16th March 2023
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PRELIMINARY TASK
We set up my tripod in front of the stair case gate, prompted up on two benches joined together but the static shots were not as good so we decided altogether to ditch it. As the designated videographer, I managed to get some great closeup shots and a smooth pull back shot as our actress comes out of the staircase area.
Shooting the scenes around the staircase was challenging as our juniors were constantly walking in front of our shots. We had a harder time telling students to go from the other side than we had shooting that day lol. We managed to wrap up the morning shoot within an hour, taking 5-10 takes of each shot. My perfectionism really kicked in so we didn't stop till I was satisfied of the clip turning out as they were in my head. After being done with the first half in full daylight, we went back home to get changed for the farewell. The sun was quite harsh in the morning but by 5 pm the weather was extremely beautiful. All of us including our actress, Rija (my friend whom I begged to do this because I envisioned her perfectly for the role) came back to shoot the rest of the preliminary task. We started of at the same location where we left of earlier and instead of doing a tilt up, this time I took a tilt down shot to show a shift in location. Taking the walking shots and squatting down in a full lehenga and heels to get the tracking shots got me a lot of stares but you gotta do what you gotta do.
The shots at the photobooth were probably my most favourite, I had helped our décor team set up a bit as well. My friend had gotten me the gajra (flower bangel) that we placed on top of the dholak (a musical instrument used to play traditional music on celebratory events), That really tied the whole entire shot as I was able to play around with the camera focus to be guided as the gajra is taken from the dholak and put on the actresses wrist. This shift of focus was probably the most tricky shot to get as somehow the focus always messed up. Zahra made her cameo playing the dholak in the background of the shot, I didn't need to direct her to do this since we had already known we wanted a connection to music shown in this task so as soon as she saw the dholak she knew what to do. Finally we took the shot of our actress walking out of the flower and polaroid decor to show a transition, walking into a place full of beautiful memories kind of inspired by story of my life by One Direction MV. This shot was really fun as it was quite windy and the decore was flowing so beautifully and the close up shots are quite good. It wasn't the most perfect shot when I got to editing but there was no going back in time so I made do with what I had. Throughout shooting this we wanted to remain true to ourselves and embrace our culture fully. |
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EDITING
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**My media sir didn't grade me on my editing input since he didn't know I did it so that has definitely taught me a lesson to never forget to take credit.**
EDITING WAS DONE BY MERAL ZAHID We had to come back in the evening to shoot the next scenes. It was a challenge since the sun was setting so I had to ensure the clip's lighting looked coherent in the next half. VSDC did not help in color grading, and despite offering basic color correction support and Luts, I was still unable to achieve the look I wanted. So again I went down the loophole of research and yet again ended up downloading Davinci resolve, an older version however which works fine if I don't use fusion and be able to actually hear what I am editing. But with multiple renders and probably frying my laptop, I made it work.
The clips were filmed on iPhone 13 and for some reason, my laptop and DaVinci resolve were unable to process the clips filmed in MOV format on it . I did not face this problem when importing the clips to vsdc so for Davinci I had to convert the clips to DNxHD 1080 format which is better format for color grading.
After color grading the clips I re-edited the entire sequence in Da Vinci so I could use its speed curve and audio equalizer option to edit my audio. Editing the sound loop was taking so long so I decided to improvise and use the eternal jukebox(AI) website to extend the music sequence of the song Kabira.
In the beginning, the first clip didn't have much audio so I added an audio clip of a bird chirping that I had downloaded from mixkit website online. In the next shot sequence, I kept the background white noise to make it sound natural, and for scenes in which I was giving directions I just removed the sound and used background noise from another take of the clip. This allowed me to make a quite natural feel. For the headphones shot, I had a specific audio style in mind as it fades from an outside headphones perspective to actually hearing the music as if it were playing in your headphones. I wanted the transition to be evident so it shows that we have entered a new perspective. I was able to do this through the audio equalizer option. To see what writing looked good I took a screenshot from my rendered last clip, added it to photoshop, and checked writing styles that worked with the concept. After struggling to import Urdu text I had to go back to my good old friend google for help. Managed to do that and play around with composite settings to finally agree on one style. I sent the writing styles in our WhatsApp group and we decided to go with the last one.
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PRELIMINARY TASK (DA VINCI)
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ROUGH CUT (VSDC)
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PROOF OF DIRECTING
(+ CLIPS THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE FINAL CUT)
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