Creating Isa's POV when taking Nos

During one of the drug scene Isa takes Laughing Gas and there is a slo-motion effect of he POV. Mike had filmed these at a high frame rate so I didn't have to worry about changing the speed of them. I would just add in so additional effects to emphasis the effect of Laughing gad/ nos. 

When researching the effects of Nos it appears that everything just seemed to be slow and it effects you hearing a lot more then visuals. I thought about what I could do to the shots to be subtle but still give a nice effects visually to watch. I read about the effects of LSD and how you hear colour and see sounds. I thought I would bring that sort of idea into this scene. even though it might not be technically correct we are wanting to create what is more visually interesting the a factual film. 

Prior to adding any effects I cut together the shots that I wanted to use in a simple layout in Avid. Luckily due to the fact that I looked over the rushes prior to leaving the location I was able to get the shots re shot as they were originally incredibly grainy. These takes were a lot more clearer and I was glad I stepped in in the production stage to get these better shots. 

As a lot of the shots all seemed to have a yellow tint I first brought the footage into Da Vinci to colour grade them. I am still learning Da Vinci and I couldn't get it to open the AAF File from Avid so I resorted to just imported the original clips separately  to be graded rather then the timeline shots from Avid. This wasn't to bad as there was only a couple shots and were short takes. 

In Da Vinci I used the scopes to grade the shots rather then just my own eye as it can be deceiving what looks white and what is actually a white. This is a simple way to grade as you try to balance out the reds, blues and greens. I used the graphs and created a slight S bend in them initially as this created a more depth in the shades of colours then adjusted them in accordingly. 

Screenshot from Davinci

I then brought this new graded footage into After Effects as separate clips to add effects to them. When thinking about the whole "seeing sounds hearing colours" concept I thought about the idea of ripples for each sound, like when rhians laughs and the guitars. 

When talking through this scene with Hannah I know she is going to play around with warping sounds a lot so this sort of subtle effects could work really nicely at adding another layer to it without distracting from the sound design. I tracked the movement of Rhians mouth with the tracking feature within After Effects and used this to create the path for the centre of the ripples to follow. I then fiddled around with the size and depth of ripple until I was happy with the effect. 

I then re did this process with the shots of Hugh holding the guitar, having ripples appear from where he plucks the string and then as the camera pans you see ripples from the tip of the guitar too. I am really please with how this works and I think when Hannah creates the sound design it will be a really nice scene. I may have to go back and sweek with the timings of the ripples depending on what the sound design is like but it gives a base for Hannah to work with.

After Effects 

I then rendered out the new shots and re-imported them into Media composer to create the sequence. The shots on either side of these POV shots are of Isa finishing the Balloon and then laughing at the slower frame rate. I have decided to use an effect within Avid, Time Warp, to change the speed so that is changes and shows the drugs take effect and then wear off. I simply speeded up the half the shots and gradually slowed it back to 100% speed. This worked really well in showing the transition between the drugs effects and normal.