BLACK BELT JOURNEY

This video was our first feature news-type of story that we made in Exploring Video Production. It took us about two or three weeks to fully complete, which is really kind of sad looking back. One of our challenges was finding someone to interview in the first place, but we finally decided on myself reaching black belt in Taekwondo, as no one else could think of anything. We learned how to use a two-shot system, with overlapping audio in many places. The feedback I got back wasn’t negative or constructive. They just praised it, so I left my video as it was. That was probably a bad move on my part, not gonna lie.

In class we took quite a bit of time o get to the point of being ready o film. I happened to be chosen to be a group leader, and we got to pick our own teammates. We took about three or so days to figure out questions, camera angles, and visuals. We were never early to do anything, so when we got to filming we had to hurry.

My area of strength I think is editing clips and audio after they’re filmed. My best quality is making quality content, but it might be a couple days late. I stay after school a lot to edit videos. It’s kind of fun, but it drains the soul very quickly.

Like I mentioned before, time management is where I struggle the most. I haven’t really done much to try and fix that, so that’s my bad honestly. Next semester I plan on speeding up a lot. My hands will be flying over the keyboard, you won’t be able to see them.

NEWS PIECE IN ONW NOW

Well this project started out okay. We got to choose groups again, which was nice, and I ended up with some different people this time. Once in our teams, we were assigned a specific part of our student news show, ONW Now. it took about two weeks, which is respectable enough I guess. It definitely would not cut it in the REAL world.

For our news piece, my group chose to cover an Orchestra Performance and a Band performance. The day we picked them out was also the night the Orchestra had their performance. So I had to stay after school until 9:30 p.m.

Another challenge was the audio for the band, as we accidentally only recorded on the right side chanel, so the audio only came out of the right side of the speakers. I did learn how to set up a tripod real quick, mostly due to necessity. Once I got to editing, I was in my element. I learned how to stabilize a shot using Warp Stabilizer, ad that made my B-roll significantly better. The band files were very good as well, thanks to my other team members.

Then we were on to putting it all with the other groups features and interviews and such. Without our teachers guidance it quickly became a mess, and we were very confused. I forgot to sign up for a role, so I just went into the studio for moral support. But then it seemed i forgot to make lower thirds for the anchors, so I went a made them. I forgot export them however, so they were useless. It turned out okay though, as the anchors introduced themselves anyway. We managed to film and play all the clips we needed in that class period thankfully, even with those cutoffs and dead spaces.

What I enjoyed the most of this semester was making the Black Belt Journey video, as editing it was much fun indeed. I would try to work a lot faster next time, though. I can’t wait until next semester where we start on entertainment. Let’s get away from this journalism stuff. I shine when I have the freedom of creativity. What we worked on these past two quarters was not something I enjoyed that much.

Animation First Semester Reflection Review

INCH WORM

I got the chance to act out deepest fantasy. I learned how to animate a worm to make it look like it’s moving. Mark Olson taught his young Padawans how to do it by using the puppet pin tool in Adobe After Effects. I am very proud of this project, as it was my first time making a 2D animation that didn’t make me want to burst into tears. My greatest strength would have to have been drawing my worm, while my weakness was animating it to look a little more realistic. If I was forced to do this project again, I would be tempted to sigh uncontrollably. But, I would make the background of the animation so much better.

STORY ANIMATION

This was easily the project I despised the most throughout my Animating career. We took everything we learned from AfterEffects and poured it all into one single story. This is my child, the apple of my eye, the piece de resistance, my legacy. When my grandchildren ask me what my best accomplishment in life was, I will link them my e-Comm blog. I drew every possible scene for this story that I could think of in PhotoShop (which I despise), and animated it all in AfterEffects. The only thing I would change is adding more scenes to this beautiful piece of art, as I was greatly saddened when we reached the deadline.

MAYA CASTLE

For the final two weeks or so of this semester we shed our Adobe skins and shouldered 3D modelling in MAYA. I personally enjoyed this more than PhotoShop and AfterEffects, and I was ridiculed for my opinion. I learned how to create 3-Dimensional shapes, and how to modify them further. After some trial and error work, we started the base of a castle, and then formed turrets from the ether of MAYA. After completing the castle shape we added textures and lighting, as well as our own personal touches.

MAYA POLLY THING

After mastering MAYA, we went back a couple steps and just made this weird hollowed out sphere. We used shaped to cut out spaces from other shapes, and made a normal sphere look a little thin. We also used more lighting in this, three point lighting specifically. The final product was just a geometrical mass that looks kind of pretty with the lights on. If I could’ve done this again I wouldn’t. But if I had to do this again, I would try to make the shape a more appealing color.

Story Animation

My story animation’s plot has to do with a bird. The bird is flying minding his own business, when suddenly a storm appears and he’s forced to perform evasive maneuvers. After a couple seconds of flying he gets struck by lightning. Just kidding it misses and he actually survives. That’s about it.

This was the most complicated animation I’ve ever done, because I had to use all I learned this past quarter and a half. We used position frames, multiplane techniques, and arc tools to make it happen, as well as opacity keyframes to switch between scenes. After many grueling hours, I managed to finish it. Here’s the finished product:

Essentials For Features

A good feature story needs expert use of the six shot system, using the power points. Strong audio leveled out through the whole video. The most important part is a good interviewee. If the story OR the person is boring, the whole thing is kinda kaput. An interesting delayed lead is essential, as it's the hook to capture your audience's attention.

Boy, have the last two weeks been a wild ride. We went from inchworms and walking straight over to multilayer designing. Which is not at all hard to animate, but designing it is another thing entirely. I started in PhotoShop once again, and made my sky a nice light blue with an almost white gradient toward the horizon. I added a sun as well, which I colored pure white and added a nice outer glow. I picked a nice muted green for the ground, and made a hilly foreground layer. I repeated the process two more times, the green getting slightly lighter as it got closer to the sun. After I had my ground and river drawn in, I moved onto foliage. Well, trees. I drew my nice pine tree with the brush tool, using individual strokes for each branch and pine needles. It took 45 minutes. But they look beautiful. Then I just copy pasted them a total of about 120 times, filling out each layer, getting progressively smaller the farther back. I also added Christmas decorations to one single tree at the end. I was done.

With PhotoShop.

Into AfterEffects I went, and I set up the positional key frames I needed for each layer in about 5 minutes. I went to export. That’s where the trouble began. No less than SIX times I exported the clip, and every time I went to open the QuickTime file it said “could not open”. Each rendering takes 15 minutes, and after the first 5 times I realized my resolution was set to 10000 x 1080 pi. So, I bumped it down to a reasonable 1920 x 1080 pi. Guess what, though? It still didn’t work. I gave up, and just had to show it from inside AfterEffects. This is why I don’t have a video.

Still my favorite project so far, though.

Interview of Mario Bustos

Mario Bustos Interview



The Task

In e-Comm we had to film and edit an interview of a person in our group. The most outstanding event that we came up with was Mario Bustos reaching black belt in Taekwondo. I drew out the outline for how we would film, and Lauryn wrote the 22 questions needed. We recorded the intro and outdo in the classroom. Then, we went out to the gym, recorded about 13 minutes off footage, stayed after school to finish asking questions. 

Editing

I headed over to Premiere Pro and started editing. After two days, my files got corrupted. So I started over. I used many different title screens and fades to try and make my video look good. Next time, I'd like to not take this as seriously, and take a more comedic approach. I did learn how to crop and add second media over existing clips, though, which is extremely useful.

Overview

For two weeks, I worked hard on my new project. It was to draw your own character, import it into PhotoShop, clean it up, and then put it into AfterEffects to animate it. This was something new to me - scanning my drawing into a computer file.

PhotoShop

First thing I learned to do was how to scan something using the cool machine in our classroom. After that it was 2 tries of trying to import that fresh PNG file into PhotoShop, which I realized on my second try that the reason it looked so blurry was because I was on a quarter view. Yeah. After that hiccup I was back to stuff I already knew how to do: using the paint bucket, wand tool, brush, etc. from my time in Microsoft Paint.

AfterEffects

After about 4 days of polishing my character, who I based off of Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet, I imported him into AfterEffects. Oh. Ohoho. I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out why he was importing so blurry, until I asked my teacher for help and he pointed out that I was on a quarter view. Again. After THAT hiccup I was again back to what I knew how to do: using rotation, anchor points, and position to make Sackboy walk across my screen. When I first used the null object tool to move him across the screen, I managed to make his footsteps line up perfectly with his walking speed on the first try. He started in the middle of the screen, though, but I was too scared of messing up my accomplishment, so I just made him fall from the sky to let him land in the same place.

That was something I could have definitely done better, along with a background that was actually made by myself. I do think I did well on actually drawing my character, though. We're gonna be starting a new project very soon actually, and I can't wait to see what it is.