Cinematography Research

         

              

                 RUBY SPARKS- Matthew Libatique

In the movie ruby Sparks, the main character is a wrier and he has to come up with a story quickly. Everytime he passes out or sleeping he always dreams about the same dream and a girl but he cant see her, she is always blurred out. Every time he dreams he gets closer to seeing her face and he ends up waking up due to his alarm set off or something woke him up.

I love how vibrant the colours are during his dreamy sequences and shows a happy thought and memory. I wanted something like this for the flashback sequence. 

I have a similar scene like this i shot outside in the park,  and for my flashback i will make this scene more colourful and add a glow to it to give it a dreamy feel.

                          PROMETHEUS- Dariusz Wolski

I love prometheus cinematography, it is very clean but the colours are  beautiful. throughout the movie the cinematography look is like the matrix, it has a green tint to it. And for this I was thinking to use it for my short film

MATRIX RELOADED- Bill Pope

the matrix has a green look to it, most outdoor scenes have more greens and blues and less warm colours. I did something similar to this in the first test i did with my classmate andy as the main character.

                THE SOCIAL NETWORK- Jeff Cronenweth
The Social network is similar to matrix, but this is more of a David Fincher look to all of his films. He always have the same cinematography and this is one of the things that makes his a memorable auteur.

SHAME- Sean Bobbitt

Research- Inspiration

Tutorial- After Effects Camera Stabilisation

Since some of my shots will be hand held, I will be needing to use stabilisation in after effects to keep the movement to a minimum and smooth. Mostly I will be using hand held camera shots when showing close up shots and reaction. I did do a test and the stabilisation was not as good. There was a lot of glitches and for that I will be needing to learn how to stabilise the camera well

Tutorials- tracking in After Effects

Research- Camera effects

Tilt shift is one of the techniques  I wanted to do.Mainly tilt shift is used as time lapse and make  things look miniaturised.I will be filming long periods of time and then add the tilt shift effects in post. As part of the short story I will be doing, at a point in the storyline there will be a time lapse to show time passing. Instead of using a simple fade to show time pass, I thought tilt shift would work great.

In my second year of university, my tutor showed us some after effects techniques videos for inspiration. One of the examples showed was an advert made for ESPN football advert. It was in Tilt shift and it look amazing. Everything looked fake and surreal  Like they were made of plastic and stop motion like effect.

Cinematography

I looked at many Cinematographers for my work and get the feel of what the colour tone will be like in my film. I went out around City centre to look at locations of which I can shoot my scenes.

I edited them using my iPad app called Photoforge 2 and After effects on my computer. Mainly used Curves, vibrance, brightness and saturation and tint effects to add and change colours to suit what I want my final video to look like.

These locations had to have interesting buildings or environments around them to film. I wanted to have a great location and background to give atmosphere.

Also time of the day was important to get the perfect colour. In post production you can always change the colour tone and change time from sunny to rainy, but works better if you already got the weather or time shot exact or similar time.

Visual Effects Inspiration - The Da Vinci Code

Visual Effects Inspiration - Limitless Effects

I really enjoyed Limitless and the visuals it had. I wanted to do something similar for my short film. First of all i love the visual, by visual i mean the colours and the vibrance used. The storytelling through out the film is quite impressive. I love the transitions and it is the reason why i wanted to try them and use them for my short film. I didn't even have a storyboard but i knew i would want to do something like limitless visual effects.

I love this scene when we see words falling down and that his thinking mode has kicked in. Instead of us showing what he is writing on his  laptop, they use words falling down from the ceiling .

in this scene is used to show transition and time passing and also showing the character going through a rough dirty poor guy to a handsome smart and successful.

The scene below was a fish eye lens/ 360 degree view showing his senses working all around and his brain opening up to full capacity. I think this was used to show his senses working as eyes too. He can see back of his head too. To show he knows everything that is going on around him.

Visual Effects Inspiration - Transitions

For my idea for specialist studies 2, I had thought of doing transitions since beginning of the year. I didn't get to explore and learn much since I ran out of time. 

In the film Limitless, we get to see main character experiencing side effects caused by the drug he takes. He goes through blackouts and end up in different places each time his blackout ends. The visuals used to show the audience what he must be going through is presented by zoom effect and it is really effective. I want to do something similar to this for my short story. 

Video below is a neat effect used to show time pass