Let's talk about something different this time.
I believe not many filmmakers would be a fan of disclosing the old cringy pieces they used to make at schools/first in the field. Actually, this is an interesting journey to witness our growth and changes, and I would want to share some of my important/favourite pieces here. All remaining pieces can be found in the channel.
Last weekend, I dug up a lot of old work from my hard drives at my secondary school and university time (some of them have been forgotten). I cannot believe how passionate and determined I was to create every single piece when I re-watched these pieces. Surely the work quality is not the best, but it definitely reminds me of the reason to be a filmmaker/visual storyteller in the first place.
Movember 2013 Promo
This is a school promo video I made back in sixth form to build awareness of men's health in November (Movember as in Men + November). I remember we had a team of almost 20 boys standing in front of the rugby field and each of us wore a shirt with a specific letter forming the statement 'The Last Man Standing'. I was trying to build a cinematic piece to create tension & power with cool-tone B-rolls, rugby shots, and a cinematic dolly-in that mimicked what we can easily do with drones by now. The way I was trying to develop and build the visuals still impresses me - I would bring the tripod and slider up to the top floor classroom during the lunch break, did my filming there alone, and carried everything back to the field for the match shooting...
It was before the colour-grading time so we used Colorista (Red Giant's plugin)/three-way colour corrector in Adobe Premiere CS6 (I guess it was even before my time started using Colorista), so the colouring was less polished and finessed like today's work. In fact, this is the time of how the Teal and (not much) orange developed in my experience.
Shot on Canon EOS 5D Mark III & EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM & EF 70-200mm f/4L USM.
Edited & coloured in Adobe Premiere CS6.
'For Granted Forgetfulness' 2016 Exhibition Promo
Another piece that was made for a school project exhibition 'For Granted Forgetfulness' - reminding audiences how much we take everything for granted and forget about our past and something that is trivial yet meaningful in our lives. The girl visited a store that used to be her favourite to-go place when she was a student, where she would draw her favourite idol cards and buy soft drinks. We are pretty preoccupied with our grown-up lives, and it would be nice to have a minute to reminisce about our pasts and all the simple things that made us happy.
I love reminiscing about everything that we can no longer live in, so personally this is one of my favourite pieces. I believe this was my first time creating the reminiscing look and tried the muted faded yellowy-green time. It would be better to have another palette when the girl walked into the store, so it would make things less confusing.
Shot on Sony A7s & EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM & Samyang MF 85mm T/1.5 VDSLR.
Edited and coloured in Adobe Premiere Pro and Red Giant Colorista IV.
And now I can tell how I used to be obsessed with cool tones... which was a contradictory statement by my ex-colleague who told me I was a fan of warm colour-grading. I think it is mostly predominated by the art direction of the scene that sets the direction of the choice of palettes, or maybe simply he's right that I've changed. #lol
Let me know if you are a fan of the series and I may expand this a little bit more...