How do you produce a film in five days while the world’s shut down during a global pandemic?
That’s what Adobe asked 10 filmmakers around the world to do. Each filmmaker was given unlimited access to Adobe Stock footage, audio from Epidemic Sound, and Adobe Premiere Pro to produce a film that shows what creativity means to them.
Among the filmmakers who took part in the project is Vivek Vadoliya, whose film is titled The Portal. He was asked to contribute to the Adobe Stock Film Festival towards the start of lockdown, “I felt like it was a really interesting challenge as it’s a totally different approach to how I normally work.” he tells TVBEurope.
“I’ve been using Adobe apps for most of my professional career, it’s what I learnt on. However, as Adobe Stock Audio is a new feature, I had never worked with it before. It was simple and effective to use, with so much footage at your fingertips.”
Vadoliya adds that he had a clear plan of what he was looking for before he started the rather daunting process of looking through Adobe’s stock footage for content. “The amount of footage available means you could quite easily get lost as there is so much to choose from and discover! I was able to create mood boards and selects for each element of my film.” he says.
The filmmakers were able to use Adobe’s Epidemic Sound library built into Adobe Premiere Pro to add sound to their images. “I like creating really rich layered sound beds so I cut up a few different tracks and layered them up to create something new. I also added in a bunch of sound effects to help bring certain clips alive,” says Vadoliya.
“Because all of the audio footage is embedded into Premiere Pro itself, everything is so integrated. This makes it easy to try things out and build more complex edits quickly without having to disrupt my workflow.”
It can’t have been easy to create a short film under lockdown. Did it lead to Vadoliya changing any of his usual working practices? “To be honest, I’m used to working from home a lot, so it wasn’t super challenging on that front,” he says. “I think creating something in uncertain times was more of a difficult task, but I enjoyed making something that spoke to the challenging circumstances right now.
“I approached the commission in the same way I would a photography project. I created visual mood boards that articulated the different sections of the film, then slowly built it together and refined across a few edits.”
Vadoliya admits the process was an “interesting way of working” but he definitely found positives from the experience. “It helps you to focus, definitely less distractions. Having features like Adobe stock audio made it very easy to try things out quickly. I’m exploring this for another project where I will be shooting a documentary remotely,” he concludes.
More details about the Adobe Stock Film Fest are available here.
And this is Vadoliya’s finished film.
