Final Reflection Video

Feature Story #1

Our second video of the year was a feature interview of a student from our school. We collaborated in teams to find a suitable location to shoot the video and choose good b-roll to incorporate in with it.We had one week of planning to prepare a list of questions and decide what we were going to interview the subject about and another week to film and edit. During this project, we struggled to find b-rol that was good quality, many of it was shot vertically from a phone and it was hard to resize inside Adobe Premiere. Another thing we struggled with was the jumpcuts. When I was talking I moved around a lot, making it very obvious whenever a cut happened. For the final product we were able to cover most of this up with b-roll. The first time we edited the video we had included the interviewer's voice saying the question. We learned for the reedit that we were supposed to either have voice overs introducing what the subject was going to say next or have title slides saying what the question was. Due to time constraints, we chose the title slide option. Feedback wise I believe people enjoyed the video except for the low quality of the b-roll. Considering it was one of my first videos of the year I am happy with the way it turned out and I learned a lot regarding the transitions between different shots and questions.

Feature Story #2

For our second feature interview of the year we interviewed another student about a book she had recently written and published. We spend a few days preparing the list of questions and setting up a good time to film with the subject. After that we spent a couple days filming and the rest of the week editing. Our weakness with this project was the first day we went to film, the equipment we chose wasn't charged all the way and by the time we had swapped it our there was no more time to film so we had to come back and film the next day instead. When we finally got around to filming the video we forgot to check if it was focused or not and the whole video turned out to be a bit blurry. Our communication issues with the subject also led to a lack of b-roll but we still made it work. In comparison to our first feature interview I can tell we definitely made some improvement. The flow of the shots is much smoother with the voice over and there are less jumpcuts.

ONW NOW Sophomore Edition

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16Y3L85hwx8Izflt2hLGfeVYiqYQQCnU5 

The finale for this semester was our sophomore edition of ONW NOW which we produced as a class. We chose production roles and split into groups to produce news stories to put in. We spent one week learning about the requirements of the project and deciding what would be included in the final product. Another week filming and editing and a third week filming the live show. We had students who wrote and controlled the teleprompters scripts for the anchors, other students who monitored sounds, cameramen, directors and more. Our group made the band concert segment, we struggled with finding time among us to work outside of school and film. Our second interview was very last minute but we ended up making it work. The only thing I wish I could improve about it would be the volume. The interview with Nathan was very quiet as was some of our voice over even though we edited it to full volume. I learned that I need to be prepared for all situations and if something goes off from the original plan, I should have a backup. Overall, the sophomore edition of ONW NOW looked like it could almost be aired to the full school! All we need it a little work on cues and facial expressions and we will be all set to air live!

Time Management

My time management has been pretty good in class, I have only had to stay after school a few times to finish up small things. On days where we finished early we always make sure that everything is done on google classroom before working on another class. Outside of class I sometimes look into the work of other students or people around the world to see what I can do differently about mine.

Strengths and Weaknesses

My strengths as a video student would be editing. I like making sure shots look as clean as possible and I am looking forward to seeing different methods to this. I am also looking forward to our Entertainment unit because I have some ideas for short films that I feel would be a lot of fun to make, I want to see what it would be like to be a director. I also really like writing scripts and lists of questions of interviews, I hope this can be handy later on in the year. My weakness would be performing on camera, I usually find myself at a loss of words if I am not prepared enough. My solution to this would to make a check of myself before I go on film and confirm that I know what my plan is.

Summary

I really enjoyed learning about life as a convergence journalist this semester and I am now considering taking the class next year. My favorite part was working as a class to make the ONW NOW video, I think we really got to know each other better and I hope we do more projects as a class later this year. I am happy to say that I am a lot more comfortable with the equipment and more familiar with the editing system and I can't wait to learn more about the hidden secrets they have. Next year I hope to learn more about how to incorporate animated texts into a video and how to check sounds more effectively on the cameras before filming.

Final Reflection Animation

This year has been a lot of fun so far! I have gotten better at character design, learned a lot about story structure and gotten to know the mechanics of the animating platforms better as well. I have chosen my favorite projects from the years so far and embedded them below with a little reflection to go with them.

Walking Cycle

I picked this animation to reflect on because I thought it was one of my best ones visually. The colors are really nice and even incorporated some of the skills I learned from the bouncing ball project to make a window. I became very attached to my character while working on this project.

During this project we learned how to make our own little characters be able to walk across the screen. It took me a while to decide on a character to animate, I had three options: a robot, a teddy bear and finally my dinosaur. I bounced some ideas off some friends in class and I eventually chose the dinosaur. First, we drew our characters in our sketchbooks and then scanned them into Photoshop to be colored. We divided the arms, legs and head into different layers so we would be able to animate them separately later. Once in After Effects, we set anchor points so the arms, legs and head would rotate correctly. Next, began the keyframe work. We had to be careful not to make the character look like it was gliding, to accomplish this we had to add a little pause after every step. We also had to make sure the arms and legs were alternating and that the legs were never in the same place at the same time. Once we finished this we created a background and a shadow that followed our character. I finished early so I made his eye blink and added a little more to the background. My weak spot in this project would be the slight glitch in his leg due to a keyframe placement issue. I also wish I could have made the background a little better because it looks very 2-D. However, this project really helped me understand keyframes better and how to work with timing. We also learned how to use the dodge and burn tool to make objects really pop. Overall, this project is probably my favorite from the After Effects unit.

Short Story

I choose this animation because it was one of my favorites to do. Even though I got behind and it didn't turn out the way I had originally intended, it was a lot of fun to think of my own story and see it come to life.

For our last video of the After Effects unit, we developed our own story by first analyzing Pixar short films and taking note of the structures of plot lines. Our goal was to implement everything we had learned form previous animations, such as puppet pin tool and walking cycle. I collaborated a lot with friends to give and receive ideas. Originally, my story was to be about a homeless man who lives alone outside of society. One day he goes into town for food and is mocked by everyone. He becomes very sad and starts to leave. On the way out, he sees a little homeless boy who needs help. The man wonders why he should help the boy when nobody helped him. Suddenly the man realizes that that is not the way the world should be and decides to help the boy. He takes the boy to him home in the woods and they build a tree house together. My weakness during this project came from how behind I got while sketching and coloring the scenes, so I got started on the animation very late.  From the animation point forward I had to manage my time very carefully and work quickly which meant cutting out some scenes. I had to stay after school almost every day one week to get finished. I also struggled with the size of my drawings. Some of my scenes weren't colored in a 1080x1920p canvas so the ended up looking a little stretched in the final product. If I come back to this project I would like to add sound because it might help make the message more clear. Overall I think the style of the art looks really good and I hope I can finish the story sometime.

Castle Model

A few weeks ago we began working in Maya. We have only made three projects but my castle model is my favorite. Instead of just making four towers with walls, I added in two more towers in the middle where the royal family lives.

For this project we learned how to add textures to things by using pictures we found on Google. We had to look up "seamless ______ textures" to find ones that wouldn't have a line going down the middle of them. To apply them to an object we added a Lambert and then connected a file to it. This was I bit hard for me and I ended up using a texture with a seam in it for the stone. I worked over this by shrinking the texture to make it less noticeable. Hopefully I can find a trick to finding seamless textures because it will be handy when working later.

PolyThing and Lighting

(Maya render)                                                          (Arnold render)

This is our most recent project in Maya and it was very interesting to me. We studied the different types of lighting and then implemented it into our model to showcase the details and shadows of the "Polything" we made. This project was very quick and easy, the only part that took a little bit to figure out was the order to delete the cylinders to create the holes in the sphere. My final renders were also a bit dark so I might go back and change the color of the plane to a lighter color to reflect more light and show more shadows of the Polything. The Arnold render showed the shadows and shininess of the blinn material while the Maya render doesn't. I am excited to see what else I can do with the different types of lights in other projects.