THE PROJECT

The vast mystery of Jordan holds many wondrous scenes worth a million frames. A client came from Malaysia and wanted to film a video for herself going through some of Jordan’s wonders; Petra, Jerash, and the Citadel atop the hills of Downtown Amman. 

Gwyn Shu had picked wonderfully as a team was put together to help carry out this extremely fun video shoot.

Tasked with post-production & color correction, it was essential to bring out a feel of cinematic epicenes. For example, although it was shot 16:9.1 aspect ration, in post production the film itself was reframed and cropped to be 2:40.1 ultra wide screen aspect ratio. Anamorphic flares were composited and tracked into a few shots to emphasize the production design and production value. 

The crew were lucky that at the time of filming historical representations of Nabataean soldiers were already there at Petra. This was used to heighten the surreal historic nature of the video. It was imperative to make sure that the video felt like there was no one around the main talent, that she was truly alone in the halls of history. 

EDITING

Spoiled with wonderful cinematography and beautiful framing, it was challenging to find the right clips to put together in order to make a cohesive sequence of images. Eventually a vague outline led to the final result as the exploration theme heavily inspired the cut of the video.

Trying to assess whether this video would do well as a short 2:40 second video or a 4 minute 30 second video was a debate that raged on throughout the process as there were compelling arguments for both cases.

COLOR GRADING

Making sure that each location had a unique color grade allowed for the video to have multiple feels and tones. For example, The city of Petra had a rose gold tint to the mid-tones to accentuate the nature of the rocks, while the hustling and bustling city of Amman had a more teal and cyan look which wonderfully dirtied up the yellow and orange sandstone buildings in the background.