Movie poster design

When design movie poster. We have to consider lots of things.

Where is your eyes going - liens in the poster helps to guide it with colour , text and pictures.

usually the poster have the main protagonist in the centre of the poster  and the design is based around it .

Fount is also very important. Some times fount changes according to the genre of the film but usual people use very simple fount that can be read easily.  Trajan and Helvetic are the most used fonts.

compositing in green screen for my film

Three is three main elements which I always consider while compositing the green screen.

1. Proportion

2.  Depth

3. Colour correction and grading.

The proportion of the subject and the background should match.  I pick one tree of the photography and blur every thing else and in that way I made the photo from one dimension to 2 dimension. 

i colour correct the subject according to the back ground and graded as same colour so they match more as more sellable. 

use of white screen colours

White screen gives lots of different effects for the film. I wanted to wake up in an unknown place of nothing and white room deliver that perfectly.  

I kept the white back screen two stop higher then so ...because i wanted to blow the whole white screen so there will b only me in the screen. 

location scouting

When I was doing my location scouting ...I was looking places with cinematic value for my film genre.  

This location have that romantic feeling and plenty of opportunities to create depth. 

This location is perfect for the night scene with a moon light and lamp light .

This room have the personality... U can see the persons personality in it. 

who's story it is ?

In every scene before I set my camera. I ask my director who's scene is this and who's story.
So I can frame the story from that person.  But some times both the character are important. for example in Irse shoot both her character were important as it is a love story. So I decided to go by the situations.  In some case the scene were focus on one charcter more then the other. So I did get both of them in every scene but try to weighted according to the situation. 

Importance of art direction

Set dressing and costume helps to create the mood in the film. For   a cinematographer also  set dressing and costume is very important.  What we see through the eye of lens is the performance of the actor and there surrounding/environment which can either bring the audience in or out of the movie.

The colour what we place in the set and the choose of colour for the costume can help to set the tone and the feeling to the particular scene. 

re think before pressing record and dont press stop.

Before recording its always good to recheck things.
Frame and whats in the frame.
Weather the things will surve the story or not.
What is the mood of the actor.

let the actor play after the scene also ...
dont say cut between the performance.
some times that post performance can be more useful.

Choosing possible camera angle.

Putting a camera and deciding an angle is one of the most important decision for a DOP.  Either it will help to convey the story or put the viewer out of the story. Every time I am shooting I try to thing weather this shot is cinematic or not if i am shooting for a film. who's scene it is. What genre of film it is.  Whats happening in the scene. What the director what to show in this scene. Whats the message. 

And example from lee's shoot.

This scene is about the andrews character. So having him in the foreground helps the audiences  eye to focus on him.  Second it brings depths on the scene. Plus the lights from windows make it more cinematic.

if i choose this angle then it will look like a cooking show. If i was shooting a cooking show then I will show this angle but for film its too flat.

location scooting for lee's film

I always prefer to in location with the director before the shoot dates. As it gives me more idea for the possible camera angle and lighting and then I discuss them with the director in the location and it makes the shooting time fast. As I already know where to put the camera and light. 

lighting and colour for my film

I a planning to divide the mood in two parts. The first part which is light and warm. I am planning to bring bright colour and warm lights with the use of tungsten light.

As seen in above stills from the films. We can notice the bright colour which bring our eyes into the character and bring comfort to eyes and the warm colour of tungsten lights... Which enhance the feeling of love.

For the second part of the films. I am planning to use blue light and light colour to highlight the loneliness of the characters. 

As we can see the use of blue colour and very unsaturated colours bring the loneliness and the sadness of the characters. 

small elements which appear in all romantic film

all romantic films have some small elements which can be seen in almost every film.

1. looking behind game = there will b a point in romantic film where the boy and the girl will b in different end of the road and they will look at each other but miss by few sec. and think the other person is not looking at them.

2. Season =  The rain and snow is one season seasons which appears in all films.

3. transport = they will be in a ride....bike , motorbike, boat, car , horse in a romantic drive.

4. kiss = All romantic kiss in the film specially at the end.

5. Entry = Slow mo entry of the actress.

6.  Jumping in water.

7. Lovely parents / rich vs poor parents.

8. Love songs playing when they hang out .... sad song during break up.

9. Party scene/ Dance scene.

10. Guy sing for the girl with guitar.
  

Research on romantic genre

I watched plenty of romantic film from around the world right from Hollywood hits Notebook(2004) to Korean film Always(2011).  I noted the main elements of all the film. So I can bring the same elements in my film.

1. Girl and boy are opposite nature.   Bad boy -good girl, Rich girl - Poor boy,  High fashion girl - simple boy.

2. They start with a fight and then fall in love.

3.  They are in same place but still not able to meet each other.

4. both have friends.... which only appears on screen for a while. 

Deciding the genre

Before starting the film. I started by the genre. It is more important for me because we make film for certain market and its always handy to research the market to see which genre is more popular in that market.  I am planning to make the film for Indian market .

"the Indian film industry is expected to grow to 138 billion Rupees by 2014 – that’s $2.28 billion"

Indian films are mainly based on romance. Like romantic drama and romantic comedy.  "The one genre in Bollywood that is unique and is what Bollywood is famous for is 'masala'. Masala movies mix elements of many genres but are largely action and romance."

hence I decided to make a romantic drama as the genre for my end of the year film.

Reference :

http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/

http://www.ign.com/blogs/zaid26194/2013/12/29/10-movies-that-show-bollywood-is-more-than-romance-and-ott-action-flick

lighting green screen

We had two locations for green screen. The first one was for inside the space craft.

for which I lighted the actors for f8 key light. For back light i used magenta to cancel the green on both the actors and the set peace.  I lighted the green screen as f11. Three stops over. 

The second location was for cave scene and crash scene. 

For crash scene i used three point lighting as the sun as key light. 

For the cage scene I used only one source. One blonde coming from the top. 

I used dido to lit the child actor as she was not getting enough light from outside lights. 

on set lighting

The first day was dark ...and I was shooting in 50 p so its was hard to expose it properly and max we were able to get was 2k and couple of didos to light the scene..  We knew that Monday to Wednesday the weather was not good but we still decided to shoot ...then out of all day we have one good day to shoot. we I learn my lesson of changing the settings so we could get some more extra light in future. 

I used the blond as the main light source... and used the other two dido as back light and fill light. 

We didn't have big extra long flags or something thing to block the light but we still manage to blog the main parts as it was extremely difficult balance the blown out white from the sun and dark shadows under the tress.  

discussion with the director and the story board team

After seeing the story board. I suggested the director and the story board team to change the camera angles as there were lots of shots which was not showing the actors face and it was from behind so we were jumping from the main protagonist prospective to an outside prospective.

location scouting

I had gone for location scouting with the director, producer and vfx supervisor. We discuss the possibilities of traveling,  safety and rest room while looking for the locations which can support the story.


I was looking at the depth, shapes and textures along with what location bring what kind of the feeling.

Fig.1 Shows the darkness in the depth as it is hiding some thing in it. The texture, the shape and the tress with out leaves shows the sign of no life.

Fig 2. have lots of natural layers.  The layers are similar to the layers shown in the last blog of mine.  

 Fig.3 Have some natural holes which will be go to establish that there might b caves in this plant.

Choice of colour for Films

Colours effect the overall mood of the films and being a director or cinematography choosing the colour of costume, set and the grading of the film is very important.

Choosing the colour for grading film is the decision which should be made in advance so it can be help full in lighting/ dressing the set and the colour decision for the costume.

For our project. I am planning the blue colour as more domination colour as blue is associated with all Sci-fi movies.  i.e all the famous Sci-fi films which included the alien life where dominated by the intense colour of blue.

For our project blue is also useful as blue is associated to cold also. Our protagonist will be alone in an open environment, which should give the vibe of cold and loneliness as the use of colour pallet as blue will enhance that feeling.

How to create layers in the film which need alien environmets

Creating layers in Si-fi films is all about bringing different shapes. Our current project is based on an unknown planet and its hard to create a planet environment from scratch. On the other hand it is easy as no one can say how it should look and we can create the location as we want.

After searching some art work, I find the use of circles and some straight lines the artist create three layers in the scene. The fore ground, mid and back ground. By doing that artist try to bring the 3d elements and feeling in there 2d work. I am also planning to bring that same feeling and elements in my work for this project.

The first picture is the perfect example, as there is a fore ground  which is dark so the eye will not focus on it but still it will create the distance and keeping the object closer it will create the feeling of vastness on the other layers.

The main focus is the middle as it is in the focus and it is the most brightest part of the scene.

By making the background big and out of focus it will create more depth and will give the feeling of lost in a big area.

The artist had also used the shape of circle to its max.  and bring the feeling of balance in the picture.

 

The second picture is a good example of creating a perfect landscape by not keeping the land equal. The land is never in the same level and lots of people do the mistake of drawing a plain land which kill the illusion of reality.

 

60p for cinematic game trailers

One of the thing which make video game trailers different from film trailer is frame rate. In film where we try to bring some motion blur to make it more realistic on games the developers try take off as much motion blur they can as people demand more smooth game play.  Now a days the minimum standard for any game is 30p but with the launch of ps4 its gone to 60p as many players enjoying playing games in 60p on ps4 and they love the experience. 

 

                                                                                       Recently Hobbit was shoot on 60p and one of the criticism it got, that it looked like video game and that what we want.  We want our trailer to look more like a video game rather than a film. I think so if we shoot it in 60p it will help to bring that feeling plus it will be better to key the scene as there will b no motion blur. 

Breakdown of of video games cinematic trailers.

After watching hours of cinematic trailers I come up with this break down sheet of video games cinematic trailers.

1. It start with a narration and shows the location of the setting with a bird eye view.

2. Introduction of problem, the world is about to end….reasons, alien attack , pandemic , darkness consume world( demons) and corrupt government. 

3. Introduction of the hero/protagonist with a heroes shot. 

4. Introduction of the villain/antagonist. usually never shown completely ( always hidden in the shadows) Either can see the eyes or some parts.

 

5. shows the weapon used in the game.

 6. Actions with narration like last hope, saviour, only you can save the world  and how humanity can survive   etc.