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Cherry Tomato
This video was created as an individual project for a 3rd-year film class. The criteria of the project was to create everything in the project without assistance. I was the writer, casting director, sound editor, cinematographer, director, and editor.
Final Video
Pre-Production
There was quite a lot of pre-production that went into this project - from determining the art direction and colour pallet, casting, make-up planning, buying and creating props and organizing the shooting locations.
One cell of the storyboard, simple sketches to help plan and figure out the types of imagery to be used in the poem.
One cell of the storyboard, simple sketches to help plan and figure out the types of imagery to be used in the poem.
Challenges I faced with this project were definitely finding and creating props -- In total, I hade a masquerade mask, face mask, chalkboard and paper mache volcano (the latter made with the assistance of my six-year-old neighbors).
For casting, I went through numerous applicants, before deciding on Annabel, the lovely actor, and narrator of the poem. She was great at her job, taking direction well and changing accents and dialect for the narration, as well as allowing me to create the large pimple on her face with makeup.
When it came to casting, I really tried to find an actor that was able to convey the emotions of finding a fresh pimple on one's face, then taking that reaction and amplifying it about 10 times.
Beginning the construction of props - in this case the volcano used in the video.
Annabel Maclean - happily getting a large, red pimple on her face.
Production
The actual shooting of the poem was interesting and full of unique challenges I had never quite experienced before. The first being that I wanted the opening shot to be a perfectly centered, top-down shot of a tomato on a plate. Something that may not seem like too much of a challenge, but I didn't have the necessary equipment -- so I had to get creative.
I ended up propping a long staff (a weapon used in martial arts) between my desk and shelf, placing my tripod on top to help keep things balanced. The tripod legs we spread to the point where they hit each side of the bookshelf, helping to solidify it further. Two lamps were then used to light the scene and make the tomato pop.
An example of the camera rig setup required for the overhead shot.
Post-Production
The post-production was quite interesting for this project as there was a lot of colour correcting and lighting correction to be done. (Filming everything without a crew presented its own unique set of challenges, as shots needed to be re-adjusted and tweaked multiple times). The addition of After Effects took a little while to figure out, however, I figured it out, managing to motion track a liquify effect.
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