By the way, if you haven't seen the video then here it is for ya :-D
So first thing that is kinda more outstanding than any of my videos is the camera/ visual quality in this video.
A common misconception about when it comes to filming is that the more expensive your camera is, the better quality your video.
Now as much as it is true that a Canon 600D DSLR will obviously have better quality than a Iphone camera, there are factors that affect every camera when it comes to visual quality.
The first and probably most important thing to consider when it comes to visual quality rather than composition is lighting.
Lighting can make a really crap camera bring out professional looking quality video. While if you have bad lighting, it can destroy any image on even the most expensive camera.
An experience I had a while ago while I was assistant director on a short film called "Photo Shoot" was something that was ruined by lighting.
During the film shoot, we had a scene where the two main characters where having a conversation and taking some photos in the study. However because the lighting was quite bad, the camera man (who was just starting) turned up the ISO (or AVA for some) on the camera to try and compensate for the bad lighting. Because of this, the video we took came out very grainy. So grainy that we could not fix it in post.
Just to give you an idea of what ISO is, I'll just briefly explain what it means.
ISO is essentially adjusting how sensitive your camera's image is to light, but the more you up the ISO, the more noise you can see on your image. Because of this, you decrease the quality of your image. For me an ISO of 800 is the max I will ever go (and that is with visible noise), anything at 1600 or above is useless.
If you compare this to, for example my 6 seconds to die short (where there was poor lighting), you can see a difference.
(Damn, I look creepy in the right photo O_O)
So for this day of production, I was able to shoot on a fairly sunny day in an area with a lot of light. Because of this, I was able to keep the ISO at 400.
Then with the right exposure and aperture, I was able to let enough light in to create a create picture without completely destroying the picture.
However you may be asking : "ProfKranc, what if I want to shoot a scene that is supposed to be dark but I don't want to loose video quality?"
Well I would advise trying to light the scene to a point where you can retain as much quality as you can and in the way you want the final image to be. Try to make sure the lighting isn't so dark that it literally make some sections completely black. If you keep the detail and want to make it look dark (or maybe even make it look like its at night), you can play with it in post until you get it right.
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! RETAIN VIDEO QUALITY!
Getting back to where we were at, there is one angle though that I didn't correct that did bug me.
This one.
The reason this medium shot of the scene bugs me so is the colour and tone. When you compare it to the OTS (Over the shoulder frames), the medium shot looks colder than the others.
The way this could have been fixed is with colour correction.
Now before I explain the whole colour correction bit, I just want to point out something.
Colour correction is when you match two images to the same lighting, colour and tone. Its not stylising the image like you do with Instagram filters. That is colour grading.
Colour grading is when you enhance certain colours and contrast, while also changing the tone of the image. Colour correction is different.
Anyway, because I was trying to edit this rather fast at the time (and because Final Cut Pro X keeps crashing on me) I didn't pay attention to the tone change in the images. If I could re-edit the video, I would pay extra attention to that to make it look more similar to the other frames.
By the way, just a side note. Final Cut Pro X is a demanding piece of software. If you are going to use it, get a desktop or make sure you have enough space and processing power to use it properly. Otherwise, it will be really slow and crash when you put to much stress on it.
Finally, I said I would tell you how I did the speed away effect shown in the Parody video.
Speed Away Effect
(unfortunately no pictures, FCPX crashed)
First off I had to shoot three things.
1. Actor playing John reacting to the effect (John layer)
2. Me on the green screen pretending to speed away. (G.S layer)
After doing this I had to bring all of the elements together into a single timeline. I put the John layer as the first/ bottom layer and the G.S layer on the second layer.
With the G.S layer on to top of the John layer, it obviously meant that you couldn't see the actor playing John and instead me on my own, on a green screen looking like an idiot.
So in order to fix this, I cropped the G.S layer so only the green screen and I where in frame. This revealed some of the background.
I then scaled it down to the same size of John on the John layer and the Chroma keyed the G.S layer.
Chroma keying is essentially taking a colour and removing it from the shot. In doing this, I took out the green screen and just left me standing there.
We are nearly halfway there now.
From here I went on and key framed myself to go out of frame very quickly from when I turned round. From that point is were we pile on the effects.
First I cut the video footage to when the keyframe movement kicked in. I then added a directional blur to the G.S layer and put it up to 78% on the speed away part of the footage. This gave a sort of speed blur for when I was shooting out of shot.
I then cut away a few frames from John's layer to make his reaction to the sudden speed away more violent. I also added an earthquake effect (or simple camera shake effect) for the first few frames of the speed away to make it look like the camera was shaking because of the pure force of the sonic boom that was created.
I then added a vector of cracked ground and then overlaid it on top of John's layer and below the G.S layer (because I'm supposed to have left the mark).
I then added a dirt charge effect from the "Action Essentials" pack from when I started to speed off to give more of an impact to the effect. It also made it look like smoke went right up into John's face.
With that I finally added a trailing smoke effect. To do this I took a smoke atmosphere effect from the Action Essentials pack and key framed a mask to reveal more smoke as I gradually left the frame. I key framed the mask to move all the way to the point where the shot ended. I did it so it seemed the smoke was following me, essentially making a smoke trail.
After that, I moved to the next shot. In order to make it seem like the smoke is still remaining from the previous shot, I added another dirt effect from the Action Essentials pack (god, I mentioning it so much its like they sponsored me or something, lol :-p) and added a fade out effect to the smoke layer. If I had left it, John would have been coughing over nothing.
And that is how I made that effect.
Now throughout that whole explanation I have made it seem quite easy, but it wasn't. It may have been because FCPX kept crashing, but it took a hell of a long time to do that one effect.
I'm not saying Final Cut Pro X is a bad editor, in fact its quite the opposite. It's just because my computer doesn't have enough processing power to run it smoothly. If you are thinking of getting FCPX, make sure your computer has enough horse power to run it, otherwise it will be as slow as a traffic jam in New York.
By the way, I have mentioned the Action Essentials pack a lot during this post. I just want to clarify that I don't have any special relations with them or anything. Its actually just a really good special effects pack that I use a lot. If you have the money and want to do special effects, I suggest you get it.
With the G.S layer on to top of the John layer, it obviously meant that you couldn't see the actor playing John and instead me on my own, on a green screen looking like an idiot.
So in order to fix this, I cropped the G.S layer so only the green screen and I where in frame. This revealed some of the background.
I then scaled it down to the same size of John on the John layer and the Chroma keyed the G.S layer.
Chroma keying is essentially taking a colour and removing it from the shot. In doing this, I took out the green screen and just left me standing there.
We are nearly halfway there now.
From here I went on and key framed myself to go out of frame very quickly from when I turned round. From that point is were we pile on the effects.
First I cut the video footage to when the keyframe movement kicked in. I then added a directional blur to the G.S layer and put it up to 78% on the speed away part of the footage. This gave a sort of speed blur for when I was shooting out of shot.
I then cut away a few frames from John's layer to make his reaction to the sudden speed away more violent. I also added an earthquake effect (or simple camera shake effect) for the first few frames of the speed away to make it look like the camera was shaking because of the pure force of the sonic boom that was created.
I then added a vector of cracked ground and then overlaid it on top of John's layer and below the G.S layer (because I'm supposed to have left the mark).
I then added a dirt charge effect from the "Action Essentials" pack from when I started to speed off to give more of an impact to the effect. It also made it look like smoke went right up into John's face.
With that I finally added a trailing smoke effect. To do this I took a smoke atmosphere effect from the Action Essentials pack and key framed a mask to reveal more smoke as I gradually left the frame. I key framed the mask to move all the way to the point where the shot ended. I did it so it seemed the smoke was following me, essentially making a smoke trail.
After that, I moved to the next shot. In order to make it seem like the smoke is still remaining from the previous shot, I added another dirt effect from the Action Essentials pack (god, I mentioning it so much its like they sponsored me or something, lol :-p) and added a fade out effect to the smoke layer. If I had left it, John would have been coughing over nothing.
And that is how I made that effect.
Now throughout that whole explanation I have made it seem quite easy, but it wasn't. It may have been because FCPX kept crashing, but it took a hell of a long time to do that one effect.
I'm not saying Final Cut Pro X is a bad editor, in fact its quite the opposite. It's just because my computer doesn't have enough processing power to run it smoothly. If you are thinking of getting FCPX, make sure your computer has enough horse power to run it, otherwise it will be as slow as a traffic jam in New York.
By the way, I have mentioned the Action Essentials pack a lot during this post. I just want to clarify that I don't have any special relations with them or anything. Its actually just a really good special effects pack that I use a lot. If you have the money and want to do special effects, I suggest you get it.
N.B. That entire bit at the end of the Man of Speed video, where we are going through someones wallet? It was all improvised. RANDOM FACT OF THE DAY! :-D
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