Everything Comes To You

 

Post Production

 

POST - PRODUCTION⋆˚ʚɞ

From the first production experiment, I learned that I must constantly think about the “aftermath.” There used to be so much film to go through that it took me far too long to choose the right clips for each scene. To save time watching and filtering them, I deleted any extraneous videos from the memory card before exporting the second time.

ASSEMBLING AND EDITING

Firstly, I assembled all the footage in the wanted order. Subsequently, I trimmed each clip to form straight cuts. Thankfully, the entire sequence is only 2 minutes and 7 seconds which gives me a few extra seconds to add an introduction for the production studio. At this stage, the only thing I considered was whether the flow of action was at a peaceful pace while also ensuring that it was not so slow that it may cause the audience to become distracted by external factors while watching. Each of the shots had to stay in sight before being followed by another in a way that wasn't too rapid to avoid a misconception of the theme of the sequence which should be more laid back and not rushed. 

P/s. Since it was my second attempt at production, I noted to myself to leave out a few extra seconds at the end of each clip to make it easier to cut and connect two different shots. As a result, this whole process was done rather quickly. 

COLOR: covering all the changes across every draft

1) lighting correction

I started by adjusting the lighting for each shot individually, as they were captured from different angles and the camera would have picked up light variably across them. My main focus is on the motion of the brightness depicted through the Lumetri Scope (in Luma mode). I intentionally tried to make sure the measurements didn't go above 100 or below 0 so that the colors in the darker or brighter spots weren't too distorted and became unnatural to the eye. I achieved this by tweaking some of the numbers on the "Blacks" and "White" instead of directly dragging the "Exposure" panel to either side which can result in the entire footage becoming a little hazy or too glary. 

2) Color-grading

Unfortunately, with the provided equipment of Canon EOS RSO (DSLR), the S-Log3 filming mode wasn't available to me, which would have given a higher dynamic range and more flexibility in the choice of colors, contrast, and vibrancy as it could have provided me with a "blank canvas" of desaturated footage. However, I came up with a way of mimicking such effects by lowering the saturation of all the footage in the sequence before applying adjustment layers. I reduced all of their saturation levels from 100 to around 70-80 (depending on the raw appeal from the clips themselves). 

While that was done for all the shots, some slight changes to tint and temperature were also done to a few clips. 

For example, this specific footage (referring to the photo above) was not filmed on the same day as the rest of the interior sequence, making it the "odd one out" in terms of both lighting and color. Originally, this scene was extremely high in warmth which gave me no choice but to dial down the yellow hues by pulling the slider to the far left (-125) while also adding a hint of purple tint (+9) to balance it out and matching the clip with the rest of the bathroom scene. 

Or this other scene from the kitchen connecting with the apartment's living room where I also reduced the warmth to -15.0, and even another one where Minh was reaching for her phone that required not only changes to temperature and tint but other factors as well (shadows was at -13.6; contrast at +9.7).

The same method was used in the exterior scenes. 

I purposely made the exterior shots a little warm compared to those from the apartment (+15 or +12 in temperature) as the scenes in the park are supposed to connote a feeling of affection, coziness, and comfort between the lovers while also lowering the saturation on all shots.

After everything, I went ahead to put on the "comparison view" and used the tool "apply match" to create a synchronization in shades and colors for the sequence separately for the interior and exterior scenes to create a juxtaposition between the two environments. 

Adjustment layer:

Upon adding an adjustment layer to the entire sequence, I decided to divide it into 4 parts:

1. From the bedroom to the bathroom

2. From the kitchen to the living room

3. Flashback to the park

4. Final: back to the living room

On arriving at this stage, I was so thankful to myself to have thought of the idea of lowering the saturation of each of the footage before applying the adjustment layer - this action not only gives me more freedom in modifying the levels of shadows or tint, it also helped bring the colors out more without the interference of the clips’ original pigment. Furthermore, it became much easier for a scene to have the same “look” as they all now start with the same foundation of desaturation. 

(Before reducing saturation - with adjustment layer) 

(After reducing saturation - with adjustment layer)

If it wasn’t for me eliminating some of that saturation on both these scenes (with other minor changes) it wouldn’t have been easy to have them stay connected in terms of hues.

1: With the first adjustment layer, I raised the saturation to +135, temperature to +36, and a -6 tint, which essentially makes the footage become more green, connoting a sense of detachment to reality which reflects the character’s (Minh) mentality a little as she still holds onto the memories of the past and isn’t fully conscious of her present. The same layer of color is dragged to the end of the bathroom section, where there is more wooden material surrounding Anh Minh, making the screen more warm to the eyes which may have been opposite to what I had planned. However, before the application of the adjustment layer, I made sure to lower the temperature on these clips which overall helps dial down the orange hues. 

2: Saturation on the second adjustment layer was higher at +155 while temperature was at +29. The lower level of warmth was due to the fact that the clips themselves had a higher yellow tone with more defined sunlight compared to the ones in the bedroom, lessening the need for increasing temperature. I also didn’t find it necessary to add green tint as the raw clips already had that element in them. One tiny thing did occur to me that by the middle of this particular part of the sequence, the actress (yes, I am referring to myself from a third person) moves to the living room where the lighting is almost opposite as she is now seen from her shadows by the camera.

As a result, I had to pause the process and consider whether the adjustment layer should be separated even further. Ultimately, the idea was scratched off as I would risk a big possibility of the 2 new layers not being consistent. In the end, I went backward to the clips themselves and changed the “whites” to -8, minimizing the contrast of darker and brighter areas and effectively regaining some of the details lost by the light from the camera focusing on the actress (still referring to myself here). 

(Setting for 2nd adjustment layer)

3: This part of the sequence truly gave me a hard time. Part of the reason is that since we were filming in the dark, lighting became a labor-intensive role, meaning there were slight differences in the way the light was shown in different clips - some were a bit warmer while others looked a bit artificial. I decided to fix this problem individually for each clip: 

    - For this clip, I had to increase the exposure (+15)  as well as temperature for it to be seen as congruent with the following shot since the lighting on the latter was a bit more bright brighterllow in tone. I even had to fine-tune some contrast (+0.9), shadow (+28.7), and more to match the shades of the shot to the ones that appear later on.

    - For the shot following this, I did the opposite which is lowering the temperature to -4, eliminating some of that orangey-yellow tint. 

All of these actions were done on top of decreasing the saturation.

 

All the “exterior” clips were already full of different colors: The actress’s shirt was bright red; the picnic blanket (although not fully clear) was pink but gave more of an orange impression; along with pink roses and other vivid snacks. Not to mention, even though the lack of continuity of lighting did make me struggle quite a bit with calibrating the temperature, it had its perk of giving me the flexibility of forming shadows however I wanted during production. This helped me save time on dragging the contrast, shadows and blacks of the scene. After that, I added the adjustment layer: only increasing the saturation (+129). As a result, I was able to provide more of a harmony of color between the shots. 

4: I duplicated the second adjustment layer and put it over the second interior section. At first, I thought it would apply similarly to the first part. However, I quickly realized the need to alter a few things: An increase in temperature (from +29 to +41) and a decrease in saturation: from 155 to 135. This is largely due to the sun setting during that hour of production, affecting our natural lighting and increasing the need for the light wand, but other than those changes, not much more was to be done. 

Overall, I dedicated a large amount of my time to adjusting the lighting on each of the clips, making sure that every single one of them was pleasing and that they all matched. 

EFFECTS

As mentioned in my production diary, the scenes were filmed in the dark with only one source of light which was the Godox LC500R light wand. As a result, some of the clips were a little too noisy due to lack of light. 

For example: 

The clip that I initially chose of this scene was another footage:

From here, it can clearly be seen the high amount of noise blurring the lines. Therefore, I decided to add the VR De-noise effect to smooth out the texture.

However, almost immediately, I saw how unnatural it made the clip. Thankfully, by implementing the three over-one rule during production, there was another clip available as an option which had lethatise, therefore I switched the clip to the other option. 

(Other option with less noise and better quality)

In another shot of the vase of roses, I added the warp stabilizer to make it less shaky as it was filmed handheld since the tripod wasn’t able to be shortened to the desired height.

I originally did the same thing to the Point-of-view shot of Anh Minh observing the paperwork next to her pillow, as it was also filmed without the support of a tripod. Conversely to my expectation, the clip instead of being more stable, got slowed. As in dragged out and more foggy, which made me remove the effect altogether and leave it bare. Watching the scene back, I believe this was a good move as it looks more natural and it is a little shaky as it is following the eye of the character. 

SOUND DESIGN: The toughest and most time-consuming part

Draft 1: 

My first instinct for tackling the challenge of sound was to add the denoise effect to remove the background noises (please keep in mind that the image here is a replica of the process) while keeping the raw sounds of the clips. I’ve heard of the method of physically removing all the raw sounds and replacing them with foleys or sound effects, but I believed this strategy to make everything sound unfitting to the sequence and “out-of-place”. However, the option of using the denoise effect has the severe drawback of making all the remaining sound suffer from an odd degree of reverb. Moreover, it was extremely tough to have the sounds be consistent with each other as the level of “denoise” needed was variable across all the shots - this can easily be detected from watching the first draft. Hence, continuity failed to be maintained and would effectively lower the satisfaction of the audience while watching the sequence. 

On the other hand, I was able to foresee a certain post-production risk: voice-over. In the first draft, the voice of a crew member can be heard asynchronously where a phone call is supposed to be happening as I needed her to help me stay on cue with the script. I didn’t, however, think about the fact that her voice would be caught onto the clips, making it hard for me to form continuity in speech and continuity in general. 

For the new version, during production, I counted the seconds needed for the voice actress to say her lines through a voice-over while staying silent. This way, it was easier for the voice-over to be applied and flow across changes of angles and scenes, building a smoother drift of progression of narrative. 

VOICE-OVER

Nguyen Hoang Minh Thu (a.k.a. Emma Nguyen) was my voice actress. I used my phone and the K9 Wireless Microphone (used in casual vlogs or live streams) to record her voice on the Voice Memos app. This microphone was chosen specifically for its ability to remove noises (and the fact that it was affordable, too) - you may have seen me use the same tool in my genre convention study video. We met up at a local coffee shop and went straight to the balcony of the place since there was no one there at the time to make sure that there wasn’t any sort of interference in sound. Instead of recording each line at a time, I suggested that she watch the sequence simultaneously with the screenplay on my laptop and record them all at the same time twice, once before the flashback and once again after. This way, I save energy and time in sorting them out. After that, I uploaded them to Google Drive and imported them into Premiere Pro.

As can be seen from the image, I chopped up the recording, removing the parts where Emma stayed silent as the character was speaking. Then I moved the sections around to fit with the sequence. To give the sound a “through the phone” feeling, I changed the preset to “From the telephone” to give it a raspy, subtly distorted vibe while also reducing the volume to -10.2 as it was a little too loud. Following this, the dynamic slider was increased (+9.9) to make the quiet parts of Emma’s voice louder and the loud parts softer, resulting in a more focused and clearer voice.

Near the flashback, where Anh Minh stares at the vase of flowers as it reminds her of the bouquet of the same roses that was gifted to her by the ex-boyfriend, I wanted to encode that her mind becomes lost in a trance, with the conversation with her boss fading into the distance. That is where the lowpass effect comes in. Keyframe was used, slowly muffling Emma’s voice “over the phone” until the end of the voice-over as the scene leads us into the flashback, making it further from Anh Minh’s consciousness. 

Sound effects from Pixabay: 

• Clock-ticking: I had to cut out a single sound as I didn’t need the entire sequence of clock-ticking sound

• Incoming phone call

• Lock screen of iPhone

(I got sound effects from Pixabay)

MUSIC: 

I had thought of using a piano, non-lyrical soundtrack for the beginning of the sequence in advance. My choice was Ballerina by Yehezkel Raz. The piece has a sentimental melody with soft dynamics. It connotes vulnerability and sensitivity which is fitting to the state of the main character in the present as she still hasn’t moved on from the separation from her lover. The music stops as the viewers see more of Anh Minh’s routine after waking up, signaling the beginning of the narrative and insinuating that they should start paying a little more detail to the advancement of the story - the dialogue that follows this scene. 

Regarding the music for the flashback, I had already set my mind on Frank Ocean’s Godspeed. The intro into the first verse of “Godspeed” had somewhat of an ethereal, dreamlike quality that makes listeners feel as though they are floating. It is soft yet soulful which is exactly how I want the scene to be encoded - dreamy and almost unreal. Besides that, the song opens with the line “I’ll always love you”, encoding that she may never truly get over the relationship and that nostalgia will continuously haunt her, subtly hinting towards the title of the film “Everything Comes to You”, implying that there is a possibility that they may get back together. I also particularly used this part of the song as once it gets to the end of the flashback scene, the music intensify, further accentuating the effect of the abrupt cut to the present. I even decided to bring back the same soundtrack at the end of the opening sequence to really tie it in together. 

I used the website Y2mate to help me convert YouTube videos into mp3 files. 

DRAFTS 2 AND 3: 

PRODUCTION STUDIO INTRO

I originally tried to replicate Focus Features’ production studio intro: 

With the animation of circular shapes being blurred into the distance of the background of the typography in the front. 

(This was me attempting to design a similar thing with a different color scheme on Canva)

However, I thought the color scheme and overall style of this wasn’t suitable with my logo as it encodes more of a vintage, almost Japanses aesthetic. In the end, I decided to do a simple fade in and out from a black background to coordinate it with the detailed logo. Instead of traditionally uploading the file of the logo (non-background) and add in the animation afterwards, I chose to edit this in CapCut to help me save time. The app was available to me through my tablet which was more convenient to edit on. Moreover, more aesthetic fonts was offered by Capcut. 

By the 4th draft, I’d made the decision to remove the “A film by Cleo” part as I thought it would be better for me state the credits along with the sequence as it progress. 

SOUND DESIGN: 

At this stage, I’ve decided to remove all raw sounds from the sequence and replace them all with sound effects and foleys. This is primarily due to the lack of continuity that I mentioned before because the sounds didn’t match up with each other between cuts. To bring back some of that ambience, I used a sound effect from Pixabay of “room ambient noise”. Apart from that and all the other sound effects I carried on using from the 1st draft mentioned before, the rest of the sounds were all foleys, directly recorded onto my ipad and then into Premiere Pro. 

Some of them were: 

• Footsteps on the wooden floor of my home

• Sound of wrapping paper replacing the rustling of the flower bouquet

• Bed creaking was made by my mom rolling around on our bed

• The sound of a silver spoon hitting against the wall of a cup (stirring) 

• Sound of water running and stopping at a faucet followed by a sound of me flicking the water from my hand onto the sink. 

• Me gulping on water

• Sound the glasses make when I put them on in the beginning of the sequence

• Sound of the door opening at the end of the film

• Pillows and bed sheets in contact

• Me brushing my teeth

• etc.

(these were all the recordings on my tablet)

As it turns out, this way of producing sound design was not only less complex compared to my expectations but it was also gave a much better outcome. The sounds are now more in harmony with each other. I even went as far as dubbing my voice over a few scenes where the raw sound was too unfocused with high reverb. 

In addition, for the exterior scene, I added a “park ambience” with sounds of birds in the background, encoding that they are surrounded with nature and the environment (despite being in public) seems more private because of the silence of other sources of noise (such as other people) 

I decided to change the previous soundtrack to a new piano track, titled “New home” by Frozen Silence. This piece symbolizes a fresh start, moving into a new chapter of life, either physically or emotionally which I believe is the perfect encodement of this stage in Anh Minh’s life where she has to move one and continue into a new part of her life where Quang Anh isn’t there. Plus, I prefer this melody over “Ballerina”. Unlike how I placed Ballerina before, I dragged “New home” right the beginning and have it slowly build up into the first shot of the clock. This way, the soundtrack seems to be more in-tune with the sequence.

One thing I didn’t catch, however, is that I forgot to trim the song “Godspeed” at the end and let it play out until the end which made the sequence end up at 6 minutes and 15 seconds. I fixed it in the 4th draft, though. 

We forgot to record Emma’s voice-over for the scene after the flashback the first time, so a second “get-together” was produced. 

I meant to reverse the method of using Lowpass effect for the cutback to the present, but I didn’t like the result of this as it was too intense for an outro of such an intimate scene. Hence, a simple gradual increase in volume (default transition) was utilized. Here, Emma’s voice can be heard slowly making its way back into Anh Minh’s mind. To create an abrupt cut, I separated from the recording the part where Emma says “Minh” - calling out the main character’s name to grab her attention - and raised the volume, producing a heightened sound.

What’s more, I included a “snapping” sound effect (acquired from Pixabay), also put at a high volume of 15.0dB to emphasize Anh Minh (the main character) snapping away from the memories that are haunting her. 

Following the trend of dubbing voices, I asked Billy (a.k.a. Viet Thanh) to also record his voice saying similar lines in production and added them into the sequence as well. This is because if I use his raw voice from the original clips, I would have to add the denoise effect to get rid of background sounds to avoid a doubled layer of background noise. However, that would cause his sound to become reverbed (as I mentioned before), resulting in an unnatural voice. 

(This was the adaptation of Billy's recording into the sequence)

Here, you can see I added his dubbing voice and adjusted the preset to “Make distant*”, effectively giving the same feeling as he is saying his lines in real time. 

CAPTIONS AND GRAPHICS:

Draft 4: 

For the credits, I set font to “Rage Italic” and set them to Faux Italic mode, making the words appear tilting to the right. This font is more cursive, which is appropriate to the romance genre (from my research to the opening credit to the movie “One Day”). The color code was set to “F8EE8D”, which is a bright, pastel yellow that pops out from the its surround and also encodes a certain sense of softness. 

While most of the opening typography adapt the use of a simple set of fade in and out animation, the setting for directing and producing was a bit more special. 

With these settings, I was able to make an impression of the words fading in from the left to right and disappear in the same manner. 

In the draft, captions were also added in the font of Perpetua in the color white - they are simpler, not to “decorated” which prevents the audience from being distracted with the design of the typography. One thing I did was to put them a little too low for the eyesight, requiring the viewer to switch their focus constantly to catch the captions. In addition, for the scene in the park, I used the same setting of letters but in a bright yellow which apparently is little difficult to be seen through the busy color in the shots. 

FINAL

Some final changes:

I wanted the sequence to appeal more the Vietnamese community as they are my target audience. I did a quick research on how other Vietnamese movies provided their opening credits. 

(The Father by one of Vietnam's most renowned celebrities in the entertainment industry Tran Thanh - please watch until 30 seconds into the film to understand where I got my inspiration)

I adapted the same way of introducing the credits in Vietnamese to encode that this media text primarily caters for this community. 

For the captions, I raised the placement of the sentences as well as give them all a dark, transparent background (learnt this from how Netflix provide their subtitles, which I can't screenshot due to copywright...). 

(the setting for the background of the captions)

New music

A viewer after watching my drafts also suggested that I changed the musical score to a vietnamese song. I thought this was a great idea as it would further highlight the fact that I was producing for those who share my nationality. It took a long time to find an appropriate, but I finally found “Xuân, hạ, thu, đông, rồi lại xuân” by a Vietnamese artist - Amee, which loosely translates to “Spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring once again”. The song reflects the feeling of longing the presence of someone more and more as time passes. 

Changing the song meaning I had to sacrifice the intro of “Godspeed” which was the sole reason I chose the song initially. Before the first verse is sung, the song by Amee starts with a piano melody which is calming but I was looking for tension. To make up for this loss, I once again went onto pixabay and downloaded a “Build-up” sound effect which I then trimmed and added it in right before the drop of Amee’s voice into the first line of the song. To encode a shift of mindset and though in Anh Minh’s mind, instead of cutting the build-up sound abruptly, I decided to connect it into the song as a way of mellowing the sound, making the transition of sound more tender and smooth. 

For the ending, I still went with the same soundtrack, and by utilizing the entering of the chorus in the song, I get to benefit from a natural build up of Anh Minh opening up the door and seeing a person she wasn’t expecting to meet, raising enigma code. Moreover, right as the shot cuts to a black screen with a typography of the Vietnamese translation of “Everyting Comes To You”, the lyric state the word “anh”, which is typically used refer to a male significant partner. This helps the audience shape an idea of who may be at the door and raise action codes. 

I chose another cursive font to form the title of the sequence, further sustaining the idea of the romance genre. 

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 THE END. 𐀔˖ ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪