Final Major Project

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Short Film Production 1 + 2

Short Film Production 1 - Blog

Week 1 – Script Writing Overview

In class we worked on and looked at script writing and coming up with short story ideas. I wrote some practice scripts, I came home and finished them.

I also started thinking of ideas for my final piece.

Week 2 – Editing in Premiere Storyboarding Workshop

I messed around with some tutorials and practiced using Premiere Pro because I haven’t done much of it before. I also looked at storyboards and came up with the idea that I want my final piece to be some sort of exercise video. I researched and looked at other videos online to get some ideas.

Week 3 – JCVD competition

I was off sick this week. I continued to research videos and think about what I could do for my final vid. I came up with a few ideas. I also caught up from my mates what we done in class, I’ve worked with green screen footage before so I know what I’m at and I’m not planning to incorporate it into my main video.

Week 4 – Catch up week

I refined an idea for my final vid and developed a storyboard for it.

Video Idea

My video will be about exercise and the benefits it can have for your mental health as well as physical/fitness. It will start off with a title page with the name of the video ‘Exercise and Mental Health’ which will then transition to the next scene which will have a character (me) sat at a table doing written work. I’ll use colour correction and grading here to make the background darker and seem more depressing.

Eventually the character will get fed up and scrunch the paper up he’s working on and throw it, he’ll then go for a nap. A few hours later he’ll wake up and get the idea to go and do some exercise to help motivate him.

Ill then use colour correction and grading to make the next following scenes lighter than they are and make it look more real.

The character will then perform a variety of exercises while useful information pops up explaining all the benefits of exercise mentally and info about how often exercise should be done and different ways of doing it.

Week 5 – Colour Correction and Grading

In class we learned about colour correction and grading in Premiere, a few days later Mark put up a tutorial on his website and I watched the vids and practiced some more at home.

Week 6 – Titles and Sound

I was off sick this week; I caught up on Mark’s website by watching the tutorial he put up. I learned that there is an animate button in After Effects that makes it far handier to animate text then keyframing. I also shot some footage for my video.

Week 7 – Catch up week

I shot the remaining footage for my video and began editing it using Premiere.

Week 8 – Submission

I finished editing my video using Premiere for putting it all together and the colour correction/grading.

 I used After Effects to create the title page and export the video as a whole.

Evaluation

I set out to send the message that exercise is good for the brain and not just physical/body, I think my video portrays that point the way I intended. So in that sense it’s a success.

I’m happy with the camera footage I shot, I took much more footage than I needed in order to leave myself with a lot to edit with.

I was unhappy with the way the text came out and especially the boxes around the information near the second half of the video, I was just experimenting and planned to change it and do the text in After Effects instead of Premiere. However the last week my desktop computer broke, I got a laptop ASAP as a replacement and reinstalled all software before realising that the laptop had a hardware malfunction and was faulty, it took them a week to get a new one to me and I had to reinstall all software again. I didn’t have the actual software files backed up, only a copy of the rendered video so I couldn’t change the text.

If I was to change anything it would definitely be the text, I’d use a more visually aesthetic font for starters and remove the stupid effects I had put on it when I was just experimenting. Also I’d remove the box around the text.

During this project I learned about colour correction, colour grading, how to properly and efficiently edit text in After Effects, and of course improve my idea generation skills which is important for any designer/animator.

Short Film Production 2 - Blog

Week 9 - Brief 2 available, start planning and pre-production

I started thinking of possible ideas for my short and came up with several possibilities while researching and looking at examples from across the net. I wanted to create a heavily edited piece with several effects that would end with the plot not so much up in the air, but open to interpretation.


Week 10 -  

I landed on and refined my idea.

Video Idea

Initially my idea was a guy is involved in a hit and run, and is left dying on the road. He goes into and has a near death experience in which everything is really trippy and hectic, lot's of screen glitching and twitching.

After discussing and talking about this idea with a classmate (Josh Kirkpatrick) we decided to join our projects and work together.

We then refined the plot - 

The main character is struck by a car and is left for dead on the road as the car drives off. He then wakes up in a different location looking dazed and confused. Then several clips of him running about trying to figure out what's going on with heavy editing and hectic music. The video will stop rather abrupt and hopefully leave the viewer wondering and guessing what happened.

Shooting schedule/script

Storyboard

At the end of the week me and Josh went out and recorded all the footage needed to create the short.


Week 11 - After effects introduction-2d camera tracking

In class we worked on and done a 2d camera tracking tutorial.

We started editing our video.


Week 12 - 

We continued editing and got it finished and uploaded to Vimeo.

Roles


Josh Kirkpatrick - Editing, Shooting schedule/script

Ryan Harron - Filming, Storyboard, Credits



Evaluation

Initially I wanted the video to be trippy, but to still have a plot and leave the viewer guessing at what happened. I think that was accomplished to a degree, with the style of editing we used it's hard to keep to a plot and make it work, this was my main concern but I think we done a good job.

I done all the camera work and Josh done all the editing work, we agreed that from the start. I took plenty of footage and a variety of shots from different angles to give him as much footage to edit with as possible. He was on set with me while I was recording and I was with him while he done the editing so we could both give our input and know exactly what we wanted and made sure we were both happy with the direction the video was going, and that we were on the same page.

I can't think of anything I was unhappy with or I would change if doing this project again, me and Josh knew exactly what we both wanted and could visualize from the start how the project would turn out, so after having that understanding from the very beginning it made it very easy to go ahead and create the short.

During this project I learned a lot more camera techniques, gained a lot more experience about pre production. Making sure you set up your shots and filming properly so when it comes to editing you have good footage to work with and lots of it. I also learned a lot more After Effects special effects techniques for editing. Although I didn't use it in my project I learned other After Effects techniques from class such as 2d camera tracking which is cool and will be useful to know for future projects.

I usually don't like working with other people or having to rely on other people, but me and Josh were on the same page from the start so it made it very easy and perhaps more enjoyable having someone to share ideas with and come up with them together.

The main problem I've had with working in groups before is the communication factor. If you don't know the person too well its really challenging to put across your ideas to give them a good sense of where the video will end up.  Me and Josh done all the work on this project whilst being in the same room so we knew where we stood with each other and the project the whole time, it was definitely enjoyable and has given me hope regarding teamwork in future projects.

Note - I have no idea why the text in this blog is changing size, and I can't find a way to make it all the same so sorry for any troubles reading.