Post Production

For the last few weeks, we've been working on the post production of the piece. This involved several shots that needed VFX or clean up. Jared made a detailed list of all these shots. We split up the list of files based on their importance. We (Jared, Chris, Tyler, Brian, Jacob & I) then organized them into 3 categories - high, medium and low. We went through the list and each voted for the files that we wanted to take up. I took up on several high priority shots and once I waged through them, I took on several medium and low priority shots.

Color Correction & Grading

Once all the compositing was done I went through the entire film and color corrected and color graded every shot manually, one by one. For color grading, I used the lighting plot diagrams I had made earlier and went back to the reference images from various movies that I had in mind for each shot, and tried to achieve the corresponding look and feel for the actual footage. I enhanced the color-mood association for each scene. I also added fake fogs, some lens flare and made minor clean ups wherever I found apt.

Cinemascope Fix

After color grading, I went in and added the cinemascope bars for the entire film. This process involved cropping and reframing each shot. The actual video was shot at 1920x1080 and adding cinmeascope brought it down to 1920x820 making it look more like traditional film. It also helped me get rid of several light stands, and unnecessary elements from certain shots. I also added a few subtle camera movements to exaggerate the comedic effects at certain moments in the acts.

Cinematography - Car Scene (intro)

For the car scene, I decided to do day-for-night. So we shot it in the afternoon under Sun light. We shot at a curvy road around CS and then went to the Bryan Cemetery to get a entrance gate-like shot. For these shots, I will do post production to make them look like they were shot in the night. This process involves color adjusting and applying filters. Then I will add fake head lights and light reflections, fog and shadows to create a convincing looking night scene.

For the gate scene I will also add fake gates and a mansion board reading "Loftin Manor" to the gates to make it look like the car is entering the mansion.