I still wasn't sure about the water shots at the beginning and end of the piece. I wanted them within the piece for conceptual reasons as I feel like it shows the pressure building at the start and then it easing at the end and showing things washing away however visual it doesnt work at the moment. I wanted it to look more like a time-lapse I sped it up slightly more than I already had and then added a cross fade between the sections. This made it look better than it did but I may still need to revisit this.
I then felt like some of my establishing shots and some shots in general still weren't snappy enough so I played with trimming these down so the shot just shows the bare essentials of what is needed but still looks visual nice and works conceptually. This help the beginning flow better especially the establishing facial bath shot and sunflower shot.
One issue I have always had with some of the stomach rolling movement shots is that I want the main focus to be on the belly button and this didn't come across as well as I had hoped because the belly button moves out of frame where I cropped in to eliminate the background. I thought of a way to fix this by keying in camera motion bit by bit so that subtly and almost unnoticeable the camera (in post) and framing now keeps the belly button much more in frame so it keeps more focus on it.
I started trying to add some basic effects myself before meeting with my effects consultant (Maisie). I started experimenting with mirroring images. I tried this on the feather shots as these worked in my pre-vis really nicely being mirrored. However this time I didn't like it at all. The feathers were white this time (as more appropriate) but this meant the mirroring just made it more visually complicated and messy rather than adding interest. I left this mirroring effect for the time being.
As suggested I wanted to try out some black and white shots to see if this added anything. I tried the black and white on the body movement shots but again I really wasn't keen on this at all. I felt it made the visuals again look worse and it meant I lost the lovely skin tones I had in the piece prior. I don't think conceptually black and white works in my piece anyway as its too cliche when linked to memories. I left the piece in colour.
I removed the headband shot all together as I only had one in the entire piece anyway and this meant that one shot stood out for being a bit too random and not necessary to the story and made the visuals seem a bit jarring. I removed this and reordered the section around this shot slightly to get the flow between shots a lot smoother and I think the removal of this helped.
I had attempted to create a glitch looking effect previously on the sunflower shots in the middle to move from a real sunflower to a fake sunflower in an interesting way and to also reflect how memories can warp and change. I felt it work conceptually but visually the glitch wasn't successful. This is because when splicing up the two clips to blend and glitch together I cut it into too bigger chunks so it was way too jarring. I instead resisted this and cut it down into amy more much smaller sections then cut these together and now the glitch looks a lot more like a glitch and is visually nicer.
An effect I had played with a lot before and wanted to put more in of was layering and opacity. I really love layering the object shots to make it more memory and dream like but also to add importance to certain objects. On one of the ring shots I added a second layer which was a different part of the clip. I then dipped the opacity so you could see essentially two rings moving around and then keyed one to zoom in so that it looks like one ring is spinning away out of shot leaving the other alone. I think in terms of visually and conceptually this is a strong metaphor and I like it.
I then came back to the mirroring effect and decide to use it on the ink spread ind after shot. I mirrored it and loved the results as its an abstract way of enhancing what this shot was already symbolising. I then went one step further and rotated this mirrored shot so the reflection line is in the middle vertically and the ink spreads from the enter to each side of the screen. I love this cause it now also on top of everything else also looks similar to a psychological blot test and this now links to the psychological aspect of the piece which has become much more important than the actual story itself as this piece represents and memories and the psychological states I was and am in.
A part of the edit which was the weakest to most people and also to myself is the sunflower shots where I have cut between the sunflower in water then on the stomach and so fourth. This happens twice, once aggressively and then again at the end but much more gently to show the calm now. I resisted this ad cut down the shot lengths and lined them up so that the sunflower appeared through out both shots to be moving back and forward continuously which allowed it to flow better and if I couldn't get it to match position continuity wise I went through the other sunflower shots to find where it could match up. This improved it however this is still he part I am unsure about in my edit.
These improvements help the piece look a lot cleaner than it had done previously and added interest however I still felt like I had a long way to go yet.
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