Saturday, February 19, 2011
A pleasant surprise
A year has passed since I last took this module, I received a email from Dr Julian that my video was selected by NUS Office of Admissions to showcase NUS. Heres the link,
Monday, April 19, 2010
THE HUGE MEGAPOST Part 3 - Portfolio Compilation
It was one heck of a night trying to put everything together...... I started of rearranging all the stuff I did into the 2 DVDs, but soon I realized that there simply wasn't enough time to finish everything at one go; time to MULTITASK!!!
I had my desktop and laptop side by side; desktop was for encore, after effects, premiere; laptop was for photoshop and file organization. The only thing communicating between these 2 devices was my portable HDD.
These were some of the stuff I needed to do on Sunday,
- DVD authoring
- DVD label design and print
- Learning Journals
- Assignment 1 and 2 videos
Of which, the learning journal and DVD authoring took the MOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSTT time.
LEARNING JOURNAL
For the learning journal, it was really time consuming to record my voice for each assignment, edit and render the videos, so I took an alternative route to do this, using Camtasia. Its like a simplier version of Adobe Premiere, with its own unique functionality. But basically, I used it for all my screen capture and captioning. For assignment 1 and 2 final videos, it was also done using Camtasia.
Screen capturing took me 4 hrs alone to edit and compile (during the wee hours in the morning).
DVD Authoring
Dvd authoring was a totally new field to me, I never had any idea on how to do this. However, thanks to videocopilot, I managed to learn how to get it done within a day (videocopilot is like a personal tutor to NM3208 now). However, there are alot of components to making a DVD menu from scratch and when Rozmail told me that he used iMovie to make his DVD menu template, I was pretty shocked....
DVD Label Design
I seriously didn't like doing this, because there were so many things to consider, including getting templates, setting up printer, buying empty disc labels etc. Of which, I was super frustrated over setting up my printer for label printing because my computer didn't have a preset to print it. I ended up scanning my label in photoshop for its exact size so that the print out looks ok.
Here's the scanned pic (yeah it was white and I had to use a book to make the outline of the labels stand out).
My label design was based on this blog, so this is my design,
The design was rather simple, it was just a table with my spectacles, something to represent the geek in me
By the time I finished this it was already 7am in the morning... the strange thing was I was still quite awake then, until I took a short nap for 1hr + ... and really felt super tried.
All the designing, compiling, testing, pasting, cutting done in 1 day, IT IS FINALLY DONE!!!
I had my desktop and laptop side by side; desktop was for encore, after effects, premiere; laptop was for photoshop and file organization. The only thing communicating between these 2 devices was my portable HDD.
These were some of the stuff I needed to do on Sunday,
- DVD authoring
- DVD label design and print
- Learning Journals
- Assignment 1 and 2 videos
Of which, the learning journal and DVD authoring took the MOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSTT time.
LEARNING JOURNAL
For the learning journal, it was really time consuming to record my voice for each assignment, edit and render the videos, so I took an alternative route to do this, using Camtasia. Its like a simplier version of Adobe Premiere, with its own unique functionality. But basically, I used it for all my screen capture and captioning. For assignment 1 and 2 final videos, it was also done using Camtasia.
Screen capturing took me 4 hrs alone to edit and compile (during the wee hours in the morning).
DVD Authoring
Dvd authoring was a totally new field to me, I never had any idea on how to do this. However, thanks to videocopilot, I managed to learn how to get it done within a day (videocopilot is like a personal tutor to NM3208 now). However, there are alot of components to making a DVD menu from scratch and when Rozmail told me that he used iMovie to make his DVD menu template, I was pretty shocked....
DVD Label Design
I seriously didn't like doing this, because there were so many things to consider, including getting templates, setting up printer, buying empty disc labels etc. Of which, I was super frustrated over setting up my printer for label printing because my computer didn't have a preset to print it. I ended up scanning my label in photoshop for its exact size so that the print out looks ok.
Here's the scanned pic (yeah it was white and I had to use a book to make the outline of the labels stand out).My label design was based on this blog, so this is my design,
The design was rather simple, it was just a table with my spectacles, something to represent the geek in me
By the time I finished this it was already 7am in the morning... the strange thing was I was still quite awake then, until I took a short nap for 1hr + ... and really felt super tried.
All the designing, compiling, testing, pasting, cutting done in 1 day, IT IS FINALLY DONE!!!
THE HUGE MEGAPOST Part 2 - Video 2: I Was From CNM
I finally had time to edit this after submitting my coding assignment. I definitely have to thank filzah for helping me out with this video before I took over, at least she helped me out with compiling the raw videos. Ok! Here are some of the fixes I did over the past 2 days,
In this case, the aspect ratio of the raw clip is 16:9, but when she rendered in .avi it was in 4:3, hence the letterbox. Luckily I still had the original raw clip, so I might as well edit this video in 16:9... and it becomes this,
Also, I've added a little scotch tape to make it look really like a page in a scapbook. There was also the page flip effect which I had to handle too, but the final effect is something like what you would see below,
Notice the stuff on the page is flipped together too? The key here is to parent all elements in a page to the paper that you're going to flip in after effects. Of course, here's the video,
In this case, the aspect ratio of the raw clip is 16:9, but when she rendered in .avi it was in 4:3, hence the letterbox. Luckily I still had the original raw clip, so I might as well edit this video in 16:9... and it becomes this,
Also, I've added a little scotch tape to make it look really like a page in a scapbook. There was also the page flip effect which I had to handle too, but the final effect is something like what you would see below,
Notice the stuff on the page is flipped together too? The key here is to parent all elements in a page to the paper that you're going to flip in after effects. Of course, here's the video,
Sunday, April 18, 2010
THE HUGE MEGAPOST Part 1 - Superhero effect
IT IS FINALLY OVER!!!
I can finally catch some sleep after getting the DVD portfolio done. But before I talk about my DVD portfolio I shall just go through the last 2 assignments I did before the portfolio itself.
Assignment 6 - Superhero Effect
For this assignment, my storyline was rather simple and you can pretty much guess it by looking at the title.
Yup, The Healer (with some special effects added). Here are some of the fun stuff I did during filming and after effects editing.
It took me some time to get this right, but the cuts looked pretty real to me, added some bruises and scratch, as well as a glow on the healer's hand. The process of making this is available in a tutorial in www.videocopliot.net (just search for healing).
This is a shot of me getting knocked down by a car. I seriously had no idea how to get it right. It took more than 6 takes to roughly get the effect needed.
Ok, Here's the video,
I can finally catch some sleep after getting the DVD portfolio done. But before I talk about my DVD portfolio I shall just go through the last 2 assignments I did before the portfolio itself.
Assignment 6 - Superhero Effect
For this assignment, my storyline was rather simple and you can pretty much guess it by looking at the title.
Yup, The Healer (with some special effects added). Here are some of the fun stuff I did during filming and after effects editing.
It took me some time to get this right, but the cuts looked pretty real to me, added some bruises and scratch, as well as a glow on the healer's hand. The process of making this is available in a tutorial in www.videocopliot.net (just search for healing).
This is a shot of me getting knocked down by a car. I seriously had no idea how to get it right. It took more than 6 takes to roughly get the effect needed.
Ok, Here's the video,
Friday, April 9, 2010
Video Project - Video 1: NUS Advertisement
I apologise for the late update, this video was already done a week ago and I was held up by "hell week" when all other deadlines come crashing on me.
A short introduction to how the idea was conceived, it all started with the idea of promoting NUS through different aspects, food, people, culture, facilities etc. However, after the presentation of our concept and storyboard to the class, we realized that this idea was similar to what most students did over the past few semesters and it wasn't unique enough. Hence, we changed our concept a little and came up with the theme of statistics versus the truth as told by students in NUS.
A consultation with Dr Julian revealed a big problem to us, we have to get to many specific places, getting permission from them and finding the right people to film, within such a short period of time. The worst thing of all, we have only 1 chance for a good take, done within 2 weeks! That would not be feasible given the tight schedules me and Filzah faced. Luckily, he gave us a great suggestion from the first scene of our storyboard, which is to get students from different countries to say something about NUS and place them in a collage. In this case, we wouldn't even need to get the specific people to their specific places to do re-shoot, we just need to approach another foreigner for help. Each shot would need roughly 5-10mins, which is reasonable considering the amount of time most students in NUS can spare (sigh... ironic why would they love NUS in the first place).
With that in mind, we began working on it and used this cardboard as our prop,
All we needed them to do is to say something on why they love NUS, followed by a pose saying I love NUS. Hence, our week was filled with targeting potential foreigners all over NUS. I could still remember the first day we went out to film, there was hardly any foreigner in sight, so we approached Dr Michael Brown as our 1st foreigner to film (He was my lecturer in CS3343: Digital Media Production last semester).
We had better luck over the next few days with more people willing to help us out. However, at the end of our filming schedules, I realized we made a big blunder. We forgot to check our video output if it was set to 16:9 or 4:3. Also, the sound capture was rather bad at some places (e.g Canteens, open spaces etc), because of the environment sound was captured together with the speech as well. Though we filmed more than 15 people, regrettably we could only select the 9 best ones and edit them in our video.
As for the editing part, there were only 2 significant problems faced. The first one was to do with freezing the frame. In adobe premiere there was only the option to freeze the entire clip instead of that particular frame; I had to export all screenshots of the frame I needed to freeze and import them again into the video. The other problem was actually due to the aspect ratio of the raw clips; because the video format was supposed to be in NTSC in 4:3 instead of 16:9, hence the 2 black strips.
For the title page, I had it done with after effects after looking at some of the great tutorials over at http://www.videocopilot.net on creating really cool titles for videos.
Without further ado, enjoy the video,
A short introduction to how the idea was conceived, it all started with the idea of promoting NUS through different aspects, food, people, culture, facilities etc. However, after the presentation of our concept and storyboard to the class, we realized that this idea was similar to what most students did over the past few semesters and it wasn't unique enough. Hence, we changed our concept a little and came up with the theme of statistics versus the truth as told by students in NUS.
A consultation with Dr Julian revealed a big problem to us, we have to get to many specific places, getting permission from them and finding the right people to film, within such a short period of time. The worst thing of all, we have only 1 chance for a good take, done within 2 weeks! That would not be feasible given the tight schedules me and Filzah faced. Luckily, he gave us a great suggestion from the first scene of our storyboard, which is to get students from different countries to say something about NUS and place them in a collage. In this case, we wouldn't even need to get the specific people to their specific places to do re-shoot, we just need to approach another foreigner for help. Each shot would need roughly 5-10mins, which is reasonable considering the amount of time most students in NUS can spare (sigh... ironic why would they love NUS in the first place).
With that in mind, we began working on it and used this cardboard as our prop,
All we needed them to do is to say something on why they love NUS, followed by a pose saying I love NUS. Hence, our week was filled with targeting potential foreigners all over NUS. I could still remember the first day we went out to film, there was hardly any foreigner in sight, so we approached Dr Michael Brown as our 1st foreigner to film (He was my lecturer in CS3343: Digital Media Production last semester).We had better luck over the next few days with more people willing to help us out. However, at the end of our filming schedules, I realized we made a big blunder. We forgot to check our video output if it was set to 16:9 or 4:3. Also, the sound capture was rather bad at some places (e.g Canteens, open spaces etc), because of the environment sound was captured together with the speech as well. Though we filmed more than 15 people, regrettably we could only select the 9 best ones and edit them in our video.
As for the editing part, there were only 2 significant problems faced. The first one was to do with freezing the frame. In adobe premiere there was only the option to freeze the entire clip instead of that particular frame; I had to export all screenshots of the frame I needed to freeze and import them again into the video. The other problem was actually due to the aspect ratio of the raw clips; because the video format was supposed to be in NTSC in 4:3 instead of 16:9, hence the 2 black strips.
For the title page, I had it done with after effects after looking at some of the great tutorials over at http://www.videocopilot.net on creating really cool titles for videos.
Without further ado, enjoy the video,
Sunday, March 21, 2010
FINALLY KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY IS DONE!!!!!!
For the love of god, I'm finally done with this time consuming assignment (took almost 1 week of late nights till 4am) to get this up.
Some description of my work and the things I've learnt doing it,
Some description of my work and the things I've learnt doing it,
- NUS corporate colors were mainly used (blue background against orange/white words)
- I've decided to use this font CAPTURE IT, because of its unique design, being able to stand out ,though its a little bit conflicting with the tone of the president's speech.
- I tried looking for help animating physics (collisions, gravity etc), but its gonna be really technical (expression coding involved) and its a real pity to leave it out for now.
- Sentences are best kept within a composition so that its easier to edit from there.
- Alternating between 3D and 2D scenes takes some time to get used to, because of the graphic placement and using top/left/bottom/right cameras to ensure its placement.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Assignment 3 - Ken Burns Effect
Finally had time to update this blog after a hectic week of tests, coding assignments and presentation done. For this assignment, we are supposed to create a video to showcase what you like/ what is unique about NUS, using numerous still pictures and transition effects.
The theme of this video is about NUS rag and flag, a unique event that bonds the faculty together in building decorative structures using recycable materials.
The photos used in this video was actually from both my friends' camera and mine. They were all taken using DSLR / High megapixel cameras, which explains the quality, as well as the size of the .mov file.
Based on the comments given last week, the music was a little bit too sad and slow, which I thought otherwise, because the keywords tagged to the music was "inspiration and heartfelt" LOL. I could try looking for 2 tracks too, a little bit fast tempo for the first part and slow for the second. Wished I had 48hrs a day now...........
Here's The video, hope you guys liked it =)
The theme of this video is about NUS rag and flag, a unique event that bonds the faculty together in building decorative structures using recycable materials.
The photos used in this video was actually from both my friends' camera and mine. They were all taken using DSLR / High megapixel cameras, which explains the quality, as well as the size of the .mov file.
Based on the comments given last week, the music was a little bit too sad and slow, which I thought otherwise, because the keywords tagged to the music was "inspiration and heartfelt" LOL. I could try looking for 2 tracks too, a little bit fast tempo for the first part and slow for the second. Wished I had 48hrs a day now...........
Here's The video, hope you guys liked it =)
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