I will be submitting my portfolio soon. I know that this is the best that I can do for now given that I don't really have much time to make any changes any more.
Worked through the night rendering, compressing, converting, burning videos. What a tedious process. At least through all this, I know my stuff better now. Ask me about videos? No problem. I learnt from my mistakes in this module, and from my classmates. I really, really learnt alot, so much more than the other modules I have taken this semester. I have also made good friends from class, especially my group members, and I have them to thank for being able to come this far without much prior knowledge about video. I've always been more of a design for print person.
Like in NM2208, we never know what mistakes or what we left out unless we show it to others to help us see. Take for example our CNM promotional video. During in-class critique, we asked the class if they thought certain sections of the video took too long to transit. The class didn't think it was fast, and that was because it was the first time they saw it. But for us, we felt that it was long and because we've been watching the video for goodness how many times, we don't notice alot of things. More like, we became numb to the video.
Other than learning about video, I learnt how to present my videos. The one which I spent most effort on the presentation part was my Superhero video - SuperFeero. I know that giving viewers only visual pleasure was not enough, I had to also explore the auditory aspects of a video. And as I have mentioned quite a few times in this module, I get my inspiration from Tom & Jerry cartoons. These cartoons, despite having minimal dialogues and movements (they are drawn anyway) are able to evoke different types of senses in the viewer. I love watching Tom & Jerry not only because it is funny, but also because I liked the way they had an orchestra to accompany the cartoon. Totally fabulous planning and choreography.
Finally, I would like to thank everyone in this class, especially Dr Julian and my group members, for making my last semester in NUS such a memorable and fun one. Thank you everyone.
:]
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Portfolio Woes
I've been trying to burn my files onto a dvd-rw for the whole day and each time, it can't be played on a dvd player. As I wait for the com to format the disc again, I don't know what else can I do except wait. This is really quite frustrating.
Assignment 3 - Ken Burns Effect (Part 3)
Based on the comments given on ivle, I've made changes to both my videos.
For the cnm video, I've made the picture sizes consistent by zooming only until the picture fits the frame. I realised that having black 'pillars' in some of the footages really kind of spoils the video. So, that's gone now :]
In the nus video, the first most noticeable mistake was the audio track. Due to my own ignorance, I had altered the volume in AfterEffects. So when the video started, the music was way louder than it is supposed to, resulting in a 'cracked-speakers' effect that was crappy and caused the video to have a low quality effect. I only realised this mistake after the lecture on sound, and I'm glad Dr Julian had that lecture, or I wouldn't had known what was the problem. I had initially rendered both videos and no audio came out, so I thought I had to adjust the volume. It was because of some setting in AE though, not the audio volume. Anyway so now the audio is much better.
The music I chose has some rather meaningful lyrics. I don't know how to bring it out though. I wanted to put subtitles or something, but then I realised it would be too confusing to watch as the lyrics will be taking attention away from the pictures. So I think I shall just leave it as it is.
I've also extended some of the footages so that people can catch them properly. I've also added another picture of the nus identity, to further reinforce the nus spirit, following the comment on ivle.
For the cnm video, I've made the picture sizes consistent by zooming only until the picture fits the frame. I realised that having black 'pillars' in some of the footages really kind of spoils the video. So, that's gone now :]
In the nus video, the first most noticeable mistake was the audio track. Due to my own ignorance, I had altered the volume in AfterEffects. So when the video started, the music was way louder than it is supposed to, resulting in a 'cracked-speakers' effect that was crappy and caused the video to have a low quality effect. I only realised this mistake after the lecture on sound, and I'm glad Dr Julian had that lecture, or I wouldn't had known what was the problem. I had initially rendered both videos and no audio came out, so I thought I had to adjust the volume. It was because of some setting in AE though, not the audio volume. Anyway so now the audio is much better.
The music I chose has some rather meaningful lyrics. I don't know how to bring it out though. I wanted to put subtitles or something, but then I realised it would be too confusing to watch as the lyrics will be taking attention away from the pictures. So I think I shall just leave it as it is.
I've also extended some of the footages so that people can catch them properly. I've also added another picture of the nus identity, to further reinforce the nus spirit, following the comment on ivle.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Assignment 6 - Superhero video (Part 4)
After the critique session.
The class laughed at my video, which is good because it means I have achieved what I intended. Dr Julian wondered about the scene where I was in the toilet, but yes, it was all real. I didn't do anything special to the video at all because I didn't really know how to. The keying out of the blue screen was already the greatest test if my AE skills.
Watching fellow classmates' videos, I realised most of them had really cool effects and their videos were so much more interesting. I think that was why Dr Julian wanted me to make my character dissolve into particles when teleporting.
I tried doing that by using masks and applying the effect on it, but it couldn't work on all scenes. So there are only some parts where I dissolve, other parts where I simply fade out. I still don't really know the workings of AE afterall, despite having read up on as many guidebooks on AE as possible.
At least now my video has sort of a balance of both camera trickery and special effects from AE. I think that was what Dr Julian wants us all to achieve, machine-made effects applied to real footages to enhance the video. It also made my video look abit more polished :]
Here's my video on youtube. Enjoy (and comment)!
The class laughed at my video, which is good because it means I have achieved what I intended. Dr Julian wondered about the scene where I was in the toilet, but yes, it was all real. I didn't do anything special to the video at all because I didn't really know how to. The keying out of the blue screen was already the greatest test if my AE skills.
Watching fellow classmates' videos, I realised most of them had really cool effects and their videos were so much more interesting. I think that was why Dr Julian wanted me to make my character dissolve into particles when teleporting.
I tried doing that by using masks and applying the effect on it, but it couldn't work on all scenes. So there are only some parts where I dissolve, other parts where I simply fade out. I still don't really know the workings of AE afterall, despite having read up on as many guidebooks on AE as possible.
At least now my video has sort of a balance of both camera trickery and special effects from AE. I think that was what Dr Julian wants us all to achieve, machine-made effects applied to real footages to enhance the video. It also made my video look abit more polished :]
Here's my video on youtube. Enjoy (and comment)!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Final Project - NUS
I like our NUS promotional video so much more than the CNM one. I think it's more interesting, and also because we spent more time on it than on the CNM video. We made some changes since our pre-production documentation, like the business student one because it was quite true that relating NUS business students to karang guni men was not exactly very glamourous.
We filmed the scenes over 3-4 days, separated outdoors and indoors. As we didn't have enough people, we had to enlist the help of Chu Yao, Canisius and Jia Hwa again. Even my sister came to help. We were lucky that for the indoor shots we managed to get an empty place, the SoC students' lounge. For that part there wasn't much problem at all. For the outdoors shot, it began drizzling a little halfway through the filming and our work was delayed for awhile. But we still managed to get it done in one day as the rain didn't last very long, luckily for us. That's the problem with outdoor shots, the unpredictability of weather. Especially in Singapore, we never know when it will rain, or when it will shine. We need to milk every minute that we possibly can.
During this time, we still have not come up with a proper idea for our business student, so after filming, we would always head back indoors to discuss and do post-production work. We couldn't really split the work for these projects, as there was only one raw footage to rip, which took some time, and then one person had to cut out the footage and delegate the jobs.
I got the idea of using SecondLife tutorials to promote the business faculty as I felt that it could both promote the faculty and also NUS. We felt that having tutorials in SecondLife would appeal to prospective students and so should use it in our video somehow. However, SecondLife tutorials are not held everyday, and permission needs to be granted before a student can have access. Thankfully, one of my friends will be having a SecondLife tutorial the next day. As I only found out about them having classes the night before, there was a mad scramble for me and meiyuan to attain permission to access the tutorial and also to film the process using an onscreen capture program. We're thankful for the tutor who granted us access even though everything was so last minute and unprepared. Nevertheless, we got what we needed and there we have, our Business student idea.
Another part of the video and filming process was that we wanted to link each scene together. We achieved this by having a recurring object/scene from the previous scene in order to achieve a smooth transition. However, this means that each shot must be planned carefully beforehand and we had to remember where the object left eh frame, ie. left frame or right frame? This helped ensure that we had a seamless video.
The result of all our hard work and late nights: our very own NUS promotional video. Hope you enjoy it!
We filmed the scenes over 3-4 days, separated outdoors and indoors. As we didn't have enough people, we had to enlist the help of Chu Yao, Canisius and Jia Hwa again. Even my sister came to help. We were lucky that for the indoor shots we managed to get an empty place, the SoC students' lounge. For that part there wasn't much problem at all. For the outdoors shot, it began drizzling a little halfway through the filming and our work was delayed for awhile. But we still managed to get it done in one day as the rain didn't last very long, luckily for us. That's the problem with outdoor shots, the unpredictability of weather. Especially in Singapore, we never know when it will rain, or when it will shine. We need to milk every minute that we possibly can.
During this time, we still have not come up with a proper idea for our business student, so after filming, we would always head back indoors to discuss and do post-production work. We couldn't really split the work for these projects, as there was only one raw footage to rip, which took some time, and then one person had to cut out the footage and delegate the jobs.
I got the idea of using SecondLife tutorials to promote the business faculty as I felt that it could both promote the faculty and also NUS. We felt that having tutorials in SecondLife would appeal to prospective students and so should use it in our video somehow. However, SecondLife tutorials are not held everyday, and permission needs to be granted before a student can have access. Thankfully, one of my friends will be having a SecondLife tutorial the next day. As I only found out about them having classes the night before, there was a mad scramble for me and meiyuan to attain permission to access the tutorial and also to film the process using an onscreen capture program. We're thankful for the tutor who granted us access even though everything was so last minute and unprepared. Nevertheless, we got what we needed and there we have, our Business student idea.
Another part of the video and filming process was that we wanted to link each scene together. We achieved this by having a recurring object/scene from the previous scene in order to achieve a smooth transition. However, this means that each shot must be planned carefully beforehand and we had to remember where the object left eh frame, ie. left frame or right frame? This helped ensure that we had a seamless video.
The result of all our hard work and late nights: our very own NUS promotional video. Hope you enjoy it!
Final Project - CNM
I realised I haven't blogged about our NUS and CNM promotional videos!
For the CNM video, we interviewed Mr Mustaffa Ehsan and his friend from Ogilvy PR. This was the very first time I experienced true outdoor filming, carrying the camera and tripod around. However, we noticed that the interview often strays off the topic of CNM and this resulted in alot of footages being not very useful for our project. Moreover, the entire interview was about 19min long, and no one would want to watch such a long interview video right?
So what do we do with 19min of interview footage? We sift out the goodies and use his face but not the entire interview.
We finally brainstormed an idea for our CNM video, which was to depict the progression of media over the past ten years, just like how the CNM Programme has developed and evolved with the times and educated students in this area. So the video goes like this: We first show how an interview would be covered by the media in old media formats like radio, newspaper, magazine. Then we move on to new media formats like the computer and social networking via the Internet. Basically, we are trying to present the evolution of communications to the mass audience.
We used static images to combine with the video footage, clearly showing how new media students work in NUS, another aspect which we hope shows through in the video.
For the CNM video, we interviewed Mr Mustaffa Ehsan and his friend from Ogilvy PR. This was the very first time I experienced true outdoor filming, carrying the camera and tripod around. However, we noticed that the interview often strays off the topic of CNM and this resulted in alot of footages being not very useful for our project. Moreover, the entire interview was about 19min long, and no one would want to watch such a long interview video right?
So what do we do with 19min of interview footage? We sift out the goodies and use his face but not the entire interview.
We finally brainstormed an idea for our CNM video, which was to depict the progression of media over the past ten years, just like how the CNM Programme has developed and evolved with the times and educated students in this area. So the video goes like this: We first show how an interview would be covered by the media in old media formats like radio, newspaper, magazine. Then we move on to new media formats like the computer and social networking via the Internet. Basically, we are trying to present the evolution of communications to the mass audience.
We used static images to combine with the video footage, clearly showing how new media students work in NUS, another aspect which we hope shows through in the video.
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