Experimental Film - Final Film

Multi Screen - Editing

Editing is always a draining task for me as it isn't exactly my favourite thing to do. It was very easy for me to do the Premiere Pro side of things as really all it was was putting the clips together. The part that I really hated was the After Effects side of the project. I find the software very difficult to use and feel that it's going to be a long time before I grasp a proper understanding of its uses. I followed the tutorial which was simple enough to go along with and ended up with something that I was relatively happy with. I had to go frame by frame following the path of the object I wanted to animate around. This was a lengthy process as the films were 24fps meaning I had to draw on 24 frames for just 1 second of footage. Given more time I would love to do this again and on a bigger scale as once I got into the swing of it I was actually enjoying drawing on each frame and seeing the animation come together as a whole. 

Multi Screen - Filming

The filming process of this project was very makeshift and quick. I really didn't have a lot of time for this project in terms of when I started it so I couldn't afford to waste time worrying about the camera settings too much and so I settled for natural lighting. Because I had very little time I couldn't bring in an actor so I had to step in myself; this is partly the reason as to why I tried my best not to reveal my face (because I was holding the camera in some shots).  I used a Canon 600D with a 35mm lens and used a gorilla pod to keep the camera steady. In all honesty, the filming went quite smoothly and was all done in the space of an hour. My only query whilst filming was not having someone in charge of the camera able to tell me if everything I was doing was looking okay or not, meaning I had to film a take, stop and playback by myself to make sure it all looked okay.

Multi Screen - Progression on Idea

Because I feel like I haven't had a lot of time to think about this project, I found it difficult to think about how I was going to implement the use of After Effects into my project. I started looking online for interesting effects that I could create but didn't want to try anything too challenging that I know I wouldn't be able to follow. I then stumbled upon a tutorial on how to create an animated drawing effect which after watching seemed quite straight forward and seemed to be in my sort of skill level. I started following the tutorial but there came a point where one of the buttons wasn't available to me that was there for the person doing the tutorial. Because of this I had to keep every drawing that I did on the screen for the rest of the video. I really didn't like this at the start but after I'd done all the drawings and saw them overlap onto one another I actually quite liked it and thought it made the whole piece look quite abstract and thought that it could represent the brainwaves of the person on each screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-CNfSqydsY

Multi Screen - Relative Work (Hoodie Allen)

Whilst trying to think of ideas for my project, I remembered how one of my favourite musical artists has a music video that uses multi screen imagery in an ingenious way. In this video it follows the singer, Hoodie and a pretty girl in whom he tries to impress at a crowded house party. One screen is on Hoodie and the other on the girl with there being a clear divide down the middle of the screen. There is a part in the video which I find very impressive which is where both Hoodie and the girl are in the same room and notice each other, the cameras on both screens then quick pan to the other person so for a very short moment they are on the wrong side of the screen. It then pans back and everything carries on. This video has really influenced me as it is an excellent use of using two screens at once and if given more time and money, would be something I would want to achieve for this project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZunGEL-jD-Y

Multi Screen - Initial Idea and Development

My initial idea for the multi screen project was to have two different people of similar characteristics following a similar journey of walking/strutting/dancing who would then eventually meet each other. I planned to use interesting camera angles and to colour correct the film in an extreme way, making the video seem quite abstract. After some thought and re-reading the brief, I realised that my idea would not meet the fitting criteria. I then had an idea to do a similar thing to my original plan but do a sort of gender role reversal idea. So essentially it was going to be two different people getting ready and going about their day but you would not see their faces until the end which would have been a reveal that the whole time you thought you were watching the mans day, it was actually the woman and vice versa. Again after some consideration I decided that this would not suit the brief again and started thinking about technology and how I could include that into my project. I decided to settle on the idea of one screen showing a person using a lot of technology then having the same person adjacent on the other screen using no technology whatsoever.