Semester Two Review

Semester two came around in no time, we have been given a few documentary roles and studio production roles to keep me busy this term, preparing for all the job roles and planning my essays.

My favourite part in this semester was helping the TVP film their dramas and documentaries as I loved travelling to different locations and helping them shoot a film and also getting to work with lots of other different crew and actors. I also liked working on the field lighting exercise, where we recreated a scene in Memento that was pretty fun, as I was location lighting operator. 

The only sad thing about semester two is that it is our final semester and we finish second year of University and leaving my course mates and going back to my life in Essex is difficult, as I have grown so close to them but we still keep in contact through out the summer. 

'Dare To Flair' studio show

We have just finished the second episode of 'Dare To Flair' and for the first show I was camera assistant but could not make it as I was not very well and the second show I was given the role of camera operator, which went very well.

'Dare To Flair' is a multi-camera talent show in the studio, similar to the format of X Factor, where the judges get to choose who stays and who goes.

This show was very unorganised compared to 'Quote That' as I turned up at 9:30 as it said on the call sheet, but the camera supervisor and the other cameras apparently had a different call time, which was a couple of hours later. As I was the first camera operator to arrive, I was unsure of which camera I was suppose to be on, so I had to keep myself occupied for a few hours helping the rest of the crew setting up.

"You may be the driving force and creative fount, but you can't make a film all by yourself. Whether you have a 2-person crew or 30 people assisting you in your vision, you need to find people who are as passionate about your film as you are." (Stoller B; Lewis J 2003).

After all the camera operators and the camera supervisor arrived, I was given the camera with the auto cue on, so I got mid shots of the presenter and two shots of the presenter and the contestants and also close ups of the contestants whilst they were performing.

Before the show I had to make sure that the white balance was correct on the camera and that the air in the ped's of the camera had enough gas in it so it would flow smoothly. We had a few rehearsals to make sure that we were getting the correct shots that the director wanted.

Overall, I thought the camera crew worked very hard together getting different type of shots for the director to cut to. The only down fall I think for this production was the organisation and communication, some of the people need to be confident, making sure what role they have, sticking to it and communicate with the whole crew properly. The sound was flowing pretty well until we were recording as live, one of the judges, 'Mister Ayo' performed and then his mic completely went off. Other than that, the production wasn't too bad just a few muck ups. To improve the communication next time for myself I would contact the camera supervisor, director and producer and make sure when the actual call time for the camera crew is.

Stoller B; Lewis J (2003). Filmmaking for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub.

DaVinci Resolve + Colour grading in 'The Maxtrix'

Today Danny Hollingsworth taught us the basics of DaVinci Resolve 9 Lite. DaVinci Resolve is Hollywood's most powerful and creative colour correction software and has been around since 1984.

"DaVinci Resolve 11 combines the world’s most advanced color corrector with professional multi track editing, so now you can edit, color correct, finish and deliver all from one system! Davinci Resolve is completely scalable and resolution independent so it can be used on set, in a small studio or integrated into the largest Hollywood production pipeline!" Date accessed 1st April 2014.

The primary colour corrector can change the lift, gamma and gain with the controls of Davinci's unique YRGB colour space; creating perfect coloured images. The primary controls include; shadows, mid tones and highlight log controls. 

If you want to get a certain colour you can use the secondary precision colour corrector on Davinci. Precise HSL, RGB colour and LUM qualification lets you get the specific colour of the photograph.

Firstly you will have to create a node, which is kind of like another layer so that once you edit, you can click between them showing the before and after pictures. A node is a more powerful version of a layer as you can connect each node together, sequently or parallel. Each of the nodes can have its own colour correction as well.

Before starting to colour grade anything you will have to fix the contrast, so the image is not over or under exposed. You can crush blacks but certain broadcasters have a limit. Waveform scope tells us how bright the colours are.
Most directors like high contrast 90% of the time but sometimes they might like low contrast depending on the choice and style of film.

Gamma show us the mid tones of the image where as Gain show us the high lights of the image.

Using colour wheels to change the contrast only enhances the low lights where as if you use the primary setting you can enhance shadows and brighter areas.

Vectorscope is the colour information with an imaginary colour wheel. Parade shows us the red, green and blue colours of the image and if one of those colours are too cool or too warm.

Some directors like to use some artistic decisions whilst creating a film, setting the tone and the mood of the film by drastically or just a minor change to the colour of the film. This can effect the audiences emotional response as if the film was dark containing mainly blacks, greys and reds the audience would feel scared and frightened where as if the film was yellow they would feel much more happier.

Throught the film 'The Matrix' the director choose to have a slight green tint to the movie but they also had to make sure that they got the correct skin tone colour and not making the actors look like they are going to throw up. 

In order to do this they would have to lower the saturation to about 30%, make the shadows and the mid tones a but towards the green and then a tiny bit of yellow in the highlights, this helps with keying back in the correct skin tone colours. 

Once they got the correct type of green that they wanted, they would have to change the skin tone back by using the secondary colour corrector and then put a key onto the skin tone, adjusting it slightly. 

(2014). Davinci Resolve 11. Available: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve. Last accessed 1st April 2014.