I have always been interested in voice acting, but have never taken steps at attempting to get better at it in the hopes that I may be able to get paid for it! When Jojo Jensen visited the class, that longtime interest was sparked and so I thought, hey- I have access to a decent mic via equipment check-out- I should give this a go and practice! At first, I thought of doing a demo with many different categories such as cartoon, medical, etc, but I thought I should just try one category. Jojo said when there are demos on your site, they need to be broken up and organized into specific categories anyway, because potential clients don’t care about the other voices- they are focusing on the voice they may need from you and it would waste their time to have it all in one demo. So I chose commercials. I tried to go for 4 “tones”- for the creamer commerical, I tried soothing. For the toy store commercial, I tried upbeat and more fast-paced. For the brewery commerical, I chose laidback. For the zero-waste store, I chose a little more serious and informative. It was difficult to get them to sound distinct enough, and I hope after the many, many takes I did, that finally came across. It is absolutely not as easy as it seems and there are so many subtleties to pulling it off. This is just a practice, which I will continue to do until I improve. I wanted the B-roll to be simple and non-distracting, but set the tone for what the commerical is about. I originally wanted to go to locations like a coffee shop, brewery, toystore, etc, and get this footage, but I was sick and had to get resourceful at home. Thanks for reading!
Category Archives: F19-P6 Final Project
Holiday Gin and Tonic
This is the second project that I have ever filmed (much excite)! Deciding on the theme to this shoot was very simple. In my lighting class I had to choose a still image to recreate as near as possible to the original, the image I chose was this cocktail beverage. When I was later assigned this video project for MUL 101, I figured I could just get someone to make the drink for me and video that and make it a tutorial. Here is the still image that inspired this whole thing, and me re-creation of it:
To start off, I sketched out thumb nails and put together a storyboard of how I envisioned certain scenes, the steps necessary, and most importantly- what I expected of my talent, so I could convey my ideas to them and get the shots I was looking for. Then I wrote out a list of materials or supplies that would be required, which of those I already had, and which I still needed to acquire.
This film shoot was my first time checking out the Arri kit to use by myself. We were in a very cramped little kitchen. I had the 650 with a chimera for keylight aimed at talent’s face from the left. The 150 to the right of the talent to light the table and props. I needed a little bit of fill light on the right side of talent. The 300 was too bright, and there were no diffusers or anything left at equipment checkout. I looked around the place and found a semi opaque shower curtain that I put into the doorway and set the light behind it. It was just bright enough to add some fill, not create hotspots on his face, and eliminated the harsh cast shadow of the talent against the background wall. Hiding cords was extremely difficult, for the 150 light that I had aimed to the table top, the only plug in available was on the backsplash of the kitchen wall immediately behind the talent. We used one of the bendy ties to tie the light plug to the cabinet knob and ran it under and along the counter top to keep it out of scene.
The one thing that was quite problematic was that I had intended to shoot the individual scene of the oranges in unity with the rest of the ingredients, but I only had a few oranges and we cannot un-cut an orange. The plan was to wait until the very end to get that scene last. That way, we could have the scene of the oranges being sliced, then one of them already sliced and posed for the ingredients shot. Seeing as how I somehow forgot this, I found a clip that had all of the ingredients and zoomed in on the oranges. All in all, a very fun project. I have learned to pay a little closer attention when I am checking off my thumbnails on the storyboard. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this video.
F19-P6 Final Project (Wirrick-Coad)
So for this project, I really wanted to focus on the aspects of video editing and audio editing we have been working on the entire term. As most of you know, I enjoy spooky stuff and never really got to put the two together until this final project. While obviously the true message is to just be thankful for what we have in our lives, I just wanted to add that 90’s creepy Homemade video vibe. This experience for me was fun, anger-inducing, and rewarding in many different ways. Going out and doing the shoots with my family was extremely fun and telling my ‘actors’ what to do made me really feel like the director of my own small movie project. Creating the audio parts for the entire video was a blast as well, knowing full well that most of those scenes don’t have their original audio and also have effects layered on top of them. Now the video editing, oh how fun it is to watch my computer start to freeze up with all the effort going into Premiere pro. This really bugged me at first because I enjoy getting my edits done quick and easy but I’ve now realized that you really do need a lot of time not just to make sure you get your edits just right but also the fact that some computers are working their hardest to make everything look good, sound good, etc. Overall, the long nights of working on the announcer audio parts, and working towards creating something that can make you very grateful for what you have, but also have that simple yet fun creepy side to it was super fun. This final has shown me how much information I have gained over this term and I am happy to show it off. I look forward to more fun adventures like this in the program and getting to use some more creative ideas that spout from my head. Hope you enjoy and thanks for watching. -Alex