Landon Coleman MUL 101

The title of my movie is called, “The Technological Error”. I was going for a PSA style video that showcases the addiction to cellphones. I think that it has an intensity that is captured well and shown thoroughly. People these days use technology heavily and it is almost essential to have a phone at this point. I wanted to basically test my workflow and see if I could do the work that I imagined. I wanted to use all the software that I had learned this year including Audition, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. I also wanted to use my camera to take the video since I had only used an iPhone to record before. Trying all these things required me to learn many things like how to videotape using a real camera, how to do certain edits in Premiere Pro, and how to create text animations in After Effects. This project proved to be a challenge and there was a learning curve for sure. Everything took longer than I planned and nothing went as I expected. My girlfriend was a huge help in this project and I want to thank her for being a great actor. As for the things that I enjoy about this project, I really loved the outcome once the music was added. I think the music is at a perfect audio level to carry the viewer through and bring a higher understanding of the characters’ emotions. I think I demonstrated how much life can revolve around something as small as a phone. My main goal is for even one person to have some extra motivation to get up and go outside and take a break from technology.

This project ended up taking a very different turn than I had expected. Originally, I was planning on creating a serious chase scene, before providing a comedic break in the very last scene. I had to pivot a little bit after reviewing the shots from the shoot. The lack of a tripod or a good camera (other than my phone camera) made the shots much more difficult to create in the way that I had imagined. For one it was very difficult to keep a still frame without a tripod. No matter what, the angle of the camera will always shift enough to noticeable throw off the frame. For another, the rapidly encroaching darkness brought a lot of grain to several of the shots.

I had decided to plan the shoot right before the sun started to go down, so that I could have the growing darkness coincide with the escalation of events in the film. What I hadn’t anticipated, was how hard it was to correct the phone camera for low light. Even when I brought the lighting up in the darkest of shots, they appeared much more grainy. I had been expecting some grain to show up, though I didn’t think it would be quite so bad.

These difficulties resulted in a lower overall quality of the shots than I had hoped for and it led to a choppy narrative. To correct this, I decided to instead go for a comedic tone for the whole film. Editing was crucial in changing the narrative, and I was able to (hopefully) flip this project into a slightly more successful one.

Thanks for watching!

Gabriel Martinez

With my project, my goal was to capture how life was before and during COVID-19. In a somewhat creative style of a “documentary”. Being stuck at home for months had made me reflect on my life more. It made me realize how much freedom we had to do whatever we desired. Hanging out with friends, going to concerts, doing anything really. We did not have to bat any eye before leaving our homes. This pandemic made everyone realize how quickly everything can be taken away from us. After most enjoyable things were taken away from us, we’re left with being stuck at home. Living the same day over and over.

In the beginning part of my video, pre-COVID-19, I included various clips from my life. I made sure to keep the beginning all fun and saturated because that’s how life felt. It slowly fades to black and white to showcase the drastic change the world has taken. The world feels empty even though life is still going on. The COVID-19 lock down was very gradual, which was why I had a slow fade from bright colors to darkness. Then in March was when it went downhill, so I included some COVID-19 statistics to paint the picture more clearly. I mentioned in my video that we are essentially living the same day over and over. Which is why you see many of similar clips in the end repeating, to show that as of right now we are stuck in an endless loop of living.

My experience with this project was very pleasant. I enjoyed looking for the perfect clips to include in the beginning part of my project. Not only that, I had also enjoyed going out and recording real life footage. It was nice to get out of my house and see how everyone is doing during this pandemic. I went out on a Saturday so I got the chance to see everyone at the Saturday market. It was really interesting to see so many people bunched together wearing masks and what not. I put together the whole project in premiere pro and did voiceovers in it as well. I edited the colors of the videos in premiere as well. I thought that lining up the videos with the audio turned out really nice in the end. Overall, my experience with this project was wonderful and I am very pleased with the outcome! It will also be nice to look back at this in a moments time.

I decided that I was going to do my final project about a story that I wrote in 3rd grade called The Living Sunstone. I wanted to make an overview of the what the book entails to make it seem like it was a cool new book that had just been released. I was planning on using one of my mics to record my audio so I could get it crisp with no background noise but I somehow managed to lose both of them when I moved months ago. So since I didn’t have my mics, I had to use my phone mic. I hope that it doesn’t produce too terrible of audio and that listening to this is somewhat bearable.

I decided that I was going to use old pictures that I had drawn for the book back when I wrote it as well as some new drawings that I made for this video. They’re supposed to look childish and funny since that’s the type of art style I used when making the book back in the day. I wanted to make sure that during the overview, I displayed the correct images so you could get an idea of what the characters were supposed to look like.

Overall, I think that I did a decent job given my circumstances. I think it turned out okay. I would’ve really liked to have my mic to have better audio. I think I did an okay job of explaining the book to possibly entice readers to want to read the book, even though it’s not a published book nor professional in any way. I left out the main plot twist so that if anyone does “read” it, they won’t know the twist in the end!

My project was very fun and exciting to make. Despite there being countless distractions for the actors considering the actors either had children or were children. Most of my time was spent setting the scenes and getting the best lighting possible. The place that I was filming had terrible lighting for shooting, which is expected most houses aren’t built for videography. The process was difficult and I wish that the actors and actresses were more flexible and less busy with their lives. I noticed many mistakes that could’ve been fixed if I had more resources and more freedom with the actors and actresses. 

My biggest obstacle was most definitely time, time got in the way of good lighting, actors and actresses responsibilities, and my time with editing considering how many projects I have to do. When I was doing scenes it was hard because it is hard to explain what I want in some scenes, so I ended up acting out the scene in front of my cast multiple times to almost each scene right. I had to record my actors with a separate audio device to get quality audio. Overall it was a challenging experience and that is what made it fun. I had a fun time making jokes, and messing around in between scenes to counteract me ordering them around each scene. 

If I was to do this kind of project again, I would most definitely worry way more about lighting and try to get something less complicated to fit into three minutes of recording.  I would also find actors or actresses that were way freer and I would try multiple angles for each scene, maybe even have multiple cameras in each scene if possible. I did enjoy this project, even though it was a little bit stressful.

Sources: The music from the table scene I got from Adobe Stock and I am allowed to use it. I got the emergency broadcast noise from: https://freesound.org/home/ .

So my final project was supposed to be an epic kaiju battle I enacted with plush animals I kept from my childhood. As the project went on I realized I would have to lean into the cheapness and read the cheesy bad names and over the top narration completely seriously and treat it more like a video story book than the battle I initially imagined.

I found the entire process frustrating as I had to learn how to manage elements in Premiere and Audition with no real instruction and the top rated tutorials online being five or six years old. I have learned that I do not like video editing as it was presented to me in this project and I hope my short video is entertaining to some of you.

I think I could have done a lot more with even a single assistant and a budget for armature wire. As one person doing this and my lack of familiarity with the programs I’m happy with what I turned out even if it is not objectively good.