EXPERIMENTS
Planning Experimentation
For my Planning Experimentation, I decided to choose Storyboards within my Process Research Report. I decided to go with storyboards as I feel its one of the most important aspects of your Production Planning, and I wanted to learn and experiment with different ways to do them, to find the most appropriate way.
The two ways of creating Storyboards that I have decided to go with are:
Hand Drawn Storyboards
Picture Storyboards
Hand Drawn Storyboards
I found Hand Draw Storyboards to be the easiest out of the two, the practicality, and especially the efficiency when it came to creating them in a well-paced time. I also like the mention the fact these can be done wherever, you can be sitting in your room, get an idea for a nice looking camera shot and quickly sketch it out. However, them being the easiest in no way means I found them the best out of the two. Where they perform well in practicality, I believe they are outperformed in actually being the more useful of the two.
I think a Hand Drawn storyboard is something I will definitely be doing, but only using it as a rough sketch with shots that don't require much attention to the surroundings.
These types of storyboards are so necessary and really just a vital way to get the information of your shots out of your head, onto paper, and to see if they really fit together. One thing I also like
Another factor that definitely puts me off doing Hand Drawn ones is my lack of artistic ability. I understand the drawing doesn't really matter when it comes to storyboards but, I feel it needs to be decent enough to actually be able to look at your storyboards on Production day, understand the shot you were going for, and nail it within the footage. Also, my handwriting definitely lacks in neatness.
Picture Storyboards
I honestly have to start by saying I didn't like doing Picture Storyboards at all, they seemed very useful in a way where you can definitely tell if a shot is going to be a successful one or not. But, they are just way too time-consuming and for the Time Allocations of my Project, they are going to be very unnecessary.
Something crucial I love about Picture Storyboards is how all the Shot information is typed, not written. One thing I do quite often is write stuff that I actually can't read myself, which of course becomes a big issue when looking back at a Storyboard that you may not remember every key detail about. I think I'm going to have to ensure that I take a bit more time to focus on the writing cause even then, I don't think I will spend close to the amount of time I did on the Picture Storyboards.
Overall Decision
At the start of this experimentation, I was really set on using both ways of Storyboards for my Final Major Project. However, on completion of both I will be making the choice to only use Hand Drawn Storyboards, this is for a few factors. The main one is: Time Allocations - We are only given two weeks to complete Planning for my Final Major Project and within this time I have several documents I need to complete. If I was to take on Picture Storyboards I would either risk, not being able to complete many other documents cause all my time would be taken up creating them or, the other case, would be not finishing my Picture Storyboards and then it gets to Production Week, and I'm a bit lost for what shots I want to achieve, as I have only Planned Out a couple or not enough at least, leading to an unsuccessful Final Product. Another reason for not choosing Picture Storyboards would be finding the right time and people to do it, again I don't have long to do this, and people aren't free all the time. Choosing this, and then realizing I have no one to do it yet could lead to me starting it very late on in the week and yet again, not finishing it on time. I definitely believe Hand-Drawn storyboards will be the way to go.
Practical Experimentation
For my Practical Experimentation, I have decided to go with Stabilisation and Colour Grading as these are two elements I love trying to perfect, when it comes to my College Work.
Stabilisation
I found there to be a lot of ways of stabilizing your footage however, I picked a few of the main ways that were accessible to me and I found to be the best for my Final Film. Below is a video of me explaining the different stabilisation methods I'm using, reviewing each one, my main pick and why.
Colour Grading
Colour Grading for my FMP - I have found the two best ways I could execute this, through Lumetri Colour and Magic Bullet Looks. The video below explains both methods - there strengths, weaknesses and which one I am to favour for my Final Project.
My FMP Outcome BTS / Experimentation
Problem Solving
An issue I was faced with was one of the clips I had recorded from different angles, had one of my actors standing up at the completely wrong time. So I had to use some Problem-Solving Skills, knowing my way round Premiere very well, I knew masking would be an easy way to solve this.
How I made the End Title
The End Title had a huge Colour Grade put over it as I had to shoot Day for Night, this video goes through the different effects I used from Magic Bullet Looks to achieve the Final Outcome.
How I Colour Graded: Silence
I graded Silence using an industry-standard set of tools from Red Giant called Magic Bullet Looks. This helped me to achieve that 'Cinematic Film Look' I was going for!