In this project, it is very difficult to choose what topic I want to do. I was very struggling to choose between telling my own story or Aesop’s fables. I realized Aesop’s fables were very interesting, and I started to find some fables that I like and that I can make different in my own style. I decided to use “The Wolf and Goat”. However, I was very insecure about my voice. I have been using my phone to record my voice to tell the story. After I practiced over and over again, I kept challenging myself about what I can do better, I started to imitate my voice while in their conversation. I found out that roleing in is the best way you can tell a good story. Also, one of my strategies is to record your story in sections, because when you have sections of your story you can very easily edit in adobe audition or other software. And the most important is if one of your sections that you don’t like then you only need to re-recording that section instead of recording the whole story again. I do enjoy this project because when I tried to adopt my voice, I was very proud and satisfied. Especially when I put the background music and some sound effects together, it turned out good. I hope that everyone will enjoy my audio.
My personal experience with this final Multi Media Project was very exciting. The video that I created came out the way I wanted it to come out but honestly it came out better then what I thought it would. Some challenges I’ve faced was editing the video and putting the correct type of lighting. Once I was able to understand how I could make my video more cinematic it all come to me naturally. This was by far one of my best projects, I even made sure to create a water mark for my video to prove I own it. Making cinematic videos is very fun for me and I enjoy doing this kind of work, it reminds me of how Hollywood movies are made. I learned a lot from this project and I could say that there is more work to be done so I can improve on my videos.
Its been such a long time since I used Premiere Pro. I started this project and finished within 24 hrs. I was so stumped on what to film. I love storytelling through cinematography, but I’ve never actually been good at writing or thinking of stories. Though I’m proud of myself for completing this assignment in 24 hours, there are so many things I would have done differently. (Spoilers Ahead) I don’t like the placement of the second to last shot in my film. I think its a nice shot, but it doesn’t set up/support the last shot. The beginning shot is too shaky and angled funky. I wish I had taken a few more shots of it to have backups. During the editing process, I realized I lost a lot of footage and/or it wasn’t organized. If I were to do this differently I would have spent more time planning in pre-production. Overall, this was such a fun project. I hope you all enjoy!
When I imagined making a “movie” I agonized over what I could make. A day in my life seemed so boring. I just sit in front of my computer doing my classwork.
On the morning I was to drop my daughter at my mother’s house, I briefly discussed with my partner what I should do for this project we locked eyes, discovering a seed of an idea. And it was ripe for the picking!
Starts Here, a plant nursery, is owned and run solely by my mother. She has just begun this life-long ambition after a separation. A sentiment I think many of us can relate to. She is of the earth and shrinks from technology. So, this was a way to help her business shine with little to no effort on her part.
I had originally planned to include more audio from her, but as anyone with a toddler knows, adult projects are often in the wind. Essentially, I captured very little of her talking about Starts Here. Even so, I was amazed at how it came together.
I was able to break away and film some of her starts and vegetable garden on what was a magnificently blustery day. Feeling discouraged about what my final product would look like with only videos from a winter garden, I told myself I would cut in some of the photos she has shared with me and plowed forward.
It worked.
I then realized that Starts Here is still without a logo and so I had to mock that up as well.
That also worked.
Finally, when I sat down to use Premiere Pro, I realized that the application is way over my head. I felt as if I were bumbling in the dark. There is another instructor who had mentioned that there are students who do video editing all on their phones! I thought, “No way! I can do anything. I’ll use Premiere Pro! I got this.” I did not.
So, I checked out the app she suggested and the reviews were dismal. I told myself I had to start somewhere and just downloaded the top-rated video editing app, a sort of desperation. I opted for the 7-day ‘Pro’ trial with YouCut as Teresa’s words echoed in my head, “This is a quick turnaround.” Reflecting on it, that phrase helped me stay in motion.
Once in the app things were very straightforward. I lost track of time as I built and learned the task of video editing. In the end, I had to edit down quite a bit. Per assignment instructions, I tried to get the photos to switch on the beat, but oof, that was proving difficult. I was very limited in the audio the YouCut provided. I was unsure if I had the time to search online for domain-free music that would suit both my and Start Here’s preferences. That said, I hope I never have to hear that guitar solo again!
I feel much more confident in video editing and I might even try at using Premiere Pro again.
I would really love some feedback, as I am considering posting this video on the e-commerce site I am mocking up for Starts Here.
Well I’m glad the turn in date finally got here because I have been working on this for weeks and it still felt like crunch time at the end. I sat and edited audio until 11 am which I told myself was my deadline and had to export. I had a lot of fun shooting this with my daughters. The staff at Mama Mayra’s Kitchen were so nice and friendly and helpful. There was a slight language gap but they worked with us and we got it done without disturbing the other customers. I filmed all of the girls shots in one afternoon. They were all starving when we finally got in because it took over an hour to get everything setup and the outside shots done before it was to dark or started to rain. I had to go back 2 other times in in order to get all the shots I wanted after I started editing and putting it together. I did another filming at home to get the interviews because I didn’t want to try and do it in the restaurant. I recorded the audio in the mic directly on to my computer and did the filming on my camera but when I started trying to match the 2 in all the different cuts I realized that the way I was doing couldn’t be the way. So, I ended up just using the audio from the camera and made it work. I can’t wait to learn how to put it all together.
This is the final project for my Introduction to Media Arts class, but hopefully with effort, not the last post I make for my blog. This project was a challenge, the kind that pushed me and I had some success with this project because of lessons I learned from my first project, and there were also some mishaps and new lessons to learn from this time around too. Overall I was able to convey a fun little story that I enjoyed making and I hope, makes sense.
I’m sitting down in class and the teacher, Teresa Hughes, puts a three page guideline for making a film on the desk. Add that to the list, I think. I had several projects in various stages going on for all of my classes, and since I’m in the Media Arts program, there’s no big test at the end of the semester or mid-terms but sizable creative projects. While juggling these projects I was dealing with a problem, What am I going to work on first? After a week or two of thinking about it and that not working, I set a timer to come up with as many ideas as possible for this project, then a timer to write on each idea to find the most workable story. With the best ideas I set a timer to flesh out each of the couple of good ideas I had. Out of that short process I had a story to work with.
Pre Production was demanding, I hadn’t written a story in several years because I didn’t think I’d know how to. I used one of the Production work days in class to come up with a storyboard, using ideas and feedback gained from another class to make my storyboarding process more fruitful. The class was called “Concepts of Visual Literacy”. What I did differently in storyboarding here versus my first film was give the characters more facetime and setup, action and reaction shots, where we see the character look at someone or something, look through their eyes to what they do or are looking at and then see their face again to see what we are supposed to feel. With the subject of my film containing a sense of urgency, it was very important to capture the feeling of each character and look into their emotional experience.
Since I put off writing the story so long, I also had to work very quickly to find talented actors and fortunately I was able to work with family friends young Emily and Andrew and a couple of adult classmates Melia and Malakhai, everyone did excellently beyond my expectations! Thank you.
Behind the scenes were lots of laughs and funny moments because most of us were new to either being in front or behind the camera. Other important pre production aspects to keep my mind on was keeping the people who helped me happy to work with me. I bought food, tried my best to keep them warm and give as clear directions as possible as well as have as clear of an idea of who their characters were supposed to be and the story as possible so my actors were not performing blindly. Nevertheless, some of the best moments were from unexpected improvisation in the way they decided to convey the emotion or reaction I was looking for.
There is so much more I want to say about finding the location and losing wallets and finding unexpected surprises we found on the set at the river, or how I forgot my SD card at home and had to borrow one from the young actors’ dad. Thank you. But here is a little bit on my post production process:
From feedback on my first film from a panel of film critics I learned that sound is very important, if not more important than what you see on the camera. Stitching the shots together was a fairly straightforward and quick process compared to finding royalty-free sound effects and music, and then cutting these sounds together to make sense with what was happening on the screen. I’m grateful to the artists and nameless faces out there that created these clips for people doing creative work to use in their product. I’m no pro but the audio in this film is a step up from what I’ve done before. I learned a lot about basic audio from Mel Stark, my “Time-based Tools” professor and audio engineer and Teresa.
I’m looking forward to experiment with another film project soon, it won’t be my first time.
For my final project in Intro to Media Arts, I decided to follow up on the last project I did. Using my light board and art supplies I created a stop motion short film. The film was made using transfer paper, pens, pencils, and erasers. I started my project with the idea of having a girl ironing a shirt. Her cat walks up and meows, but she ignores her. The cat jumps onto the ironing board, the girl tells her to get down, then bends down to the floor. The cat then jumps down and walks between her legs and boops her nose. I struggled so much with the proportions of an ironing table and when I was done with my thumbnails, I realized it was way too long. I got rid of most of the project, and just did the end scene. Though I love drawing, Repeating the process can be a bit tiring, and repetitive. I also am not used to drawing cartoon animals so my cat drawing was a bit funky.
One of my favorite parts about this project was finalizing it. After the meticulous drawings were finished, I shot images, credits, and the Title. Setting up the camera and quickly taking shots is very fun for me. When I imported them into premiere, I found myself extremely bored again editing the timing of the images. As soon as I was done I added some music and felt rather content with my project.
Ive always wanted to record my art and have it be shown in a fun way. Im excited so say I finally got to do it, and that I wasn’t unimpressed with my work. If I would have given myself more time and supplies, I think that I could make a much more put together piece. Thankyou for watching, I hope you enjoyed it.
For my final project I decided I would do something goofy with the word game “Mad Libs”. The video is a collage of video, audio and still images. The Mad Libs story I have chosen is about about the concept of “home sweet home”. The music track is a homemade version of the song “Home on the Range”.
The funnest part of this project was getting together with two of my friends to record the music for the video. I have not recorded music in a very long time so this was exciting for me. I purposely applied static to the music file to replicate the sound of a very old recording. The end result of the music track does not sound like our original recording, but had to be stretched out to full-fill the minimum time limit for the project and to fit with the voice recordings. The music track was originally cut in my friends basement recording studio, and afterwards I ran it through Audition before adding it to the video.
The video that I used was shot with my Elph camera. I used Eugene Skinner’s cabin as the major image for the classical rustic ideal of what “home sweet home” is and to match with the old time feel of the music track. The other images were taken from Google images and spiced into the video.
I admit, some of the audio and video transitions are a little rough. Such is life for a beginner in the media arts. I just keep faith that as time continues I will improve with all of the new tools that I am learning to work with.
It was fun being in a introductory class with a diverse group with many different creative influences. I look forward to seeing everyone next term!
Roller derby is so much more than throwing elbows and wearing fishnets. Within a derby team there is so much community and passion. Through this video I had hoped to demonstrate that very notion. Getting ahold of the Emerald City Rollers was super easy, yet I never actually expected a reply. Within a day after contacting them through Facebook I was able to get in touch with their social media gal. She informed be days, times, and locations I could get some good filming. That very Saturday I was able to go out and film a bout (a game). I was there for a good two hours, and sadly because of my poor filming had very little useable footage. I showed up with two Gopros, a T5i, and no tripod. I thought I was recording the whole thing on the Gopro, and didn’t realize I wasn’t until I brought it to class, and I only had a few two second videos. I didn’t use a tripod so footage on the T5i was incredibly shaky and unusable. In the end the majority of my video is footage from the very last day of shooting. I filmed and interviewed the Emerald City’s recreational team (T-rec) at one of their last practices of the season. It was super awesome to actually interact with the players and hear some of their stories.
I came into this project with too high of expectations and I let myself down. I think my message and overall idea was in the right place for an interesting project. I just don’t think I carried it out fully how I wanted to. My participants were so awesome and gave me such great content. I just don’t feel like I gave them justice. At the bout I was only a spectator and couldn’t really interact with players. I wouldn’t want to take their focus out of the game anyways. It was the same kind of feeling at their practice. I didn’t want to impose or distract or make anyone uncomfortable with the camera. Because of my shyness and the feeling of being an inconvenience I feel as if my project came out flat. Almost every clip in my video was from the same spot. I wish I could have been more creative with my shots without distracting the players. In a year or so when I am on the team I’d like to try this project over again with more creative and dynamic shots. hopefully next time I will be a participant and not a spectator.
In the end I am happy I constructed my project from a topic close to my heart. I’m happy I ended up footage to work with, and I’m excited to have made the contact with this team and get to join up with them in January.
This video is inspired by a time that I went to go play basketball. Sometimes, the urge to go play basketball and get outside is so strong that I have forgotten to even bring a basketball. Then, my only hope is to hope that someone is already there playing so I can use theirs.
Ironically, that is the thesis for this video. I wanted to make something that I relate to while also making something that is a little weird and funny and odd.
To walk to a basketball court without a basketball is quite obviously not the best move, but to get to the basketball court and by chance find a ball of any kind, you are most likely to make do with what you have at hand at the time.
I decided to use my friend Jacob for this role because he also knows the feeling of wanting to play basketball while simultaneously not having all the resources, and making do with what he can find on a given court.
A sense I would strive to give a viewer through this video is relatibility, as well as a sense of can-do and make-do attitude.
My personal favorite part of this video is my post-production and continuity of the edits.
