It is becoming more and more apparent that a problem is developing concerning the music used in my films. More and more often I am struggling with the edit, not because of the footage or the story but because I am trying to change the natural feel of the edit to suit a certain piece of music. This is nearly always because that particular piece of music has been picked by the couple.
For music video style pieces this is fine. The music goes down first and the edit is fit to it and doesn’t have to make a lot of sense as far as a story is concerned. But for all other editing styles such as movie trailer, or movie or vintage film feel the music is secondary. That’s not to say it isn’t as important, it is actually more important. It has to fit around the story, the feel of the visuals, the pace of the cutting and the dialogue.
In the past I have made do with making the best of how the film and the clients music choice fits together, after all it is their wedding movie. But now it’s time for a change. The story comes first. I’m starting to use more movie scores and more original pieces. Music choice is starting to take it’s rightful place right at the top of the creative process.
Archive for
July, 2010
...
I get asked form time to time why my movies look a little bit more cinematic than the average wedding video. It is mainly the editing. But the image has some important aspects that I’d like to talk about. The HUGE sensor on the 5d mark II along with EOS L series glass produces mind blowing colour rendition and dramatic depth of field control but another aspect is colour correction and grading in post production.
Firstly each clip (there’s up to 120 in a four minute piece) is painstakingly colour corrected to match the rest of the edit in a coherent way. Then I start a secondary process called colour grading. This is adding a ‘look’ to the image in a creative way. As a story teller you can use this tool to manipulate the viewers mood.
Here are some frame grabs from Cat + Jez’s wedding short before and after colour correction and grading:-
Vows shot before:-
After:-
Notice how a lot of the blues and greens were lost under the tungsten lights. The original image looks washed out, orange and video like. This was corrected and then the greens and blues in the shadows were exaggerated just a little to achieve a certain look (or grade).
Umbrella shot Before:-
After:-
This shot looked slightly under exposed so this was corrected, the highlights exaggerated and the shadows made a little greener to match the context of the rest of the movie.
There are more extreme examples of colour grading in my past pieces but this is just my latest.