CAP Holly Wood Reflection 2

I am very excited for our project right now. It seems to be coming along well but time constraints are setting in and its looking like its going to be close. Our project has progressed nicely so far but it seems that we’re going to have to step it up because as the deadline approaches we need to make sure that everything is ready. We still don’t have all the shots that we need yet but I am confident that we can get those done and edited before the deadline. I have been going over to Sam’s house regularly to help him edit but it is taking longer then I expected. The shots do look really good though and I still think that we are going to be a serious competitor for the best picture award. I think the hardest part of the project so far is working with actors that don’t have the same time schedule as you. With different school projects due and the end of the year looming everyone is busy and it is hard to find times to work. This past week I am happy to say that our poster is done and looks very professional. We have also been putting together an intro for CAP Holly Wood that is looking great as well. In the next few days I think that it is vital that we manage our time as efficiently as possible and work hard to get this project done. Just to talk about the editing a bit more in depth, we have been using adobe premier for the actual forming of the film and using after effects with the magic bullet plug-in to color grade the clips and fix any other technical issues with the shots. I think that its great we were able to use Sam’s T2i camera because it adds a professionally element to it which I hope pushes our film to the top spot. Hopefully we will be able to get all the shots together soon so that we can edit and turn it in by the due date.

Reflection #1

So far, our CAP Holly wood project has been going very well. we have a solid rough cut of the project in a time line and we are continuously working on it. Our group is working very well together which i think can be attributed mainly to the fact that we have a very good idea of what needs to be done. There have been some glitches though because it is hard to keep continuity consistent when the actors are wearing different clothes every day. We also don't have all of our footage yet and we want to re-shoot some of our second scene. I think at this point the most important objective is to get all of our footage so that we can just focus on editing. I will be editing this video with sam using Adobe Premiere Pro with color correction using DaVinci resolve. This past week we have been working on the movie poster and shooting footage. Overall the work we have done has been effective and is currently on time. Im worried that we might fall behind schedule but with some heavy work this weekend i believe we'll be fine. In the next week and a half before it is due we will be in full editing mode polishing up the rough cut.

Edit Preview

This is a very small preview of a snowboarding edit that I plan to make with my friend Max Salzman. Though this is only one clip, I have used a lot of new and old film editing techniques. This was shot at Liberty ski resort with a go pro HD hero at 60fps and at 720p resolution. This specific trick Max Salzman is doing is just a method but I thought the lighting was good so I decided to make an edit out of it to potentially use as an intro for him. Max and I have both been snowboarding for a long time and will both appear in the edit that I hope to have done by the end of spring break. I edited this using After Effects Cs6, FCPX, and Magic bullet looks. I first edited this in aftereffects because I wanted to use the slow motion program Twixtor to slow the shot down and make it look epic. I also created the film burn effect you see during the slow motion in After Effects that was harder then I anticipated. I then brought the clip over to FCPX to do the color correction and the title. For the color correction I made it slightly harsher then I normally would just to play around with how the footage handled it. I will definitely change it for the actual edit. The title is just a simple fade in of his name that I got off of one of the preset titles there are in FCPX. I will be going snowboarding multiple times in the next few weeks to gain more footage and I am excited to seriously start working on this project.

Documentary on Education

This was a documentary video project that I did with my TV-Studios production group for a grade but also to submit for the C-Span Challenge. This project was done over the course of two weeks with us working hard to meet the submission deadline. The editing was done at Connor’s house on his new computer that he built and Sam and I could be found there either editing or eating everyday during those two weeks. This was by far one of the most difficult projects we have achieved so far simply because we had to get so much information and interviews and research into an eight minute clip that also had to be better then all the other submissions. Me and Connor traded off doing the main editing which consisted of building a frame and piecing together the actual product while Sam did a lot of the effects work and color correction. We used Final Cut Pro X to piece together the project and After Effects CS6 to do all the effects work and the color correction. This was a very rewarding project not only because of the sense of accomplishment but also the fact that we might gain some profit from it. This project also definitely built our team skills because it is difficult to make a film you like when our editing styles are very opinionated, stylized and individualistic. We did manage to come up with a great product though and I’m proud of my group and myself. I hope the judges and you enjoy it as much as we did!

The British Exchange

The British exchange was a project that we did for TV studios while the British kids were here. This was probably one of the best and most entertaining projects because we had Nick in our group and having someone with a British accent perform in our video was authentic and very entertaining. This project was also rather challenging though because we only had a week to get it done. We also were required to use a prop that we got to choose on the first day of production. Nick actually came up with the story idea that was actually a misunderstanding. One person thought they were trading a real crystal. The other was thinking they were trading crystal meth. We thought it was a good idea and we went out to shoot. We shot on the track at Blair near the back wall to make it look sketchy. We shot with Sam’s T2i, and Mr Mayo’s T4i and the quality was excellent and it took about a class period to get all of our shots. I then took the video files and edited them on FCPX on my computer at home. One problem I ran into was the fact that the T4i shot very blue and the T2i shot in normal color but I simply matched the T2i’s color with the match function on FCPX and Magic Bullet Looks. This worked because the mood of the overall production was sketchy so the blue color enhanced it. This project was one of the best-recorded memories of the British kids coming and I hope that we get a chance to see them next year and perhaps do another video project.

English Media

This was a video project that my class did in English rather then TV studios but just the same it was fun and entertaining to create. We have just recently finished the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and to demonstrate our full comprehension of the book, were required to make a media presentation of some kind. This presentation had to include quotes from the book as well as other meaningful quotes that tied in to the main theme. My theme was the idea that we all handle loss differently and that everyone does it in his or her own way, on his or her own time. This was a fun video project because it was so open ended. We had a lot of leeway as to how or what we made because we were not only indicating Jonathan Safran Foer’s voice; we were also trying to develop our own. I edited this video on Final Cut Pro X and did all color corrections with Magic Bullet looks. Final Cut has been acting slowly lately so it took much longer then it needed to but it was still entertaining and helpful to work through the snags and finish the project. Hope you enjoyed!

Independent Film Project

youtube link

For the Independent Video Project, our class was assigned to go and shoot footage of our community to give the British kids a chance to see what living in our area is like (though I don’t know whether they will actually be seeing them). I shot most of my footage in DTSS (Down Town Silver Spring) because that is probably the main place I hang out for fun. I also shot some footage of me and my friends playing soccer because soccer happens to be the most amazing sport ever invented, made twice as fun with enthusiastic friends. Obviously my home is the main place I am in my community but my community is not in my home and this is why I neglected to have footage of it. The closest you can see of my home is the street us kids play football on which is actually a rather fun past time. For this project I decided to use picture and video so that there would be a better variety of media that will hopefully better capture the audience's attention. I took photos of stuff I thought captured the essence of living in this community (happiness, friendship, excitement...etc) Hopefully you picked up some of these elements in the video (which is currently not here). I edited all of these videos and photos on FCPX which was incredibly frustrating because FCPX is running ridiculously slow at the moment. As I write this, the video shows 35% complete, which sounds promising except it’s been 35% complete for 12 minutes now. hopefully it will be up soon (When seen above you know I edited this post and included it)

This was a project I did over winter break because I wanted to experiment with Trapcode Form, which I haven’t used yet, and I was bored on the last day of winter break. This specific project caught my eye on AETUTS and I thought it would be a good project to put on this blog. This project took my approximately 20min and I made it using After Effects. I first started out by creating a text layer with CAP2013 which I thought was appropriate and then I key framed the title to fade in one word at a time to the music. I then created a Trapcode Form layer and messed around with the number of particles and the randomness. By putting it over a grey layer I was able to make the white letters pop out as the particles and then after adding some wave and Shine it was done. I then had it fade to the CAP2013 picture logo I created. After Effects is still a challenge to me but I plan on using it more and more in these blogs and hopefully get better. I used the music Chimerical dream because I thought it sounded good and had the mystical quality that I was trying to portray through the space like particles. Next video project I would like to incorporate this as an intro because it is one of the projects I’m proud of and at least to me, looks professional.