Film Production PortfolioRemember Me

May 2018

Editor

YouTube Link: https://goo.gl/PFwqSE

Rationale Word Count: 100Word Count:

The Rationale:

My film Remember Me, is about a teenage boy wants to find a journal his mother left him before she died. Unfortunately, he has severe memory issues, and can’t remember where he placed it, and he may totally lose his memory of her. Some recurring themes seen in this film include discovery and the quest for knowledge. One of the most important elements of this movie is to create well designed and understandable flashbacks that lets the viewer develop alongside the hero, as seen in both the Usual Suspects and Memento.

For Remember Me, I assumed the role of editor.

Word Count: 100

Commentary

Pre-Production

To give Remember Me the intended effect on the viewer, we wanted to create a strong attachment to Kevin and his family. We are planning to achieve this connection by giving the viewer the backstory of Kevin and the struggles he has had to face with his memories. The use of flashbacks in our film is going to be the primary way of creating that connection. I began researching the most effective forms of flashbacks used in famous films to develop my own style that I will later use in our film.

After I had decided the flashback effect that I would be using, I wanted to develop a few different Look Up Tables (LUT) that I could use in post to create a certain feel to the film. I created a deep grey blue look the flashback sequences, while having a vibrant yellow color for all the other scenes. I will be able to drag and drop these LUTS into the sequence easily later, post-filming

Finally, I had to set up the folders that I will be using to sort the footage and audio files into. I began by creating the following folders: B-roll, the scenes filmed, discarded footage, voiceovers,

music, and graphics. With these folders in place I can insure that I will be able to maintain a clean and organized system that will later ease the editing process

Filming

During the filming process of our movie I did not have any major role, as I am the editor I do most of my work during the Post Production stage. Since I had no major role I decided to help the rest of my group with some of the little tasks to help keep the filming process a smooth as possible. One of the most important elements to any film is the setting, knowing this my group and I wanted to ensure that we choose the most suitable location for our film. As most of our movie would be filmed within one household we wanted to choose the pristine location to display all the emotions and struggles that Kevin faces throughout the film. I first suggested filming at a model home that I work for which had an extremely expensive setting offering a unique building style. Unfortunately, after filming for a few days we ran into scheduling and location errors that forced us to find a new house to use in our production. Next, I suggested using one of my friends houses that I felt would have an appropriate setting for the story.

The only involvement that I had during this phase that had any correlation to my editing role was the suggestion of various shots so that in post-production I would be able to develop the necessary effects and keep a steady flow throughout the film. Aside from those two points I mainly held lights and aided in any of the production tasks that were needed at the time.

Post-Production

After a few weeks of shooting I uploaded all the footage and audio recordings to my computer and assorted them into the appropriate folders.

Now I had to compose all the footage in Premiere Pro and create the necessary effects to create a well-developed and understandable film. My initial goal for editing was to composite a base sequence of the film to ensure that the story flowed well. After creating the base sequence, I began to splice and match various shots to keep continuity throughout the film. Since we were limited to only one DSLR it was vital to have correct framing for transition shots, a prime

example of this is when Kevin barges into his parents’ room after listening in on their conversation. In this shot I had to establish the correct timing so the door and Kevin flowed together from the previous shot.

About half way through my process of editing I realized that a few of our shots were framed incorrectly and needed some form of change. I notified our actors, director and cinematographer and established a time that we could reshoot.

Once we had finished reshooting the necessary shots, I continued where I left off and finished the base version of the sequence. I feel that now having the correct shots the film had the intended fluidity, and I was able to effectively edit each clip together which now gave our film the story we wanted. The next issue that I ran into while editing was realizing that there was quite a lot of noise in some of our shots. My initial response was to attempt to apply various effects such as brightness, color correction and grain reducers within Premier Pro. Unfortunately, using this method, I was unable to remove the noticeable noise in my shot. At this point I knew that I had to import the various clips into an After Effects composition and use the dedicated setting within that program. In After Effects the process of removing grain is as simple as dragging the “Remove Grain” effect onto the selected clip, resulting in a better final product for less work then Premiere Pro. Each clip takes a few moments to render and analyze before the grain is finally removed, once removed I could close After Effects and continue editing the movie in Premiere Pro.

At this point I could begin to add the color grading LUTs that I had designed during the Pre-Production phase. Adding the LUTs to the film really transformed it into our desired feel, it managed to connect the viewer to Kevin and the struggles that he was facing. It gave the film various up and downs changing the lighting of the sad shots and creating more presents of light during the happier scenes. While adding the various LUTs to the sequence I had to make sure that I did not apply them to any of the flashback scenes in the film, or else when I would make the flashback effect, the shot colors won’t look correct. Knowing the general look that I wanted for my flashbacks after my research helped as I fiddled with various color wheels, grunge effects, etc. After about an hour of editing I established the final effect that I would use for the flashbacks, including an echo effect on the video, a smoke and grunge overlay, color correction,

and audio effects. I was pleased with the final outcome of my work and believe that it portrayed the necessary effects to establish that it was in fact a flashback.

Final Evaluation

The creation of this film has been a long and hard process, as we had to face the many issues and mistakes that came about throughout the filming.

Equipment Used Adobe Premiere Pro CC Adobe Photoshop CC Adobe Illustrator CC Adobe Audition CC SD card

Micro SD card Micro to SD card converter Zoom Microphone Headphones Dell XPS 15 Laptop DJI Mavic Pro

Bibliography