From A to B
The Stranger
Becoming
Evaluation
Have you described your subjects processes clearly and concisely?
Process was described detailed enough for anyone to understand. Because I have 2 outcomes, it was longer than I would have wanted it to be. I had the idea of taking car photography and videography for sometime now and I got the chance to learn more about it and let me say, It's harder than it seems, there were definitely moments where I through of moving away from this and doing something different. It was worth the journey and there is much more I need to learn.
Have you considered and examined the merits and problems of the subjects?
Merits - The journey to get these images and video was incredibly fun. Lighting during this was phenomenal as it was not too harsh nor to dark. My farm was clear, and I had perfect puddle spots around. The puppies were definitely helpful on not making this process dull.
Problems - It was late December and early January so here in Malaysia, we got a really bad rainy days that caused a floods for number of weeks. The original car that was meant to be the centerpiece was my E280 W210 Mercedes but unfortunately collided with something on the road while flooding. Other than that, there were almost 2 months that I was not able to go out to take pictures and got sick during those times so was very stressful. Since I was in a rush to complete, I did not get shots of my setup up.
Have you evaluated your subject matter, equipment, and editing?
I have broken down what I have used and what my settings were but this are not firm, in every different scenario, there will be different use cases and hence I have talked more on the setup and editing than the equipment. the subject is clear as it was the car and the journey that a car takes you and for a car guy, I would say the car was what made me happiest
What you would do differently?
Oh there are many thing that I would be doing different such as getting a Sony A7 M3, lightbox, green led tubes, taking the car to the mountains or even using multiple cars and doing a transition from that, but the one thing I would have done differently was chose a better place to record the car as it was really tight and wet to get the shots and another would be to get someone else to drive the car so that I can focus on the filming and camera settings.
The Inspiration
The inspiration and motivation had definitely come from Peter McKinnon and Matti Haapoja with others like MKBHD, OpticaWander and Patrick Foley.
The idea for the photographs of the car was definitely inspired by OpticalWander as his work on street photography in London is amazing and I have learnt alot from his videos. For videography, I learnt from the 2 best people the learn from, Peter McKinnon and Matti Haapoja as they are incredibly creative and finding new ways to record.
I wanted to create something that was a been more unique to for this module as not only to achieve a higher grade but to see where I can improve moving further into the future.
By OpticalWander
By PeterMckinnon
By PeterMckinnon
By Matti Haapoja
By MKBHD
The Equipment
Creating what you see above was much simpler in contrast to the other short films produced on YouTube.
The only equipment used:
iPhone
Canon 550D
Canon EF 35mm lens
DJI MAVIC Air 2
Software used :
DJI Fly
Moment Pro
Adobe Lightroom CC
Adobe Premiere Pro CC
Process for the Short Film
Ground camera setup:
- Using the Moment Pro app on my iPhone, I set the color profile to log with 1080p resolution at 120fps to get crisp shoots that I will than be able to slow down in post production.
- iPhone was placed on tripod at each location trying to avoid harsh lighting which was not hard as it was raining at the time of filming.
- For shots that I knew I don't need to slow down too much, I used 4k at 60fps
Editing
What was done to clips:
First, clips were examined and the clips that worked well was taken into the time line, chosen song choice was downloaded from Epidemic Sound and was also placed on the time line. Each clip was trimmed and speed of clips where selected.
Clips were than white balanced to get a base to start from and an adjustment layer was added on top. For the last outro, I decided to take the drone shot of the car leaving the farm to portray an ending. Sounds of birds and wind were added to give more depth to the ending and a fade out transition was added.
Color grading tutorial by Denver Riddle
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Process for Images
Process for this was much simpler as I already had the look I wanted straight out of the camera which was a darker environment to allow the day time running lights to glow.
I set the camera up on a tripod and placed in between the creeps to get a foreground boka effect. But because it started raining, I had to wait for a bit of sun to pop out. This created a nice droplets that reflected some light and it really worked out
Settings:
RAW
ISO 100
Aperture f/8.0
Shutter at 1/500
35mm Micro lens
Editing
After uploading the images onto my computer, I imported the files to Adobe Lightroom to start editing
First, I use the white balance tool to create a more neutral tone. I than used the basic color tools to alter the Highlight, Shadows, Whites and Blacks to create a more dramatic scene. I than move over to curves panel to increase the whites for the reflections on the car and darken the blacks so that the focus is towards the headlights
For the second picture (the one to the right), I used the green curve to match the foreground and increased the highlights to brighten up the details.
