Novice VFX

Well... Key framing is very important isn't it. I've spend the majority of my day working out how to match some of the trickier transitions in the sequence, in particular:

- Mickey throwing Vinny the moody gold

- Franky to Turkish wipe

- Boris disappearing into Doug the Head's ledger

- Bricktop's Victim to diamond spiral 

The transitions in the original sequence are so well executed that they are seamless, When Mickey throws Vinny the black bag there was clearly a set point of the frame that Brad Pitt was meant to throw to that matched the same point of frame in  that the bag enters in the 'Vinny' scene. We however didn't think of this precise point while filming, of the many shots we had of Troy (Mickey) throwing the bag, only one had the bag actually leave the frame. Unfortunately this wasn't my first choice of clips as the run up to the trow didn't look quite as good as some others but as the scene was sped up it made little difference in the edit. I tried using the shot I wanted first but as the image is pushed out of the frame by the next it didn't work as you could see the bag fall before changing locations. 

The transition between the 'Franky Four Fingers' scene and the 'Turkish' scene is another that is completely seamless, if you deconstruct the clip and watch it frame by frame you can see how when Franky puts his hand down the frame is wiped from bottom to top revealing Turkish's hand on a new table. This was so hard to recreate as once again the shots we had didn't line up perfectly as we didn't have the next scene in mind when shooting just the one at hand (get it? at hand... ha! puns). I was able to fix this by changing the position and zoom of the 'Franky' clip so it matched Damon's (Turkish's) hand in the next shot. It shows up a little more than the original but should blend more once I have corrected the colouring. 

When we first contacted the visual effects students we were hoping for them to also complete the 'Boris/Doug' transition as it was one of the most difficult and would be very time consuming. George suggested we add some orange tape onto the book that the 'Boris' clip disappears into, this would allow him to add the visual effects over the top later on. This turned out to be more of  a hinderance than a help; as the vfx students had to drop this and other effects offered as they had a large workload. Though the bright orange tape made it very easy to see where the clip was to go, it stuck out like a sore thumb which meant something had to go over the top of it. This transition took a lot of time and patience, I ended up adding keyframes to each frame of the 'Doug book' clip, resizing and moving the 'Boris' clip to cover the orange crosses. 

The final shot in the sequence takes a shot of Bricktop's screaming victim (who looks less in pain and more like he's opening wide for the dentist) which fades to an extreme close up of the diamond which loops back around to the start of the opening sequence. This was a fairly simple effect to replicate, potentially as it wasn't as complex as the others but it's more likely that i's become more comfortable with DaVinci at this point. I've not used much of Premier Pro, Avid or other editing software but I found DaVinci to be very user friendly. Once i'd found my feet it was pretty straightforward. This shot consisted of a cross dissolve between the shots with a zoom and a 360 degree clockwise spin. The difficult part of recreating this shot was matching the clips as to recreate the desired shot the 'diamond' clip had to be constantly zoomed. Once again I keyframed each frame of the clip and adjusted the positions of each clip so they were aligned. 

I've definitely become more comfortable with the editing process and with using DaVinci, i've gotten a few strange looks when i've told people i've used it and I really don't know why, the software is responsive, it is super compatible with Blackmagic high resolution footage and i've been able to come in as a complete novice and work with it (I swear I don't work for DaVinci, I just really like their software... really). Big big thanks to Joe Mcfarlane and Doug... of the production hub for all of their help. You guys have been so helpful and I just can't thank you enough. 

Da Vinci masterpiece

Piecing together the shots was fairly easy, I loaded the RAW footage into DaVinci Resolve (V12) as well as the time coded clip from the original film. I went through the time coded clip and marked every cut with frame markers, using a different colour for each character to mark the scene change. I began dragging in the first set of clips from my media pool and dropping them into place on a separate video track, by disabling clip link I was able to delete any audio from the files and just work with the video clips. By closely examining the movements in each original scene I was able to match them with our raw footage, it was interesting seeing how many of the clips in the sequence had been sped up or slowed down just slightly, some of which were obvious but others were much more subtle. Matching the speeds to make sure the characters were moving in the right ways was fairly easy to do in DaVinci; when selected to change the clip speed I was given the option to add a speed point which enabled me to grab the clip and literally drag it to be the right size so it matched the original. Adding a speed point at any point in the clip enabled me to slow down or speed up certain parts of each clip with ease, so I could put a speed point a third of the way through the clip and only speed up the first third or second two thirds if I needed to, meaning i didn't have to splice the clip into sections to change the speed at certain points.

At this point we're waiting on the character freeze frames to come back from the VFX students. For now i've left a gap at the precise moment where the freeze frame begins and ends. The only problem with editing without them is that I don't know at which frame in the selected clips they will use for the freeze frame, this means that i'll have to go back later on and change the clip if they don't match.

For the moment i've just pieced together the clips and made sure the timings match, next time I edit i'll starting on the freeze frames and effects. There are several tricky transitional edits that will require using the keyframe tool which is completely new for me so should be a challenge, but so far the rough edit is looking remarkably like the original and that's without a final grade or effects! Just goes to show how getting the initial shots right can do so much for the editing process.

Production problems and radical remedies.

Several weeks have gone by and the last shot for our 'Snatch Edit' shoot has been captured. We've had a few bumps on the road and a few delays but we've got there and the final product is looking spiffy. We've got a wealth of different shots to choose from for each scene, most of which we've had to whittle down to find the best ones, now each scene has around 3 different shots to choose from.

We had to make a few compromises for the shoot, the problems and solutions are listed below. 

Problem). No caravan for the Mickey shoot

Solution). Use Damon's bedroom and dress it up as a caravan (as discussed in my previous posts)

P). No classic car for BTT shoot- we were hoping to have a classic car for Tony's shoot, at the very least we were hoping to have a car with an older style boot and not a hatchback such as any of the crew's cars. After asking around some local dealers/car for hire businesses  there are none available for shooting. 

S). We've had to make a compromise and use one of the crew's car, we've matched the shot as best we can via the location and costume so hopefully the different car will go un noticed. 

P). Lack of available actors- we were hoping to not have to reuse actors (unless their face is not seen) so each character would be represented by a different person. Unfortunately there were fewer people available during our shooting schedule. We were also hoping to have the appropriate ethnicities for each role.

S). Unfortunately there was no solution to this, we had to shoot and so we reused actors who have previously been in the shoot, such as Damon, who has pitched in on several occasions. Big thanks to Oliver Byrne for stepping in last minute as Bricktop so we didn't need to repeat another character. 

P). Location fall through- the pubs we were hoping to shoot in all refused as we needed to have someone lying on their pool table (can't blame them really). 

S). We dressed up the room next to the studio as an impromptu pub, with the same green felt used for the Franky poker scene we turned a few tables into a make do pool table and in a clever and creative move from Peter we managed to make a pool table light out of cardboard and hung it from the ceiling with tape, it didn't look amazing close up but ads more to the scene and helps flesh out the otherwise drab background.

P). No spare lighting- Though the dedo's and lamps we've booked out have been proficient in lighting up the studio, the bricktop scene next door was lacking. At short notice we were unable to book out more lights and couldn't wait to reschedule the shoot. 

S). There wasn't a vast amount we could do to change this, with the deadline looming we had to get the shot done (lesson for the future - you can never have too much lighting). With some cleverly placed reflectors and a quick rearranging we were able to get the lighting to a good standard but not quite right, and though it's the worst thing you can say on a shoot we knew we could 'fix it in post'.

Overall though it's been a relatively successful shoot without a lot of problems, everyone has worked hard to get the rushes ready and finished so we can get cracking with the edit. To ease some of the workload we've taken on some of the VFX students to help create the freeze frames for each character. Hopefully we can get those back nice and quickly so we can each make our edit amazing with the time we have left. Let's do this! Here's a rough edit of our scene with some effects in lovingly uploaded to vimeo for your viewing pleasure Password: Dags

https://vimeo.com/162717180