February 7, 2016
After the photo shoot on Tuesday, I had another smaller one at home. Jack lent me a flask and I set up a little studio in my den for the Liquid Lightning. I didn't have a white or a green sheet, so I used a gray blanket. I took about 15 pictures of different poses before I called it a day.
I spent Tuesday (Feb. 2) and Wednesday (Feb. 3) to work on the poster. Unfortunately, I encountered a bit of a design flaw with using the Liquid Lightning. I couldn't erase the background or make it look good in the poster. I had to scrap that idea.
I came up with some issues in Carter and Patrick’s green screen as well, specifically green screen bleed. Luckily I was able to work around it. (If you look closely at Carter’s chin, you might be able to catch a little green.) Overall, I didn't really like working in Photoshop. I much prefer Illustrator or After Effects. In fact, I ended up taking the project to After Effects and doing a lot of work there. (Thank you Adobe Dynamic Link). I sent it back to Photoshop and exported it there. I came up with two different versions, one with a blue lined background and another with that was black with blue spots. I showed it to the cast and crew, the preferred the black background. I liked their decision because it had an “electric water” effect that I couldn't get from adding the Liquid Lightning. I added Carter and Patrick’s names, finishing the poster last Thursday and turning it in on Friday. I like the final poster, but I’m thinking of creating another one that features the flask on Liquid Lightning. What we’ve created was more of a “character poster.” However, I'm not going to worry about that right not. It's a job for another month.
I've spent the weekend rough cutting all of the footage shot. I wasn’t very picky about it, just getting basic sequencing. Once I was done, I put it into one big sequence. I added black video with text to account for the scenes we were missing. Overall, it was almost 17 minutes long. I expect to cut that down to at least 14-15 minutes.
It was very rough. Cuts weren’t alway clean and some of the audio was mixed up. We had a few enormous, glaring errors though. Carter’s wardrobe dramatically changes from the scenes and sometimes within the same scene. Most of it was my fault I admit. I saw Carter changing clothes based off the days of the story, not on when he would have time to go to his closet and change. Once I account for it, I realize that he will have only three costumes: Day 1, a green plaid shirt (with the lab coat for lab scenes), Days 2-4, a gray plaid shirt, and Day 5, pajamas. Luckily, for most of the scenes we shot, we defaulted to the gray plaid shirt. Had we gone with another, it would have created a bigger slur of issues.
I needed to point this out to Jack so we could find a way to fix them. I wanted to try out a service I discovered a few months ago called ProofMe. It will allow us to draw and comment directly on the frames of the video. Plus, it’s tied to our Google Accounts.
After a long time exporting and uploading to the internet, I shared the video with Jack. I just wanted to show him the continuity errors, but he didn’t hesitate to point out how rough it was even though I told him it was going to be. He was pointing things out like audio, cuts, and other things I was already aware of.
I had a solution to the problems, but I didn’t get a chance to tell him Saturday or Sunday (today.) I was hosting the Super Bowl, so I had my hands tied up with that.
February 8, 2016
Jack and I had a quick passing discussion about how to fix the problems of the film. I suggested we reshoot the beginning and end of scene 9, since it was the hub of wardrobe difficulty. All we would have to do is slightly change the beginning (Carter would change clothes in the beginning rather than end of the scene) and shoot the final part where he exits. He will just run out instead of changing clothes.
Jack agreed to my suggestion and he added that we should reshoot some of the scenes in the garage. There are many mistakes to fix and I need to compile a list so we can be efficient in their solutions. Jack asked Thomas if we could go back to his house and film (with a much smaller crew). He agreed to it.
Man, I hope we can finish this before February is over. Tennis is starting to pick up and I need to be at practice.