Time lapses and B-rolls became a very important element on Sunday League, because they helped to filled in the gaps between a lot of scenes. The biggest problem I had early in the edit, was that there was too much jumping around in the script, going from one place to another and having characters in one place, next scene in another and next one suddenly somewhere else. Of course if it was different characters it could make sense, but the exact same character and giving no sign of moving places or anything, could become very jumpy and heavy for the viewer. I started consulting this with Tim the editor at first, because that was my biggest struggle, cutting those scenes and giving them sense because they can make sense in a script or a book, but on screen it is very different. Tim told me that the most ideal way of cutting this was through adding some B-rolls in between in order to not only give the audience a breath, but also to establish that something has happened in between those scenes, meaning is later in the day or the characters have moved. I was very familiar with the term B-roll which I used a lot in school in my TV Pro class, where we had to go out and get some establishing footage of whatever the news piece was going to be about for our daily news break. Another option as well which counts as a B-roll, is having time lapses that would simply imply that whatever is about to be shown, is happening later in the day or the next day for example.
The first thing that I did as part of my research was to make sure I understood the concept of a B-roll in order to apply it and film it properly. According to Brandy Barker, who used to work on Facebook and called "tech expert," the definition of a B-roll is:
"The modern day use of broll (or b-roll) is with broadcast TV as supplemental footage inserted as a cutaway to help tell the story. B-roll includes the shots that are shown to introduce a segment and/or in between the live or taped interviews. B-roll does not include sound so that custom voice-over or music can be inserted by the TV producers. Today, it is often shot in high-definition to be compatible with network TV."
As you can see on the image above, the b-roll would be that Shot 1 in which it is being established where we are. If that shot lists was to be from a TV show in which there was no dialogue, then all 6 shots would be b-roll and it would be actually called a "B-roll package," because you are putting together a lot of clips and trying to not only establish where we are but to tell a story or send a message, using b-rolls. This scenario is very similar to the nightclub scene that we have in Sunday League, which is all music, no dialogue and is mainly to establish not only where we are, but what has been happening by using just visuals. The idea behind the b-roll is to actually keep it for any future productions. If you go out and shoot some clouds, traffic lights, animals, people or anything that could simply help the editor fill in those gaps efficiently, there is no need to get rid of it or just store it and never use it, because usually this are shots that are nor linked directly with any type of production in specific, it is more like bank of b-roll in which a production company can access and use them in any production they want because they own it and it also saves time doing stuff over and over again.
For the Sunday League pilot, I decided to include a couple of this where I felt the edit was too quick or messy by jumping around places or where the audience could get easily lost in time. There are four main B-rolls excluding the time lapses and the nightclub package, in which I felt it was very necessary to have something in between scenes. The first one is after Tom and Dean speak on the phone and Dean says that he has to go see Nath. I thought the ideal b-roll for this was to use some way of transport, in this case train as Dean doesn't drive, plus having and outside shot of the building where he lives:
The second one was right after the scene in which Dean sees Nathan, he says he'll make some calls to try and get a coach and get some players. Right after that, suddenly all the four main characters are in a car parked up outside of the hall where Don is meant to be. I shot a couple of shots to establish that we have left Nath's flat and we are moving through the streets in town, going somewhere:
The third one is very similar than the second one, which is meant to happen right after the scene in which the four characters are in the car. Dean and Ollie leave the car as they go to the hall where Don is and Nath and Tom carry on and actually go to a boxing place where Tom is going to teach Nath some boxing lessons to defend himself. For this what I did was to do a b-roll from inside the car moving through the streets and parking somewhere implying that we have moved and stopped at a new place:
The last main b-roll was one right before Dean and Ollie enter the hall where they realize that there is a wedding celebration going on in there, which made me take some shots of the food, the bride and people just talking in the wedding, to establish right before they enter, that this is a wedding reception:
The other thing I had a look after was into making time lapses with a Go Pro in order to get some nice sense of time passing throughout the film. The idea was to use it at least twice in the film, one being after the team splits up at the beginning the episode, in order to show that this is another week, another day and imply that after that bad moment, this is a bright new day. The second idea was to use it right after the post nightclub scene where Lucy and Dean almost kiss and get interrupted (oops spoilers). For this second one I actually had one that I used in a previous production back in school, which I stored and actually found in a hard drive and thought it fitted perfectly for what I needed, which was a time lapse from night to day, establishing that it is the next day. One of the main things I did first was to research into how to shoot a time lapse with a Go Pro and what the ideal settings where. I found a couple tips that were useful and used them as my guide for setting up the shots:
- Choose the right shooting interval 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10 30, and 60 second intervals
My choice for this was 5. I originally thought about 10, but then I looked into this as a guide:
0.5 – Driving, up-close shots of something small (birds, insects, fish tank, etc)
1.0 – People walking in a busy area, heavy traffic flowing, view from a moving bus or train
2.0 – Clouds moving quickly, popular tourist areas
5.0 – Sunset or sunrise, normal moving clouds
10 – Slow moving clouds, construction sites
30 – Nature shots, Shadows moving across the ground, puddles drying, storms
60 – Plants growing, shoot the entire day or night, long-term processes
After that what I did was to:
- Pick the most ideal resolution (12MP)
Having 12MP as my resolution I had to:
- Choose the right playback rate
For me it was 25FPS mainly because that is the settings of the project I am working on and I didn't want to be messing around with there frame rate.
- Determine how long you need to film
In this case was about 15 minutes. I actually spend over an hour doing tests and seeing who different things came out, but I realized that what I needed was 7 seconds of footage to match with me music I got got that time lapse, meaning that if it was getting 1 frame every 5 seconds, I would have to make a simple math:
In order to get 1 second I needed to multiply 5 seconds (for 1 frame) x 25 which was my frame rate
5 x 25 = 125(seconds) = 2 minutes 5 seconds.
With this I knew that in 2 minutes and 5 seconds I was getting 1 second of footage. Now what I had to do was multiply 125 seconds x 7(which was the amount of seconds I needed of footage)
125 x 7 = 875 (seconds) = 14 minutes 58 seconds
And that is how I realized that I needed to be recording for 15 seconds in order to get 7 seconds of footage. Sorry for the heavy math!
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| Me filming the first version of Time Lapse |
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