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I met with the other members of the editing team and together we began delegating roles so we could keep consistency across colour grading, sound and VFX. With my issues hearing and having not worked with Davinci before, I took on the role of colour grading. We also split the script into three potential segments which each of us would cut together.

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Over the week I put together a prospective document for my ideas on colour grading. With the script's theme being a circular story dedicated to time travel, my original idea was to move through a colour cycle to indicate the different time frames. Moving through colour themes from the Grace seeing herself in her bathtub and returning to it by the time she gets sent back to the bathtub. My major inspiration for the grading came from the film I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Kaufman, 2020) which subtly moves through different levels of saturation and brightness to signal the emotive state of the main character and build tension.

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We worked with the continuity and data wrangling team to ensure we were on the same page with how we'd handle recording which takes would be most usable for post production and how would be best to pass data during shooting. I also ensured lighting were aware of my plans for colour grading and checked if they had plans of their own in case of any conflicts.

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During the week I prepared some potential images to be used as a taxi company logo which I shared with the rest of the editing department. Over the day we finalised our post production roles, ensured a solidarity in our creative ideas for how we were to edit and I began to lay out my prospective ideas for cutting points which I completed during the evening. In the document, I planned potential important places to cut and ensured I had ideas of what motions or concepts may motivate my cuts.

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More classy take, inspired by American taxi logos. Maybe a bit too subtle

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More fun though a little too childish.

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Through the day, I took on the responsibility of gathering and appropriately labling all the scenes we had recorded ready for editing together a cut of what we had recorded. This included checking what footage was appropriate for the shoot.
I also worked in support of the lighting department, both as an extra body for them to practice lighting on and also to ensure I knew what their plans currently were ready to begin colour grading. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be wanting to do anything to extreme in terms of colour for lighting so it shouldn't go against my plans for grading. This day was useful to start visualising how the film may be cut together after seeing what type of shots the camera department were intending on using.

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Having gathered the footage from out test shoot, I spent today cutting the footage together into a potential template for our finished movie. This included ensuring the footage we recorded would get across our narrative properly and discovering the kind of motions that could be utilised for a cut between shots. Unfortunately, some of the footage was lost during the shoot and as such the edit was slightly incomplete but this worked as a valuable lesson for us to check that the footage is being recorded properly before starting shooting in the future.

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With myself having the footage from our test shoot, I volunteered to provide the stills of each scene for reference of the shots. Comparing it to the provided shot list from the camera department, I took the time to ensure the stills were all labled appropriately for ease of access and ensured I provided a still for each motion the camera made for reference come shooting.

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Not being needed on set, I spent these two days ensuring I was ready to use Davinci Resolve efficiently. This mainly culminated in watching a number of tutorials on the software on YouTube and putting what I learned into practice on some of the test footage I had on my hard drive. My goal here was to further my aptitude with the software so post production would be far more efficient.
Videos used -
https://youtu.be/SrJOE2pEp7A?si=6uGdCHQK2o3yzSEo (Clatemont, 2024)
https://youtube.com/shorts/Mk6peo7W0Yc?si=85dYkgkX4h2FxJNX (Batal, 2023)
https://youtu.be/1CdZPNjjih8?si=DUbisN_191Mh_bfw (Joshyy, 2023)

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Having gathered up the footage of the scenes I'd be editing, I used the weekend to get a head start on cutting together the film. My primary goal when cutting together was to ensure the story of the film would be adequately expressed while looking visually interesting. Once I selected the best shots to use, I focused on maintaining the continuity of the shots, pushing myself to cut on a continuous motion where the motion continued through the shots while still having the dialogue flow continuously. I learned the importance of appropriate cuts here. Having to ensure the cuts felt motivated despite them really being used to cut away from a mistake in the lines or the sort.

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This day was spent starting the colour grade. My first task was to colour correct all the shots to ensure I had an appropriate base for further edits to be done on. Once the base was fine, I could move onto the more creative aspects of making changes that reflect the mood of the scene. My main goals was to add a forboading tone to the interview scene and bring back the warmth of home with aspects of the agent's scene bleeding into Grace's home.

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Through a lot of trial and error, this was the end point of my first attempt at colour grading a scene!!! This is the still I'm planning on using as my reference point for future grading sessions

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The day started somewhat chaotically with us realising that the version of Davinci I was using at home was more updated than the computers at Media City, leading to the footage I had edited to not be usable. This technical error was a learning moment for ensuring our technology was compatable with each other in the future. Fortunately, I was able to quickly put my section back together, using my original edit as a point of reference for what takes to use. I then copied the grading I had done over the weekend to move across to the new version of my edit to recover the work I had done over the weekend.

Videos used-
https://youtu.be/_zrCKccQZoU?si=a0ocPkBpNIVj7JPp (Lippman, 2023)
https://youtu.be/FA_POw6aceo?si=-qKqM6P_X-G0la9D (Tone Fuentes ENG, 2023)

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Having caught back up, I used this day to begin grading the remainder of the film. Unfortunately, the footage was not always properly lit leading to some of the footage I had to work with looking significantly different from their corresponding shots. I focused on the most difficult to work with scenes first, including ones that were far too dark or undersaturated. I worked to return colour to these scenes to the best of my ability and make them as visually pleasing as I could as I intended to use these as the basis for grading the remainder of the shots in the same scene. The logic being it would be much easier to make the high quality footage match the more inconsistent ones than trying to do it the other way round.

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While a portion of my day was continuing to try fix the more problematic footage, I spent part of my day trying to make the scenes I edited more engaging. My scenes were relatively static, being a shot and reverse shot of a single conversation. Using pans and vooms I managed to add some much needed motion to the moments, however I wanted to make sure these moments were motivated. Zooming in on Grace as pressure builds, back out when she managed to gain control of the conversation, panning to match the motion of a previous shot. Though the original motivation of these motions were to make the scenes more dynamic, it was always o  my mind to ensure there'd be a logical motive behind the motion for an audience.

Videos used -
https://youtu.be/V9MWwN7Ivjg?si=z2J6gFaAPv2NP3YT (Quanta, 2023)

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Through the day I had managed to grade the remainder of the footage to match the shots I had graded before. Unfortunately, with the remaining time and issues with footage I had to put aside my original plans for colour grading in favour of ensuring the grading didn't come across as jarring for an audience to watch. I also spent some time working on lighting effects for an ambulance arriving. After searching youtube for tutorials it seemed Davinci didn't come with an easy way to apply this effect without using copyrighted overlays. I worked around this issue by making use of the whites in the scene coming from the direction a window would be and boosting the light rays coming from them, changing the colour of it to a blue then keyframing the scene so the lights dimmed and brightened at the pace of an ambulance light flashing.

Videos used -
https://youtu.be/FE1qhMcngXg?si=VXHR481o5f-6JfTT (Kessler, 2019)
https://youtu.be/nlN88ERW4vY?si=PdmOuRDrobQZToa4 (Sergio Mota | Academy, 2023)
https://youtu.be/XDoxqh4qXgc?si=mltYrIYtbtP6nt8K (Faris, 2020)
https://youtu.be/aydFLf1lVsI?si=ObcWEnXokWQdN-0- (DaVinciProz 2023)

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Screen Recording 20240507 140700 OneDrive

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With it coming to the final day it was time to move all our work into a single timeline. Once we had all the visuals put together, myself and another editor moved through the film a frame at a time to search for any graphical mistakes, adjusting clips from the film to ensure there are no black frames and making minor adjustments to ensure continuity was maintained throughout the film. Once that was done, I set to ensuring the colour grading seemed consistent throughout the film. In the finished product, there were still moments of inconsistencies I would have liked to work on if I had more time to work with the footage. However in the time we had with the inconsistencies within the original footage I'm happy with how the colour grading looked. I also used some time to create the visual effects of lights being turned on and off which I managed to do by using keyframes to adjust the shadows and warmth of the images before and after the light was interacted with, creating the illusion of warmth coming from light.

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Batal, D. (2023, 24 April). Copy/Paste COLOR Grading – DaVinci Resolve for NOOBS! - Tip #18 [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk6peo7W0Yc

Claremont, B. (2024, 6 February). DaVinci Resolve Beginners Tutorial 2024: Edit like a PRO for Free [Video]. YouYube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJOE2pEp7A

DaVinciPro. (2023, 18 April). How To Edit With 3D Lighting... Davinci Resolve Tutorial! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aydFLf1lVsI

Faris, C. (2020, 21 May). Basic Re-Lighting in DaVinci Resolve – Color Grading Tutorial [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDoxqh4qXgc

Joshyy. (2023, 13 April). Davinci Resolve Tutorial for Beginners (2024) - Everything You NEED to KNOW! [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CdZPNjjih8

Kaufman, C. (Director). (2020). I’m Thinking of Ending Things [Film]. Netflix.

Kessler, T. (2019, 6 July). Fake Police Lights in POST! *EASY and FREE (Premier, FCPX, etc) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/FE1qhMcngXg?si=7QMupG03Hy1RWFrN

Lippman, J. (2023, 13 March). How to Move Davinci Resolve Projects Between Computers (2023 UPDATE) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/_zrCKccQZoU?si=UXSN5y-SBag0fvGq

Tone Fuentes ENG. (2023, 5 May). Copy Complex Node Edits in a Quick and Easy Manner | DaVinci Resolve Tutorial [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/FA_POw6aceo?si=bOJ6qWtaLNmfeBXk

Sergio Mota | Academy. (2023, 18 May). RELIGHT FX in Davinci Resolve Studio 19 is INCREDIBLE! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlN88ERW4vY

Quanta. (2023, 7 July). DaVinci Resolve 18.5 | Adding Zoom & Pan [ Dynamic & Static Zooms ] [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/V9MWwN7Ivjg?si=JCm6wvWvZgzAxyWn