CD
Catnip
Directed and Produced by Amy Styran
My Role: 1st Assistant Director and 2nd Camera Operator, as well as Assistant Editor
Shoot Day #1 (11th November '13):
As a huge cat fan myself of course I got excited when Amy asked me to be on her crew, filming at a cattery. The owners and lady, Sarah, who worked there were so lovely! Really warming and funny people and allowed us to do interviews with them in their home, as well as wonder the cattery and property at our own will.
We only had a small crew of 5 (Shown below) with Amy directing and on camera, George Smith on lighting, Nicola Pedley on sound and Richard Amor Allan on photography. It was very easy working on a small crew at a small cattery and having a basic idea of what shots the director wanted but still allowing me some creative leeway with my shots and lighting. It seemed to work very well just roaming the cattery and shooting what we thought would suit and gathering ideas as a collective team.
Shoot Day #2 (20th November '13):
The second day was more of pick-ups due to exterior shots on the day being very cloudy and miserable looking. We shot enough footage for a promotional video for Kandahar Cattery as well as for a short film about the nations love for the feline creatures.
We got some beauiful shots outside of the owners other pets such as the two Llamas, the chickens, dogs and even some recent visitors to the cattery, 5 adorable kittens and its mother.
Post-Production:
Unfortunately we did have issues with the sound on day 1 with it all only coming in to one ear and not both, then on day 2 the Marantz PMD661 was not being nice and had constant horrible crackling feedback. However, as the assitant editor I was able to help and support Amy with the sound levels and equalling the sound in both ears/speakers.
One style that Amy desired when it came to editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 was a Super 8mm style with colouring tints added, similar to the screen shots seen below from Lumi & Hunter on vimeo. In order to acheieve the exact desired look of the director, and after an awful lot of research, I discovered that we could use Adobe After Effects but would be too time consuming due to our deadlines and work load. Magic Bullet was a software I found to be very influential of the Super 8 style and method of effects, however due to our lack of availability to it I hunted for alternatives. We did things a lot simpler with simple coloured templates and overlaying them the visuals along with Three-colour-way, Luna Curve and Contrast adjustments, which you can see illustrated on the bottom 3 pictures below.
