I put together a video of my entire process behind the photos and the video for my self-portrait project Uncertainties. This was such a long process full of obstacles and tedious work, but it was extremely rewarding once it all came together in the end. In the end, I think I created some of my favorite conceptual self-portrait work to date!

Step 1: Photo Session

I wrote a poem about falling into the depths of uncertainty and anxiety and finding yourself settling into that space but then waking up, finally finding that spark, and rising again; and I thought that would be a great concept to try to put a visual to. Ultimately I decided to create a dark, barren land in which I fall into and exist in. I planned to create two wides (which ended up being three) as well as several closeup images. The first wide would be me falling through a layer of clouds into a dark abyss. The second wide would be my lying in a barren field under the stormy skies, and the final wide, which was an additional bonus, was my sitting amidst the mountains under the same stormy sky.

For the photoshoot, I used a GVM LED light, a little Savage RGB 360 light panel, some gels and diffusion, and my camera of course. I gelled my GVM light blue and used it as a key light while I used the led light panel as the orange glow. Against a dark bedsheet backdrop taped to my living room wall, I worked to create the different wide and closeup setups, getting photos and video takes with each pose, and after several hours, finally got what everything that I thought I could.

Step 2: Editing Photos

Once I selected the photos I wanted to use, I scoured Adobe Stock and Envato Elements for stock photos of clouds, mountains, and deserts to use to composite into my images and got to work! I spent several days cutting myself out of the raw photos, tweaking all the individual elements, and fine-tuning the myriad of adjustment layers. At the end of the day, I’m very happy with how it turned out! Before moving on the the video, I exported the individual photo layers to use in After Effects, but more on that later…

Step 3: Editing & Compositing Video

I found a few stock video clips of clouds and lightning that looked perfect and in the resolution I needed (I was working in 4K) and edited it together with my footage in Premiere Pro. Once I had a final edit, I exported each clip into After Effects to composite everything together, and began the tedious task of rotoscoping me out of the background. Because creating a video was a last-minute addition, I did not set up my photoshoot to be conducive to an easy post-production process… Either way, an obscene amount of time later, I had some beautifully rotoscoped footage to composite!

Here is where I imported my individual photo layers to arrange in a 3D After Effects composition. Since I wanted to add camera movement, creating a 3D composition was important for the ease of replicating perspective changes. In order to sell that what you are seeing was not a static photo, I added some added motion elements including video elements, generated rain or dust, and animated distortions. I added a turbulent distortion with a very subtle revolution speed to the clouds to add just the subtlest of movement, something that may not be consciously registered, but it added a lot! I also generated rain to the falling shots and dust to the landscape shots as well as miscellaneous lightning flashes throughout. The final step was added camera movement! Because I did not change perspective of the camera when filming (I was by myself during the photoshoot so there was not much I could do with the equipment i had), I could only zoom in and out with the 3D cameras in post.

Step 4: Final Color Grades & Export

With all the compositing done and rendered, it was time to finally compile it all together in my editing timeline with the stock video, titles, and music! For the titles, I also wanted to do something special and created a simple animated titles in After Effects. I did the final color grade in Davinci Resolve, a program I’ve come to find extremely useful for coloring video. With that, I exported the final video a long three weeks after filming! Again, I’m extremely happy with the final outcome. It took a whole lot of work, something that I don’t think I’ll commit to again anytime soon, but I’d say this was worth the effort!

See the full Uncertainties collection here!