For this project I came up with the idea of making a “Mock Visual Novel,” a visual novel is a video game that focuses on story more than game play, it’s not uncommon for these to have a lot of stills and 2D character sprites with high quality art. I was really excited for this project since I loved the idea but the production part was a lot harder and tedious than I predicted.

I first drew the characters traditionally which was easy since I originally learned traditional art only, mostly due to lack of technology growing up, but I’ve been pushing myself to do more digital art now that I have the funds. I bought myself a drawing tablet that lets you trace your traditional art, but the strokes were very messy because I have shaky hands. I tried fixing the strokes in Illustrator but it didn’t help, one of my other teachers recommended Photoshop so I did some research and it fixed them a little. The same teacher recommended coloring on Photoshop as well, so I taught myself how to do basic coloring on that program. I wasn’t happy with the coloring but I started running out of time before I could learn more advanced techniques. I did all my animation and exporting of my video on Adobe After Effects, I’m still a novice with this program as well but I think I did very well considering.

If I had more time, I would’ve added voice and sound effects, since I ran out of time and wasn’t able to add any, I also would’ve tried drawing different face expressions for the characters, and my own custom text box and Title screen. I really enjoyed this project like all the other ones before, and would like to continue working on this one outside of class and try to improve it. Thank you for checking out my video!

Credits:

Sakura Tree image by Annalise Batista “Annalise1988”
https://pixabay.com/en/sakura-blossoms-japanese-sakura-3774153/

School Campus Image by unknown, original image was removed from web

Text Box by CandyCaneEditor
https://www.deviantart.com/candycaneeditor/art/Pink-Glowing-Frame-333989488

Music “Hopscotch” by Purple Planet
https://www.purple-planet.com/upbeat

Original blue Polka Dots image by Karen Arnold “Kaz”
https://pixabay.com/en/polka-dots-aqua-blue-white-spots-937612/

-by Monica B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Kyf5c7t3g

My husky and I first crossed paths back in November of 2015. When I saw him laying in a cage among eight other huskies that were howling and crying while chewing on their cages, he was laying there not making a sound and just staring at me. When I asked about his story a lady named Victoria told me all about the Goliath Mountain Rescue (GMR) initiative.

GMR specifically houses Huskies, German Shepards, and Malamutes. These beautiful dogs are often given up because of their size and how high maintenance they can be.

The dog I was looking at had a tag ‘Collin’ but he wouldn’t respond to it, Victoria told me Collin was found as a stray in Los Angeles. when they found him he was aggressive and would try to escape from every enclosure.

When I looked at him through his cage I cant explain how it felt, but I knew it was very likely I would be taking him home. When I took him on a walk just around the Petsmart we were at, I fell in love.

through three years I have never felt so attached to something. I changed his name to Bolt and he actually responds to it  now. Adopting Bolt has changed my life for the better; though at times he absolutely drives me crazy, he also is by my side through the darkest of times.

I made this video to try and capture the feeling of helping the truly helpless. my actor was one of my best friends from my childhood and at times i felt like Bolt was easier to work with than him because I’m just not the director type and we constantly were goofing off. plus, laughing didn’t help with the shaking of the camera.

That brings me to the largest problem I ran into with this video, the shaky camera. I rented a GoPro Hero from LCC and was warned, but this was my first time ever using a GoPro. the worst part was that you had no clue how good a shot was until you attached it to a computer. Most of what I had filmed was absolutely terrible!

The Southern Oregon Humane society is not where I originally got Bolt but is the animal shelter in my home town of Medford Oregon. The Faculty was not allowed to let me take Bolt past the front desk so another problem occurred but was easily fixed in editing.

Thanks  to a lot of help from Kyle Whitaker and Chris Ortloff I was able to work through my shaky camera issues. The actual production was actually far easier simply because I became familiar with Premier. Adding transitions, trimming footage and creating a time lapse was actually kind of fun. I am pretty satisfied with my finished product and think my understanding of video editing has greatly improved.

This video was probably the hardest one for this class. The last video, I had a specific topic to focus on, but this one, I was all on my own. I had a few ideas at the beginning, but my mind would go blank once I started thinking what resources I could use. My original idea was to make a video about “Things I’ve Learned Backwards”, but I didn’t like how it had a bad sounding connotation to it. As I was falling asleep that night, the thought of “Things I’ve Learned Second” came to me. It was sort of like saying “backwards” but in a different way. Afterwards, it got easier. The whole video I taped, recorded, and edited. Luckily, I had a wonderful sister who worked with me through thick and thin and offered to act as my look-alike and I certainly used her to do all the dangerous stunts for me (especially the bike part!).

It was hard to fit all of my thoughts and ideas into a 3-minute video. Because once I had all of my resources together, I just started cramming media into my project nonstop. In the end, my video was 6 minutes long. I had to cut, copy, paste, and rearrange a lot of things. It finally went down to 3 minutes. The editing part was really frustrating for me. There was so much to do, and so little time. I would work on a part of it, and then without any warning, the video would jump back and my whole timeline and soundtracks would be messed up. I then had to start over and realign everything back to the way it was. It happened at least 7 times. The day before it was due, I stayed up until 1:02 in the morning, trying to get the program I was using to behave with me. I did what I could for as long as I could, and then when I couldn’t take another step, I did the next best thing, I backed up and gave it a rest. I exported what I had, went to bed tired, exhausted, and worn out. 6 hours later, I checked it one last time before dragging it onto my drive. My video didn’t export the media correctly and then all hell broke lose on my computer. My whole video crashed and I had to use every bit of strength and grit in me to crank it out one last time. I was sweating and panicking through the whole process. I finally got it exported correctly, and crossed my fingers that it would play back correctly. To my relief it did…finally!

Overall, I enjoyed the project. I like things that challenge me but not to my limit. Especially when it’s due 3 hours later. I was so close to calling it quits but then before I thought about giving up, I thought about why I held on for so long. It was difficult waiting for the right idea and time to come, but I think regretting something I didn’t get done would have been a lot more difficult. Also, my family always falls in love with a stubborn heart who won’t give up, not matter what.

Resources:

Magnetic Letters:   https://www.google.com/search?q=magnetic+numbers&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirsILO7fjeAhVRLX0KHZ2BCKMQ_AUIDygC&biw=1366&bih=604#imgrc=RvnSVuglldPoWM

Play-Doh Numbers:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76IWtiganwc

Number Flashcard:   https://www.twinkl.com/resource/esl-number-picture-flashcards-to-30-t-n-2307

Red Mustang:   https://freeplaymusic.com/#/?q=red%20mustang

For my Final, I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do until I was given the idea to use what I had done for my audio project by a fellow classmate. As soon as the idea was thrown at me, the creative juices got flowing and I instantly knew exactly what I wanted to do!

Spare’s return!

For this project, I took the audio from my audio project and essentially created an animatic to go with it. My audio project was a narration from an event that happened to my Dnd character, Spare. Not only did we hear what Spare did, but now we can actually see him in action.

I knew right away because I was doing an animatic, that I could NOT procrastinate. I spent several hours drawing thumbnails and creating a very very rough storyboard before I could even start drawing the frames. At one point during the beginning, I got disheartened because of how many layers one little clip had (110 to be exact) and began to second guess myself. I knew I had a very strict timeline I needed to follow and there was a point where I didn’t think I’d get it done in time without sacrificing hours of sleep. Surprisingly, I was better at time managing myself then I thought. I was able to finish the animation and sync it to the audio with no problems.

I learned from doing this project the amount of work animators have to do to create a moving picture. It made me really think about if it’s a career I want to pursue. I found throughout the process the feeling of satisfaction and glee at seeing the scenes animate once I was done with a scene.  Overall it was a very tiring and time constraining experience, but I found I did enjoy doing it. Mostly because I was creating an animation about one of my own characters, that I think made it the most enjoyable. I was able to see them come to life, and I think that was the best and most rewarding experience for this project.

Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

-MaKayla

Credits:

Talent:

• Daniel: Daniel Gerlach
• Older Sister: Jackie Chesnut
• Roommate: Jorge Sandoval
• Narration: Kyle Letsom

Audio:

• freesound.org
• Mattia Cupelli

Written/Filmed/Edited/Produced:

• Kyle Letsom

The initial intent for this video was simply to create something that is interesting to watch. Then as I looked into more story idea a little deeper, finding new possibilities, I realized that I wanted this to be a sad story, yes, but also and inspirational story. There is a bit of a humor element and a suspenseful element, but mostly I was going for inspirational. My initial story idea was a bit concerning because of the editing that was required to make it work. I wasn’t sure if I had all the tools I needed, and I certainly wasn’t sure about how to go about doing them. However, I stuck to the story idea and took my chances with youtube video tutorials on how to operate inside of Premiere Pro to accomplish everything I wanted. Thankfully it worked!

I have to admit, I think I got a little too overly ambitious with this project. What started out as a good idea led to more and more ideas that just couldn’t all fit inside a video that cannot exceed 3 minutes. That being said, one of the biggest challenges with this project was cutting all my video footage down to under 3 minutes. I also had a number of other dilemmas such as working around all of the schedules of my actors. It was especially difficult around this time of year because the people I needed for my project were supposed to be around my age, and everyone that fit that description was too busy with finals. I even had three actors quit on me entirely just before all of my production was due. They had too much on their plate, but they had already committed to the project and I had already filmed scenes with them at that point. Finding replacements last minute proved to be a huge problem, but thankfully I managed. In addition, my computer caused me some issues as well (not Premiere Pro this time, thankfully). My video file just got to be kind of large and my computer was not allowing Premiere to play certain bits of my video, more specifically the split screen section of my video (four videos running at the same time). This was quite the obstacle as well because it was very hard to see all the edits I made when it wouldn’t give me the option to play it back and see what it looked like. However, all things considering, I can confidently say that I am proud with how this project turned out, and I am proud of everyone who put in work to make this video happen.

⌈Kyle Letsom⌋

The most difficult part of this project for me, was putting all of the pieces together after getting all of my footage and photos. I had about 30 minutes of interviews, and getting that down into a 3 minute video that conveyed the message that I wanted it to was definitely difficult, as I had never worked with video before this class. I also had about 75 photos of the tiny home villages that I never ended up using due to time constraints. I have gotten a lot better at interviewing people since taking a newswriting class last year, but I have to say, that it was definitely harder to make a short video with the interviews than it was to write a short article.

Altogether, parts of this project were fun, but it did not inspire me in any way to get into video editing as part of my career. It was like putting together a giant puzzle, and I am not a fan of puzzles, so I think I will stick with photography and design. I’m still glad that I got this experience using Premiere Pro and Audition, as I have heard from many Multimedia Design professionals that it is important to be as well-rounded and have as many skills as possible so that you are more valuable in a super competitive field.

I was also interested in learning about the tiny house villages, and how they are combating skyrocketing rent rates and lack of available affordable housing. I was lucky enough when I moved to my own place in Eugene, to find a really nice affordable loft (mostly because I was looking for a place in December, when many out-of-town U of O students were leaving), but it did take many months of searching and many dead ends, so I have had some personal experience with the affordable housing crisis in Eugene.

For this project, I wanted to do something a little more serious than my past assignments. As much as I love comedy, I wanted to test myself on how well I can make a more informative piece. And so, I decided to make an interview of Donald Gruener, a photographer/graphic designer of Gruener Design Studio. Conveniently, he happens to be my dad! I wanted this project to not just show my editing skills, but to be informative to current and future media art students, especially those who plan to pursue photography/graphic design.

The production and post-production phases went smooth enough, but there still were some hurdles. Initially, I set up two phones to video-record the interview. One was a front angle and the other was a side angle (which I ended up not using). I would have liked to use a better camera, but my iPhone was the best that I had. I also set up a super nice microphone (the same one I used for P4-Audio) to record audio much better than my phone. We did the interview, but It felt unnatural so we redid the entire interview the next day! I also recorded a bunch of extra footage showing my dad doing some of his graphic design. We even staged an entire photo shoot just for me to record!!

For the post-production editing, I had the terrible idea of using my own computer. I found this video software called “DaVinci Resolve,” which has a pretty awesome free version. It is very advanced like Premiere Pro, making this an amazing piece of software that I can get for free! Plus, I wanted to expand my knowledge of tools beyond the Adobe suite. Well, turns out my semi-decent laptop is a total wimp. Playback was so laggy that it became impossible to simply compose the video. Plus, my computer’s hard drive completely filled up, so there wasn’t any way that it could handle video editing! So I was forced to re-do everything at school in the media creation lab. Using Premiere, I managed to complete the entire video in a mere two and a half hours!

All this hassle made me not want to add in the second camera angle. It might have looked cool, but it would have been too much work. Plus having the different angles mixed with the different shots might have made the video too chaotic. Also, as I said earlier, I recorded the audio separately on a nice mic. Well, turns out that audio got cut off. It’s too bad, because it sounds much nicer and crisper than my phone’s mic!!

Overall, I’m glad with the end result, despite all the problems. In fact, I’m kind of glad that it wasn’t smooth! It taught me to adapt to the situation and not let it get in the way of a nice video. Anyway, enjoy the video, and I hope you learn something from it!

Credits:

Filmed and produced by Colin Gruener

Music credit: bensound.com (https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/beyond-the-line)

Special thanks to Donald Gruener of Gruener Design Studio!

Since the day they arrived these ducks lived their daily lives very interestingly and I just had to do something with them. This also probably my payback towards them because they always poop in my garage and my car sometimes.

What has kept me drawn towards them was their abnormal life. The ducks don’t really quack like the ducks you find at ponds, these ducks just start panting and shaking their tales like dogs. Doing a little more research on the ducks they are Muscovy ducks that migrate from South America and some Mexican wetlands. The Muscovy population are also protected by the U.S.F.W.S, The United States Fish and Wildlife Services. This means there could be consequences with the law when killing these ducks. Theses ducks not only are very unique in the sense that they do not always house in nearby ponds because they can be domesticated in forest and suburban areas. Muscovy ducks are omnivores they eat worms, corn, leaves, small fish and small reptiles. If you ever come across one of these particular ducks beware that they are not your typical little puppy you could cuddle with. Males tend to be more aggressive than females but they will hiss at you depending how close you get to them and will sometimes bite at you if they feel threatened. They can tolerate very cold weather and place themselves in wet areas where rain is present.

Not everyone has the joy of having neighborhood ducks but I hope my video will provide a hilarious experience.  Hopefully when you are confronted by these ducks this blog will give something to remember them by.

Credits:

Directed and produced by, Alberto Lepe-Romero

Voice talents, Alison Courts and Alberto Lepe-Romero

Ducks voiced: Benny (Tall male duck), Karen (Short Brown duck), Becky (Short black duck)

Area permitted by, by friendly neighbor Maryland

Sound/music: http://www.Freesound.org

Produced in: MUL 101 and Alberto’s neighborhood

Instructed by: Teresa Hughes

During this project I was hoping to try my hand at making a simple narrative about somebody looking for something not important and ending up with something much better than the thing they were looking for. I also wanted to spice things up with more than just static shots. So I experiemented with moving the camera around and panning from my subject to whatever item is dominant in the scene. I also experimented with using different angles for my shots as well so that the scene would never become stale or boring.

The most difficult part of the project was telling the actors what they should be doing at any given time, what they should be saying, and having to keep things light while trying the same shot over and over. Initially the video was going to take place exclusively in the park, but as it went on I decided it would be more interesting if we went a few different places for the scenes. I was able to ask my actor what kinds of things he would normally do on a day off and then go from there to try and make things seem authentic. Of course there’s a bit of a twist at the end and I had to actually rush to get those shots. One of the actors I was working with, Cece, came home from work and needed to go to practice 30 minutes after, so we had a limited window to get everything I needed for the project in terms of her acting. I learned how to successfully navigate a stressful time crunch situation all while buying my actors dinner as thanks for helping me out so much with the project.

The editing process was long but simple. First I watched through all my clips and got my best shots together, then I plugged everything into Premiere and began the editing process. A lot of the time I’ll cut a video like this to a predetermined music track so that the clips flow with the song, but this time I decided to put together the clips without any song. The goal was to have a video that could stand on its own, even without a music track and I feel I won out on that front. The dialogue was the most difficult part to edit and I believe there is a ton of learning for me to do in terms of coming out with clean audio. I had to up the volume on most of the clips with voice but tried to at least keep all the audio within a consistent range. Hopefully I was successful in that end.

Overall I feel that I was able to successfully make a video that is light and airy, somewhat comedic, and is hopefully relatable to anyone who watches. It was fun to come up with all the different locations and working with my friends, and I can’t wait to do it again!

I’ve wanted to do a real Animatic for some time, so with this I finally had a good reason to spend time practicing storyboarding, using Premiere Pro, and everything else I’ve been learning this term. It really was kind of a cumulation of my efforts, other than photography of course.

The song I chose was a meaningful one to me. I tried my best to plug the metaphor I wanted to get through with my composition and choices. I’d really love to see what people to think this animatic is really about! The words don’t really connect to the song all that well until the end, but I think the feeling of the song is still the way it should be.

As much as I personally am proud of the final product, it’s very easy to see the progression of my techniques. Originally I had intended for it all to be more of an animation, like the earliest clips. In reality when I started animating, they went much faster then they are in the final product. I had to slow down the frames in order to match them better to the audio, which is why they stutter and seem strangely slow. As I realized I would have to slow many things down considerably, I changed my tactics, using more still frames and, in the end when I realized I was running out of time, I began to use After Effects to create smoother visual effects so nothing stuttered. I really am happier with the ending more than the beginning. If I had all the time in the world I would have likely changed parts of the beginning to better resemble the end, but all in all, it’s fine.

I had some worries about the audio, and whether or not I would get permission from the band, but luckily I was able to get confirmation from the band via their Twitter account! It also makes the first time I had ever really contacted the band, which seems strange to me considering how impactful their music has been on my life. This is truly something I’ve put a lot of my heart in to creating, and I can only hope that is obvious to the viewer.

Thank you for watching, and have a great day.