End of Year Video Reflection

This year in Video was pretty good. I learned a lot of stuff, had a lot of fun, and made some cool videos. Even though I'm not continuing video next year, all the skills I've gained should help me into the future anyway.

In terms of technical skills, I started to learn some of the more advanced effects you can do in Premiere. In my most recent project, the short film, I learned some color correction and lighting effects, as well as some audio effects like filtering out wind (sort of).

The skills I probably had to use the most were collaboration and communication. Most of the time, they kind of went together. Throughout all of the second semester projects, I had to work in a team to get videos done. Whether it was knowing what to say in a shot, or even something as simple as telling when the camera was filming, communication was important. This semester was also probably some of the most fun I've had in e-Comm. I have some great memories: filming our music video up on the catwalk, being generally dumb for the Napoleon Dynamite trailer, and making an actual short film. Working with other people was really fun and helpful. Even when things went wrong (messing up a line, wearing the wrong clothes for a scene, or the daily "forgetting to fix the audio settings"), we learned from it, and got better.

Project management has always been somewhat of a natural skill for me. I usually get projects done on time, and I'd say they turn out fine. I do have a habit of getting distracted with most work, but I have an unnatural like for editing, so I usually go for like three hours straight, but I don't even care, because it's fun to me. Time managing while filming is fine, too. There have been many days where we goof around too much and don't get much done, but we've always finished on time.

Leadership is still probably my weakest quality. Most of it is just the fact that I just hate telling other people what to do, but I'm not a good leader anyway. I probably have gotten better, though; I feel a bit more comfortable in leading, at least in video, though it's probably just me being a perfectionist. 

Overall, this year was great. I've honestly probably learned more in my eComm classes this year than any of my other classes, except maybe Japanese... but this is an eComm blog, so that doesn't matter. All the projects turned out pretty good, and even when things didn't turn out how I wanted them to, I still learned something.

Trailer Recreation

In concept, this project was a bit simpler: recreating a pre-existing movie trailer. But this ended up being one of the most complex videos I made so far. The movie trailer my group decided to make was Napoleon Dynamite, which ended up giving us some pretty funny experiences.

This was the first video we had to make a serious script for, which should have been easy, but Napoleon's deep voice combined with the 13 year old video make the audio hard to hear. We were able to figure it out in the end, though, and got filming. The shots were pretty straight forward, only two pans and no dolly shots. The outside ones were probably the most difficult, requiring some strategic camera placement to block the wind. On a few, we also had to green screen in the parking lot over Aiden.

I feel like we did a good job doing a shot-for-shot recreation of the trailer (aside from the tetherball scene), and the music timed up pretty well, only a few beats off from the original in a few places. However, to make the shots heard over the song, I had to change the volume at places, which made it sound weird in areas. Besides that, this turned out pretty good.

A Music Video

My latest project, and first for entertainment, was a music video. I'm not really the type of person who enjoys singing and dancing, but I found this project pretty fun. The pre-production stuff wasn't really all that different from last semester, and making the storyboards worked well. We based the shots off of the original music video (mostly for the vocal, lip-syncing parts) and some of the meaning in the lyrics.

The filming was great, some of the most fun I've had in e-Comm. I got to film Jacob getting thrown against a locker and getting kicked, and got to climb up to the auditorium catwalk (which is like at least two stories above the ground) for the singing parts. And even though we did kind of mess around, we actually got good footage.

The video was also pretty cool to edit. I learned how to use a lot of effects, even going as far as to spend literally an hour testing all of them to see what they did. Some of them, such as the color filters and the stabilization, helped a lot to fix some of the shortcomings. The hardest part was probably matching the lip-syncing up to the song (which I totally didn't pirate), because I had the camera set to the wrong mic for the first few clips and it just recorded static. Thankfully, Jacob's exaggerated motions gave me some idea where it was in the song.

Overall, this was a pretty good video. I wish we could've gotten more cinematic shots, but the song, as well as the time, kind of limited what we could do. The story, especially, could've been better. There were only like four shots explaining the story, and even though I thought those were good, everything could've been explained better. Also, some shots in the vocal section before the guitar solo were a bit long.

Review: "Can a Robot Love?"

YouTube Creators, Corridor Digital, recently made a video called "Can a Robot Love?" using robots and stop-motion to put together a story. The video tells the story of a robot who is unintentionally sent to a junkyard while cleaning. In the junkyard, the robot meets others: some friendly, and some not.

The video was very well made, especially considering the extra steps that had to be included for using robotics. One thing that I felt was especially good was the storytelling. In a story without human characters or dialogue, it's often times hard to portray emotions, but all the robots in the video, even the ones that had no "faces" gave off their own unique feel. A lot of the shots were great, too. The sweeping establishing shots and the close ups of certain actions fit together, adding to the quality. However, as with all videos, there were some small problems. For one, some of the junkyard characters that were stop-motion animated looked a bit clunky at points, breaking the realism. Also, once the action started, it was a bit confusing what was going on. The action scene was really cool after the viewer figures out what's happening, but there isn't enough to introduce it.

There were a lot of things in this video that I would like to use at some point. For one, the use of panning and other movement makes a shot a lot cooler and can establish a location. Also, I think using stop-motion or other forms of animation within a live-action video is an awesome idea, and can make a fantastical situation like the one in the video a lot more realistic.

https://youtu.be/XgsZ6GnFglA

Corridor Digital. “Robots Programmed to Kill!.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube, 22 October, 2016. Web. 29 November, 2016.

Tae Kwon Do Feature

After the last feature story I made, I wanted this next one to be better, incorporating all the things that weren't so great last time, and keeping the good things from last time in. First of all, while I originally thought that my idea to do a story on marching band was a good idea (and I still think it could've been), my planning, especially for the B-Roll/nat. sound, was not great, giving me little to work with in the editing. This time, I chose a subject (Tae Kwon Do) that I know a lot about, and I got some much better footage with good sound with it. I was also able to get a variety of shots this time, fitting some more medium and close shots into the video.

I think the interviews were about the same quality as last time. I got the answers that I needed, and the sound was good, but they weren't amazing of anything. I did get some things better, though. For one, last time, the location wasn't very good, being a solid gray wall and a weirdly-lit basement. While I couldn't get a relevant location for Drew's interview, I was able to get Master Stephen's in front of the flags, which ended up being a bit better.

When looking at this video compared to the last one, I'd say that I'm still improving. In the final product, I got much better nat sound than last time, and also just improved a bit on all the other aspects that make a good story. It's not amazing yet, but I'd say that I'm getting closer.

Marching Band Feature Story

On the News, there are two types of stories: Hard News and Feature stories. Feature stories focus on a specific person, event, or group, and are usually only a couple minutes. For my first feature, I interviewed two Marching Band students about all the commitments that go into marching. I wanted to do Marching Band myself, but my schedule didn't allow it, so I went to see what all they did.

This was my first project where I had to shoot B-Roll, and it went okay... The conditions while I was shooting weren't very good; it had just rained, the band was just practicing marching, not playing, and I had to use my own camera, as the school cameras were all checked out. Even though, I got all the shots I needed, and in a good quality. Looking back, the shot variance wasn't all that good, but I couldn't get too close to the band.



The interviews went well, though; much better than the last project. In my opinion, the questions, audio, and video quality were all improved (which is strange, as I wasn't using a video camera or an external mic). However, the lighting on Miles was not great, and the placement wasn't good, either. The guys I interviewed also gave some great answers, showing the idea I was trying to prove. After I imported the clips into Premiere, I used the skills I had learned on the last interview, plus a few new ones, to make a story I'm pretty proud of. J and L edits were one such skill, which I tried to use as much as I could, but I didn't really have enough footage to do more. Some of the bits, such as the "At Ease" at the end might be a bit cheesy, but I thought it sounded cool. When I put the B-Roll in, I did realize that a few of my shots were shaky or out of focus, but I ended up having enough for the whole video. Overall, though,  this is one of my better projects, and I'm already seeing improvement from earlier in the year.

How to make titles in Premiere Pro

When making a video in Premiere Pro, knowing how to make titles can really help in conveying information, especially for news headlines or similar situations. A title, to clarify, is when you have text appear on the screen in some way. It's pretty useful in a lot of situations, like clarifying who someone is in an interview or scrolling text like on a news channel. There are many more situations that would call for titles, so it's an important skill for a video editor to have.

Step 1: Open the title creator with either "Command + t" or by right clicking and choosing "New Item" in the Project tab, where your clips are.

Step 2: In the Title Creator, you can use the tools and the sidebar to make the text look any way you want, but be sure to keep the text within the Title-Safe zone, which is the smaller of the 2 rectangles that will appear in the window.

Step 3: Once you have chosen the style and placement of the text, just exit out of the Title Creator; it will save automatically.

Step 4: Insert the title into your timeline, on the layer above your normal footage. From here, you can add effects and transitions to the title, and change how long it stays on screen.

With titles, you should be able to add a whole new layer (literally and figuratively) to your videos, displaying information in a new way.

Interview Project

My latest video project was my first time doing an interview. I was kind of nervous at first, especially when actually conducting the interview. Eventually though, I got through it, and made a project that went pretty well. The hardest part was likely making the questions and asking them. After that, I got into the editing and made the footage into a completed video. During the editing process, I learned how to make titles in Premiere and also how to use static images and how to include keyframes to make motion with pictures.



There were definitely some things that I could have done better, though. While the titles were nice, they often got in the way and were a bit repetitive. The only reason that I used them was another problem, too. While I was recording the interview, I forgot to get full sentence answers, so the titles explained what the question was. Also, the framing of the shot, while mostly fine, was a bit too zoomed out, especially with the head-room.

Procedure Video

I finished my first video for sophomore year, and it turned out pretty good. As well as being the first of the year, it's also my first video using the Panasonic camera and using Premiere Pro. Both tools were a bit confusing at first, but eventually, I learned how they worked. Many people were complaining about the differences in Premiere from Final Cut, but it's really the same thing with a few more features. Filming the video went well too. My partner and I both used our ideas together to make a complete project. All of our shots worked for the video, telling a story and following the rules of video design. Editing was fun, too. Learning all the things I could do with the new software was really cool, especially the video effects I could add in. Finding audio clips and putting them in the video was also fun, to add more emotion into the story. If I could change anything, I'd probably make the second to last scene a bit more zoomed out, as  it would do well to add more to the tone and feel of the shot. Overall, I'm pretty proud that this is my first project of the year, and I'm exited to see what things I'll be able to do later in the year.

6 Shot System Video

My first video project was on the 6 Shot System. I learned a lot about the basics of video and worked directly with a partner for the first time in an ecomm project. The project ended up turning out good for my first video, and i'm satisfied with my work. When filming the shots, I learned many lessons about what to do and what not to do, which helped me later. I also learned how to use Final Cut, which I personally enjoyed more than the filming. I learned all the skills for making the video and some more, including transitions and audio editing. If I could change my video, I would try to make more emotions, especially in my close ups, because my acting was not very good in the final product.