maxbrodbeckfilmblog

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: The Final Film!

Here is a link to The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. I hope you enjoy!!

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Lola’s Room: The Final Film!

Here is a link to Lola’s Room. I hope you enjoy!!

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: VFX

I did some VFX work on The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. Some of which was planned in preproduction, but also to iron out issues with our footage. Here’s a rough breakdown of some of the things I tweaked.

^ Due to bad weather, we had to reshoot the master of scene 1 on a separate shoot day, in a different location to the other shots in the scene. In this overhead close-up we needed a shadow to block Arthur’s view of the sky, but we shot it in overcast weather. The solution was to grade it to match the master, and then create the shadow in post-production. I did a separate grade to make the image look shadowed, then layered them on top of each other, key framing the shadowed layer to move like a real shadow would. I replicated the shot with test footage to overlay, so that I could trace it from a real shadow, making it more realistic. I am really pleased with the final result. If you look closely you can tell it isn’t real, but its good enough that you won’t notice if you aren’t looking.

^ In this shot of Arthur opening the door we noticed in post production reflections of our crew in the window. I went through it and painted colour over the faces to make them less noticeable. When flicking back and forth it’s easy to tell what I’ve done, but in the final image you no longer notice the faces unless you’re searching for them.

When we showed up to our shooting location for the final shot of the film, there was a broken down van parked where we wanted to shoot, which meant we had to move the filming 50ft down the road, resulting in Arthur running past this lamp post. We filmed the shot nonetheless and decided to cut around it in post, but it turned out if he didn’t run for long enough it didn’t make sense with the wide shot, so I attempted to remove it with VFX. For this I had to learn how to use DaVinci fusion to paint parts of other frames without the pole over each frame with the pole in. In each frame individually you can’t tell that I’ve removed a lamppost, but in motion you can see a blur fly past him, which is better than a lamp post, but something I should do more work on before festival submissions.

This was a shot we planned in preproduction. We couldn’t have our actor run towards a real cliff, so our idea was to superimpose a shot of Arthur running on grass against the sky over a cliff face. The cliff shot is Salisbury Crags, taken from the roadside outside the Old Royal High School. It is shot in 4.6k on a 135mm lens, so that it could be punched in in post-production. Still, the people walking across it are too small to be visible to the eye. The shot of Arthur running was taken outside the Napier campus in Craiglockhart. We scheduled the shots at times which the weather was similar, and the second shot was simple and plain enough that it matched the first. I layered them in the grade, and then softened the edges, spending time to match the colours. I couldn’t be happier with the result. No one has noticed that its superimposed, and I think the shot looks amazing.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Colour Grade

I was the colorist on The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. Colour grading is always my favourite part of working on films, and I’d love to pursue a career in it post-university.

For this film, I designed a LUT in preproduction based off test shoot footage. Here’s a breakdown of what it did.

Increased contrast

Increased saturation

Crushed shadows and highlights

Raised black-point

Posterised, with gently cyan shadows and orange highlights

A subtle vignette

I pushed the hues in each colour group together, meaning everything in the green pallet becomes the same shade, everything in the blues becomes the same, etc. This meant the colour looks deliberate and matches, as well as adding to the animated storybook style of the film, with block hues rather than gradients.

Saturated greens and blues, but ordinary skintones.

The reason for this was so that I could import it into the camera, and shoot the film with the grade directly in mind. This was the workflow of a colorist I interviewed for the Work Related Learning module, and it definitely helped the process a lot in production, as well as gave me a huge head start in the grade.

I spent 2 & 1/2 12 hour days on the grade itself. The photography was beautiful before grading, so a lot of the work was about matching weather between shots, and making things look like they’re shot in the same location. The final scene was 4 locations across 3 shots, so matching that scene was especially tricky.

This was the node tree I built. I use 2 step CSTs to take the input Log footage and output in Rec709 Gamma2.4, with a middle stage in Davinci intermediate, where the majority of the grade takes place as to minimise information loss. My LUT is added towards the end of the node tree, followed by a small amount of noise reduction to balance out the natural colour noise that the grade brings in. The grade itself begins with a series of balance nodes, focusing on the main individual features I wish to change on every single shot in the film. After this I use one huge set of parallel nodes, which work more specifically on areas of the image, directing the viewers eye, as well as any tracking, masking or ironing out inconsistencies. This is larger than is common for node trees in the industry, but at this stage as I’m learning the art form it gives me more control and makes any mistakes easier to fix.

Scenes 1 and 3 were also shot over a range of locations, which made balancing the shots to look consistent across them was especially tricky. On set we matched the sun direction, which helped a lot. In the flashback scene Ivan decided not to use the colour grade as a way of separating the scene from the rest of the film, but I have made some minor distinctions, such as the higher exposure, higher saturation, warmer temperature and slightly yellow grass which implies a later time of year.

I sent over 3 drafts of the grade, and received feedback from Ivan and Abbie for fine adjustments. Overall I’m really pleased with the final images. The changes I made were for the most part fairly subtle, but the grade definitely elevates the film’s visuals, as it makes the whole thing feel incredibly consistent and deliberate.

Log footage -> My LUT Applied -> Final Image.

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Lola’s Room: Colour Grade

I was the colorist on Lola’s Room.

I didn’t design a LUT for Lola’s Room, as we did test shoots the day before the shoot, and I didn’t have time to use it to build a look for the film. This is something I regret and really helped on The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky, and I wish I’d spent time on for Lola’s Room in pre-production.

I spent 2 & 1/2 12 hour days on the grade for Lola’s Room. The grade was a good opportunity for me to compensate for any problems I had with the images I shot, and I am significantly happier with my cinematography post-grade. A lot of the work was spent on directing the eye, and balancing the levels of exposure and saturation across the scenes, which used quite different lighting setups.

The node tree I used was the same for Lola’s Room as The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. I was colour grading them at the same time, so using the same workflow avoided any confusion and sped up the process significantly.

The first row of nodes balances the images in exposure, contrast, temperature, saturation and skin-tone, allowing for controlled and easy manipulation of the colour. In the parallel nodes I highlighted areas of each shot, and used them for more specific changes to individual elements of the image.

The opening scene was the most consistent, and fits the soft but saturated intentions I had with the cinematography. It was relatively easy to grade. I made use of tracked masks on faces, with inverted versions to lower the exposure of anything that wasn’t the faces, directing the eye to the action and making the lighting feel more placed and deliberate. I am not entirely happy with the bathroom scene and the following scene, which stand out from the rest of the film due to different lighting, a none of the pink hue which dominates the rest of the film. The final results don’t feel out of place, but aren’t consistent with the visual style.

I added the Kodak 65 film look Davinci LUT preset at 20% intensity across the film, as it separates the luminosity scale towards a filmic look, as well as altering the hues into gently complementary positions. I added varying amounts of noise reduction to deal with some of the grain of the corrupted cards, as well as the colour noise of the grade itself.

I worked through various drafts of the grade. Paula met me at screen academy to work through the grade and give feedback on the consistency of the images. A second opinion really helps, as my eyes adjust to the current conditions of the grade, leading to the picture getting more and more contrasting and saturated.

Log Footage -> Final Image

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Score

I wrote the score for The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. It was our intention to have a score from early in the process, as we thought that the childish, fable-esque narrative lended itself to motifs and music to help embellish the tone created in the visuals. I am an experienced composer and have written the scores for several short films.

The pacing of the scenes was edited with score in mind, and we made a decision to begin the score after the edit was completed, so that I could more precisely write music to the beats of the action, rather than having to try and time the action to the music, which in this case wouldn’t have worked due to how little freedom Davide had with extending shot timings.

I had a meeting with Ivan on the day of picture lock, where we went through the film and picked specific moments where music was required to enhance the scenes. We decided to take our main inspiration from animated Japanese films, as they were a big part of our visual inspiration and fit the tone we were aiming for. I made notes on the timestamps and we came up with references for each area based off existing pieces of music.

I had a meeting with Gaby straight after, where I went through the exact areas of the film which would include music, with a description of the intended timbre of each sequence.

Some of my main references were…

The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki, 2023)

The Wind Rises (Miyazaki, 2013)

When Marnie Was There (Yonebayashi, 2014)

The work of Ichiko Aoba

The work of Hikaru Shirosu

I began writing the score on the evening of picture lock, and completed a first draft for the sound department to use as a template to design around 1 1/2 days later, early in their process. I delivered a second draft of the score a week later. I did a third draft of the score for 2 days before layback, and exported stems so that Gaby had freedom to mix it into her sound design more precisely, highlighting open frequencies and altering overlapping ones.

The pieces I wrote were arranged for solo piano, accompanied by a string section of Solo Violin, Violin I, Violin II, Violincello & Double Bass, as well as a Vibraphone, Harp and Flute. The harp and flute have been cut for the final film, as they overlapped with the role of the design, and came off as goofy in the mix. The main theme is a piano waltz, which exaggerates the romantic melancholic tone, and is light and spacious as the film requires based off its themes. I wrote underscore for the interior scenes, which helps with the pacing and flow of the film and is a little quicker and more inspiring and creative, as is the action. The music I wrote for the final scenes went through the most alterations, and I am not happy with the result as it stands. It is something I’d love to return to after the crit, as I don’t feel like I’ve had enough time to make it to the best of my ability. The dark undertones of the dissonances in the score leans the ending too heavily towards the suicide interpretation, which we want to be more ambiguous and balanced, so needs to be brightened and toned down.

Overall I think the score adds a lot to the film. I had a great time writing it and I believe it helps with personifying the sky and emphasising Arthur’s emotions in each scene.

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Lola’s Room: Stills

My favourite shots from Lola’s Room…

While I wasn’t overall happy with my work on Lola’s Room, there are some shots I’m really proud of. I had lots of opportunities to tailor my OTS shots to my taste, and there are several here which I’m very happy with.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Stills

My favourite shots from The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky…

These are amongst my favourite shots I’ve ever taken. I’m so pleased with this film.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Least Favourite Shots

Some shots from The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky that I am not happy with.

Overall I was so pleased with my contributions to the visuals of MWFLS, but there are shots I am less happy with.

I think this master of scene 9 is awkwardly framed, and the lighting was unstable inconsistent with both the close-ups of the first half of the scene, as well as the OTS shots later in the scene. I wish they were blocked at an angle, and I think the scene is missing a wider establishing shot, and a slightly closer medium two shot so that it could be used for dialogue and facial expression rather than just movement.

This tracking shot & Pan from scene 5 is slightly out of focus, and the production design isn’t well framed. Arthurs skin tone is too close to the wall colour and we should have spent longer on making the final frame beautiful, rather than just practicing the movement.

This frame from the montage in scene 6 was shot to be used as a match cut with a sky shot we took, where a cloud was in the shape of a feather. Now that the match cut wasn’t used, the feather is being held at a really weird angle and doesn’t look pretty at all, it only works in the final film because it’s on screen for just a second.

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Lola’s Room: Least Favourite Shots

Some shots from Lola’s Room that I am not quite happy with.

There were quite a lot of shots in Lola’s Room which weren’t entirely as I’d hoped.

This first and second shot were the same slate, which was shot on a dolly and tracked Lola and Jasmine over to the mirror after their transformation. The start of it is poorly framed, with the bed, carped and basket poking into the frame in an unsatisfying manor. Lola’s head is also cropped by the frame. The shot is also shot on a 20mm lens, which is the only use of anything below a 35mm in the whole film. This was due to a lack of space in the room, and stands out as not part of the visual style established in the rest of the film. The lighting was also inconsistent with the OTSs, which was tricky to fix in the grade. The second half of the shot was supposed to be used as a master, which was punched in to close-ups on the dialogue, but we ran out of time on the shoot day and had to cut the singles, meaning the shot is held for a really long time, drawing attention to some of the mistakes, such as the grain created by the corrupted card, as well as the wallpaper in the reflection which doesn’t go all the way up the wall.

This next frame is taking from a tracking shot in scene 2. Due to how much of the room we see, I wasn’t able to light it, which limited my control of the final look. The movement is shaky due to the inconsistent carpet and no dolly tracks, and Lola has her back to the camera, which makes the action less engaging. The shot goes on to reveal the spell book, but due to the poor framing, the audience’s eyes aren’t drawn to the book due to the distance from the camera, as well as all of the more interesting objects which directly surround it.

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Lola’s Room: Sound

I didn’t hear much from the sound until fairly close to the deadline. We did not have feedback sessions throughout the process, but I head bits and pieces of the sound while in screen academy. When I first heard the sound a few days prior to submission I was blown away by Saoirse’s work. The sound completely elevates Lola’s Room and brings it all together. It is full of incredibly well executed bold creative decisions. The dialogue is clear and well mixed, and the breaks in the diegesis such as the magical sounds and the song are well placed and deliberate exaggerations which amplify the tone and match the sound of our early 2000s references. I think the song is great and really works for the film. The bathroom scene is especially impressive, as all of the water was added in post-production, and you can only tell if you’re looking for it. We gave feedback on the sound in time to make adjustments to ensure we were all happy with the result. Saoirse was lovely to work with, she was open to honest feedback and enthusiastic about the project throughout.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Sound

I was not shown the sound design for The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky until a few days before the deadline. A meeting was called a few days before submission to discuss the score, at which point I was told that it had never been put in the film, and sound design had been done without score in mind. Gaby was concerned that the score would interfere with her hard work on the sound design and said she believed that the film would be better without it entirely. I was really upset by this. Similar to my concerns with Lola’s Room edit, the first version of the film should be faithful to the creative intentions of the group, at which point we can come together and discuss what does and doesn’t work about it and come up with solutions which we all agree with. I believe the fact that sound didn’t even try and put my score in at any point in the design process until they were forced to, after receiving it at the beginning of the design process, is poor workflow and a complete disregard for the creative vision of the rest of the crew. Upon hearing the sound for the first time a few days before submission, there was very limited opportunity for feedback, and the concerns of the group were not addressed. There was a total of a few hours of work done on the sound between the first draft being sent to the HODs and the submission, during which me and Ivan worked through it with Gaby to discuss the mix and the score. Despite this, I think Gaby has done a fantastic job with the sound design and there are some really interesting creative elements. Our locations were poor for sound and there’s a distinctly urban feel to it which Gaby has done amazingly at numbing. There are lots of things I am not personally content with between the score and the sound, and I would love to return to it after the crit to ensure that it is in a state where everyone can be happy with it.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Edit

We had frequent edit feedback sessions for The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. I was in screen academy working on the colour grades for my other films, so was able to give consistent feedback on Davide’s edit. I am really pleased with out final edit. Almost all of my shots have been used, and I think it is the best version of itself. Contemplative and slow in places, but always interesting. It flows beautifully and is narratively paced really nicely too. Davide was enthusiastic about the process and wanted to do everything he could to make our collective creative vision a reality. The opening scene is the only moment where there is significant cuts to the screenplay, which didn’t cut together smoothly, and opened on poorly delivered dialogue and an uncertainty which didn’t do the later ambiguous elements of the film any favours. I am especially happy with the edit of scenes 3 and 11.

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Lola’s Room: Edit

Early in the edit process I heard very little about the progress of the film. I was shooting The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky and was never sent a first draft. Later in the process I became very involved with giving edit feedback to help fine tune the edit to my taste. When I first saw the film I was disappointed that it didn’t follow the extensive plan I had made for the storyboards. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t shown the first draft, or if from the very first draft the initial collective creative vision wasn’t followed in the edit, but by the time I watched it decisions had already been made to make alterations from the initial intentions. That being said, from this point onwards Robbie was very open for feedback and worked hard in making sure the whole crew was happy with the edit. Robbie has done a great job with the final edit. I think it really captures the chaotic fun that we had always wanted the film to be, and the edit is so much of that. There’s a great rhythm to it, and the film manages to never be too jarring despite cutting lots of dialogue and action.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Camera Report

Here is the camera report I put together for The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky.

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Lola's Room: Lighting Plans

We weren't able to schedule around lighting due to costume and makeup changes between scenes. This meant the lighting was pretty intensive on set, as we had to change the lights between every shot to maintain the look I wanted. For each shot, there is a diffused Arri halogen key, with a celeb fill, both at 2700k. For most shots there is also a halogen backlight. These lights augment practical lamps in the scene, and due to blocking the 3 lights are cycled around the room between slates, so that the celeb is always the fill, arri always key etc.. I needed a bigger camera team to do this successfully, as these lighting changes took a lot of setup times and are a regret of mine.

Here is an example of one.

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The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Floorplan

Here is the floorplan for the interior location for The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. We shot the entire thing from the right hand side onto the left hand side, as there was a cabinet on the right which would cause reflections of the camera. Also the longer right hand side allows for a longer dolly track, which meant we could shoot futher away from the action and use longer lenses, which was a dream.