Synopsis
Armaan finds himself kidnapped in a building. He manages to escape and on his way down the building he hears some noises in the distance. He then tries to trap the kidnapper and quickly rushes downstairs to see two people talking, he immediately recognizes the girl and once the man she’s talking to turns around, Amaan is shocked to see something very astonishing.
WHAT IS THE UNIQUE SELLING POINT OF THIS FILM?
Time as a factor is not usually used in filmography, and we thought upon using time as our conflict because it is not restricted to only one dimension, but linked to many other periods in time. The story is quite diverse at first, but we tried keeping it as simple and relatable as possible.
Primary Character Description
Armaan is a calm person who tends to make wise decisions in life but his lifestyle and work-life is very messy and due to stress at work he drinks alcohol in order to keep his mind at peace. Armaan only has one life goal that is to work till the age of 50, collect enough money, and then live a lavish life.
- Calm
- Vulnerable
- Smart
- Workaholic
- Alcoholic
- Sophisticated
- Religious
Ciara
Ciara is an independent women who tends to have high morale and ego due to her great success at work but as she has such high status she sometimes has anger issues. Armaan’s existence helps in calming down her short temper.
- Anger issues
- Independent
- High ego
- Sophisticated
Note:- Excessive thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions) – OCD, having the need to arrange objects in a specific manner.
We had divided our entire shoot into two days with day 1 having scene 1,3,4, and 6, and day 2 having scene 2 and 5. Fortunately, we went according to our schedule that we made in pre-production and finish the shooting on time.
Behind the scenes of our Day 1 shoot
Editors often don’t have a major in role at the production stage of the film than the cinematographer or the director. Although before the shoot, I had given the editor notes to cinematographer to help him give a clearer idea of when I’ll be cutting and which cuts I’ll be using. Moreover, I made sure that all shoots matched the particular cuts I had in mind. So, for instance, there was this long shot of Armaan running, before the cinematographer shot it, I told him before hand that I’ll be using a jump cut over here so kindly shoot the entire sequence from one angle instead of shooting a point of view along with a long shot.
Behind the scenes of our Day 2 shoot
Overall, it was a good shoot as we got a chance to experience how films are shot, how the crew members communicate on set and how the decorum on set is maintained.
Day 1 of Editing
On Day 1, we started our foundation portfolio’s editing. Our entire foundation portfolio was edited on Premiere Pro. During production, I had noted the final take’s source number saved on the camera, so that during post-production I would be able to save time in importing the source files. At the first and final cut stage of editing, I changed a certain amount of shots that signify more meaning.
Before the opening credits
There was this mid-close up shot of our main character struggling to open the rope and the moment he shakes his shoulder, I cut it to a long shot of him sitting on a chair and still struggling even though we had never shot a mid-close up shot, in post, I just increased the scale of the long shot and made it a mid-close up shot. I simply did this because the entire long shot had the rule of third used with the character being with more negative spacing and less positive spacing, so by shifting from the mid-close up to the long shot more positive spacing (the space in front of him) was created suggesting that the character has almost managed to untie the rope. After these shots, a short opening credits came, I have given a detailed breakdown ahead.
Firstly, the software that I used for the opening credits was Adobe After Effects. The font that I used for the title was Action Now from Fontspace(clickable). The reason why I particularly chose this font was because of it’s in built grudge effect which in a way suggests that the film has a lot of action because a grudge means roughness. Ideally, when a human eye looks at a plain, for instance, arial font text doesn’t have any sort of roughness to it, it’s just smooth in nature.
I downloaded the text as a portable network graphics file with a white font color for the the upper title of the time seeker and a red font color, as red signifies danger, action and rage suiting the genre of our film, for the lower title. White signifies peace, tranquility and happiness, but because our film has violence, I kept white but used a rough textured image, positioned it on top of the text files and the background color, and then later changed the blending mode of the image to screen from normal creating that extra grudge effect on the overall frame. For the text animation, I just played with the position of the the text file and added a motion blur to it. For the camera animations, I am again just playing with the position and scale of the compositions along with a motion blur. Motion blur adds that natural blur that occurs when an object moves in a fast speed, it helps the animation look more realistic. I mainly keyframed the motion of the text and the camera for less than a minute, meaning that the text will move in less than a second, moreover I also played with the graphs of the keyframe by slowing the speed of the motions of the text and the camera animations initially, then increasing it again. The purpose of this type of this fast paced credit scene is too show the contrast between the speeds of the scenes before it and the text animation. The scenes before the text animation are very slow paced, but the text animation is very fast paced helping us to grab the viewer’s attention again and in a way exciting them.
After the opening credits
Moreover, after the text animation, there is an extreme close up shot and point of view (with a 15 percent camera blur) shot which I kept on cutting again and again with a black fade in and out transition to help the audience understand the character’s vision. The significance of that camera blur is that when someone wakes up in the morning, that person’s vision remains blurry for a couple of seconds after coming back to normal, so because the character had a cloth wrapped around his eyes and because his vision was blocked for a long time, I put a camera blur on all the point of view shots only. During pre-production and production, we had written 6 scenes and even shot 6 scenes, however, our opening could only include till the 4th scene. We wanted the time seeker (our foundation portfolio) to be a slow paced film with less cuts because it gives that freighting feeling to the audience and also makes them curious of what is about to come next, so I used more cut on actions, insert cuts and standard cuts instead of jump cuts because going ahead in time and cutting the character’s action forward in time would ruin that suspense. There was this long shot of Armaan running in the kidnapping room shot one from outside the kidnapping room and the other long shot inside the kidnapping room. So in editing, by matching Armaan’s action of him opening the door in the both the clips at the same time allowed me to cut between them creating a cut on action. There was one more long shot of Armaan hiding outside the kidnapping room and waiting for the kidnapper, and we had also shot of point of view of the kidnapper walking towards the room, so in post what I did is at the very last moment of Armaan hitting the kidnapper with an iron rod in both the shots, I cut to the point of view shot only showing Armaan hitting the kidnapper nothing else making it a small insert cut.
Day 2 of Editing
On Day 2, we initially started with the sound designing and mixing. Sound mixing is basically arranging all the foley sounds, pilot sounds, and the background music in a way that makes it go in sync with each other, for instance, if Armaan is speaking his dialogue then the background music or other foley sounds such as traffic noises should be lowered. Through out our opening we only used two foley sounds; one where Armaan’s kidnapper is walking so we needed the footsteps sounds and second where Armaan’s kidnapper is talking on the phone.
Essentially, for the opening credits’ soundtrack I used two different tracks and put them on top of each other so that they can blend well. So for the first track, I used a clock ticking sound effect, and for the second track I used a suspenseful fast tracked music. The reason why I did this is because the title has the word “TIME” in it, hence the clocking ticking and the suspenseful fast tracked music because of the word “SEEKER” which means a person searching for something so that music track technically suggests a panicky effect.
Additionally, I used Adobe Audition for denoising the entire pilot sounds because we majorly used pilot sounds so it was very important for them to be clear. I selected all the pilot audio tracks in premiere pro, right clicked on them, and then selected the option edit with Adobe Audition. In Adobe Audition, I basically imported an audio track, captured a point under the noise reduction tab located in the effects tab where the noise can be heard the most, then selected the entire audio track by Ctrl+A, then went to noise reduction(process) again under the noise reduction tab located in the effects tab, and then finally let Adobe Audition do the work. Through Adobe’s dynamic link, whatever I save in Adobe Audition gets saved in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Before starting the color grading of our film, I did some research about Joker, because we were hugely inspired by Joker’s color grading and editing and we thought that would be a perfect example for the way we want our film to look expect that Joker’s color palette had more greens where as our film’s color palette has more reds and blues.
It was very important for me to discuss the color palette once again with the cinematographer and the director, so they sat with me during the color grading session and express their opinions throughout. Inside the kidnapping room, I maintained a more warmth and reddish feeling as warm colors usually create heat helping the audience understand the overall temperature, whereas outside the kidnapping room, I used more blues and cooler colors instead of the same colors helping the audience understand that there is a contrast of temperature or feel between the two rooms. Moreover, in order to maintain the spotlight on Armaan, we designed Armaan’s costume in such a way that the colors of the costume don’t blend in with the lighting of our sets. For the costume we decided to use white and black simply because they are such colors that always stand out in the color palette because they are unpleasant to the eye yet the most attractive ones that helped us to maintain the spotlight on Armaan in that kidnapping scene.
It took us a year and a half to complete this film, so we hope the audience appreciates and treats the film good. On that note, I conclude today’s post. Thank you.
-Advik Arora (Founder of A.P Makers)
A.P Makers 