What Do You Do When You Don’t Have the Shot? - BTS at P&P

When you watch a film or video, it’s hard to know what production challenges have been met that subsequently made it look good. I thought I’d write a series of blogs highlighting certain behind-the-scenes work at P&P, and how We Produce.

Most editors have had the experience of getting to a certain point in their edit and realizing they don’t have a shot they need. This happened to me recently while editing a mini-docu about Pivot Ministries, a substance abuse rehab program. One of the pillars of Pivot’s process is to create a community that welcomes addicts and brings them out of isolation. 

I needed a shot of an isolated guy. I remembered a clip where Pivot’s Director was talking to a guy who had a very forlorn expression on his face, just what I was looking for. I started with a still of this scene. It would work, but I had to remove the Director from the shot.

I drew a mask around the guy.

This resulted in an isolated guy.

So now, I needed a clean background. My client took a couple of pictures with his iPhone, lining it up per my instructions. Here’s the original and the clean background

I graded the 2 shots so they were cooler, before I composited them.

Here’s the composite of the two pics, which is almost the final image I wanted.

I imported the still into FCPX, added grain, light leaks, a bit of blur and tweaked the grade. I also added motion by slowly pushing into the image.

Here’s the final used in the program

Making this change took about a half-day. We did not charge our client for this change. When we submit a quote, it’s a fixed price. If the client doesn’t change any meaningful shoot parameters, like adding a shoot day, the price never changes