One of the perennial bugbears faced by low-budget and independent film-makers is location shooting where there is no control over weather and one is challenged by the variability of available light, This can result in footage that varies considerably in quality, colour palette and shadow, and this is where the craft of the compositor can become a life-saving asset to a production.
Recently we were asked to to re-edit and provide visual effects for a music video for an up and coming London indie band, Rev78. The band had a clear vision for the narrative flow of the video to accompany the first single from their new album, “The Boy in the Blitz”. The single, “Every Bone” has a moody reflective quality and the band and producers wanted visuals to reflect this. The message of the song was that even in the most dire circumstances, with self-belief we can prevail.
The film had been shot on a Canon 7d in the weekend before Christmas 2010, during London’s worst snow for 20 years. There were some very nice scenes and nice performances, but the well-documented issues of the DSLRs were plaguing us as we edited the film together – rolling shutter defects on moving shots, issues with softish focus, not to mention the bane of post production – the very high ISO settings often used by indy camera operators to compensate for poor light (perhaps a post on this in the future…).
As we scanned through the footage, we kept coming back to a key shot – a tilt down from the bell tower of the chapel at the Mill Hill school to Teddy Quick, the lead singer . We decided that this shot could give us our sense of urgency, of impending crisis, if only it was a clock tower! The opening shot would have the hands of the clock moving backwards against a stormy threatening sky.
So, we needed to create a clock tower, and for extra impact, we decided at a critical point of the song, we would explode the clockface .
This is what we had to work with.
And this is what we needed to achieve:
As you can see, we had some work to do.
First, the sky was over exposed and so was a big block of white with no detail. In the video, the camera also tilts down the bell tower from the sky to Teddy Quick. As the camera tilted down, there was a focus pull to Teddy, which meant some sure-footed compositing work when we put a different background in. And finally, where was the clock?!
So how did we transform a fairly ordinary shot of the Mill Hill chapel bell tower to an exploding clock tower?
1. First find your clock.
The clock face was extracted from our stock library. We then animated the clock hands to run backwards. This was then composited in to the bell tower.
2. Remove old sky
The sky in the footage had to be replaced. In order to replace it, we had to first remove the old sky. When these steps had been completed we had this:
3. ’twas a dark and stormy…
A dark and brooding sky was called for, preferably in time lapse. We didn’t have the right timelapse footage in our stock library, so ordinarily we would have gone and collected our own timelapse footage, but the London sky was not cooperating. There was no budget to purchase any stock footage, so there was nothing else to do but to create a sky and animate it.
4. Correcting the light
We now had our time-reversing clock in the clock tower, and our stormy and threatening time lapse clouds so the compositing tools were put aside, and the colourist tools came out. As any compositor, matte painter or visual effects artist will tell you, the two things that sell the illusion we are trying to create is matching light and colour. This is what makes a composite appear like a single image.
With the final composite and colour corrections dealt with, we finished off by applying a warm colour grade to give a slightly moodier feel and then added an animation to complete the sequence.
Then we had time for a nice cup of tea and biscuits while it rendered and was then uploaded.
Here is the finished video for “Every Bone”. We hope you enjoy it!
Saw a preview of The Way, the new film by Emilio Estevez staring Martin Sheen. We were fortunate enough to aquire tickets to the preview screening at the British Film Institute, that included a Q&A with both Emilio Estevez and and our favourite US president Martin Sheen. What a fantastic evening!
Tom (Martin Sheen) is an American doctor who goes to France following the death of his adult son, killed in the Pyrenees during a storm while walking The Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, also known as The Way of St. James. Tom’s purpose is initially to retrieve his son’s body. However, in a combination of grief and homage to his son, Tom decides to journey on this path of pilgrims. While walking The Camino, Tom meets others from around the world (three in particular), all broken and looking for greater meaning in their lives.
The film is made more poignant knowing that it was a father-son team that brought this story into existence. It was written and directed by Emilio Estevez, based on Martin Sheen’s desire to make a film based on an earlier attempt to walk the Camino, several years earlier.
The Q & A covered a lot of ground, and one of the questions inevitably asked was how the two men had felt working together so closely – for a son to direct his father, and for a father to be directed by his son. The video below is is how they answered the question…
A little piece of the films – the Festival de Cannes ident which was shown before the start of each film.
Well, the festival is over for another year. We’ve met many new people and, hopefully, solidified some existing relationships.
It has been interesting sitting in the bar of the Grand Hotel listening to the wheeling and dealing and the earnest pitches… watching young women dressed to the nines begging for invitations to the Gala premières so that they can have a chance to walk the red carpet and have their photos taken by the paps… but all in all it has been invigorating and validating to feel part of a community of similarly obsessed filmmakers!
We have gained fantastic insights into the business of film, and in the areas that we moved in, there were very few celebrities in terms of actors or personalities. The celebrities we saw were directors, producers and other notables, including Roger Ebert (renowned US film critic) who was frantically looking for his lost MacBook Pro!
We’ve learned that:
you can’t be over dressed at Cannes
French public transport can be next to useless
the film industry has a very distinct and elitist hierarchy
the festival is a peculiar mix of ostentatious wealth and socialist politics
film makers wear sensible shoes, actresses don’t and by the end of the week there were a lot of women with sprained ankles from falling off their stilettos
just because something calls itself a festival, it doesn’t mean that it is actually a festival (speaking of the Cannes Independent Film Festival). We applaud their efforts to support independent filmmakers, but the experience of actually attending left a lot to be desired.
So back to the real Cannes festival:
For those interested below is a list of all the winners.
FEATURE FILMS IN COMPETITION
Palme d’Or
LUNG BOONMEE RALUEK CHAT (Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives) by Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL
Grand Prix
DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX (Of Gods And Men) by Xavier BEAUVOIS
Award for the Best Director
Mathieu AMALRIC for TOURNÉE (On Tour)
Jury Prize
UN HOMME QUI CRIE (A Screaming Man) by Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN
Best Performance for an Actor
Javier BARDEM in BIUTIFUL réalisé par Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU
Elio GERMANO in LA NOSTRA VITA (Our Life) réalisé par Daniele LUCHETTI
Best Performance for an Actress
Juliette BINOCHE in COPIE CONFORME (Certified Copy) by Abbas KIAROSTAMI
Award for the Best Screenplay
LEE Chang-dong for POETRY
SHORT FILMS IN COMPETTIONPalme d’Or
CHIENNE D’HISTOIRE (Barking Island) by Serge AVÉDIKIAN
Jury Prize
MICKY BADER (Bathing Micky) by Frida KEMPFF
CAMERA D’OR
AÑO BISIESTO réalisé par Michael ROWE présenté dans le cadre de la Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
UN CERTAIN REGARDUn Certain Regard Prize – Fondation Groupama GAN pour le cinéma
HAHAHA by HONG Sangsoo
Jury Prize
OCTUBRE (Octobre) by Daniel VEGA & Diego VEGA
The Prize for Best Performance Un Certain Regard
Adela SANCHEZ, Eva BIANCO, Victoria RAPOSO in LOS LABIOS (The lips) by Ivan FUND & Santiago LOZA
CINEFONDATIONFirst Cinéfondation Prize
TAULUKAUPPIAAT (The Painting Sellers) by Juho KUOSMANEN
Second Cinéfondation Prize
COUCOU-LES-NUAGES (Anywhere out of the world) by Vincent CARDONA
Third Cinéfondation Prize
HINKERORT ZORASUNE (The Fith Column) by Vatche BOULGHOURJIAN
A VEC JESAM SVE ONO ŠTO ŽELIM DA IMAM (I Already am Everything I Want to Have) by Dane KOMLJEN
And for those who have yet to view our little bit of Cannes, here is the trailer for The Ladies’ Room.
Today we went into the Palais to see the official screening of the 9 short films in competition. As we moved to the Salle Bunuel which is on the 5th floor, it was melancholy to see our now familiar haunts being dismantled – indeed the bitter end was nigh!
The 9 short films in competition were an interesting mix of films that once again had us scratching our heads over the alchemy of festival selection. Don’t get me wrong, the films were all of a high standard and watchable, but we couldn’t identify a unifying theme or criteria that might have been used to select them.
The majority of films were from South America – Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba. There were 2 animations and 2 documentary short films in the mix.
Felt satisfied that The Ladies’ Room compared reasonably well
Went to the Cinema de la Plage (the cinema on the beach), which is the only part of the Cannes festival open to the public. It’s a big screen on a pontoon on the water with deck chairs on the beach. The films screened are all classics. We saw Jacques Cousteau’s “The Silent World”. That was cool…
Things are starting to close down. The UK Pavilion, and our reliable access to the Internet, closed today, which is why this post is late.
Had difficulty moving around because the police were out in force around the Palais. Even getting into the Palais took longer than usual as security had been tightened for the screening of the controversial film “Hors La Loi” (Outside the Law) by Rachid Bouchareb.
Clare looking at the law. Increased security for “Hors La Loi”
Synopsis: After losing their family home in Algeria, three brothers and their mother are scattered across the globe. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes leader of the Algerian independence movement in France and Said moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shabby clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle. Gradually, their interconnecting destinies reunite them in the French capital, where freedom is a battle to be fought and won.
We were unable to get an invitation to see the film, so can’t comment one way or the other.
We were finally able to book a screening booth at the Short Film Corner so that we could see some of the other short films that had also been selected. Time was so pressing at the booths that 53 minutes into our booked hour, the attendant came and asked us to finish up so that they could alleviate the queue that was forming.
Fiona looking at films in the Short Film Corner screening booths
The afternoon into evening was beautiful – encouraging another stroll along the beach side of La Croisette. We had invitations to 2 parties and chose the AmpPav annual queer party, which turned out to the most unqueer party we have ever been to. The drinks were also very expensive.
Parties wherever you look!
Even so, life goes on. A night game of Boules or Petanque just across the road from where they hide the celebrities after they’ve walked the red carpet…
