Colour Grading Issues

During my editing stage of our second film, I had some issues with the colour correction. We filmed the second film in two different days but at the same location. The problem we had with that is there were different weather conditions during the two days. It started off with an overcast sky, high winds, frost, snow and on the second day it was completely sunny therefore that meant we would have continuity issues. The best way I tackled that Issue was by using the colour correcter on Final Cut Pro and on After Effects. Some of the shots had the highlights and the mids of the picture too bright such as the sky, that also wasn't much of a problem to solve.
To make the film seem a bit more cinematic I added the CC Toner effect, Curves to adjust the tone and Vignette to darken the edges which is all located under the effects presets on After Effects. This gave me a sort of golden look to the picture with a vignette around the edges.


Here's a 'dutch tilt' shot of a raw unedited footage and a colour corrected one below :

Research & Development

Here's some development, research and planning I did during this module. 

This is a book called 'The Technique Of Film Editing' in which It gave me good techniques in preserving a clear continuity and use of sound. This helped me a lot as continuity is a stage I strugge with. I also did some research on Colour Correction.

These are some notes I took down during the development of the film and during Lecture seminars.

Ryan Gosling : Drive

Drive is a film that I recently watched & I must say, I deeply enjoyed it as I feel it is a modern masterpiece. One may compare this to a Tarantino film as it has the same filming techniques such as unnecessarily extended scenes with no dialogue at all. The soundtrack choice is also unexpected but somehow fits in perfectly with the cinematography, its very catchy and defiantly fits the mood. Drive is a movie directed by a Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn who is also known for the movie 'Bronson'. 


The movie is led by Ryan Gosling as the 'unnamed' character usually referred to as 'Driver' or 'Kid'. He is a very mysterious character without a back-story so we don't really get told what his story is, except that he's a stunt driver for films. On the book that bases this film on, the character actually has a back-story.
What inspired me on this film was the cinematography and the soundtrack, I think they both worked in harmony.


Below is the official trailer for the film. I feel as if though the trailer hugely misrepresented the sophistication of the film as they presented it as a typical explosive Hollywood film and it gives out a lot of spoilers.

After Effects VFX Particles

When I was editing the footage for the first poem we did, I was really inspired by a video I had previously seen called VFX Particles TV Movie by Robert Langnickel. This is a video which heavily features an effect called the CC Particle World which is found under the effects presets on Adobe After Effects. I used the same effect on one of the clips in our project and I must say I was impressed as it worked well especially after the color correction to the video. It gave the clip a dramatic isolated look to it and it worked well in a dark environment. I'm not skilled enough to manipulate this effect to work like it did on Robert's video but this is a goal I'm aiming on.


Below is the video by Robert Langnickel which features this effect: 



VFX Particles TV Movie 'Schreie der Vergessenen' from Robert Langnickel on Vimeo.

Here's the screenshot of my edit with the particle effect :

Maya Tutorial : 3D Modelling

During our first few weeks of introduction to Autodesk Maya we were taught how to use such important tools as The Graph Editor, Non linear Deformers and Hyper-shades. These come in very handy when doing character modelling and animation. We were given a task of creating a bouncy ball and making it squash and stretch, in order for me to make it look realistic while bouncing I had to edit using the graph editor to make the curves much smoother. Maya is a program that takes a bit of practice to learn so we were encouraged to download the free student version that would help during out of hours practice. 


Below are examples of models and tools I used during the tutorial :

Team Project : Stanza Stones

At the beginning of this project, we were randomly chosen and situated into groups of 4's. Our brief was to create two short films based on a poem written and produced by The Tadeeb Writers Group. 

Our initial idea of course was to break the poem down into something that can be understood and interpreted into a short film. 

My group involved Tim Holland (Storyboard artist), Joel McCusker (Actor), Yoni Cohen (Director) and my self Wisdom Makubile (Editor). We worked together tirelessly to break down the poem and that led us into drawing a story board each. We named our poem "Isolated" as it is about a young man who had lost his best friend. After we all handed in our story boards, we had to choose the one which made the most sense in-terms of interpreting the poem into film. 

We went to an 'interim-crit' to get some criticism from fellow students and tutor, we were given an idea of where we were and how we were doing so far with our project. After a few alterations, we were ready to start filming. The equipment we booked was the Sony XD-cam and a tripod. 

We faced a few problems such as needing filming permission and being stopped by the authorities but those issues were quickly solved.
Filming for the first poem took us two different days at two different locations but the outcome was what we intended.


Working as a team was very inspiring even though some of our ideas clashed, we all went with the best ideas. All of the team members were reliable and we communicated well, overall I enjoyed working with them and I look forward to working on the second poem with them.

Marvel Comics Opening Sequence

During our storyboard process for our first poem interpretation short film, Yoni came up with an idea of having the main character dream about the good times he's had in the past with his best friend. The best way we thought could interpret this was to produce a fast montage of images as a dream, since he was a photographer. The first idea I had in mind was the iconic video montage of comics which was done by Marvel, for the introductions of their films and games. Yoni the director of the project loved the idea and asked me to make a similar visual effect for our project.


I then collected at least 20 images that included the cast of this project, these were all from Facebook, I saved them as Jpegs and then imported them onto After Effects. I started key framing the images one by one in a vertical order. I used a fast motion blur to make the motion seem more natural and of course fast, rendered the footage at 25 fps to be edited with the rest of the footage on Final Cut Pro. The footage looked amazing and was defiantly going to be part of the film. 


Below is the opening sequence by Marvel: 

Pendulum Animation On Maya

During our demonstrations to Autodesk Maya, we were required to produce short and simple animation of a pendulum. We were guided through-out the stages of creating this animation. We used such tools as The Graph Editor and Animation Curves. I used tangents to give an illusion that the lower part of the pendulum has weight to it, I edited the curves on the graph editor and broke the lower tangents to get that effect of acceleration and deceleration. The animation is not perfect as it was just a learning process, the video of the animation is below.

Here's an example of a much more advanced animated pendulum I found on You-Tube.

Media Platforms Lecture Notes PPP

Above are notes I've taken down during a lecture conducted by Bridget March, these will come in hand for future blogging, presentations and research. I learnt a lot about Social networks, I only knew what Facebook and Twitter was for but now I've got some knowledge other Platforms such as Digg, Slide share and Linked in. These will be really useful when I become an Industry professional, or just seeking networking.