VIDEO AND SOUND PRODUCTION - FINAL PROJECT
VIDEO AND SOUND PRODUCTION - FINAL PROJECT
24TH AUGUST - TBA (WEEK 1 - WEEK 14)
NG VEYHAN (0349223) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
VIDEO AND SOUND PRODUCTION
FINAL PROJECT
Lecture Notes
WEEK 1
For the first week of lectures, Dr. Martin gave us a quick rundown of the Module Information Booklet for this module. He had also recommended us some peripherals and equipment that would make our work in this semester much easier, such as monitoring headphones and tripods along with (preferably) ring lights to maintain consistent lighting conditions.
An in-lecture exercise was also given. We were instructed to download two sets of short clips from Drive and stitch them together in order to create one cohesive video. The first one was demonstrated completely, and we were expected to complete the second one our own.
WEEK 2
For this week, we were assigned to create a compilation of sorts to practice creating shots with different angles. For the shooting exercise I have gathered from the lectures that:
- Low-angle wide shots show the entire subject and a large portion of the environment to create a setting and enlarging the subject to create a sense of "power".
- Frontal MCUs show the subjects face down to the shoulders. It brings attention to the subject for situations such as conversations.
- Frontal MS show the subject down to the waist. It has less focus on the emotions of the characters but makes it easier to convey movements.
- Extreme close-up shots only show a very small portion of the subject. Often used for dramatic effect.
- Side-angle MS show the the subject in a similar manner to frontal MCUs, although from a side angle. It gives the impression of perspective from a bystander in the situation rather than a "camera" angle
- 3/4 angling shots show the subjects face at a ~45 degree angle to the camera, it is the most flattering angle for the face of a subject.
- Close-up shots only show one limited portion of the subject. (i.e. just the face, hands, etc.) It can be used to show detail or emotion on faces.
- Eye-level medium wide shots show the character in the environment, albeit not fully. It helps establish the setting from a level similar to the subject.
For the other exercise, it involved editing videos. Dr. Martin explained to us how to set in and out points for certain portions of footage to be cut out and stitched together. Another part of the tutorial video also taught us how to use the cross dissolve transition to create a fade effect into another scene, but in this case used as effect to create a vanishing subject.
Practical
Exercise 1
Obtaining the video files was just a simple download and extract file from Google Drive, booting up Premiere Pro, I imported all the files and began to work on creating the video. All the clips in the Mints exercise were already arranged in numerical order, therefore all I had to do was to arrange the clips into the timeline and export it afterwards.
(Fig 01, "Mints" Video Stitching, 26/8/2021)
(Fig 02, Completed Video "Mints:, 26/8/2021)
The second video we were instructed to stitch together was one of a Doritos commercial. After loading the stack of videos, I realized when arranging the first few clips that these were not arranged in order. It was confusing with no context, therefore I had to look for the source video to arrange it correctly.
(Fig 03, "Doritos" Video Stitching, 26/8/2021)
(Fig 04, Completed Video "Doritos", 26/8/2021)
Exercise 2A - Shooting Exercise
For the shooting exercise this week, I had no access to a DSLR camera as there was an unforeseen problem with a corrupted memory card, therefore I had to make do with a mobile camera which was undesirable, to say the least.
Another major inconvenience was the cloudy weather that I was receiving these few days. The environment was much too dark to shoot a video without having to alter the exposure settings. Despite that, there was still some grain in the video, which I felt was annoying but had to make do with.
When editing the video, I had used what was taught in the video tutorial provided by Dr. Martin. Setting an In point then an Out point was one of the basics of video production.
(Fig 04, Video Trimming)
(Fig 05, Captioning the Video)
(Fig 06, VSP_W2_Shooting Exercise)
Exercise 2B - Lalin
First part of this exercise, I took a look at source material in order to get a rough grasp of the subject matter that I was working with.
(Fig 04, Viewing the Source Material)
Initially, I was expecting the provided clips to be identical to portions of this video, but after skimming through the clips, I quickly realized that was not the case. Afterwards, I took a look at the provided storyboards to see how these series of short clips are going to be arranged.
(Fig 05, Viewing the Storyboard)
Conveniently, the sequence to arrange each provided shot has already been provided, which saves some time by being able to tell which clip was which at a quick glance. At this point, I was ready to start working on the video itself.
(Fig 06, Setting In and Out points for trimming)
Following the video tutorial provided by Dr. Martin, stitching together the videos was a fairly simple procedure. For some of the clips, the audio waveforms provided on the audio track also gave me a rough idea on where clip was needed to be cut, only in clips with soft to no background noise, however.
(Fig 07, Using Cross Dissolve Transition)
The other portion of the exercise was the use of the cross dissolve transition in order to create a fade out effect for the subject. Identically framed shots with and without the subject are placed side by side, with the transition to switch between the two clips, which gives the illusion of disappearance.
Afterwards, all that was left was the render the final video, I kept the settings to match those of the source videos.
(Fig 08, VSP_W2_Lanlin)
Exercise 3 - Dance Shoot
There was quite a lot to unpack for this exercise. It was the first time I was dancing by myself for a camera so I was a bit shaken, and it was a group exercise as well.
After an afternoon of back and forth discussion, we had decided to use the track "No Brainer" by Dj Khaled featuring Justin Bieber as our backing track. I took it upon myself to extract a 30 second clip of the chorus and ran it through Audacity to add some compression and fade in and out for a smoother clip of audio.
(Fig 8.5, Setting the Audio, 8/9/2021)
After an afternoon of shooting and a leg cramp later, I have gotten all the footage required to begin the editing process of this exercise. First off was to just import all the necessary video files and just roughly cut them according to the exercises given to us in previous weeks, the refinement for more accurate cuts would be in the next step.
(Fig 09, Video Cutting, 14/9/2021)
As all of these clips were dances that were synced to the audio clip that I have created above, I needed to align the clip to the music. I picked out the track because it had a punchy bassline and felt that it would be easier to dance to, it was helpful here in the sense that the audio waveforms had large jagged peaks denoting each hit of the bass, making syncing much easier.
(Fig 9.5, Aligning Clips with Waveforms, 14/9/2021)
(Fig 10, Video Cropping, 14/9/2021)
Timing was a crucial aspect of this specific exercise, and admittedly we were a little off beat, as we weren't professional dancers by any means. I had wanted to alter the speed of specific parts of the video and not just apply a uniform change in speed/duration. I would then turn on keyframes for the speed of each clip in the right-click dropdown box.
The time remapping keyframes are different from standard keyframes as the keyframes denote the in and out points of the speed change, rather than a set of values for the particular moment. I tried to smoothen out the speed ramp of the playback, and it was more up to intuition than anything to decide whether it looked proper or not.
(Fig 11, Time Remapping, 14/9/2021)
After I was finished processing the clips, it was time to add the transitions and movement to the elements in the video. For the 4 shot arrangement, I wanted two shots to enter from above, and the other two from below, and individually editing would cause room for error which creates small but noticeable differences in velocity, something I was all to familiar with. To resolve this issue, I nested both elements into one track and edited its motion as only one element.
(Fig 12, Nesting Clips, 14/9/2021)
A flat velocity curve creates a very boring, uniform type of movement for the entry and exit of the shots. A more dynamic option would be keyframing the velocity of the two nests of shots and using the velocity graph to create an exponential velocity for the movements of the shots. The nesting of the shots stated above helps create a consistent outcome for the linked shots instead of having one go faster than the other or vice versa.
(Fig 13, Velocity Tweaking, 14/9/2021)
At this point, the video was almost completed. Just some small tweaks here and there, as well as reducing the audio by 10dB to prevent my ears from being blown out, which I had found out too late. Rendering it took a lot longer than I had expected too, perhaps due to the 4 shot scene which was very resource intensive.
(Fig 14, Rendering is a pain, 14/9/2021)
Final Video for W3 Shooting Exercise:
(Fig 15, W3 Shooting Exercise, 14/9/2021)
PROJECT 1:
PROJECT 2:
PROJECT 3:
Feedback
WEEK 1: No feedback as it was only the first week of the semester.
WEEK 2:
WEEK 3: The lighting of the shots was lacking and certain shot sizes were incorrect. Dr. Martin did mention is was a nice try, though.
WEEK 4:
Weekly Reflections
WEEK 1: Considering that this is the first week of the semester, the work load for this week is very light, which is a nice way to get back into gear after a long break. Going into the second semester, I'm a little nervous about the upcoming amount of work compared to the last semester. Dr. Martin also seemed to be a very affable person and I look forward to studying under him for this upcoming semester.
WEEK 2: I was feeling rather under the weather this week as I had just received a vaccine, therefore doing the work for this week felt a lot more draining than it should be. The shooting portion of the exercises assigned was tighter in terms of schedule, however once that was done I had some breathing room for the editing portion. Overall, I had some trouble with the work this week due to my condition but hopefully I'll be doing better by the coming week.
WEEK 3: This weeks exercise was a lot more, physical than I anticipated. It was my first time working in a group this semester, so it was rather interesting. The poor weather hadn't let up yet and trying to set up some half decent lighting proved to be a pain. I had a lot of fun editing the video though, as I didn't want my work to be too rigid, as such I tried playing around a little while trying to stay true to the work requirements.
WEEK 4:
Semester Reflections
Experience
This module was pretty similar to the Digital Photography module from the previous semester, but with a stronger emphasis on shooting videos rather than still images. There's also the use of clever camerawork in order to create optical illusions for visual effects. This somewhat ties in to the animation specialization that I wish to pursue in my upcoming semesters. All in all, I think what I learned from this module, while not exactly being directly applicable in my specialization, could help me develop storyboards and effects for my upcoming projects here at Taylor's.
In terms of workload, I felt that this module was on the lower end in terms of the spectrum. This is not an inherently bad thing, as it just meant that there was more focus on the conceptualization aspect of the work. It also gave me a chance to relax a little when working on projects in this module, as other modules were a lot more labour intensive due to my relative lack of experience in those fields.
Observations
A lot of the hassle when it came to shooting videos was the lighting conditions of the set. Granted I had no professional set to work with during my time in this module, determining a suitable time to carry out a video shoot was largely dependent on the weather of the day. Sometimes a cloudy day would roll in and totally derail my plans. Having an external light also helped greatly when maintaining consistency of lighting across various shots. Creating separate angle shots of a single scene was actually surprisingly easy as long as there isn't any major issues with continuity.
There wasn't much in terms of compositing digital effects in this module, as the effects were more practical in nature. While I understood the principles behind the effects, it was quite difficult to execute correctly as small details such as lighting or shot sizes between takes created inconsistencies. Tweaking audio for the videos that I had created required quite a lot of attention to detail. I was quite lucky to have done music often as a hobby, as such I had quite a sharp ear to the subtle differences in audio tracks, otherwise I felt I'd have struggled a lot more than I did
Findings
The visual effects that we often see in videos online are actually quite simple in practice. I believe that the most difficult parts of this process are to imagine the application of these basic principles to create something new. The effects that were actually applied digitally to the reference videos I had used were actually quite basic, such as masking a green screen and cuts made on high-motion impact frames. Much of the works were actually done physically with hidden props, such as pouring liquids from a solid object being done by a bottle being taped to the back of the device.
What makes cinematography such a simple yet hard-to-master discipline is made evident by the ability to create visual effects yet being able to find a method to apply it in a certain shot composition. After looking at some behind the scenes of certain movie productions for reference, I've come to appreciate the prowess that many of these skilled directors display. Carefully framing a shot and including/excluding certain elements to invoke specific thoughts and feelings is something that doesn't cross my mind at first glance, but subtly makes an effect on the viewer.
//END OF SUBMISSION//
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