The post-production process of any film involves much more than just editing the shots into a narrative. It is also the point at which editors alter the sound, colour, contrast and overall visual appearance of the clips on screen. In this post, I am going to walk through my decisions to change the visual appearance, and leave the sound design for a separate post.
In iMovie, the symbol resembling a colour palette (along the top right) opens up several different colour bars allowing the editor to change the aesthetics of their film in a simple and easy to fix manner. Once the clip in the timeline is selected, you can then click on the colour palette and start to experiment with the different looks and tones it can create. The screenshot above shows that I started at the beginning of my narrative and decided to gradually work my way through each shot in order to make the visual tone of the film look continuous and seamless.
Colour was already an important part to my story, from its early conception in the storyboards, through to filming in locations with different lighting and even titling my film with reference to light and shades. Knowing this, I want to make sure that in post-production I made the importance of lighting and colour apparent. The screenshot above shows how I have changed the brightness and colours of the opening shot to become more defined but also a lot darker. My intention was always to make the film look visually dark in the build up to the murder, and then when Dylan decides to spare the Father's life I would shift the film into a visually lighter tone. I think that the strong and intrusive shadows help to accompany the sombre voiceover.
Once I had started to change the brightness and colour on one of the shots, then I needed this to be continued in the next. So the shot above is much less colourful, shown through how the blue and yellow of the photograph are no longer bright and eye-catching, and the contrasts of lighting are much harsher. I like the effect it has on this shot, making it feel like Dylan is sitting in the shadows and using this as a projection of his own mindset.
The shot above is my favourite colour change in the whole narrative. The problem I had with filming this on two separate occasions was the change in weather, because one of the days was grey and the other was sunny. Therefore in the editing process I now had the chance to make the differences inconspicuous by giving all of the shots the same dark appearance. In this case, even though the sky in the background still has a bluish tint, it now resembles more of a grey and gloomy backdrop. What is most relevant about this shot is how I have darkened it to the extent that Dylan's face is half covered in pitch blackness. I love this split because it perfectly personifies his conflicted mental state, partly consumed by utter hatred and partly still human, blending the light and dark moral connotations. I think that visually it also creates tension because by not showing us Dylan in his entirety, the audience become suspicious as to why he is lurking in the shadows.
Making the sky differences less overt became more difficult when the sun was actually visible in the shot. Take the shot above for example, where the sun in the background helps to produce a shadow over Dylan on the side closest to the viewer. It was unproductive to just make the shot darker because this made Dylan indistinguishable in the car and made the sun more noticeable, so what I had to do was change the yellow colour bar to make the sun less defined and reduce the brightness to limit its projection rather than increase the darkness, which would have just made the contrasts more definitive. So although the sun still features in the backdrop of this shot, it comes across as spectral and eerie rather than uplifting.
You can see in the timeline that this shot appears just before the main title, and so I wanted this shot to look especially dark in order to create convergence between the title credits and the visual connotations of the shot. I increased the darkness to its maximum and also reduced both of the colour bars, making the shot less reliant on colour and more on the shades of light and dark present here. Since Dylan is holding the gun here, I wanted him to be visually consumed by darkness in order to reflect his internal thoughts. The light from the sun hitting his face on the other side is only subtle, but it helps to prevent Dylan from becoming a silhouette and so maintains a necessary outline of the character's features.
After the credits, we are introduced to the Father's character, who is walking past the car park. I still needed to keep the exterior quite grey and dull, but I also wanted to establish a contrast between the claustrophobia of Dylan's car and the freedom of the outside. Therefore I enhanced the darker contrasts of the shot to give the Father more prominence in the foreground of the image, and also enhanced the colour this time so that the green fields and trees looked lively and fresh. I made this choice so that I could portray Dylan as isolated and compelled by darkness, whereas once we start to take the perspective of an outsider looking inwards, the world isn't suddenly so full of darkness. The greyness of the sky still needed to be continued in order to hint at the malicious deeds about to follow.
Another shot of Dylan in the mirror's reflection, where I once again increased the contrast to completely conceal one side of his face. This time, however, I didn't make the background look as glum. I allowed the blue of the sky, which is only very subtle, to border this brief shot as a way of foreshadowing the redemptive arc that Dylan will experience.
The screenshot above shows an important part of the narrative because the Father is now entering the location where Dylan intends to kill him. The shot is very suited to the film because it captures how the Father is leaving a bright area and moving into the darkness, whilst the position of the camera also has the impression that someone is spying on him from above. In terms of colour, the main thing I wanted to achieve here was a clear contrast between light and dark, where the darkness of the path foreshadows what's about to happen. It looks as though the Father has left a place of hope and sanctuary to walk into a trap.
Dylan's surprise when the Son comes out of nowhere is captured with a strong sense of vibrancy. The green of the bushes and trees was enhanced to make the path seem more idyllic, and this helped the rays of the sun to be more noticeable as they try to break through the thick forest in the background. Increasing the contrast here was not done as a way to make the shot look dark or glum, but as a way to emphasise the colours and the light starting to gain prominence. This shot marks the start of a change in the visuals of the film.
From this point onwards, the increase of the darkness is not a deliberate attempt to exaggerate the sombre tone of the film, but is done to capture the light and strong contrasts between the colours, as shown in the shot above.
Even though this shot signifies an establishing shot and a change of setting, it is still greatly linked with the shot that precedes it, and in terms of colour becomes synonymous. It maintains the visual tone whilst not maintaining the visual content, adopting a new location but acting as a continuation of the aesthetic appearance of the shots that came before.
The difference in colour and contrast of these two shots is quite unbelievable, especially seeing as they were filmed around a similar time. These two shots are the last to unfold at the Big Mead, and the differences in sky were something I wanted to include to characterise the differences between the protagonists. Using bright blue to capture the Father and Son helped to establish the contentment that they feel, while using a slightly faded sky with a hint of the sun for Dylan aided in the assumption that he has transitioned from being overly dark to slightly redeeming. The glow of the sunset symbolises the sense of hope that the viewer has for Dylan.
The blue in the background of this shot definitely needed to be enhanced. It is the last shot to feature Dylan in the narrative, so I wanted it to act as a visual conclusion from where he started. The visual shifts in post-production complement the tonal shifts of the narrative, and the blue sky behind Dylan here shows how he has embraced and come into the light, leaving his darkness behind. I also increased both the darkness and the brightness to heighten the contrast of the image but show the redemptive conclusion to Dylan's arc through a lighter approach.
This is one of my favourite shots, made even more so by the contrasts I have used to emphasise the Father's features, and also make the red flowers seem more imposing. Most of the shots in the epilogue have a combined tone of sombre regret and uplifting progression, so I wanted the shot of the Father here to begin with a darker visual approach and like I did with Dylan, start to make this less obvious as the scene elaborates. The contrast is still maintained, but becomes more about emphasising the light than emphasising the darkness.
In order to establish character parallels between my protagonists, I thought that I could use the lighting in post-production to make these recognitions more obvious, through subtle changes. So I have enhanced the contrast in the shot above like I did with several of the shots of Dylan, to make one side of the Father's face darker and concealed. I kept the blue sky as it was so that the shot didn't start to backtrace and undo the more redemptive tone of the scene which precedes it, so instead it acts as a continuation and grants the Father his redemption as well as Dylan's.
My short film with the additional changes to my colour and contrasts.
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