Reflective: compositing

Films are always fakery, but they must be fakery that is convincing and does not disrupt the audience’s suspension of disbelief. This doesn't just apply to compositing effects, of course, but to lighting, sound effects, in short every aspect of the movie experiment continuity, the audience’s immersion in the story is disrupted.

In its earliest form, this was simply a plate of glass I front of the camera lens, with the matte area painted in black paint. This prevented the matted areas from being exposed; then the negative was rewound and a glass plate with the reverse of the original painting was used to expose the previously matted area with another image – usually a painting. Nowadays we can use many software help us to do it.  

Nearly all movies today have special effects created using a digital intermediate, even if the movie was originally shot on 35mm film.

Final look through green screen part

Keying part of my short film

During the Easter holiday I was still doing my short film. I was making the green screen part which was the most difficult part of this short film. Because I know this part will be keying with after effect in the post production phase, so I asked the little girl don’t wearing green clothes, but the little girl have the big green eye which I cannot avoid. So I need to be more careful and use more time to keying in that part, and try to make sure the little girl’s eyes are still there. After add some unreal background, I use some lights and petals to make this part look like in a dream.

before

after

after

Choose green screen to shoot

One scene I choose green screen is to do the experiment in order to make a contrast between the real people- the little girl and the colourful garden- the 3D background.  At the same time, it's also more easier to make a process to change the background from color to black and white. So that the little girl can isolated from the picture.

Scene design

This was the scene design for the background of the green screen part of my short film, in order to create a colorful garden in children's world. However, I don't want this garden is too real, because it was in the little girl's dream.

THE IMPOSTER – Colour of Deception

Colourist Rob Pizzey played an important role in developing the looks for the different locations and timeframes in the story and overall mood.

They use different types of cameras to film it, so it looks different in each frame. “There were a few shots on one camera where the highlights were a little hot, so I created a layer that would isolate them and allow me to tone them down a little,” he said. “The home movie footage was low resolution so I just tried to pull out as much information as possible. The archive news footage was extremely saturated. I backed the colour down on this.

Bold Contrast

Through the grade, Rob was able to contribute to the director’s themes of deception and self-deception, clarity and ambiguity, and intentions to introduce elements and tones of a thriller into his documentary. “Bart explained that he wanted the reconstructions to be distinctive and stand out against the interviews. We used bold contrast and colour manipulation to achieve this and highlighted various parts of the image to draw the audience into the journey. Depending on the context, I simply emphasised elements of what Erik had captured in the frame,”

Rob said. “We used a lot of power windows and tracking shapes to mould the image and increase the dramatic impact, adding more shadow and texture. I also used colour isolation in the frame to play certain colours off against each other. It will lead the audience focus on the things that director want the audience to see.

Locations were also graded subjectively at times. The looks created for San Antonio, Texas, where Nicholas Barclay’s family live, change quite a bit throughout the movie, with a glowing early morning look, and wide blue skies with white clouds. Erik Wilson noted that a specific location among the re-enactments was at the town’s square with a telephone box in the middle, where the narrative returned several times, needed a special look.

Rob said, “I wanted to really pull out the skies in the grade to make them stand out against the landscape. We have some classic evocations of the American panorama in the shots, such as highways, diners and so on. Most of the locations were enhanced during the grading process to give a hyper-real feeling, especially the flashback sequence when Frederic is recounting the first time he meets Nicholas’ sister as she shows him the family photos.

Light and Shadow

To help with some fairly complex dissolve sequences with multiple layers, Rob graded each shot separately and rendered out to the Smoke for the online editor to composite together. “We then viewed the sequences back in the DI theatre and tweaked the opacity of each layer to make sure that each element stood out at the right time,” Rob said.

As the film was shot digitally, they carried out grain addition tests on the footage to make it appear more filmic. 

Color adjustment plays a very important role in the movie, it can change the picture quality, and reshape the image of feeling, even can build a different atmosphere, so that it can achieve the director's requirements. It also can add some interesting elements for films to enhance the story.

Adriene Hurst, 2013. THE IMPOSTER – Colour of Deception [online]. Available at: http://www.digitalmedia-world.com/Features/the-imposter-company-3-rob-pizzey?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed [Accessed 1^st April 2013]

Film "The Imposter"

Few days ago, Jools recommended one article for me. It talks about one documentary film “The Imposter”. Before read that article I decided to watch this film first.

This documentary film is really as creepy as it described in the poster, even it’s scarier than many other good fiction films. I can feel the director was trying to use some very exquisite ways to express the characters of each people in this film to the audience. 

A documentary film is based on reduction event, but in order to enhance ornamental, director was intended to keep the film in an atmosphere of suspense, so that the movie was inserted into many post-production elements to restore the scenes again. The director use many scenarios (such as the characters' language overlap, eyes confrontation, etc.), this more or less make some narrative sense of reality.