Hi Guys. My name is Radek, and I am the Season Two winner of YOBIFilm. Many people ask me about my short film ”Memories” and today I am going to tell you about production and post-production of that film, and how it all came together. “Memories” was my two-minute individual university project which I had to direct, shoot, and edit myself. And I really wanted to challenge myself and fit that kind of story within a two-minute narrative. The idea for the film came together quite quickly because I always wanted to make a film that would show life as a series of pictures or life as a series of events that leave a mark in your memory. The original idea for the film was slightly different because I wanted the main protagonist to take pictures of empty places and then on those pictures he would see his memories, he would see the people he met and things like that. But, unfortunately one of my friends was doing a film that involved using that camera, so I decided to change my concept slightly. Instead of using a photo camera, I decided to use a film negative to represent memories. When I was writing the script I was listening to a lot of music, especially to a band called “Silence” and I really liked one of the tracks called “Runalong,” and it helped me to shape the mood of the film. And it seemed like a perfect sound track. I wrote to them and asked them for permission – described my project – and just the day after they said “yes, you can do it. We like the concept and we are looking forward to seeing the film” That really pushed me to do the best I could, just to show them I could make a good film, and I could make good use of their music. After that I started looking for actors. Andrew Bolton plays the main character in my film. But, I really needed someone else as well to play a younger him. Lucky for me his son looked really similar so, I asked him if he would like to take part in the project and ended up having the whole family in the film. So, that was really lucky for me and for them if was like a family souvenir. Then we started shooting and I shot most of the film just near my house and I used the same camera that I am using now, which is a JVC HD200. It’s a mini DV camera capable of shooting HDV, but for that project I used just HD. To me, the most important shot in the film was the shot when he drags the film behind him. Since the beginning when I started working on that film, I knew that I really wanted that kind of shot and that was going to be the key point in the film because you see him collecting his memories. But, then he drags all of his memories behind him – I really like the idea of showing that kind of picture. But the only problem was how to make a transition between shots of him holding the negative and backflash, so I came up with the idea of using green screen. I basically brought green paper and stuck it on to the negative. And, that’s basically how we made the transition. That’s the original film negative that I used for the film and for every sequence that he was thinking of his memories. He was just picking up the same bit of film negative and then in post-production I added some pictures. Also, the shot when he opens his photo album there were no pictures, it was only green screen. It gave me some kind of flexibility that I could choose the pictures and what would go on that film negative and what would go on that photo album. I could choose that in post-production so that was good for me because I had a really tight schedule and I really had to film it quickly. We spent two days filming, so I really did not have time to think what would go on the pictures. To be honest, I think the most important stage of making this film was post-production because that was the point where all the magic happens. The effects in that film take a really important part because they help to make the story more convincing and obviously make it look good visually but at the same time, more interesting, they back up the main story, and they are not used just to “show off” they are used for a reason. The last thing, probably the most important one for me, was color-grading because the original footage didn’t look great. It looked really plain. You could see it’s like really cheap DV footage and I wanted to make it slightly stylized – to make the reality kind of grayish, really saturated and cold looking. But, at the same time, as a contrast, his memories, they were really warm to give that kind of feeling that he remembered them in a good way. Eventually, I uploaded that on Yobi.tv, and here I am. So, I think you don’t need big budgets to make decent films. You just need a good story and then a clear idea on how you want to produce it, and that’s all. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.