For my video edit I wanted to create a surreal world vs reality, just like my photo edits inspired by René Magritte. To do this, I decided to focus on deep dream. After getting the film that I needed the week before, I started to think about how I could edit my video to show the difference between what is real and what is not. I decided to focus on the footage taken of my model sitting in the middle of a screen as I wanted to make the background change around them.
Before I started to edit my photo, I watched YouTube videos to get an idea of how I was going to edit my videos, as I was not too sure. I found two videos that I felt explained what I wanted to do best so I followed their tutorials.
To start off making my edit, I was meant to take a screenshot of the background before the person walked into it, so that I had a clean slate to work on when making the background all trippy.I found this to be difficult as I had not used a stable positioning for my camera when filming, therefore I had to screenshot the background as my subject was sitting down to make sure the background was in the same position when I was going to edit it, to make the video not look unnatural. I then took the screenshot that I had taken to the website 'https://deepdreamgenerator.com' to make the background look all trippy.
On the deep dream website, you can chose how much to enhance a photo and how 'deep dream' like you want it. For the video, I wanted the background to start out not that enhanced and then get more and more enhanced as the video progresses, therefore, to get this to happen, I had to take the screenshot and enhance it more and more each time until I had gone as deep as I wanted. To do this, I made sure that my first generate of the photo was on low enhance and insertion depth and then I increased it each time. I also experimented with different layer looks (displayed at the bottom) so that the background would also warp into different forms when the video would be put together. I enhanced the same photo 7 times and then took the photos into premier pro for editing.
To make sure that only the background of the video was changing state and not the person, I had to export all of the photos I had gotten from the website and put them into the premier pro timeline.I placed a cross fade transition between each photo to make sure they blended into each other in a sequence instead of looking like it was jumping from one photo to another. I then had to get my original video and placed the clip underneath the photo sequence. After doing this and getting the photos all lined up in the order and duration that I Wanted them in, I had to make a sub sequence of the original video and layer this on top of the photo layer, to create a sandwich of the photos, with the original video on the top and bottom. I then, on the subsequence layer, had to create a mask cutting out the person who was not going to change form. This was difficult at first as I had to make sure the mask was very accurate to make the video look more effective, but after being very persistent I managed to get there. I had to change the mask in different frames slightly to make sure it was following the person who was moving to cover up any deep dream layered on the person in the screenshot I had taken. This task would have been easier for me if I had filmed my footage with a tripod, which I will take note to do next time.
After I had masked out my person, I started to think about what else I could add to the background to give a more 'trippy' surreal like feel. I thought about how I could make the background warp and started to play around with the 'turbulent displacement' tool on PP. I experimented with different wave lengths etc until I got a result which I was satisfied with. I wanted to make sure that the waves were not too small that it would create a water like ripple effect, but I also didn't want the waves to be too big so that it ruined the state of the background making it unclear what the background actually is. I also wanted to make sure the background was moving therefore I created a timeline on the 'turbulent displacement' feature so that it would be constantly changing states.
After adding a warp like feel to the background, I then started to think about colouring and blending the colour of the trippy background and the person together, to make the edit look more natural, just like how I did when creating my photoshop edits. I also wanted to add different colours to the background changing to create even more of a surreal world. TO do this, I used the RGB effect on PP and experimented with different colours. I also created a timeline on the photo layer with it changing colours so that the background would warp into different colours as it was turning into a deep dream like world.
To finish off the experimental edit, I wanted to blend the subject and the background together in some form to create a scene where you could not tell what is going on, therefore, I experimented more with the turbulent displacement tool on PP, but was less subtle when using it this time, making sure to swirl the whole scene together as it ended. I hope that in the future I can make a longer video with this type of editing and have all the different scenes melting into each other in this way. I feel this will create a much more interesting transition that links to the type of work I am trying to achieve.
Overall, I am pleased with how my edit went, though I feel there is still room for improvement, which I will work on. I hope to use the skills I have learned in the future to create a much longer and detailed surreal video comparing the different of reality and fantasy. Next time I will make sure to have much better, stable video footage to edit with as I feel this was the biggest issue I faced when trying to edit, causing the video to not turn out completely how I wanted it to, never the less, this is a learning curve so I am not too upset.
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