Colour Correcting

Today during class, I spoke to Mr Andrews about my colour correcting to get his feedback on what I had done so far. He told me that my colour was a little overdone and suggested that I make it a little less yellow so that it better suits Wes Anderson's aesthetic. This is the colour I am going for:

Here are the changes I've made with the colour:

I think that the colour correction of the new shots look a lot better, less saturated and more like Wes Anderson, especially when compared to the shots above from Moonrise Kingdom. I don't think I will be able to film again this weekend (I might only be able to do a couple of shots), but I will be filming throughout the week in the afternoon to finish the scenes which will be shot at home. That means that I will probably have to wait until the weekend after to film the rest of the shots in the field as it would be way too dark filming them at 4/5pm.

Book Cover

This afternoon, I created the book cover that I will be using for the autobiography. I am not completely happy with how the design turned out, however I think it will be okay as it is only shown twice in the film. I may change it again before I film the shots of it, however I don't think I will have time to reshoot the photo and edit it again before I film the scenes at home.

Editing Footage from Weekend

During class today, I edited the footage that I took on Sunday. The tracking shots were very shaky when I imported them, but the stabilisation edit on Final Cut worked amazingly to hide it - I was actually surprised at how well it worked. There are a few shots that I will need to retake, and there are some shots that I didn't take according to the shot list as I wasn't able to due to differences in setting/a different shot looked better and I am happy with them. An example of this is the shot of myself in front of the slide (pictured below) as I was originally going to have the camera positioned between two bars, but the playground I ended up filming at did not have this.

Below are three of my favourite shots that I have taken so far that I am really happy with.

I love this shot of the sticky tape dispenser so much - it turned out exactly how I pictured it to to be and I think that it really suits the aesthetic of Wes Anderson's films, especially because of the colour and the fact that it is symmetrical.

This is another shot that I really like. It is a tracking shot that moves forward to track the characters movement and I originally thought it would be too shaky to be able to fix and use in my film, however it turned out really smooth! 

I think that this extreme wide shot also represents Wes Anderson's aesthetic and style really well.

Filming Over the Weekend

Today's filming definitely did not go to plan. I ended up going out a lot later than I had planned (I left home at 1pm instead of in the morning), which meant that I only had a couple of hours to film before it started getting dark. Also, a lot of time was wasted at the beginning as I struggled to get the Gimbal to operate properly.

I set it up and turned it on, stabilising it via the app, and it was working perfectly... for about five seconds. It started spinning every time I held it straight up without moving it and it was not doing what it was designed to do. I tried turning it off and back on again *numerous times* and every single time I tried, it started vibrating and I didn't know how to stop it. I gave up and decided to use the hand held stabiliser instead which wasn't the best, but it still worked better than if I were to have just held the camera in my hands.

I didn't get all of the shots that I had planned on getting, so next weekend I will be going out and filming all that I should have gotten done today, and I will make sure to be out early so I can spend as much time as I need to on it without worrying about bad lighting in the afternoon.

I will be editing all of these shots during my next lesson and hopefully I have a few that I like and am happy to use in my film.

Playing Around with Different Lighting

Today during class, I learnt how to use the Gimbal since I am taking it home to film over the weekend. I am so excited to use it and see how the shots turn out - it's going to make my tracking shots look so much better. On Sunday, I will be filming a lot! I will be filming as much as I can of the scenes of the daughter on her adventure and her father looking for her and I will be beginning with the shots using the Gimbal so that if I run out of time, I don't need to borrow out the Gimbal on another weekend and can let other people have the opportunity to use it too. 

In the afternoon, I wanted to test out some shots using the different colour slides on the LED light, even though I don't think I will be using these different colours throughout my film (except for a few shots). I will be adding in the colour afterwards when I am editing. Here are some of the shots:

I really love the look of these images with the different lighting and wish I could have used this light in my previous, darker films.

Screenshots of Chapter Pages

Today during class, I finished creating the screenshots that I will be using in my film at the beginning of each chapter. I am so happy with these and I think they really suit Wes Anderson's aesthetic, although I may re-do the ending page and make the text bigger or something as I don't know if I like the fact that the page doesn't really have much on it.

Production Schedule

During today's lesson, I created my production schedule and will be printing it out so I can refer back to it and see where I am up to in my production, what I should be doing and how many lessons I have left before it is due.