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.

"The Delivery" Animation

I have 1000 times more respect for every pro animator after this project. 2000 frames and 20 hours of work, and it's only a minute long. But I have learned so much from this, and it's my favorite project I've done in my 1 and a quarter years in e-Comm. This project taught me the process of making a story, from the ever-important storyboard, to the final rendering. In the actual production, I learned so many skills: from styling and the Pen tool in Photoshop, to Track Mattes in After Effects, I've gotten a lot better at both programs.

To make this project, I first had to plan out what I was going to do. I've actually had the initial concept for a while, but making the whole story work and writing a plot took a long time. It was also during the planning phase that I had my first problems, as coming up with all the elements of a story was hard to do for my idea.


 But after that, I got to work, trying as hard as I could to create and animate exactly what was going on in my head and on the storyboard. This
took so long, and I spent all my class time and more just trying to get it done.

What I've gotten done on it so far isn't completely what I really saw in my head, but I'm going to continue working on it, hopefully entering it into e-Magine later this 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.

Walking Animation

The latest project I've made in Animation is a walking cycle. This was definitely the hardest, but also the most fun project I've done so far. One cool thing about this animation is that I actually drew the character by hand. I don't think that I'm any good at drawing, but when I scanned it in, my drawings looked fairly good, and the weirdness of the proportions actually worked for the project. After setting up the foot movement and moving my character (who is half pug, half butler) across the screen, I started messing with the other limbs to give the whole thing a sense of realism, applying the Principles of Animation, such as Squash and Stretch, to the head. I also made the arms swing slightly. All of these really subtle changes actually worked to make a somewhat natural-looking walk cycle.

First After Effects Animations

For the first two animations of the year, I started learning how to use After Effects. Last year, the only animations I made were in Photoshop, but I'm really loving AE. Before, I had to make frames for everything, but keyframes are really helpful to make animations longer than a few seconds. My first animation was just a bouncing ball, something I had done before. However, this time I was able to make the bounce look smoother and more realistic. The second animation was of a crawling worm, and it turned out even better. This was technically my first "character" animation, so I learned how to use puppet pins to move parts of the worm. It ended up pretty good, but if I took a bit more time, it could've probably done even better.

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.