White Wedding
As I explained in the previous post I changed my project's idea and collaborate with Ivan Uzunov. His theme was couple relationships and therefore his idea played around wedding scenes.
White Wedding
White Wedding’s inspiration comes from marriages, and all the difficulties they carry. The video is set during the breaking moment of the couple, whom lack affection and caress for each other resulting in the birth of pure evil.
White Wedding is a music video based around a broken love story, with a ‘dark comedy’ gist. It follows December and June a recently wed couple, they quickly realize their relationship is deteriorating over small arguments. Growing distant they chase each other throughout the corridors of the decaying mansion they once called a happy home. The chase sequence is created in cinematic montages for an opportunity to capture the decaying beauty of the old manor along with December/June’s outfits. As the video extends both June and December become increasingly rough and hateful to one another; it is then June gives birth to a pile of guts (evil) rather than the beautiful baby they once wanted, in return for their aggression, violence and repulsiveness to one another.
“The greatest evil is physical pain.” – Saint Augustine
I told my thoughts and we went in different ways of an emotional show. How it should be represented, what kind of song we should use and so on.
Inspiration
I kept in mind these videos while shooting, tried to express similar look.
MUSIC
This was a bit problematic, but I think I did it right.
Trust-BulbForm - we chose this song because of the mood. It contains many audio overlays I was cutting in post. All cuts blended together using the same rhythm and I think I did well.
Set Location
Back in summer of 2016; I and Ivan went to a couple of ruins and abandoned buildings- Ivan went back to the synopsis and figured it out; dying relationship, lack of love, anger, fear, and havoc. Ivan wanted a distressed looking building with torn down walls and dark corridors, something that was once beautiful in relation to June and December's love. He revisited BULL MANOR in Slough and called the number on the plantation post; We got in contact with the Site Manager Kevin and asked for permission and actually got his approval as long as we were accompanied by a member of Vividline (Daniel Holland) Ivan promised him a copy of the film. We had to shoot immediately, as we only got signed off a day before the shoot. Below are some images Ivan took of the location and permission approval.
We had the permission and then I started my part in a different role. Production... I was writing risk assessment and I was in charge of the project folders.
While Ivan was doing storyboarding, directing and script writing I had my positions as a cameraman, editor, and part as a creator of production pack.
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While Ivan was doing storyboarding, directing and script writing I had my positions as a cameraman, editor, and part as a creator of production pack.
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Filming
Gear
We used fully only our personal gear. Fujifilm X-T2, which was used for 4k and FHD slow-motion videos. For this camera, we used wide angle 12mm 2.0 lens.Another was DSLR Nikon D5200 with Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 lens. Velbon fluid-head tripod. Flycam-Nano stabilisation system and LED portable lights. We used walkie-talkies for better communication through the house.
Techniques
Because of Fujifilm x-t2 capabilities in low-light, I was shooting video even using 8000 ISO without any noise. For moving shots I used 4K option so I could stabilize the footage in post. We tried to use fluid movement, so all shots look more cinematic and more immersive in this scary house. We also used post-production dolly zoom, It made the effect called "Parallax".
Editing
Gear
For editing, I used my custom built PC (WIN 10). i7 3.4 GHz; RAM: 24GB; SSD 128GB; HDD 2TB; GPU 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 770. As my monitor, I used Dell U2412M IPS. My sound was monitored on MicroLab Studio 6c speaker set.
Software
I used Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere.
Techniques
I used post production layer masks, different sound merge tools. I used digital parallax effect technique which took me about 4 hours to learn. I was using many subsequences and pre-compositions. Premiere compositions were working all the time together with After Effects and Photoshop.
Fujifilm X-T2 allowed us to film in flat image profile. Retouching and color edit was easier then ever before. I used colour look up table to set the colour gamma at first. It was easy to pull out the details from dark areas and highlights from overexposed shots.
Facing problems
Because of linked media, pre-compositions in After Effects and some layers that were interactive with photoshop I faced problems exporting the clip. It took ages even on a powerful computer. It did not render out the visuals on the first go. On the second something was wrong with the audio. Only on the third go, we were completely done.
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