Trey-ffects (PART 2)

 

Because the bully scene was filmed on a different camera than the rest of the shots, the raw portion footage looked jarring in contrast to the rest of the opening. To mask this, I used my halftone effect in Photoshop and overlayed it over the footage using the opacity controls in Premiere. To make it look good, I had to resize the images and keyframe the position. The overlay made the speech bubbles/text boxes look much better as well.

The action words were created using the BiffBamBoom font from Adobe Creative Cloud.

Without further ado, here is the rough draft of Trey's Split!

I'm going to give it to Drew so he can do some touch-ups, create a title sequence, and add more effects. I plan to continue working on my CCR.

Trey-ffects (Part one)

 I decided to make the mise-en-scene comic-based and imaginative to implement Trey's interests and dynamic perspective on the world around him. This was tough because I couldn't use external sources, so I had to create all of my effects in Photoshop from scratch. I began creating the text boxes using the shape tool. I added a black stroke along the lines of the boxes to give it that classic 2D feel. I wanted to add a shadow to them to make them look more cinematic but I decided against it.

The font I used for the text is called "Captain Comic", which is prominently found in Graphic Novel prints and other comic book works. I typed the text and sized it precisely so that it would fit within the shape. 

 Next, I created a halftone layer in Photoshop and placed it above the textbox, creating an image that looks like it came straight from a comic book. I did this process with three other images.

Because the bully scene was filmed using a different camera, I decided to mask it in a really creative way using the halftone overlay. If you wanna find out more, catch me in the next post! 

Trey's Sound Effects

 TREY'S SOUND EFFECTS

We decided to get most of our sound effects from a sound base provided by Mrs. Stoklosa, and we recorded dialogue from a booth. I recorded raw audio of my bike moving as well as the sound of the brakes at my house.

I layered multiple tracks under the Basketball scene to capture the ambiance of the park, as with the bully scene as well. For the majority of the opening, I decided to leave out sound effects as it would drive attention away from the V.O. 

To properly sound bridge between scenes, I used a constant gain effect to make the transition sound subtle and smooth. If I left it out, the audience would hear a quiet "pop" noise, which could be immersion-breaking. Audio is everything when it comes to film. If the film has bad audio, then the audience will not be engaged.

If you thought that was cool, just wait until you see my comic book effects! Stay tuned for the next episode of Trey's Post-Production Z Kai! (Much better name if I say so myself)

TREY'S SOUND

TREY'S TUNE

To illustrate Trey's varying interests in cultures, I decided to use a rock song and a rap beat. A band I discovered many years ago called "Good Kid" actually has DMCA-free music.

 

Thus, I downloaded an instrumental for my favorite song, Slingshot, and imported it into my timeline.

Finding the rap beat was fairly easy. Many producers post their music on YouTube to gain notoriety, and many of them are free to use and DMCA-free. I found a free "Kanye-Type Beat", downloaded it, and imported it into the project. The music fits well with the opening's aesthetic.

Rock music is meant to symbolize Trey's unique side. It's music that he resonates with the most, while those around him wouldn't appreciate his tastes. The music is played over by dialogue where Trey provides information about his background, his interests, and his personal feelings. The rap beat is slow and mellow to match Trey's feelings of isolation. Whereas the rap beat is played over by dialogue where Trey talks about his disgruntlement with society as a whole. Rock symbolizes passion, while Rap symbolizes conformity. 

BULLY RESHOOT!

 TREY'S BULLY (HOW LONG CAN WE KEEP THIS UP?)

Today we refilmed the Bully scenes. We decided to film in my neighborhood since our friend, who also happens to have a good camera, lives there as well. Plus, it looked much more natural than it would in a school setting. We filmed at 9:30am to get it done fast; it would only take us 15-20 minutes.

Filming went great, and even better than we filmed the first time! I'm going to import this footage into the timeline today, along with adding the sound and the music. FOLLOW UP NEXT TIME ON TREY'S SPLIT POST-PRODUCTION Z KAI!

EDITING TREY

 THE START OF A NEW TREY
Today I will be finally editing Trey's Split. I imported all of our clips into Premiere and started working on it.

I removed the audio and cut out the extra filler from the clips we got for the opening to be concise and natural. The microphone on the camera is poor, so I completely left it out. As I was rendering the rest of the clips, I noticed that the colors on the footage were very bland and desaturated, which didn't fit with the theme of Trey's Split. To fix this, I added an adjustment layer above the raw footage and color-graded it to make the scenes more colorful, perfectly fit with the movie's spirit, as well as meet the audience's desires. Here's a before and after.

BEFORE

AFTER

Before I added any effects or music, I made a line edit of all the clips I wanted to include in the final cut just so I had a clear picture of what I wanted for the opening. Throwing everything that you've recorded into the timeline isn't a good idea, since you're not going to like every shot you've gotten in pre-production. Only including the best ones will make your life much easier (Trey wouldn't know anything about that LOL!).

I'm gonna add music and audio tomorrow, which happens to be the same day where we're going to refilm the bully scene! Stay tuned for the next episode of Trey's Split Production Z Kai! (We're going to have to work on that name...)

CCR

 I’m currently working on the CCR