SETUP : Lighting

Here are photo's of Ryan (One of the team members). We set up a white spot light so the we only see light on the main focus so that it looks like this:

This footage has not been edited/retouched at all. It is the RAW footage, so you can still some of the left over blue from the backdrop.

Ryan adjusting the height of the stand that the light goes on

Ryan making sure the light is properly adjusted on the stand, ensuring it does not fall off during the course of the filming


Again, here is Ryan adjusting how much light is being let through the flaps for the light. Not too wide or to narrow. Just enough for the light to give the spotlight effect

Test Footage Before Shooting (Applying Make-Up Before Shooting/The Final Look) PART 2

Here are the Make-up artists applying some make up to our Actor Annabelle Nyguen

Here is a close up

Our Beautiful Make Up Artist At Work. Ife

Annabelle Being Waxed Up...

Some More Shots....

In total this preparation period took 1 half of the lesson to complete. Which was 45 Minutes. Because we were tight with time we had to rush the make up that was being done and hurry it up.

It was a fun process but we had to be efficient and swift about how we worked.

Test Footage Before Shooting (Applying Make-Up Before Shooting/The Final Look)

During the course of shooting this trailer before we did any filming we would apply makeup to the nessecary areas. Here we need some on his hand. Like in The First Test Footage we could see that there was no tone on where the blood was, so I asked our make up artist Ife Adeyemi if she could apply some more tone to where the blood was.

She then proceeded to what I like to call "the darker stuff" to the hand. This way it gives it more tone and realism. Adding the bruiser allowed the hand to look way more damaged and realistic so that even when colour grading it will look even more believealbe.

Towards the end of the footage we did the final test and also a colour graded version. The colour grading was done very quickly and hardly any time was taken on it , but in the final production of the trailer it should look amazing. From the little colour grading I did I applyed a preset called "Merlin". This is a bluey shade of colour. It looks good on a quick colour grade, imagine how good it will look in the final.

Test Footage Before Shooting (ISO/Shutter Speed/Apeture Setting)

I noticed that on walking into the building the flicker thing happened again. This is because of the kind of light used within' the building. Apparently with old fluorescent lights when filming over 100 Hz, the "camera capturing time" is too short to see the light always ON, like our eyes.

This is why during filming with the camera the ISO setting was raised to a whopping 6400. This problem with this is that raising it this high will cause the footage to be over-exposed.

Exposure is the amount of light collected by the sensor in your camera during a single picture. If the shot is exposed too long the photograph will be washed out. If the shot is exposed too short the photograph will appear too dark.

The apeture controls the amount of light let in to the camera. As u can see alot of light is being letting in causing the footage to be washed out. Also the white balance was left on +3 causing the white to take up most of the footage.

Test Footage Before Shooting (Seeing How The Makeup Looks On-Cam)

Before shooting we applyed make up to our actor, but to ensure the realism of the makeup I decided to see how the make up would look on camera in a variety of settings. We went out side to see how it looked. Clearly, if you watch over the footage it looks rather false and unbelievable outside. The reason we came to this conclusion was that the 'blood' which was applyed only had one tone. In horror movies blood never only has one tone, it has about 3 or 4, which led us into the next testing footage, where the make up artist applyed more tone to the hand.


I also noticed that when shooting the darker area of the footage had like TV flicker line running up and down it. Maybe because the lighting was low ? or there was something in the way ?

Through doing research I found out that :
"In fact, you see the "light's refresh rate", specially with old fluorescent lights (fluorescent lights or with sodium lights in industrial environment for ex.) so you see the light in its "OFF phase" and sometimes in its "ON phase".

Over 100 Hz, the "camera capturing time" is too short to see the light always ON, like our eyes.

If you use cine specialized HMI lights, or incandescent lights, you can work with higher shutters."

It's basically telling us the type of light used within the building was causing it to flicker, if the lights were more recent such a thing would not be present.


Information taken from :
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-7d-hd/474495-flicker-7d-50hz-country-shutter-speeds.html

Progress Update 14/12/2010

Due to a drastic improvement in weather conditions we have been able to proceed with filming and have progressed to film all but two shots. We are intending to complete filming by 17/12/2010 and continue editing out footage.