[Victoria Thaine]

Hi Eric, thanks for checking in! Yes we shot it on Sunday and after reading the replies I feel like I should use AE. I’m desperate to jump in and edit but I’m now working my way through an After Effects tutorial. I’m going to play around with some of the footage in both AE and Premiere to get a feel for it. But we locked off the shots for the wide, and did multiple runs with the singer in two different looks, so I’ve got plenty of options. We went handheld for the close up but kept the movement minimal. It will probably be the wide where I’m going for the PJ effect. I had an awesome cinematographer so it looked beautiful – fingers crossed I can pull off the edit!

[Victoria Thaine]

Thanks Mark – am I correct that with this technique and the other advice from Eric and Jonathan, I might not need to mask the performer in each layer? If I have locked off shots and and similar lighting set up to the PJ Harvey clip? Or am I dreaming?! I played around last night with some poorly lit test footage and just two layers where I masked the performer on the top layer, changed the opacity over time and mucked around with some blending modes so I started to get the general idea…

[Victoria Thaine]

Thanks Jonathan – we’re going to have a lighting set up similar to how you’ve described – except with dark green velvet curtains – but pretty dark with high key lighting. Hopefully that helps me in the edit. I have used After effects VERY lightly – in terms of workflow would you recommend building my rough cut first before moving into AE?

[Victoria Thaine]

Thanks Eric and we don’t shoot until Sunday (I’m directing it as well) so definitely pre-planning so I don’t make it too hard for myself. We’ll do locked off shots. The cinematographer thought they may have added some of the pan and zoom in the PJ Harvey clip in post also…?

[Victoria Thaine]

Thanks Peter – that’s really helpful – I’ve been geeking out on youtube videos and picked up tips from a few other forums so think I have a handle on things (well enough not to stuff it up!). Thanks for the advice on the background noise that’s supposed to be at a distance – I’ll try a few different variations at different distances for safety. And I’ll make sure I wear headphones – ALL the time! I may even just wear some tonight in bed to make sure I don’t forget 🙂