Editing

When looking at our stop-frame-animation shots I decided that I should explain how we actually achieved having the four of the same males within one shot. We started off by filming the green screen shots, and having the male move over one and a half steps away from where he was standing the shot before. This meant that when we started to edit these shots we could easily make the male look like he is stood next to himself. We green screened the male onto our chosen background so it looked like this:















After we had done this we saved it, and opened it up within the same project, which meant that we could put a new green screen shot over the top. So it now looked like this:















We then repeated the previous step until we had the four males so they gradually added onto the end. Our final shot looked like this:













Overall we were very happy with how this turned out, as we were unsure as to how the final result would look. We edited the contrast and brightness of the shots because his jeans change slightly (which can be seen in the above screen grab) so now our shots looked very realistic and it is almost impossible to tell that we have used the greenscreen effect. The final result can be seen on our final video when everything has finished being edited.

13/01/11

Today we have arranged to start producing our digipack as we have now finished editing the stop-frame-animation shots and filming extra shots (such as greenscreen shots), therefore we are going to use our lesson time today to take the photos of the male outside, the shots of the objects on the table and possibly the photo of the park if we have enough time to achieve this. We will then take the photo of the male sat in his bedroom during the day that we will film the scenes in which he is in his bedroom. Therefore - if everything goes to plan - our digipack will almost be finished after todays lesson.

Lighting experiment

When we were filming our green screen shots, we decided that we should experiment with lighting as we were unsure as to which ways would cause more shadows, or more lighting on the actual screen rather than the male. During this video you can see that we had used the same background (which will also be the background for our final piece as the sky is very dull and negative - creating a negative feel to the male) for all of the shots, but we have used different shots in which the male exits the shot via the left which will also feature in our production. We decided after looking at these one after another on this video that if we do not use the overhead lighting, then the two side lights appear stronger and affect the whole shot - resulting in too much light being attracted to the sides of the green screen and making the purpose of the green screen effect less effective. Therefore we decided we must use the overhead lighting to stop this effect happening. When looking at the two side lights, we tried different positions of the lighting. For example, if you look at the image you can see that there were 2 different positions for each side camera. We mixed these combinations and tried them all to see which one was most effective. For example, we used the Side Lighting A at point 1 whilst Side Lighting B was at point 1 also, we then changed it so that Side Lighting A stayed at point 1, but Side Lighting B was now at point 2. We then did the opposite of this, so there was a total of 4 combinations when regarding the side lighting. We decided on putting Side Lighting A at point 1 and Side Lighting B at point 2 as we found that it did not create a shadow when the male exited the shot and it also meant that the male did not look too discoloured from the 'Oh me, Oh my' shots either. There was also the issue that with too much lighting on the shots, the male sometimes turned translucent and we could see through his arms and shoulders. We then decided to mess around with effects on the Mac and we lowered the contrast levels which effected our short green screen lighting experiment as he was no longer translucent, and the colours were much more vivid. Therefore we believe that this experiment was extremely beneficial as it meant that we could get the best out of our green screen shots and it enabled us to use the green screen effect extremely effectively.

Another way that the shadows could effect our piece is by them occurring because of the actual green screen. For example, if the fabric is not crease-free then there is an issue of shadowing happening because of the fabric itself. However, whilst exploring the Mac we found out that we can crop green screen shots so that only part of the green screen shot is shown. For example, looking at the screen grab you can see that by moving the four circular points you can cut out the parts that you do not want. For example, (referring back to our original green screen experiment) we had the top corner which had shadows and did not 'green screen' well. However, we now have the ability to cut these errors out of our production, therefore if a part of the shot has not worked as well as we had hoped and the male doesn't go near that section we can cut it out and make it disappear.

Greenscreen

Whilst experimenting with editing, we managed to find a way to layer the green screen shots on top of one another, creating the effect that there were four of the same person, within the same clothing etc. However, because of the way we had originally filmed these green screen shots, it means that we must re-film these shots having the male move over a few paces after each one so that we do not have the issue of the closest male blocking the view of the furthest one. Therefore we decided we will use our lesson time today (11/01/11) and our study period before this lesson to film these shots.

How we are using our time

At the moment we are using our lesson time by editing our piece, so that we will not end up wasting our time with our stop-frame-animation shots, which take up valuable time. We have decided that we will film in 2 weeks time; however we will not waste our time up until then as we will be focusing on these shots, making sure that the placement of many shots are in the right position. For example, when on the iMac (looking at the pictures you can see this demonstrated) some shots (e.g A) takes up the whole of the screen,whereas some other shots (e.g. B) had two black bars across the top and bottom of the shots, making it seem smaller and the shots were more squashed up. Therefore we had to crop all of the shots to make them the same size (as they are meant to seem as though an object is just appearing e.g a pencil). Therefore, it made it much more difficult and time-consuming so we decided to finish the editing for these shots now, rather than when we are in a rush.