Use the shape tool & draw a black rectangle over your image, check fill and make it black (unless you want to use another colour for vignette). Then draw a circle for the area you want to vignette – if you want to make a custom shape then draw it with the bezier tool (haven’t got time here to go into how to use bezier tool!). Again check fill – it doesn’t matter what colour you select. You’re going to use this shape as a mask. Now apply the Gaussian blur filter to your circle/custom shape. Change the amount value to something your happy with.

Now your going to apply an image mask to that rectangle. Right-click on your rectangle layer>add image mask. In the inspector or HUD drag your circle or custom shape to the Mask Source box. Finally check Invert Mask. You should now have a custom vignette!

A tutorial describing workflow with Pluraleyes – Singular Software’s plugin for Final Cut Pro for automated syncing up of dual system and multicam sound. In this tutorial I cover my approach using Pluraleyes to sync some clips from a project shot on a Canon 5D Mark II.

The film was shot on a Sony EX3 and Canon 5D Mark II HD-DSLR. The EX3 was my main camera and I used the 5D for storyboarded setpieces that needed a more filmic look. The first big shoot was at the Barbican Centre in London at a satellite meeting of Shell’s AGM. It was a bit of a run and gun situation. We did three interviews in quick succession. From a filming point of view, the venue was a bit of nightmare – a very public place and lots of noisy fountains, not to mention the numerous planes flying over – always a problem in London.

Barbican Shoot.

[View with PicLens]

Despite the fact that Sarah our ‘producer’ had sweet talked all the security and management staff at the Barbican, I got into a sticky situation with the Barbican’s manager. She came over and said, ‘We’ve been watching you from upstairs and you’ve been focused on that security guard for over 5 minutes. I want you to stop filming.’ Oh dear – we’d been clocked as environmental activists! I didn’t take kindly to her aggressive attitude and the conversation was going rapidly downhill until my colleague Nic intervened and neutralised the situation.

[View with PicLens]

Our main task of the day was to film and conduct an exit poll on Shell’s shareholders. This was done guerilla style with the camera mounted on a monopod (Tiffen Steady Stick). We managed to get someone who worked for Shell on camera saying what a great job they think they’re doing of ‘managing the environmental aspects of tar sands operations’. What a load of greenwash!

[View with PicLens]

The sequence I enjoyed filming most was ‘The Ugly Truth’ a mood film, where a girl puts on makeup and eventually realises that it’s oil – metaphor – oil is used to make everything from cosmetics to toothbrushes. I really went to town using the Canon 5D to give it a filmic look. The main interior location was a bathroom with 2 mirrors – which I tried to use in an interesting way to tell the story. I made use of the 5D’s ability to get shallow depth of field (knocking the background out to focus on the foreground subject) and used the monopod to get shots from tight positions. I also got a couple of really low level tracking shots using a toy trolley and the results were suprisingly smooth! For the extreme close-ups, I used a telephoto lens with a macro adaptor, as I didn’t have a macro lens available. This was extremely tricky as the slightlest movement from the actress would put the focus out and it was difficult to keep the shots steady. Overall I was very happy with the shots and Heini, the actress was more than patient with me. Oh and Nic managed to break a loo seat whilst taking a still of me filming – definitely the funniest moment on set.

The Ugly Truth Shoot.

[View with PicLens]

123►

One of the other setpieces I filmed on the Canon5D proved to be quite challenging. The water filter sequence – we see water poured in and dirty black oil coming out. Having no separate mixer for this production meant I needed to find another way of recording dual system sound. The answer was right in front of me – I decided to use the EX3 to record separate sound. After this eureka moment I used this technique for all the Canon5D shoots. Anyway back to the filter – we used 4, yes 4 tins of treacle for the oil and I have to say it looked very realistic, beautiful even. The problem was we had to capture the treacle coming through in one take. The first take was a disaster the weight of the treacle pulled off our fake filter. Trying to set the shot up without treacle seeping through the filter was nearly impossible, but in the end with the help of some trusty gaffer tape, we did it.

Water Filter Shoot.

[View with PicLens]

12►

A central part of the film was a SKYPE session between the 12 pupils at Ysgol Bro Ddyfi and Myron Lameman, a tar sands activist and member of the Beaver Lake Cree community. From a filmmaking point of view I was presented with another problem. I installed some great software called Call Recorder on my Macbook to record SKYPE calls, but the highest video resolution it records at is 640×480. Now, as an experienced editor I knew that that would not look good if it was upscaled to 1920×1080 – full HD size, which is what I shot the film in. I could use it screen in screen, but that makes it tricky to edit. What do other people do with SKYPE in films? In the end I decided to record it on the Macbook anyway as a backup and for use on the film’s blog.

For the main setup though, we had him projected on a screen and I filmed off this. The image off the projector wasn’t fantastically sharp, but I felt this was our best option. In the first setup I had the camera equidistant between the kids and the screen, so I could maintain focus and pan between them asking questions and him answering. The second time we filmed, we changed the setup, so that the kids sat in front of the screen, to get both reactions in one shot. This just about worked, although it was hard to squeeze everyone into the shot, especially as the screen was fixed low on the wall.

So what other filming challenges were there? There were lots, but filming the kids individually reciting the Beaver Lake Cree’s declaration was tough – more so for them, as it is written in legal language and they had to learn it by heart. I chose the beautiful backdrop of the Dyfi Osprey Project to film this – a nature reserve with hills on the horizon, reeds rustling in the wind, ponds, boardwalks and even water buffalo. Each person had to say their piece to camera. I wanted to film this in a documentary narrator style (in my head!) where I’d track back with them. Now creaky, uneven boardwalks and tracking back just don’t go together easily. Add to that trying to steady the Tiffen ‘Steady Stick’ monopod with the camera and I suddenly became painfully aware why people do courses in operating steady cams/shoulder mounted rigs etc. It was really hard, especially on the bends. On one take I walked backwards straight into a ditch.

I was also trying to keep one eye on making sure the boom mic didn’t come into shot. The most annoying thing of all was that there were people there. I thought it would be pretty quiet on a Sunday morning, but how wrong could I be. The place was teaming with birdwatchers and other nature lovers. We did our best to keep them at bay. Number of takes? I lost count after the first fifty or so. It was a bit of slog, I have to admit, but once again everyone proved how good natured and patient they were.

It was very enjoyable shooting a film with a great bunch of young people and they conducted themselves like true pros. Everyone worked hard and made it happen. There was one phrase I used again and again throughout the production though, which I feel like I used a million times – ‘Can we do that once more for luck?’

Be sure to check out the The Beaver Lake Cree v Tar Sands Facebook Page.

The idea for the film came after reading a story in my local newspaper about Tywyn cinema and the owners Bob and Avril Garrod retiring. I initially contacted Bob by phone and he cautiously agreed to the film. I proposed that the film could be a nice memento of the years he and Avril have spent running the cinema and capture the end of an era.

I met Bob and Avril for the first time on Friday 30th April in the evening at the cinema. This gave me the opportunity to get to know them, observe their daily routine at the cinema and recce the location. I talked to both of them at length and took stills and test mood shots for storyboarding the film. A key consideration was assessing the lighting conditions, especially in the main theatre which was extremely dark. I’d begged and borrowed a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR for the shoot for image quality and the ability to shoot in low light. However, sound quality on the built-in mic is poor, so I decided to record sound separately. I phoned a sound recordist friend/colleague to see if he was available and could help out. Next I arranged a shoot with Bob for the Sunday Matinee screening of How to Train Your Dragon. They agreed to open up an hour early, so I could get an interview. The rush before the film would have to be shot verité style, so I made another phonecall/trip to borrow a monopod.

On the Saturday, I wrote the shooting script and schedule, interview questions and made up storyboards. I spent some time researching software for Final Cut Pro for transferring the footage and syncing up the sound. I also printed off release forms. There was one major challenge for the shoot – there was only one battery for the camera! A spare was £79 and Jessops didn’t have one in stock anyway. This meant I was going to have to be careful to conserve battery power.

The Shoot. We arrived an hour or so before Bob and Avril to get the exterior shots. The spot lighting in the theatre meant they were top-lit during the interview, but I had no lighting, so it would have to suffice. Ten minutes into the interview, the fan on the theatre’s heating system kicked in; Bob informed us it would take 20minutes to wind down. So rather than relocate, we recorded wildtrack of the fan, with the intention of backphasing the sound in post. Apart from these hitches the shoot went smoothly. I filmed on both the tripod and monopod and sound was recorded on the mixer, split between boom mic and radio mics. I managed to eek the battery out by switching off Live View mode (on the LCD) when not shooting.

Post-production. The footage was recorded onto 4GB CF memory cards as H.264 Quicktimes (1920×1080 25p). I installed Canon’s EOS plugin for Final Cut Pro. Using the Log & Transfer window I archived all the memory cards as disk images (.dmg files). I mounted the disk images and using Log & Transfer transcoded the files to Apple Pro Res 422 for editing. This allowed me to add a reel no. and only ingest the bits I wanted, saving disk space. Sound was recorded on a 4GB SD card as WAV files – I copied these to a folder on my scratch disk. In FCP I made my usual directory hierarchy with bins for rushes, audio, graphics etc. The biggest job was syncing up the independent sound to the guide sound on the camera. For this I used Singular Software’s Pluraleyes plugin for Final Cut Pro, which analyses the waveforms and automatically syncs clips in the timelime. Pluraleyes did a great job syncing up the rushes. I relinked the video to the better quality audio, dragging the clips to a new bin, ‘Synced Clips’. The title and endboard were created in Motion 4 and ident in FCP. For Vimeo upload the finished edit was sent to Compressor where I made a custom Quicktime H.264 setting, video quality set to High, audio to 44.1 KHz and data rate limited to 5000 kilobytes. I kept the full 1920×1080 frame size.

Equipment List: Canon 5D Mark II HD-DSLR, Sachtler Fluid Head Tripod, Tiffen Steady Stick, SQN 4S Series IVe Mixer, Sennheiser MKH60 directional microphone and boompole,
2 x Micron Explorer diversity radio mics.

Part 3 of a series of tutorials on different techniques for blurring out subjects in your shots using Final Cut Pro, Motion or a third party plugin. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to keyframe the mask shape filter with blur to track the movement of the camera.

Level – Basic to Intermediate.

Part 2 of a series of tutorials on different techniques for blurring out subjects in your shots using Final Cut Pro, Motion or a third party plugin. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to use Andy’s Region Blur Plugin in Final Cut Pro.

Level – Basic to Intermediate.

Part 1 of a series of tutorials on different techniques for blurring out subjects in your shots using Final Cut Pro, Motion or a third party plugin. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to blur out a couple of car number plates in a static shot in Final Cut Pro.

Level – Basic to Intermediate.

Another commission from Motor Racing Live Ltd – this time a promo for their ‘Star In A Car’ driving experience to syndicate to Red Letter Days and other websites. We’re also producing bespoke DVDs for their customers as a memento of their day, with in-car camera rigs. Track side vantage points were severely restricted due to Health & Safety and the weather was somewhat dull – but it was a lot of fun to make! The brief was to create an eerie, top gear style opening, with empty track shots etc. It’s actually ended up verging on horror movie! Top Gear eat your heart out. The video clip is here and the blurb is below –

Secretly, we all think we can top BBC Top Gear’s leader board and now is your chance to prove it by taking part in one of the most exciting motorsport challenges around. After individual coaching from your very own Speed Masters and plenty of practice laps, you will be ready to push your ‘reasonably priced car’ to the limit through lightning fast chicanes and down pure-power straights. With two sessions racing against the clock in race-modified road cars fitted with full race-spec safety gear, nerve, skill and sheer determination are required to get the fastest lap time possible. Every driver gets a place on the leader board, and the five top drivers by November 30th 2010 will be invited back to compete for the coveted first place trophy and a £1000 prize!

DVD design for ORCi Safety Film

A2Bpostproduction recently had the hairy job of filming at two stock car racing events to produce a safety film for drivers. The experience of filming in the pits can best be compared to Mad Max, with frenetic ativity, grease, noise, welding and engines revving. We also filmed on the Infield at a distance a bit close for comfort as cars bashed into each other! ORCi are extremely pleased with the finished film which highlights many safety issues. We employed the considerable talent of voice over artiste Bob Jones (of Classic FM). His V/O gave the whole film a shiny finish. Take a look – it’s in the showreel section