"Sci-fi Cityscapes"
A short film that picks out the science-fiction details scattered across a real city.
As a counter to the typical YouTube montage — cuts timed to fast, rhythmic music — I deliberately chose a calm piece. Because each sequence stands on its own, the timing is matched closely to the music so that non-diegetic sound carries the continuity: something like a moving photo series.
- Date
- 2022.06.04
- Team
- Solo
- Tools
- DaVinci Resolve, デジタル一眼 (SIGMA fp)
- Tags
The first thing I cared about was grading every shot from zero. To shoot footage that holds up to grading, I used a SIGMA fp and recorded every shot in RAW (CinemaDNG). Grading was done in DaVinci Resolve, aiming broadly for a teal-and-orange look — recreating a technique of recent Hollywood films to give the images a sci-fi feel and make everyday scenery look like science fiction.
No LUTs were used: the colour was built from scratch with curves and the primary wheels. My own touches were raising saturation only on the teal and orange hues with a hue-vs-saturation curve, and lowering the luminance of near-saturated areas with a saturation-vs-luminance curve for a "colour chrome"-like effect.
The second was camera work built around motion parallax. Tracking moves and orbits around the subject make it feel three-dimensional and separate it from the background. Orbiting also keeps attention on the subject's details without the footage becoming monotonous.
In the edit, I cared about the music and the pace. Long moving shots alternate with short still ones, giving the motion contrast while staying on the music's tempo. Because each sequence stands on its own, the cuts are timed closely to the music so that non-diegetic sound carries the continuity — something like a moving photo series.