Evaluation

Over the course of this project I attempted to create a short documentary about what it’s like to work in a professional kitchen. The film follows an average working day for the chefs in The Preston Park Tavern and their life up to this point. In preparation I watched several similar documentaries as well as recommendations from the chefs themselves. Researching and coming up with the whole ‘story’ for my film as well as undertaking the filming and project management was something I found very satisfying.

Managing time as well as several people for filming was quite a challenge but I feel like it has helped push and improve my abilities. The actual production had quite a few problems that I wasn’t expecting and had the unfortunate consequence of me not being able to record my own music. Amongst these and several software problems I feel like my ability to be more agile and work around things has been improved by this project. Despite these problems I feel like I was able to create something I am quite proud of.

The final full film and the trailer are going to be used for promotion of the restaurant as well as the private catering company run by 2 of the chefs. Seeing my work out in the real world and working to the expectations that some with it is something I look forward to doing more in the future.

Feedback

Before rendering out the final file to hand in I decided to show the film to a few friends as well as the chefs that appeared in it. Apart from a few of them thinking they sounded a bit awkward, the response was generally pretty positive. There were however, a few points that were raised that I will definitely need to act on. The first one was that there were a few ums that came through quite prominently, which I just covered with a cutaway to some b roll and then edited the interview footage. The second point was that it ended quite abruptly from the part where Joe mentions cleanliness to the final time lapse. To correct this I just added in a portion for Blake to talk about finishing at the end of the day and winding down. I think adding this quality control measure near the end of the process has been valuable as a fresh pair of eyes tends to notice things that I haven't.

Grading Footage

The next step was to try and adjust my grading style to fit Premiere Pro's setup. The drag and drop interface is the same as After Effects and many effects are similar or identical, so this process was very fast. The render times for effects also seemed to be much faster due to Premiere Pro's handling of render files and scratch disks.

Due to the nature of the very flat footage I shot the first step was to add a little contrast to the footage. Because this has the consequence of lowering shadow depth so I used curves to raise the black point very slightly to match the style of the previous stuff I researched. I then used tint to map the shadows to brown and highlights to a straw yellow. This gives a warming effect without altering the mid-tones too much, giving it a much subtler look while still adding a stylised feel. Shifting the hue balance slightly corrected for any mid-tone shift they may have occurred. I then finally added and unsharp mask to replaced the built in and fairly terrible sharpening my camera normally applies.

For the interview footage I carried out a similar process but mapped the blacks to a cooler indigo colour to give it a little more of a stylised look. I tried to keep this to the interview footage because I would like to try and represent the ingredients and dishes in the most realistic way possible.

Titles

One huge advantage of my workflow problem I discovered was how much easier doing titles in Premiere Pro is compared to After Effects. Normally I just use a solid colour and add a text element in a separate precomp and then adjust the in and out times to get it where I want it. After looking around the software I discovered that Premiere Pro has a dedicated titles tool.

This tool allows you to create titles as a separate asset that has a transparent back ground which makes things a little easier for me. You can also create a template that can be used many times for end credits, as well as much better alignment options. I'm quite glad I discovered this and will be using it to do my titles from now on. Below are some examples of my titles:

Workflow Problems

Now that the main edits are complete, I moved my project to over to After Effects for the grading and titles. After importing the project, I ran into several major problems with the audio. For any clips that had been synced using PluralEyes, After Effects was unable to recognise the linked clips and everything fell out of sync with each other. As a consequence, most of the audio files that were trimmed in the source module of Premiere Pro simply weren't recognised and didn't appear after the import.

After a few hours of testing and trawling internet forums for a solution I discovered that there was no way to fix this in an efficient way. The only 2 ways of doing it would be to re-edit using manually synced footage, or trim down around 30 audio files and sync them into After Effects. Both of these options seemed worse than death so I made the decision to remain in Premiere Pro to finish my project.

After having a good look around the software, it seems that Premiere Pro shares many of the basic grading functions as After Effects such as Tint, Color Balance and Curves. As I only need basic colour grading tools I think I won't be slowed down by having to work in Premiere Pro until the end of the project.

Timeline Update and Roundup

Now that I'm about a week from hand-in I went back to consult my time line for progress. Fortunately my decision to not compose my own music has paid off and I am currently on track with plenty of time to finish what I still need to do. All of the main edit has been completed so all that is left is sound correction, colours and finishing off the titles. I think having a more detailed time line to work from compared to the one I used for pitch has been a massive help in keeping track of individual tasks, rather than blocks or categories of tasks. If I hadn't expanded my schedule I would've certainly ploughed on with my own music and been caught out at the end.

Blake Interview

The final interview to be completed was Blake. As he is normally very confident I relied on him providing a good portion of the 'friendlier' anecdotes for the interview. For this shot I planned to frame him in the kitchen, something I think is essential seeing as the whole film will be set there. Because of the narrowing time constraints and mechanical noises once the kitchen is set up I had to come in early in the morning with Blake to set up.

I was very pleased with how the interview went apart from some noise coming through from the fridges, which will be dealt with in the same way as the noise in Simons interview. This clip took slightly longer than planned because the other chefs came in to watch, making Blake quite nervous. Overall he gave very good answers, coming out with several of the set piece answers without any prompting or direction.

Joe Interview

My next interview to go ahead was with Joe. Because I was forced to do it during opening times, for this interview I decided to things outside in the staff garden. I had originally planned to do it in front of the pass but because of the noise and the fact I was already behind schedule I decided to do it that day. Below is my original sketch for filming in front of the pass.

This interview went much smoother than the previous one as Joe seemed very comfortable coming up with detailed answers quite quickly. Once I had all my composition and levels set it took about half the time to record compared to the previous one. Although there were quite a few pauses and ums, they were all in places where I could easily cover them with b roll.

New Music

Because of my choice to not compose my own music I have now got to decide what music I am going to use for my film. Looking back on my post about music inspiration one composer really stood out as an option, Nils Frahm. From the very beginning his song Keep has been in my mind as the potential backing music for my track so it seemed like an obvious choice. Track is a little on the short side so I will have to either combine it with other music or edit the original.

Timeline Update

Now that I'm 2 thirds of the way through my project I decided to check my progress against the schedule I created at the beginning. Unfortunately I have been unable to make up the time lost near the beginning and have less time to do what I need to get done. This has been solely down to the fact that arranging interview times with the chefs that work 80 hour weeks is proving to be incredibly difficult. I think I have some firm dates coming up to interview but things are still behind.

Because of these unforeseen circumstances I have decided to use existing music instead of trying to compose my own. Although it is very frustrating to have a do it, it should get things fairly back on track without sacrificing the quality of the final product.

Workflow

Because this project is so much larger than previous ones I have undertaken, I have gone to the effort of defining my workflow for editing before I actually start. At the beginning of the edit I will start out using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 as it is dedicated to non-linear editing, making things easier for me. This is the software I will use to edit all the basic clips together as well as getting all the audio sounding right.

Once the sound and editing is complete I will take advantage of the cross-compatible nature of Adobe Creative Suite and import my project on After Effects CS5. This is where I will carry out any visual treatment as well as titles and text placement.

My reason for splitting things like this is that it makes sense to use the software that was developed and fine-tuned for each purpose, rather than wasting time and effort trying to make one do the job that the other could do much faster and to a higher standard.

PluralEyes

Now that I have my separate audio and video files for the first interview, I began the task of syncing all the footage up. For previous projects I have gone about this manually, using a clapper board to create an audio peak as well as a simultaneous visual cue. This method is extremely time consuming when anything more than a single 5 minute interview is concerned.

To try and speed things up I got myself a trial of a program called PluralEyes. This software is capable of taking multiple camera angles and audio sources and syncing them up automatically using the camera captured audio as a reference. The first step was to import all the clips into the software.

Once all the clips are imported all that needs to be done to line them up is hit the synchronise button and PluralEyes handles the rest. An xml sequence then needs to be exported from the program and then imported into Premiere Pro. This creates a sequence with both audio tracks intact, and one with only the audio from the dedicated recorder intact.

This method has already saved me considerable time and will be how I do any syncing of audio and video in future.

Noise Removal

After getting home and going through the footage and audio in a much more quiet environment, I did notice that there was still some noise from the air conditioning unit being picked up on my recorder. To get rid of this I went into Audacity and carried out several passes of noise reduction, each time recalibrating the sensitivity as well as the expected noise profile. This proved to work really well and when put against music there is no evidence of background noise and the speech is left sounding untouched. Although it was easy to remove, it did slow my process down a bit so I will have to take much more rigorous measures for future interviews to eliminate sources of noise before recording.

Simon Interview

Because of the way the work rotas have fallen, Simon ended up being the first person to be interviewed. For this part I chose to film in the dry stores downstairs to get away from the noise of the kitchen above, below is my round layout I used as a guide for framing my shot:

After having some difficulties with the noise of the air conditioner coming through the lav mic, I decided to get rid of it and hang the shotgun mic from the door frame just out of shot and pointing directly at Simon. This improved the sound quality greatly and we were able to begin the interview.

I was very pleased with how the interview went as Simon didn't need very much prompting beyond what was already in the questions. I went over my standard interview procedure and checked off all the questions with good takes, while marking down on the questionnaire which ones were interrupted by door slams or ums and uhs. Overall the whole process took around 15 minutes and I came away with some very usable footage.

Color Grading Research

As I would be grading all of the footage myself I went about researching what kind of look to go for, my first choice was to look once again to David Gelb's work. With Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Chefs Tables, he seems to have gone for a very natural look, while maintaining the soft, low-contrast look of the flat profiled original footage. Although this look is very subtle I think I might try to do something slightly more stylised.

As each episode of the series is directed by a different person I took to Netflix to watch the rest of the series. The 3rd Episode, directed by Clay Jeter really caught my eye and offered much more inspiration than Gelb in terms of colouring. In this episode he followed the chef Francis Mallmann who cooks in the Patagonian wilderness using predominantly fire. The grading in this episode is much more cinematic and stylised, perhaps to echo the wild nature of the subject matter of the documentary. This is much more like what I want to try and achieve when grading my footage.

First Filming

Now that most of my planning has been completed I headed up to the kitchen to film for the day. Overall it went really well and I think I captured most of the B roll I need for the final video. I filmed in mostly 60p to give myself the option to slow things down in post and fortunately there were enough interesting things going on to slow down. The light wasn't fantastic but it was well within what I think is acceptable and sadly due to space concerns I was unable to bring in any external lighting. In total I was down for about 5 hours and got everything in my narrative arc apart from the cleaning down.

Filming Equipment

For my filming on location, I have put together what I think I am going to need and stored it in a locker on site to avoid moving things every time I shoot. The first choices I made were which lenses to bring with. I went with a total of 5 lenses that should give me the ability to shoot in low light, wide angle, standard focal lengths, telephoto, wide angle low light and image stabilised. Although this may seem excessive, I have no shortage of space on location and I'd rather be safe than sorry.

From left to right: SMC-Pentax 28mm f/2.8, SMC-Pentax 50mm f/1.7, Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS III, Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II.

These lenses will be fitted to my Canon 600D for filming, which has been equipped which a battery grip that holds double the batteries. This will be extremely important when filming long sections and ensures that all interviews can be shot in 1 take without interruptions. 

For mounting my camera I have chosen my Daiwa fluid head tripod, this will be used for al static and panning shots. although its much larger and heavier than my other tripod I will make up for it with increased stability and smoothness of movement.

For all of my hand held shots I will use my shoulder rig to stabilise my video footage. This rig allows for a larger surface area to hold and will also allow me to attached multiple accessories for sound recording.

Sound Recording

In order to capture my sound in the best quality I have decided to use the best equipment I have available to me from professional filming for this documentary. Although subject matter and the way it is filmed is very important, a lot of people underestimate the amount of production value that can be gained by capturing very high quality audio. The heart of my setup will be my Tascam DR-40 that I bought last year for £150. It can record with its build-in, multi pattern stereo mics at 96kHz WAV as well as adding 2 mono tracks with either and XLR or TRS inputs. This level of quality is totally uncompressed and will hold up extremely well to mastering in post-production. As well as having much better level control over individual tracks, it will also allow me to monitor sound as its recording, something my camera cannot do while recording. This will allow me to monitor levels and make sure it isn't too low or clipping from being too high.

My main microphone for recording part of the interview sound, as well as room noise and environment sounds will be the Audio Technica ATR-875R. This shotgun mic has a very narrow pickup pattern and will allow me to focus sound recording directly on what I'm filming while ignoring background sounds behind the camera. This microphone has a balanced XLR output which will allow me record at higher level with a low noise floor, as well as avoid electrical interference from appliances in the kitchen. This microphone will be mounted in a home-made shock mount to isolate any noise coming from me handling the camera.

For interviews I will be combining this microphone with a ProSound lavalier microphone. This microphone is an omnidirectional mic, which means it picks up sounds from all angles but has a very short fall-off, making it suitable for hiding in jacket to capture speech very effectively. For recording interviews I will set this mic to average around -12dB and the shotgun mic to around -18dB. This is just in case anyone unexpectedly raises their voice and causes the audio on the lav mic to clip, I will have a lover volume recording that should not clip for insurance.

To monitor all this recording I will fall back onto my old favourite, the Phillips SH-2500 over ear headphones. I have had these for about 7 years now and they haven't failed me yet so I have a lot of faith in them doing the job for the project. They have a relatively low impedance and flat response, making them perfect for monitoring and mastering audio. Their long cable also comes in handy when things get more complicated from operating the camera as well as interviewing.

Timeline Update

At the moment I have found myself behind schedule with where I would want to be by now. This has ended up like this for 2 reasons, generally things are taking much longer than I thought and arranging convenient days for filming and interview is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Fortunately I was very optimistic with how things would go so there is quite a bit of headroom before  I really run into difficulties.

Picture Styles

For this project I have decided to take a step beyond the normal 'Neutral' picture style built in to my camera, that I have used in the past. For other projects I have been disappointed by the lack of shadow detail from the contrast being too high as well as the default sharpening looking far worse then the finer sharpening found in Premiere Pro or After Effects. To go beyond what the camera is normally capable of I will have to use EOS Utility to load a custom picture style for filming. Rather than install each picture style and test it I took to YouTube and found a comparison shot on the same camera I have with 3 of the most popular 'cine' profiles.

Of the 3 profiles compared, I think the CineStyle is the clear winner, achieving a much lower contrast and flatter image look closer the the C-Log and S-Log profiles shot on professional video camera. This flatter image will give me much more leeway and dynamic range when it comes to grading the colour in the final film.