Seriously… This Sucks

I’m kinda disappointed in myself. I got the raw footage from Edmund, and lots of it were unusable. He had so kindly pointed out a lot of eye-level errors that I made (nothing could be done to fix that!!!!!!) and a lot of noisy footage (especially on the last day of shoot, lighting goes haywire)

I mean, if pictures are going to look like this:

Bad Screenshot

I might as well use a normal consumer camera with 1 CCD to shoot this damn thing.

You know things are not looking too good either when it’s harder to key out the green screen with your actor in front of it, than it is to key out your crew accidentally videoed in front of it.

Wan Greenscreened
It took me 2 clicks to key out Wan when he was goofing off in front of the green screen.

Sarah Low under Green Screen
As for Sarah, it took me 17 clicks to key out the green screen, plus I had to use a spill suppressor (to non filmies… it means a lot of work) on the footage to do it.

Even more demoralizing was that someone was singing Rihanna’s Unfaithful in Wan’s goof-off scene (the lyrics: I don’t wanna do this anymore!). :D Granted, we were all very tired on the last day of shoot. I myself haven’t had 4 days of sleep by then, but that is not a reason not to light a screen well. Geez. I’m kinda disappointed in myself.

But looking on the bright side, I did find some really nice and usable shots (despite Edmund saying otherwise). After some edits of course. :D . The wonders of AfterEffects. (I even fixed the footage in the first picture – brighter, less grainier… whatever)

Speaking of AfterEffects, AE CS3 must have the most user friendly error messages I’ve seen:

Friendly After Effects Crash Message

It tells you in your face that it had crashed! How more friendly and honest can it get?

Oh… to end this on an upbeat mood (mainly because I’ve been able to use some AE Magic to clean up a lot of footage)… lemme post 2 pictures.

Screen Shot from the Movie - Sarah and Alfred
This is a screenshot from the movie. Who’s biting who?

Scary Image of Grace and Sarah
Who said zombies had to be ugly?

Argh. There are then other stuff that cannot be fixed. Like eye-levels (I went for too many odd angle shots), and framing of the shots. Those can’t really be salvaged. Sigh. Still lots to learn.

Coming up next: Surprising guest star!

11 comments to Seriously… This Sucks

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