Separation Edit 4 - Effects Consultant Meeting (Maisie)

I met my effects consultant Maisie on 22.03.18 to discuss my edit and improve this with her advice and assistance especially when it comes to adding effects and smoothing those out that I already have. This is how I created Edit 4 for Separation. Here is the main things we worked on together:

We began discussing the effects I had put on the water filling up and then emptying shot to attempt to make it look almost like a time-lapse styled shot. She felt like we could improve on this especially since at the current time it was very disruptive between each section as the water line suddenly jumped up. Maisie worked on smoothing this out by increasing each sections length so the water line flowed up. We then pieced it back together for the beginning and ending and on a separate sequence we messed with speeds to see how we could get it to look. WE increased the speed much more than already to around 800% to try create a time-lapse look. However we felt like now it moved so fast it was very distracting because it was just too much happening too quickly. We then had the idea to maybe drop the frame rate just on this section to make it look like a time-lapse. we dropped it all the way to 10fps and this worked a lot better and had the visual style I wanted to achieve. I was much happier with this!

We then worked on the water submerged facial shots. Like I said in a prior edit I had added more of these facial shots through out to make it a constant part of the narrative and keep anchoring back to me. However I didn't want my face to be easily and instantly recognisable because that gives away too much too quickly. Instead I wanted it distorted so me and Maisie worked on distorting each of these shots. We did this by layering a few of the shots and dropping the opacity so that makes it much more distorted with bubbles so that you can't tell who it is easily at all. Then on some other shots we just framed it in on the bubbles much closer up making that the focus to again hide my face more. Then on the final reveal shot where I sit up out the water I needed this to be distorted too. We decided to make the sitting up shot out focus and create a focus pull so that by the time I'm out of shot you can clearly see the moving water behind me. That also allows more time while you watch the water before I open my eyes to allow the viewer to have a moment before the big end shot. This now makes these sections a lot more exciting and how I envisaged them. We also adjusted the colour temperature on these shots slightly to make them watch in with the body movement shots more from the perspective that we wanted it to be deemed as the same body/being (myself) so warming up these bath shots helps that. However I will in the finals ages of editing come back and colour grade the piece to make this much more effective.

Maisie then went and added to some of the shots I had already keyed motion in like the stomach roll to make the shots frame up a lot better. Like I said I keyed this to have unnoticeable camera movement in post that makes the belly button stay in frame. She just re-visted this and added more key points to make it smoother. She also then keyed some other body shots with me to make the moment again sit in the frame well and flow smoothly.

We then spoke about the order together and I again moved a few things around while I had her their for her creative opinion.

This meeting was very successful because now I am much more comfortable that the effects I added and wanted work to the best of their ability and she has assisted me with this to make sure things are as good as they can be from this perspective.