Welcome to the very first Whatsit Wednesday post for 2016 – a series that will resource you to do video better, offering hints and tips on how to improve your videocraft. Today, we’re sharing a 50-minute tutorial on 3 ways that you can go about approaching a day to night timelapse through manipulating aperture priority, blending in post, and ramping up your exposure/ISO.
Made by Saskatchewan (Canada) local, Preston Kanak – this filmmaker, educator, and time-lapse photographer, unpacks the time-lapse ‘holy grail.’ Demonstrating that while there is an assumption that the day-to-night lapse is complex, the reality is that they may not be as difficult for you to achieve as they appear.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a great little Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial by the ever resource-driven team at Lynda.
If you make videos, then you ought to know that good videos have been treated in order to make the colour consistent. Just think – how many Hollywood blockbusters would you have avoided if the production companies hadn’t entrusted a colour-grading specialist to overlay the ubiquitous (and film critic nightmare) “orange and teal” colour system? More than a few I would wager!
Case in Point…
Despite Hollywood’s apparent reluctance to stray too far afield of their orange and teal ideal over the last 20 years or so (though to be fair, there have been other stereotyped colour visuals employed – for example, stark, or bleached white scenes depicting the future… warm orange scenes depicting the inside of a medieval inn… blues and/or greens employed to depict science fiction… you get the picture) – we shouldn’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Colour grading ought to be an indispensable element of the video-maker’s production schedule. But what if you don’t have the budget to hire a colour grader? What if, like me, you are more an indie-shooter that quite often produces the work from top-to-tail in a guerilla fashion? Are we to be left at the mercy of the raw footage? In short, no… there are tips and tricks that we can employ to help us smooth out our work too. And this video is one such tip.
Adobe’s Premiere Pro can afford us with a unique – and visually-pleasing – result by employing some basic blending and adjustment layer functions. And as noted by the No Film School post on this same clip, author “Ashley Kennedy recently shared some extremely helpful tips for using blend modes to correct exposure and contrast issues, as well as some tips for using blend modes to create color casts.”
Is it perfect? No. It may not even be ideal. But when you are on your own, or are in a seriously bad way with your footage – then this might be just the kind of trick that can help you to salvage something out of the situation. I hope you enjoy.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share an excellent little tutorial on how to get the most out of exposure. Seriously. You have no idea how much I want you to see this video. This is one of those kind of clips… the potentially life altering ones!
Okay, that was a bit OTT. Still – I love this clip.
The team at Realm Pictures have taken what is often a long-winded subject (exposure and lighting), and they have cleverly condensed it into a nice neat package of just over 6 minutes. Whether you are just starting – or you just need a reference guide reminder on how to best use exposure in your videography – then this gem is definitely what you will want to come back to. Please enjoy responsibly. 🙂
Waiting 2B Scene 