Final Major Project Unit: Post-production

Lauren and I had our final shoot date with our last contributor, Seema. She currently lives on the West side of London, so we took a journey there and aimed to get all the filming done in one day. She is a self-employed Optometrist, currently studying for a Masters. And she also paints as a hobby. So we filmed a sequence of her doing her art, with a lens change to get some macro shots. I couldn't do much movement on this lens, as it was a telephoto without a built-in stabiliser. So I set-up the shots on a tripod and let the action unfold, as any slight touch of the camera would cause smalls vibrations.

For reasons attached to the stigma and discrimination in the workplace with mental illnesses, she didn't want to be recognised, so not to damage her career. In this case, for the interview we sat her with her back to a window, so I exposed to that light rather than exposing her face.

We then went out to the church, to film a few shots. Unlike, our previous shoots, we only interviewed her once at her house. Here is her shot list.

Whilst Lauren is organising the structure of the documentary in the edit. I've been working on some looks and testing the footage to see how it's handling correction. It's good practice to get the white balance and lighting right when on the shoot, and I've learned from experience. But there are times where it's not always spot on, perhaps I start getting lazy. Luckily, colour balance can be fixed in post. However, I do always pay attention to the exposure of the image because that's not, if at all, easy to fix. Especially images which are over-exposed, as opposed to under-exposed.

Here's some examples of my own correcting of my mistakes, and adding a little bit of a "filmic" look:

too warm

getting there

to add a letterbox?

slightly brighter

getting macro