Gleneagle Film

1. Storytelling 101

We are going to do a crash course on story structure by looking at a handful of Pixar short films.

1. exposition: establishes the location and characters before the story begins
2. inciting incident: the conflict that deviates from normal events.
3. rising action: as the stakes increase, the conflict intensifies.
4. climax: a solution is found! the viewer is given some catharsis.
5. falling action: where intensity declines, leading finally to the…
6. resolution: that ties up the story nicely and helps clarify the themes, morals, or lessons learned

1. Find Composite Layers

Start collecting your “plate shot” or other assets! Get a photo or video of the background you had in mind (i.e. a spooky forest), any foreground elements (i.e. a bush in front of you), and/or pre-made special effects (i.e. a lightning strike). You can even start assembling them together in Premiere!

2. Shoot Your Clip

Students will be brought down a few at a time to film their clips. Mr. Gilbar or one of the film 12s will help. Once everyone has filmed their clips, they will be uploaded to the Class Resources folder in Teams. Please just take your own clip.

3. Exercise Screenings

Once everyone has filmed their clip, we are going to watch and analyze a handful of the initial exercises.

1. Final Cut of “Shoot the Shots”

Finish your rough cut of the “Shoot The Shots” project and begin correcting colours and adding audio (ambience, SFX, and music), your production logo, credits, and titles. This is the last dedicated studio time we will have to work on this, although you’ll have up to a ~45 minutes to work on it over the next couple of days depending on how quickly you get through our green screen exercise. “Shoot The Shots” will not be due until early next week. We will be filming and editing the special effects shots on Thursday and Monday and introducing our storytelling unit next week, but you won’t have much studio time remaining to work on this project.

2. Colour Correction 101

Problem: My video is too warm (yellow-orange) or cool (blue).

Solution: The white balance was incorrectly set on the camera when shooting. Go to the “Color” workspace (on the very top panel) then go to the “Color Correction” section in the top-right corner. Adjust the topmost slider left to “warm” the clip or right to “cool” the clip down. There are other sliders to play with below that will manipulate the exposure, contrast, and saturation. You can get an excellent result this way, but it still isn’t as good as having the White Balance properly configured when filming.

3. What the Green Screen?!

Pretty much all special effects in film are created through compositing multiple images or videos together to create an optical illusion. We will look at some famous examples of how this has been done in mainstream film over the years. If you are interested in learning more about how it works, you can watch a series of videos that show the history of greenscreening and some useful tips. Afterwards, we will look at some past examples.

4. Keying (Luma and Colour) Demo

We will shoot review demo footage of the class and and look at the various ways to key out portions of video. For a more detailed guide, check out this step-by-step walkthrough on how to get the best possible result!

5. Green Screen Exercise

I have produced a quick and simple demo deconstructing how this process is typically done. Try to come up with a clever idea for an 8+ second idea to show-off both your planning/execution skills in shooting, as well as your compositing abilities in Premiere! You can capture your footage as a pair/group, but each member of the group is responsible for editing together their own “version” of the project. The more creative and complex, the better your mark. This is a quick, two day exercise, so you must plan and shoot on the first day so you can quickly get to editing.

6. Discuss and Pitch!

Tell a neighbour what you are planning to do to see if they have feedback. Could it be too hard? Inappropriate for school? If you feel good about it, confirm your idea with Mr. Gilbar or our peer tutor. Come up with a plan as far as how you’ll need to stage the shot on Monday/Tuesday. Remember, do not wear any green!

1. Editing “Shoot the Shots”

You will have almost the entire week to work on “Shoot the Shots!” Please use all of the available time to make it the best possible film it can be. Make sure to keep your production documents (i.e. your notes/script/storyboard) safe as I like to be able to refer to them when marking this project.

1. Organize and share footage with all members.  –  M
2. Review footage. Reshoot as needed.  –  M/T
3. Rough Cut  –  T
4. Add logos (both filmmakers; yours first, your partner’s second), title, and end credits.  –  W
5. Add music, foley, sound effects, etc.  –  W
6. Correct lighting, colour, add special effects, etc.  –  W/Th
7. Caption with shot type.  –  Th/F
8. Export versions with and without captions (brief demo next week before assignment due date)  –  Th/F

2. Colour Correction 101

Problem: My video is too warm (yellow-orange) or cool (blue).

Solution: The white balance was incorrectly set on the camera when shooting. Go to the “Color” workspace (on the very top panel) then go to the “Color Correction” section in the top-right corner. Adjust the topmost slider left to “warm” the clip or right to “cool” the clip down. There are other sliders to play with below that will manipulate the exposure, contrast, and saturation. You can get an excellent result this way, but it still isn’t as good as having the White Balance properly configured when filming. There is also a new colour space option that we will be exploring.

3. Sound Editing 101

Problem: There are distracting sounds in the background!

Solution: Reduce the gain or eliminate the in-camera audio entirely. Sound effects can be rerecorded or quickly pulled from our network. Remember that We have an amazing library of nearly 20,000 songs and sound effects available on the network. Parse through the many folders, and when you find a sound you’d like to use, copy it to the project folder on your computer’s hard drive (do not drag it directly into your project!). You can also pull sounds from Youtube and other streaming sites using a downloader like iyoutubetomp4.com, but be sure you are only doing so under Fair Use.

4. Edit Rough Cut of “Shoot the Shots”

Edit “Shoot The Shots” project and bring in all of your clips to create a rough cut prior to correcting colours and adding audio (ambience, SFX, and music), or titles. Grab a camera and reshoot as needed! We will be introducing our storytelling unit on Friday, but you won’t have much studio time remaining to work on this project.

1. Filming Today!

Get your crew and equipment together, prepare your actors, and head out to your shoot! If you were filming yesterday, now you are acting/supporting and vise versa.

Please be sure to leave AT LEAST five minutes at the end of the block to offload footage, check over your equipment, and return it to the correct location. Thank you in advance to the Film 12 students for helping the 11s to check out and get started with their equipment and their first shoot!

Reshoot as needed, then each group member should begin editing their own cut or “version” of the film.