Update 2

6pm, Monday 22 May.

No hard drive.

End. Unlikely that I will fulfil my aim of completing the grade for my feedback tutorial tomorrow.

Your next update will most likely be during my feedback tutorial.

Update

It is now Monday 22 May.

There is still no sign of the hard drive, I think Ben has it, I am hoping for it back this morning.

I saw it briefly Thursday. I held it! But then it went again :( 

I shall update you shortly.

Disorganisation

Arghh!

I hate disorganisation.

I spend two hours grading the WRONG premiere file. 

I had been working on a premiere file called Edit2, in the folder on the hard drive called FINAL EDIT. After I had finished the first pass of the rough grade, and played it out to check if there were any huge inconsistencies with the balance and base grade, I noticed that a lot of the shots were wrong, and didn’t match with the ‘final’ that I had seen on Vimeo over the weekend.

So I though there must be a different file somewhere, so I went looking. I found a folder called Edit, but it wasn’t in there, thees we all just files from the original edit months ago. Then I found a folder called EDIT BACKUP, and there it was. Named exactly the same ‘Edit2′, just in a folder called EDIT BACKUP.

WHO PUTS THE FINAL EDIT IN A FOLDER CALLED EDIT BACKUP, AND LEAVES AN OLD VERSION OF THE EDIT WITH THE SAME NAME IN A FOLDER CALLED FINAL EDIT

ANGER

So I then almost had to start again. I imported the premiere file that I graded into the ‘new’ file and copied the grades from the old clips to the new ones, didn’t quite work because there were a few inconsistencies with the renders from nuke for some reason (still have no idea why), but a few hours of work later and I had a pretty decent first grade ready for critique.

Oh and there was frame rate issues (the whole premiere file was being worked in at 24fps, so the sound guy had worked on a file at the wrong timebase, which meant that when it was corrected it was all out of sync and he had to redo his work…). I feel like animation just have very very poor organisation and attention to detail. Its basic things that we are taught in first year, ORGANISATION. 

Just to cut down the story, I had to hand back the drive because someone needed it, so I never got to finish the grade yet (this is Thursday 18th now) really hoping for it over the weekend so I can finish it for my feedback, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Its really annoying me now because this was a big part of my project and I can’t evaluate and close the lid on this project until I have finished it. I could but by doing so I’m saying to myself that I have successfully finished all that I set out to do, which I haven’t, so I can’t bring myself to put an end to this project yet. (if you understand that). You’re just going to have to wait for my full evaluation as soon as the Beast of Brecon grade is finished. (I have a draft evaluation, ready to go as soon as its done).

LUT

From that grade I created two LUTs, one for Premiere and one for Resolve, so that regardless of which piece of software I use, I have a base LUT ready to go.

Went through a few revisions to get it looking the best

Grade Tests

I guess I can talk about grade tests 

A while ago I did some grade tests for Ben and Kieran for them to choose from so I could create a lut to make my life easier when I came to grade. In total I created 17 different grades to choose from 

Number 15 was the favourite...

Grading

Monday morning/lunch +3 days since deadline. I get the hard drive to start the grade. But its still not final, so to avoid any more delay, I decided to just grade it in premiere. Mainly because I cannot update DaVinci with changes to a sequence without starting again, and because there was going to be constant updates throughout the next few days, I couldn’t grade in DaVinci.

So Premiere it is. I already know that I won’t really be able to get back the sky like I did in early tests, Premiere just isn't powerful enough. 

Beast of Brecon Grade

The deadline that I gave Kieran for getting the final to me to grade was Thursday 11 May, that gives me two days to grade it properly in time for the submission. 

Thursday came, and went with no final in sight. Friday then came, still no final, in fact as of Friday lunch, there was no edit of the comped shots in existence. 

Then I found out that they working hard drive, the only full copy of the entire project had not been backed up for over a month! What kind of crazy idiot doesn't back up?!

We/I (Rosie, myself and Ben) decided that the backup of the entire project was a higher priority than the grade.

By the time that a ‘final’ was ready, it left me only a few hours to get it graded, and it wasn’t even the final as there were still shots going through comp which hadn’t been rendered yet. So we made the decision to leave the grade until the beginning of next week. So I spent the entirety of Friday afternoon backing up the 700GB hard drive. 

This.

The location was amazing too. It was a huge old house, which is an Air BnB, and it was beautiful, and Monmounth is a really nice little town too!

Stuffed

I had the opportunity to be Trainee Camera Assistant on a really cool short film, filming in Monmouth.

Directed by Carys Lewis

Director of Photography: Scott Coulter

1st AC: Steven Sinclair

Camera: Arri Amira

Lenses: Arri Ultra Primes

I was in charge of slating, lens changes and supporting the camera crew. And it was awesome, I am definitely doing the right thing, I want to do that all day everyday. It was great. I loved it. 

My slated were perfect:

Dan Davies

Part 2 of Dan’s shoot. 

I will not go into details but I’m not sure I would work with Dan again. The disorganisation of this video is beyond belief. 

This was supposed to happen within a couple of weeks after the first video, however I was pretty busy so I gave him dates which I could do (quite a few dates) and told him that I was going to be unavailable from when I went to Germany until the deadline, however he did nothing and made no effort to organise anything, and I was not chasing him, I didn’t need the shoot, I had already done a lot, this was simply because Kris asked me to. Anyway, it got to the day before leaving for Germany and I get a message from Dan saying that he had just spoken to his manager at the location and got permission and asked when my availability was, which I had already told him that I was unavailable from the following day until the deadline (he messaged me a day before I left), and I told him that I couldn’t. 

It then got the the Monday we got back from Germany I went into Uni and Kris told me the situation that he got a new DoP who wasn't replying to him and Kris asked my availability to see if I could squeeze him into my schedule. At this point I was on a three day short film that was shooting nights, so I said technically I can do during the day, although I would rather not. Eventually I said that I can film Tuesday morning, but I had to leave by 1 for my shoot later that evening - just to be clear this was a favour for Kris, not Dan. We wrapped at 1:30am and I got home about 2:30am Tuesday morning from the short, to then be up again at 9 to be at uni for 10. I gathered all the equipment and luckily Kris had organised the first year crew together to help out (they were going to have to pick up where I left off if we didn’t finish by the time I had to leave). We got the location and began setting up. First thing was the other person he got to film turned up, then disappeared, then showed up again and just sat in the corner saying nothing, then he came up and asked me what I was trying to do (I was trying to find a way of rigging a lamp for a backlight/sidelight) and he suggested bouncing a backlight in (which whilst there aren’t really any rules for lighting, bouncing a backlight in is a pretty stupid idea - you only really bounce light in to fill or key, to get a good backlight, it needs to be a direct source - especially for the look I wanted). He then got embarrassed when I questioned it, and then he disappeared, never to be seen again. Next thing was the talent turned up, but Dan didnt tell her to bring more than one dress (she needed two for the shoot apparently) so we then had to wait for them to go and buy another dress) We got to the location about 10:30/10:45, it then very quickly got to 1pm and nothing had been shot and I had to leave, and I left the shoot in the capable hands of the first year crew (Paul, Mario and Joe). Completely and utterly disorganised and a complete waste of my time, especially as I was working a night shoot where that night call was 5pm, and we didn’t wrap until 4am the next morning. Not cool Dan, not cool.

Rant over. 

Mitchell Brice

Set up by Kris, a media production student was doing a music video for a London Based rapper group, Kris connected him with me to film for him in the studio. A full day shoot, relatively simple. Just basic green scree, same as the rest really, nothing special. 

#Bounce 

Jordan Richards

Ex-student, working in the bay has a personal passion project, essentially a continuation from her third year FMP. She wanted some green screen test footage and I was asked help her get it. Simple

Storyboard was provided 

James Hill

Again this was just a quick set up and go project as I was still working on the wrangling at the time. 

Really simple thing, just a projector. 

However, there was a pretty big lack of preparation on his part. We had asked if he had tested his method for proof of concept (if it actually worked) and he said it did, so we set up the camera top down over a OHP (over head projector) and put slides over it, but you couldn’t actually see anything, and regardless of how much ND I used or how much I closed down the lens, you could still see nothing. Turns out, he didn’t test it, just assumed it would work. So we had to switch to plan b and just project it and film the projection which still looked relatively good. 

Feedback

What is even better is he sent me an early final version to critique and feedback which I was both honoured and astounded by, a first year asking a third year for feedback and critique!

I was more than happy to give him some feedback, and it was just little things really