Post Production: Colour/Brightness/Contrast

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. 

5 Minutes or Less

With 43 seconds of footage left to remove, I decided to become more selective over which shots were essential to my narrative. Sadly the cameo role I found for my nan, involving her as a civilian walking past and suspiciously eyeing Dylan, wasn't something which I felt enhanced the narrative. This was a brief moment that seemed to characterise Dylan in an archetypal way, as a dangerous and untrustworthy youth whom people dismiss.  Although I think that from a societal perspective this could be quite an important way to criticise adolescent stereotypes, I decided that addressing stereotypes wasn't my main aim of the narrative, so I cut out this shot entirely. 

I think that visually the shot tracking the Father and Son behind the tree is more effective if the shot actually starts behind the tree, obscuring our view. Beforehand it follows the Father and Son, loses sight of them behind the tree and then recaptures them as they emerge again. By trimming this scene to the point where all we see is the tree at the start, I think that the sequence feels more progressive as the Father and Son then walk into view because their movement then feels synonymous with the camera's.

Another establishing shot which I had debated using or cutting, I had initially decided to leave this one in the finished film because the change of setting for the epilogue is quite a relevant shift in location, and so the establishing shot helps to identify this change. However I decided that cutting to black before this scene would be enough to signify that the narrative has moved on in time and place, plus the mise en scene of the photo, flowers and roadside should be enough to make the audience realise how the location is narratively relevant. With all these different aspects contributing to the change of scene both visually and tonally, I concluded that I no longer needed this shot. 

Like with the tilt down to the gun that I had discussed in a previous post, I felt that I was being forcefully expressive with the connotations here. The camera tilts down from the photo to the flowers and lingers there, but I have trimmed this shot before it tilts down to frame the flowers in greater focus. With the flowers and photos recurring in later shots, I felt that it seemed pointless to use valuable time here if they would be shown again. Consequently the scene now unfolds to place more focus on the character stepping into the frame and so the flowers and photo are less overt in the background. 

Further trimming occurred with the arc shot shown above. Prior to my editing, the shot arcs around from behind Dylan (where we briefly see the Father and Son in the distance) and then comes to focus on Dylan from a frontal position. I kept this untouched because I felt that framing Dylan, the Father and the Son in the same shot made the narrative seem more intimate and less disjointed. However after watching it back the circling movement of the camera makes the overall scene seem slightly disjointed because the dynamic tracking of the characters so far has mainly been moving forward, whilst the circular motion disrupts this progressive feel. Therefore I decided to trim the shot so that it began already at Dylan's side, and then it only had to move 90 degrees to frame him at the front. This way it seems as though the camera is moving downwards as Dylan walks, maintaining the forward momentum of the journey. 

The shot above was going to be the last shot in scene 2, just before Dylan holsters his gun. However the shot that precedes it is a zoom in to Dylan's face as he undergoes his epiphany, and so this shot appears slightly too stationary and underwhelming in comparison. After deleting it completely, the build up and catharsis of tension felt much more fluid in this sequence, transitioning smoothly into the dynamic movement of the next shot. 

I wanted to make further edits to the opening scene of my narrative, but I didn't want to do this hastily before I had added my voiceover into the timeline. The reason I didn't want to trim the opening any more is because I wanted to see how it visually unfolded alongside the voiceover before I cut it down further. After experimenting with the Tascam and microphone to record my speech, I didn't find that it reduced the background noise that effectively, so I opted to film with the camera and then just detach the audio in post-production. Using the same microphone for my voiceover as I had with my film had the benefit of producing a similar quality of sound, which will make the audial consistency much better. The screenshot above demonstrates how I added the clip to the start of the timeline, and the green bar shows that I have detached the audio into its own, separate file. After doing this, I just deleted the visuals and placed the voiceover underneath the shots which serve as the opening of my film. 

At the moment my film seems to launch the viewer straight into the story, and since it is only allowed to be five minutes in duration this seemed to make sense. However, I didn't want the opening to feel rushed and had the idea to intersperse the opening shots of my film with opening titles in order to establish both a professional and narrative build up. Intercutting the shots with a black screen helped to evoke an eerie tone and this suspense was complemented with the emotional tragedy of the voiceover. It feels like this introduction is just that: an introduction. I am drip feeding the viewer clips from the opening rather than letting them unfold in a progressive and narrative sequence. Breaking the shots up into fragmented, standalone clips gives them a lot more meaning because the viewer can pay more attention to them at an individual level, rather than as part of a sequence of shots. 

The writing in the credits is currently subject to change, but at the moment they include:

• 'White Light Pictures and Lapham Productions Presents' - These are fictional production companies that I made up by experimenting with my family surnames. 
• 'A Film by Sam Lapham' - This is a common line in film credits that shows both ownership and teases what's to come. 
• 'SHADES OF REASON' - Writing culminates in the title of the short film, appearing just after the voiceover finishes. 

I should also point out here that I have edited down my voiceover as well. I removed some of the dialogue (specifically the lines 'I should have been, I was supposed to protect him') because I feel that I delivered them in a way which seemed too emotional for a voiceover. The narration is supposed to give clarity and inside information without coming across as too emotionally compromised, so I think that this clipping made the voiceover seem informative rather than melodramatic. 

This is less of a reduction and more like experimenting with transitions. With the epilogue scene I wanted to fade in and out at the start and end almost as a way of containing the sequence. The transitions are subtle and don't impede on the narrative in a fake way, rather they help to elevate the slow and redeeming tone of this whole scene. 

Having done all of the clipping of shots that I deemed possible, I decided that in order to get rid of the remaining 16 seconds the only way would be to completely delete some of the shots. The one above, for instance, shows Dylan catching sight of the Father as he walks past his car. However, as a way to give the Father more of an introduction without being distracted by Dylan's reaction, I thought that I could delete this shot so that the Father could be in a couple of shots consecutively without cutting back to Dylan. This way he starts to function more as his own character rather than as Dylan's opponent which humanises him as more than just a plot device.  

I'd wanted the shots of the Father and Son in the Big Mead to be filled with simple and basic smalltalk, and one of the shots shows them talking about how the Son had been to see 'Rogue One' at the cinema. I decided to delete this shot because the conversation is supposed to help characterise them as just everyday people, but the shot is from behind and doesn't show their faces. As a result I found that the intention of the shot was undermined, plus my nan is also in this shot and not in the next, which could have exposed some continuity issues. 

This footage still hasn't been edited in terms of colour, brightness and contrast, but in terms of sequencing and creating a narrative, I feel that I have accomplished what I had hoped: a story with an emotional core that successful blends two genres. 

Cutting Down

Although my first cut is considerably reduced, there is still almost two minutes of excess footage that needs trimming in order for my short film to reach the appropriate length of 5 minutes. In this post I have highlighted the changes and cuts that I made in order to bring the running time down. 

I started back at the beginning and worked my way through narratively. The first reduction I made was to eliminate one of the opening shots entirely. This is because I didn't like the way in which the dutch angle shot (screenshotted above) shows Dylan at a distance, and then the next shot rises up from the can on the floor to act as a slow reveal for the character. It felt like two separate introductions trying to achieve different things, the first showing a sense of detachment and isolation through the long shot, while the second shot implies his unstable mentality through the lingering image of the alcohol can. I opted to delete the first shot because the second was more dynamic and even though it was a little shaky, it carried more meaning. 

Here I clipped the ending shot to scene 1 (where Dylan pursues the Father out of shot) in order to quicken the pace for the transition into the next scene. Doing this enabled me to reduce the length whilst also making the pace more consistent and intensifying as it progresses. 

The screenshot above is another example where I deleted the shot entirely. This is because the scene is supposed to be fast paced with expectation of the murder at the end, but the speed at which the characters are walking felt incongruous with the speed of the other shots, confusing the pace. Additionally I found that there isn't enough character engagement occurring. Although both Dylan and the Father are in the shot, we can't see either of their expressions and so there is no characterisation, meaning that the shot only serves to show the physical distance between them. I didn't feel like this reason justified keeping the shot in the film. 

I had mentioned in my individual editing of this scene that I was debating the value of the establishing shot in the frame above. On reflection I decided that I didn't need to signify a new setting because the locations are supposed to seem continuous and the natural progression from forest to forest edge is already visualised in a believable transition. Therefore drawing the audience's focus to the coast in a separate establishing shot stresses the change, which unnecessarily detracts from the important character moments taking place in this scene.  

Although directly inspired by Justified, and although it worked very effectively in that example, I do not feel as though my film adopts the same tone to accomplish this. To some extent it comes across as theatrical and unbelievable, so I have cut this arc shot before it shows Dylan raise his gun because I don't think that he needs to point it for a second time in the film, much less pretend to pull the trigger. I wanted this shot to show how he is considering the potential outcome if he had pulled the trigger, but I think that I achieve the same effect in the low angle shot of the gun that comes later on. It is a much more nuanced and thoughtful alternative that brings the focus from the gun to Dylan's expression.

Going back to the start again, I kept trying to trim clips without making them seem rushed or brief. For shots which seemed to linger for a little too long, I clipped them (as shown above) to keep the main part of the shot in the narrative but also develop the overall pace.

Looking back at the sequence which intercuts between Dylan's and the Father's strides, I decided that I didn't need to cut between them a second time. It feels repetitive and tedious and in my opinion works more effectively just once since it maintains momentum and doesn't linger on their legs for too long. This enables the camera to get back to the character's expressions and body language a lot sooner. 

In my first cut I had the problem of the same dialogue being used in two separate shots that sequentially follow each other. I decided that the best way to resolve this was by trimming one of the shots so that the speech is only detectable on one occasion. With this continuity issue overcome I had deleted around 1 minute of footage, leaving 43 seconds more to trim. The current cut is available to watch below. 

First Cut

With each scene individually edited, I copied the edited versions back into one timeline to analyse the running time and how much more I would need to cut down. Considering that my initial compilation of footage amounted to 15 minutes, I am impressed that I have created a narrative which is now less than half of this original duration. The first cut below is 6 minutes and 45 seconds. 

Editing - Final Scene

Ideally, I could have ended my short film after the previous scene, because that would have more or less wrapped up Dylan's character arc. However since this film is about the parallels of two different characters, I thought that this epilogue was necessary to understand both the Father and Dylan a lot more. 

I started shooting here with an establishing shot. Slightly noticeable in the screenshot is a bluish tinge at the start of the footage, making the sky look a little brighter than the grey that comes later. Although I am unsure as to what caused this specifically (it definitely was not the sky naturally going from blue to grey in the space of 3 seconds) I am pretty sure that it was the camera adjusting to the lighting of the sky. I think I was recording the shot whilst the camera lens adjusted to the brightness of the location. I have edited the blue segment out because it looked unrealistic and slightly menacing. 

Again whether I need an establishing shot here is something I will decide later. I think I will cut to black before I introduce this scene, just so that it becomes easier for the audience to recognise that this scene is slightly separate from the narrative that unfolded beforehand. This is more of an extra, which is why I'm phrasing it as the epilogue, as it brings additional closure and clarity to the story. Without it, we wouldn't really know whether the Father was a regretful or carefree man after killing Dylan's brother. 

Cutting down on footage was quite straightforward in this sequence because I just had to delete the shots which didn't have the photograph in the frame and keep the ones which did. Once I had substituted those, I had reduced the running time to a more reasonable length already. 

The shot moves from the hand putting down the flowers and pulling away, to the shot of the Father standing up again. Even though it is a very simple movement and cut, it looks seamless and so the transition is undetectable. It poignantly draws focus from the photograph and flowers to the character without pulling the viewer away from the narrative. Additionally it enabled me to cut down footage by using some from each shot and deleting the rest. 

Another reduction in running time occurred in the shots above, where I had the same action taking place in two different shots. To overcome this, I made sure that I edited both shots together so I that used the start of one and the end of the other, and so I didn't have to delete either of them but could reduce them both considerably. 

Editing - Scene 4

The fourth scene is more of an extension to scene 3 and is the culmination of this main part of the narrative, with only the epilogue to follow. To me it was important to show the recognition and acknowledgement between these characters in a brief but memorable way. 

Since this sequence signifies a slight change of setting, I have decided to include a potential establishing shot to introduce the locational shift. However, I am unsure on whether I will need to use it because my entire short film is supposed to be a progressive journey and so using a new establishing shot will disrupt the seamlessness of the walk and make it seem as though the new setting is an important factor, when in fact it isn't. I thought it may be aesthetically pleasing and so depending on how this affects the pace of the overall film, I may choose to use or discard the shot. 

I had to make a decision from the two shots above on how I wanted the Father to get into the car. In the top screenshot, I use the shot from his perspective that shows how he suspiciously looks at Dylan from the mirror on the inside of the car, whereas the bottom screenshot circles around to show Dylan watch as he lets his target go. I thought that it was more important to include the shot of Dylan because he is the main character and so it becomes more necessary to show him opting to let the two of them go. That being said I may cut back and forth so that I can use both of these shots to some degree and capture both characters, although that will lose some of the effectiveness behind the arc shot around Dylan.

As screenshotted above, most of the actual trimming down of this scene was done by cutting a couple of seconds from the end of each shot. I wanted to talk about the shot above because of its lack of clarity. Originally I wanted this long shot to do a push focus to Dylan in the distance, but due to technical inconsistencies the push focus didn't quite work. Looking back however, I think that this shot works very effectively because the blur can symbolise Dylan's insignificance, adding to how the bond of the Father and Son isolates him to the extent where it undermines his presence.