Post Production Blog Post 12/6

Over the past couple weeks I have worked to finish my film and complete the post production stage of the project. During this time I filmed a few remaining scenes, edited everything together, and color graded. With the film now being complete, this is my reflection on the post production process.

A Change To Dialogue

The biggest thing that happened during the final bits of post production has to do with dialogue. Prior to the filming of the remaining scenes, I took a look at the script for those scenes. After reading through the dialogue, I noticed that even after trying to make it seem more natural, it sounded like a script. Then, I re-watched scenes that were shot during production and their dialogue also sounded awful. At this point I wasn't sure how I could re-write dialogue and have it sound good especially with very limited time. Then, I thought about just removing the dialogue, leaving the film as a "silent film". I went back and re-edited what I had already done, working to tell the story using music and actions instead of dialogue. Overall, I feel the change was for the better although, the film still wasn't exactly as I envisioned it either way.

Editing And Color Grading

Editing the film together wasn't much of a difficult task. The only real issue that I experienced while editing was transitioning between scenes. This error was mainly caused by lack of planning for transitions while planning shots and while shooting. Editing the film to eliminate dialogue wasn't as challenging as it first seemed. For scenes that involved dialogue, characters speaking shows the audience that a conversation is happening. I also included two instances of subtitles in cases where the words being said by the actors are important. I made this choice as if I played audio it would feel completely inconsistent with the rest of the film. In my production blog post I wrote about how much I enjoyed color grading the footage I had shot so far, and my thoughts remain the same. Color grading did see one improvement due to usage of my new camera, which records a very flat image. This made it take less time to balance the image before color grading.

Final Thoughts

I'm overall satisfied with the final product and glad that I can move onto another project. The time spent working on this film involved a lot of "firsts" for me. It was my first film since the pandemic began, first film using my new camera, first film where I was entirely behind the camera, and first film to have changed from the beginning to the end. Filming throughout the process was always enjoyable for both my actors and myself. I managed to try a lot of new things that I haven't done before and my actors were also excited to be a part of the process. Color grading was likely the highlight of the post production process for me. Typically, I neglect color grading my footage and tend to leave things as they are directly from the camera. However, after color grading this film and seeing it become instantly more appealing to the eye, I will surely be doing it for every project from now on. As of now, I currently do not have any ideas for another project. When the time comes to begin another project, I intend on finding someone to collaborate with. Doing this should hopefully help with a lot of planning and will hopefully lead to someone other than myself writing the dialogue. In conclusion, this film was very different than what I've done before. I can definitely take away things like my new appreciation for color grading and realizing that I need to improve as a writer before my next project. But with the experience I gained I know that what I do in the future can be so much better.