Documentary Production 2 and Post-Production Editing

This week we've carried on animating the stop-motion scenes.

I cleared the forest from the main set and replaced it with the red plant and a tree for the close-up shot. Once again this took a long time as the plant had to be re-rigged with thread. The threads must have got tangled because during animating, the mechanisms that controlled each individual petal often jogged the petal next to it, however we eventually got the footage, which only required a bit of painting out rigging in editing. 

The leaf close-up didn't take as long to set up as this wasn't animated on set, but green-screened instead. The first attempt at animating the leaf reacting to a water droplet looked unnatural as the tips of the leaf seemed to coil up too much. The second attempt however was much more successful as the whole leaf shudders this time.

Next we animated the silhouette shots. We used the cardboard cut-out Daisy made, and slotted it into the vice I made on the side of the table so it stayed still during filming. Moss was added in a way that it wouldn't easily fall off. This was necessary as we animated the moss by gently blowing on it between each shot - animating the moss by hand would've been too tricky as it is so delicate. Despite the odd jumpy movements, the moss animates smoothly.

For the scene with the forest silhouette at night, the lighting was focused on the front of the trees. For the fire scene, the lighting was focused behind the cut-out forest. This created different effects on the tree edges.

With these elements complete, it was time to start editing. We decided I'll be editing the stop-motion and text parts and Harry will be editing the collage parts. 

The silhouetted forest is composed of the same duplicated footage. The further back through the forest, the darker, blurrier and more contrasted it becomes. It was placed on the glowing blue backdrop used for the tests. Meanwhile, the fire silhouette gets lighter the further you go back and a cross-blur best conveyed the presence of a fire. It too was placed on the same oil background used for the test. Harry will edit in the smoke.

The first layer of the panning shot is of course unedited footage. The four layers behind are then keyframed (at faster speeds the further you go back) using easy ease to make the pan look natural. Once again, it gets darker and blurrier the further you go back. 

The scene introducing the weaving palm oil was the most problematic shot. Due to the fact we animated the trees and background together, I couldn't edit the palm oil to weave between these layers, and masking the moving trees would have taken far too long. Instead we reshot footage of the grass and trees as individual elements, and changed the framing of the shot to be more focused on the ground where the transition takes place. I then edited in strips of paper that settled on the tree trunks, using the Page Turn effect. This was very effective for conveying the presence of a wind. Harry will edit in the wind collage elements. 

The same Page Turn effect was used on some of the text transitions. For this, I previously cut out each word from a book and stuck them to a green-screen, which took roughly a day. The paper the text is on compliments the paper that is seen blowing onto the trees during the collage take-over. 

What Went Well

• The editing revealed if anything needed to be reshot
• The leaf close-up is the smoothest animation we achieved
• The Page Turn effect is really good at making the still footage we have look like it's moving in a wind

Criticism

• The palm oil scene was very problematic and meant reshooting, however if anything, the new scene looks closer to the storyboarded idea
• Jobs like rigging the plants and cutting out words from the book were time-consuming, taking most of the day