DANCE VIDEO: Post Production
ROUGH EDIT:
After finishing the shoot and all the footage was backed up Lucy started the rough edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, as she felt she would be more comfortable with it. After a bit of initial research i reassured her that it would be possible to convert the project file to Avid Media Composer, our software of choice for Color Grading and Finishing since we had booked the Avid Suite.
CONFORMING TO AVID:
Since the rough edit was done by Lucy in Premiere Pro, and the final color grade would be done in Avid Media Composer, we needed a way to get the timeline transferred from one application to the other.
Since Premiere and Avid aren't very compatible when sharing EDL files, we came up with a way to make the premiere pro export as generic as possible, stripping it from custom master clip names that confused Avid.
We did this by exporing an XML file from premiere pro containing all the cuts. We imported that in to DaVinci Resolve, a software package used traditionally for color correction, and is compatible with both Premiere and Avid. We then exported an AAF file from DaVinci, that could be imported smoothly in to Avid.
The resulting Avid Timeline retained all of the basic cuts and fades. We also exported a video render of the premiere project to verify and fix any errors that occured with the transfer.
VISUAL EFFECTS:
The film required a number of simple and complicated effects. Some of the most complicated shots were the glidecam shots as they involved tracking the movement of both shots, stabilizing them in 3d space and then re-applying one of the camera moves to both shots in order to get a shots with both Amelias and a moving camera.
Also allot of the greenscreen shots required extra hand drawn mattes as due to our quick shoot we didn't have time to cover the floor in a greenscreen.
The way i went about garbage matting the shots was instead of adding the masks after keying the footage, i precomposed the footage and then added green solids to cover up the floor and the light stands. This meant that the keyer would be able to pull a more natural key from the image and other effects such as light wrap would work properly. My keyer of choice was a combination of Keylight and Primatte. Keylight works well with chroma differences, where Primatte can be extremely selective as it also considers the foreground object's colors.
For some of the shots i also tried quite a different way of masking, as allot of shots needed to be done extremely fast. Instead of drawing masks and keyframing them by hand, i used the "Roto Brush" tool that was introduced in the recent versions of After Effects. This allowed a semi automatic masking process that only required some of my intervention to fix errors. I also added some adjustments to the edges of the matte such as softening and light wrapping to hide some of the imperfections of the matte.
Also, towards the last few days a new edit was cut, therefore more shots had to be added. These shots were being created at the same time as the edit, so as a shot would be completed i would hand it straight to shahid to replace in to the timeline.
Here are some shot breakdowns to further show my contribution to the project as an effects artist:
COLOR GRADING / ASSISTING THE EDIT:
To assist shahid in the complicated color grade for allot of the complex visual effects shots, since i was already creating keys and mattes to seperate both sides i created grayscale mattes as separate exports. (You can see these in the breakdown video above)
These mattes were then used in Avid as a Matte Key to isolate specific areas of the image in order to color grade them seperately.
I also assisted shahid in the tricky job of transferring shots back and forth between the edit, visual effects and the final conformed timeline. Both me and Shahid tried our best to mach lucy's edit, keep everything organised in bins and fix any problems that occurred during the transfer of projects.
With the colors both me and shahid were trying to keep everything consistent, therefore we saved both colors as presets to re-apply on to footage. We also added a filler on top of the main timeline to adjust the contrast globally, and to add a color safe limiter. Lastly we also played around with some external controllers for avid's color correction tools.
SOUND MIX / FINAL TOUCHES:
To finish the project as soon as lucy had the sound edit ready she exported each track individualy and gave them to me to do the final mix and mastering.
The tracks were mastered in Logic Pro X, and the adjustments made were equalizing all the tracks to avoid frequency clashes, but to also bring out the best of each sound (for example, lift the "kick" of the heartbeat, give some high end dynamics to the clicks), compress some sounds that were not balancing correctly, adjust the levels using professional monitor speakers and add some further effects such as a slight reverb on the breathing.
The final mix was balanced to -10db peak and -14db average with a -18db test tone, as highlighted by Simon Allmark.
I also designed a simplistic end titles sequence that literally "reflect" the mirror in the piece.
After finishing the shoot and all the footage was backed up Lucy started the rough edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, as she felt she would be more comfortable with it. After a bit of initial research i reassured her that it would be possible to convert the project file to Avid Media Composer, our software of choice for Color Grading and Finishing since we had booked the Avid Suite.
CONFORMING TO AVID:
 |
| Lucy's Premiere Pro Timeline |
Since Premiere and Avid aren't very compatible when sharing EDL files, we came up with a way to make the premiere pro export as generic as possible, stripping it from custom master clip names that confused Avid.
We did this by exporing an XML file from premiere pro containing all the cuts. We imported that in to DaVinci Resolve, a software package used traditionally for color correction, and is compatible with both Premiere and Avid. We then exported an AAF file from DaVinci, that could be imported smoothly in to Avid.
 |
| The Premiere Pro timeline conformed to DaVinci Resolve |
VISUAL EFFECTS:
The film required a number of simple and complicated effects. Some of the most complicated shots were the glidecam shots as they involved tracking the movement of both shots, stabilizing them in 3d space and then re-applying one of the camera moves to both shots in order to get a shots with both Amelias and a moving camera.
Also allot of the greenscreen shots required extra hand drawn mattes as due to our quick shoot we didn't have time to cover the floor in a greenscreen.
The way i went about garbage matting the shots was instead of adding the masks after keying the footage, i precomposed the footage and then added green solids to cover up the floor and the light stands. This meant that the keyer would be able to pull a more natural key from the image and other effects such as light wrap would work properly. My keyer of choice was a combination of Keylight and Primatte. Keylight works well with chroma differences, where Primatte can be extremely selective as it also considers the foreground object's colors.
For some of the shots i also tried quite a different way of masking, as allot of shots needed to be done extremely fast. Instead of drawing masks and keyframing them by hand, i used the "Roto Brush" tool that was introduced in the recent versions of After Effects. This allowed a semi automatic masking process that only required some of my intervention to fix errors. I also added some adjustments to the edges of the matte such as softening and light wrapping to hide some of the imperfections of the matte.
Also, towards the last few days a new edit was cut, therefore more shots had to be added. These shots were being created at the same time as the edit, so as a shot would be completed i would hand it straight to shahid to replace in to the timeline.
Here are some shot breakdowns to further show my contribution to the project as an effects artist:
COLOR GRADING / ASSISTING THE EDIT:
To assist shahid in the complicated color grade for allot of the complex visual effects shots, since i was already creating keys and mattes to seperate both sides i created grayscale mattes as separate exports. (You can see these in the breakdown video above)
These mattes were then used in Avid as a Matte Key to isolate specific areas of the image in order to color grade them seperately.
 |
| Seperating the two colors in Avid |
With the colors both me and shahid were trying to keep everything consistent, therefore we saved both colors as presets to re-apply on to footage. We also added a filler on top of the main timeline to adjust the contrast globally, and to add a color safe limiter. Lastly we also played around with some external controllers for avid's color correction tools.
 |
| Color Correcting in Avid |
SOUND MIX / FINAL TOUCHES:
To finish the project as soon as lucy had the sound edit ready she exported each track individualy and gave them to me to do the final mix and mastering.
The tracks were mastered in Logic Pro X, and the adjustments made were equalizing all the tracks to avoid frequency clashes, but to also bring out the best of each sound (for example, lift the "kick" of the heartbeat, give some high end dynamics to the clicks), compress some sounds that were not balancing correctly, adjust the levels using professional monitor speakers and add some further effects such as a slight reverb on the breathing.
The final mix was balanced to -10db peak and -14db average with a -18db test tone, as highlighted by Simon Allmark.
 |
| The final sound mixing desk |
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