The Final Video

After I sent the resultant footage, complete with 3D integrated text, a set extension, animatics, the 'sofa jpeg' element and color synch, to Gordon to be colour corrected, the resultant shot was my finished shot, to be shown near the end of our final shot. Key framing was (excuse the pun) key, and the most time consuming due to it having to be done manually (I never got time to find out how to use the camera tracker to integrate jpeg's, only text). Although slightly rough around the edges, it corresponds well with the original clip and also blended nicely with the other footage shot and edited by Ben, Kirsty and Gordon. Here is my showreel, containing information about the inspiration needed to get the shot done, some practical elements, our original footage and finally, my finished shot contained within our combined group's final video. Excuse the unusual narration. (link is to a vimeo webpage)

https://vimeo.com/83927922

most of the layers shown in the after effects timeline, of my finished shot

Colour Synching

scott pilgrim logo before effect was added

duplication of layers which had to be tinted different colours.

What I thought was going to be a very straightforward process turned out to be relatively complicated. The synching of colour within a layer basically meant that I had to duplicate said layer twice (which drains CPU) and tint them red and blue. Then I had to drag them slightly to the side and turn the opacity down considerably, adding a motion blur also.

Slight color around the edges of the lightening bolts signifies a
color synch. The effect was originally a mistake and was called 'bad TV'
in an old version of Final Cut Pro

When a musical beat is heard in the clip, the colour synch effect is intensified, corresponding with the swell in sound. A more random, sporadic colour synch effect had to be applied to the Scott Pilgrim logo and the camera tracked text, in accordance with the original footage. The entire effect gives off a playful, light hearted vibe in accordance with the film's themes.

colour synch was also applied to the surrounding footage

scott pilgrim logo after colour synch effect was added

Final Animations

Experimenting with animatics before was successful, so now I had the task of creating the actual animations which are going to be incorperated into the final video. The three animations I had to consider were the first 'lightening bolt' animation within the video, the second one, which is more pronounced in its visuals and is in time with the music, and then the Scott Pilgrim logo itself, which moves in a very particular way:

lightening bolts in original video

scott pilgrim logo, which has edges which move along the text itself

Cutting out the shapes in Photoshop and creating individual frames, I inserted these frames into Premiere and made them each 1/24th of a second long. Next I exported the files and added them into adobe after effects. The original footage contains animations with a 'color synch' effect (not too dissimilar to the visual style of an old 3D film when you remove the cardboard glasses); I have no idea how I am going to achieve this effect at this point as after effects does not contain a 'color synch' preset. The animations however are now in place and keyframed, which was a long and arduous task, not to mention the masking that had to be done in order to give the animatics a sense of depth, successfully integrating them into the 3D space of the video.

masking the animatics

Set Extension

After viewing the rushes, it became apparent that the footage we had shot did not contain a significant enough camera move to replicate the original shot. Furthermore, the set that we used was drastically different to the one that was originally featured. To combat this problem, I came up with the idea of integrating a set extension to the footage, enabling me to create a more faithful virtual set, and also letting me track back further than we did originally with the application of key frames to the footage that we shot.

In order to create this set extension I screenshotted a frame from the footage we had shot, and preceded to 'clone stamp' around the edges, making the image appear wider than it was originally.

application of the clone stamp tool to the walls and the floor (below)

The side walls in the original footage are a lot narrower, so I decided to integrate artificial walls into the set extension also. The walls were created from a free texture I obtained online, which were then skewed and the colour changed in photoshop.

application of the floor extension in photoshop

Next I imported the final image into after effects and preceded to key frame the original footage in an artificial track back, matching up the curtains in shot to ensure that they blended well and did not falter away from each other, something which happens a lot when key frames are applied to images.

animating and matching up both elements

after some blur was added, it appeared as if the footage was part of the extension

Although far from finished, for now it is adequately blended and will require some additional masking and feathering around the edges to blend completely.

Camera Tracking and Smooth Motion

So now the basic edit is done I will be focusing much more on the one shot I have assigned to me. To start off I needed to know how I was going to have the text and the 'lightening' animations to match the camera move on set. After visiting some tutorial websites and having several basic inductions I came to the conclusion that I needed to start to learn Adobe After Effects, whose many tools include a camera tracker and also the ability to provide smooth motion to key framed objects which is virtually impossible to do in Adobe Premiere. This is the camera tracker tool:

By pressing 'Track Camera' it tracks various random points in your video and essentially creates a 3D space for you to add objects or text that will stay in a fixed position within the motion of your video, giving the impression that they are at one with the raw footage. So I added text to one of the track points:

The 'Bullseye' tool, which you can alter depending on
how grounded you want your text to be within the video

A hell of a lot of rotating and altering on the x, y and z axis
eventually gave the impression that the text was standing
upright on the ground as the camera tracked out

So after a lot of experimenting and rewinding tutorial videos I eventually got the desired effect. Next on the agenda was the 'sofa' shot integrated into the same shot as the text. The way I wanted to do this was by photographing a still image of the actors on the sofa, with their heads facing the other way, cutting out the background in photoshop and then key framing the still image so it appeared that the camera tracked back beyond the sofa. I replaced the background with green so it could be easily keyed out.

After cutting out the background and trying to key frame the image in after effects I ran into a problem; key framing requires manually animating the image and the result was that as the sofa shot moved forwards it was in no way smooth. As the video played, the shot slowed down jarringly instead of smoothly slowing down and coming to a standstill. To combat this I realised that After Effects had to have some kind of graph based key framing which, thankfully, they did. Much like applying a curve tool effect in Photoshop, the way the key frames were positioned had to curve smoothly:

After applying this particular effect, the sofa shot was smooth and it finally began to slightly resemble the finished shot in Scott Pilgrim. Much more to do, such as applying the camera track to the sofa shot (which proved insanely difficult) but thats another blog post for another time. See y'all soon.

Beginning To Edit

Once shooting had finished we began to experiment with editing the raw footage. No effects have been applied yet, but relatively quickly we ran into some setbacks. Some of the close ups of the instruments we completed relatively quickly last saturday turned out to segway to far from the original clip. The issue mainly had to do with a lack of punch when it came to hitting drums/strumming guitars etc.

The note on the rough edit letting us all know that a small
re-shoot may be a good idea.

The synchronisation of the original video with our video has so far been the most successful editing aspect. Colour grading and 2D/3D visual effects are obviously going to be a challenge, but with the footage that we have so far shot, I think we may be able to make it work?

The sync with Gordon's and Cera's performances

Experimenting with key framing and motion tracking

Shooting

So last saturday we finally cracked down with the shoot. Aside from a few minor setbacks, one being the band we originally wanted to film pulling out at 11o'clock the previous evening, another being that a drum kit suddenly was not available, the shoot all in all went smoothly.

Ben lighting Knives's (Played here by Ariane Cole) reaction shot. Ben's face suggests that he is happy with said lighting.

The scene lit and ready to shoot. 

Filming the first sequential shot in the video. Timing of dialogue and camera movements was especially  important here. Gordon Gowland Jones, also in our group, took on the role of Scott Pilgrim after the band pulled out. I took on the role of Steven Stills. Luckily our voices are going to be dubbed by the original sound so our terrible mimicking of the characters voices will never be presented to the world.

Filming the final section of the shoot, the long tracking shot which required us to go into a much larger studio. The most complicated element of shooting was this one, we used a crane to pan slowly out and then down. Much of the elements seen in the original video (including moving text, lightening animatics, colour correction and possibly the rug also) will be added in Adobe After Effects. Shooting took roughly five hours, using a Canon 5D.

Gordon Gowland Jones and Ben Gwyther after the day's shooting. I was fine.