The last of the
footage is now ingested and rendered. The synch is working a
little better, but the issue is the image itself. Some
of the sequences are drifting in and out of focus.
At first, I thought it might have
been the scans from LomoLab, but, upon close inspection, the individual grains
of the film were sharp, so it must have been the seating of the film in the
camera. It could have had something to do with the speed of the hand cranking
not allowing the film to seat itself properly. I was cranking pretty fast this
whole project, though and this issue didn’t present itself until shortly after I
switched camera backs. It’s an intermittent problem, so I may be wrong.
I’m relieved to have
enough usable footage to finish the video, so its not a huge problem and the
main vocal section with the affected footage is in the middle of the video, so
I can cut around it and the fluttering focus becomes another part of the Lo-Fi aesthetic.
After talking with Kyle about it, he was in favour of the “warts and all”
approach to the footage. The aesthetic of the piece as a whole is fun and
pleasingly “retro”. It definitely stands out, which is what Kyle needs.
The vocal piece at the
lighthouse is synching up fairly well, with the footage being sped up, on
average, 125%. This is a bit baffling to me because the calculations I made,
based on the song being slowed down by 300%, then shot at (what I assume to be
roughly) 6-8fps, transferred at roughly 10fps and having that footage sped up
300%. Somewhere in that fuzzy film math something happened. It worked in the
end, so I’m not complaining, but still…
The vistas and other
B-Roll shots are being sped up between 200% and 400% to create a time-lapse
effect, which I think works quite well.
Completing the full
rough cut took 4 long days in the edit suite in Edinburgh. The bed next to the
computer became very handy after 12 hours of cutting footage. I emerged from
the edit-cave with a very tight edit for Kyle.
There weren’t very
many changes from the rough to the fine cut. The cuts were refined (with the
help of a click track) and the final mix of the song slotted in perfectly.
With the edition of
Kyle’s title cards (and a bit of “old film” filter on top of them), the video
was pretty much finished. The “coming soon” end card can be removed after the
album is released, so Kyle will have the option of including it on the CD, or
even broadcast.
I’m
really excited to see the general reaction to it. Lomomography is very
interested to see it as well. They want to post it on their LomoKino micro site
and publicise the “professional” uses of their little camera.
Jack Quick at LomoLab London was Brilliant! His hard work and willingness to go above and beyond is what made this project possible. I could not have completed this project without him!
Overall, I’m very
happy with Fireworks. It was one of the most technically challenging films I’ve
worked on. Of course there are things I’d do a bit differently, but hindsight
is always 20/20…
Here is a link to the Echo Bloom Micro Site
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