framing, but this was a very long process and I'm sure I could find a better way of doing it with more time. Instead of doing that this time I just used a still image and had the png fade in and out. I wasn't fully happy with how this turned out but will try again at a later date. 

The animation of her tattoo coming off her leg turned out roughly how I envisioned it, but if I do end up reediting I would add in another frame of the leg movement so that it looks more smooth. My main issue with this shot was erasing the original tattoo from her leg one the frog jumps off. I found several ways to do this online but none of them looked natural enough to me, so I decided to leave it in for now. This is another element I'll try and troubleshoot when I have time.