Lushi's serious blog

In week one I’ve already set up some criteria in order to access if I’m consistently involving in the class/projects or not. I would say that I was doing not bad during the semester for this class. Basic things like classes attended, assignments handed in on time and learned from the class are done. I’ve attended most of the workshops and reflect on what I’ve learned from them, such as the Time-lapse workshop and the stop-motion workshop. Apart from the workshops, I focused a lot on the reflection of my own work as well as thoughts about other people’s videos.

In this case, the process of receiving feedbacks and making changes is my main activity that most influenced me as a learner this semester. This process occurs from our version of video, then receiving the feedbacks from class and the finally adjusted video. The process of learning from feedbacks starts from the first sketch till the final presentation of the second video. In the first sketch presentation, I started to think critically towards the feedback from the peers. Especially for the first sketch to the first video, I have rethought and considered the opinions from the class and keep adjusting our ideas. When it comes to the second sketch we could explain our ideas better in related to both the video and the poem. At this stage, we have more decisions over the peer’s opinions since this time everyone has a different taste towards the sketch. Then, we need to decide what is the best to express our concept rather than fitting other’s tastes. As a learner, I keep changing myself to a better position, adjusting my study path and absorbing critiques. In the second video, we made more decisions regarding to what we want and how we want to express ourselves. I think I’m more confident due to the process of getting feedbacks, realising problems and tackling problems. The other activity that influenced me most should be dealing with chaos and changes. During shootings and decision making, there are a lot of sudden changes and chaos. I have to make decisions fast, organised schedules nicely and able to think of back up plans quickly. In our decision process, we always keep challenging our ideas and change to a totally different idea. In this time I need to adjust all the plans that associated with the first idea to a brand new schedule. I would say this is the most difficult part for me since the changes of minds and decisions always happened in a second and I have to re-organise everything. Even though, this is a good experience for me since the media industry itself always changes. This activity builds up my confidence in working under pressure, under deadline and adapting quickly to new stuffs.

Overall, this course is the first one that made me so enthusiastic about the assignments and tasks. I would say it is the most participated course I’ve ever had in university due to the frequent production making. I also had a lot of time in reflecting my works, not only by words but in action. This is obvious when I looked back to the sketches and the final videos. There are continuing improvements and challenges in my works as well as my learning path.

I was sick and didn’t attend the Canon 5D workshop this week, but I found some notes about it from Liyana’s blog.

* don’t use above 800(ISO) in dark if u dont want noise in your footage.
* canon has the noise reduction feature.. for shooting night
* fix zoom lense (prime lenses)- eg.50mm
* lenses- know how far you are going to shoot. different looks come from different lenses.
* light testing- ISO, do quick test, try different ISO and aperture  to se which one looks the nicest and image quality.
* shutter- how fast your shutter closes, 16 -60 per second.(rolling shutter)
* when shooting with fluorescent light be careful because the lights are always flickering.- try different settings and look at your test in your laptop.
* there are video profiles in the cameras. menu> picture styles; monochrome, portrait, nuetral etc.
* weights and hand away from camera to stabilize shots. take image stabilization off when doing video.
* frame tear- can’t really handle very fast movements.
* zoom in function on camera- zooms the live view function.
* sound- plugin mixer and mixer to mic because the canon 5D is not really good for sound without external mics.
* use filters  for depth of feel look- have epiture wider open use filters to take out light and give u depth of feel

Post production:
* canon 5D will automatically use H264 compression. get it out of file format before going into final cut.
* 5d to RGB- software(new), MPEG stream clip(software)- capture footage to apple proRess 422HQ (HD).

Tips:
* dont point it towards the sun
* while changing lense- make sure clean, environment clean. keep body facing down so dust dont get in.
* lense shifting when focus. photographic lenses will distort when changing focus.
* 15 minutes limit for video. doesn’t matter how big memory cards are.
* sandisk have recovery software- if crash take card out and dont shoot over it.
* exposure pulls- going from light to dark or dark to light- 5D not very good.

When I was using 5D for the time-lapse, I sort of play around it and knew some basic settings before taking the images. Before using 5D, the techs had taught me some basic stuff about shooting large quantity of images. Things like adjusting the aperture and ISO to a lower level can minimized the size of image so that the storage won’t finish so quickly. One of the issues I have when I was using 5D is the shuttle speed. I was experiencing different shuttle speed and check which one suits me. But in fact I couldn’t manage it since the test shots are not changing a lot, at least I didn’t notice any changes. When I was shooting for the second video, we wanted to capture the car lights in front of Flinders Station at night. At that time, I was very confusing about the numbers of shuttle speed and don’t know which one is capturing more light and which one is not. I saw some pretty images playing with shuttle speed before, but most of them are stills and I’m not sure about it with time-lapse. Another issue is the pre-set image size. I always confused if it’s already in 16:9 or I need to crop it into the size I want at the end. According to the tips above, I also have problem with the compression and quality with the images and wonder they belong to Pal or HD.  Apparently, I need to put more time on technical aspects and play around the equipments more often. Then I can handle technologies in a better level.

Changes had been made for the second video final presentation. Comparing to the first video, the changes are not so dramatic but more of tightening the draft.

We re-shoot most of the time-lapses; adding music and texts at the beginning and the end; shorten the duration of time-lapse; re-shoot some of the footage to avoid overexposure problem and wrap up the end better. After presenting, the feedbacks are similar to the last time – everyone got his/her own taste towards the video. Some think it’s better to have subtitle and others prefer none; some think it’s better to keep the time-lapse silent while others think it’s awkward to become silent between videos; some thinks the time-lapse are too short but we wanted to keep the video concise… Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the video myself and a little extended of the time-lapse duration will be perfect.

For other groups, they presented some excellent works as well. The group playing with projector and lights is very impressive. They seemed good at trying out new styles and ideas. They got rid of the music and put voice over instead in the final version, which I think the intension is good because the voice over can express the poem and the video a lot better. Personally I prefer the music in the sketch because it’s got rhythm and beats that can express the emotion of the video very well. The animation video is also impressive. They combine stop motion and computer graphic together, real person versus drawings. I really like how they zoom in into something then zoom out to be another thing. The editing is good and clean while the sound effect is matched with the drawings nicely. The ghost one was good but sometimes confused me. I guess it’s too abstract for me regarding to the editing and the image. Though, I like one of the scenes when the camera was in the water. To me it was creepy and scary, which fits the poem ‘ghost’ very well. And then the group using split screen and different angles, the style and idea is good. But I think there is space for improvement for example, while using different angles to present one scene, it was obvious that the actions are not matching and you can tell it’s shooting in one camera then edit them together. There are some details that needed to be fixed. Likewise, the handling of Facebook and the ending was a bit too rough and confusing. Maybe it will be better to make the browsing clearer and the theme of using Facebook more obvious.

This week’s class is more relax and we did a review of the first video. We summed up a few points from the feedbacks we got for the final presentation and in process of changing.

1. Firstly we re-shoot the scene where the girl supposed to be lying down into the girl sneak to the boy’s computer and started her own version of fighting. In related to this, because the situation has changed to the girl’s point of view, we also shorten the ending to the boy giving flower to the girl and cut the winning part of the boy.
2. I re-edit all the images with an original drew blood bar and more detail graphics.
3. I shorten the fighting bits from three rounds to two rounds, cutting out those repetitive movements and tighten the structure.
4. We looked for new soundtracks with copyright free and dubbed it over the old one. We want to make sure no party is offended.

Though, there are some technical issues remain: the images are not 16:9 and the frames are tighten enough; there are more to do with the colour, it’s better if we can change it to a more video game-related tone; As for the new shot, it was not obvious that the girl was playing the game instead of the boy. I should edit that bit slightly longer so that the audiences have enough time to connect the scene with the previous plot. If I could be more prepared before I shoot, it won’t be so many problems while editing. The biggest problem is the framing of the images. We were keeping it too wide and the actions are not in focus; the sizes of the images were not set as 16:9 and I need to do extra editing at the end. However, we really tried to improve the video and we will do more to fix it until everyone’s satisfied!

This week is presenting the sketch of second video. From many of the groups, time lapse became the popular animation to use after the workshop. Of course our group uses time lapse as well. We wanted to do something artistic again and failed again. We got quite some feedbacks from the class:

• whether the time lapse remain silent or play around with sound effect or the atmosphere soundscape
• whether the view of ‘us’ is necessary since we didn’t make it obvious enough
• the appearing of the girl is sort of a surprise at the end and should we make it more noticeable
• the freeze frame is too long (I just didn’t cut it down so it won’t be a problem)
• should we add subtitle or not
• there are still some technical issues like overexposure and image quality that needed to be fixed
• the timing of time lapse is not consistent
• the overall structure is still bit loose
• how to wrap up the ending and when should the text came in

Since it’s the sketch of the video, we still need to re-shoot or fix many details. This time is hard for us, because everyone has different opinions that we can’t fit everyone’s taste. By looking at other group’s work we were inspired in some way. For example, the time lapse of the sky from the other group was beautiful and we re-design our time lapse in a wider point of view; the water time lapse is also amazing since we never thought of manipulating the speed of time lapse. It looks very nice when the time lapse changes from slow to fast then slow again. Those are really creative ideas and really impressed. After the sketch presentation, we thought a lot of ways to improve our video

• Should we use atmosphere sound effect/pure music/silent with the time lapse?
• Should we use voice over or text when adding the poem into the video?
• Should we leave it as no subtitle?
• How can we improve the image quality?
• Should we re-shoot time lapse since we have different ideas towards the aesthetic style?
• How to deal with the last frame? Simply fade to black? Adding transitions?
• We also want to try controlling the shuttle speed of the camera to get a better view of Flinders Station.

Finally having stop motion workshop. Even though I tried stop motion for the first video, I still have a lot of questions towards this animation. Stop motion can be shot in many ways, you can either take pictures shot by shot, put the camera in continue mode or shoot in video then take out some of the images. In designing the motions, the guest told us to start with some still position, then go to the actions and still. In this way the motion will look more reasonable and look better. There’s another thing I learned from the workshop, I can actually open the video in Photoshop and edit the layers. I didn’t know this and I was so stupid to edit the images one by one. Though, I checked my version of Photoshop and seemed that it’s too old to have that function. Or other people had suggested me to use Final Cut Pro and just added layers. I should have known the information a bit earlier so that I can save sometime and did better for my first video.

After the workshop, I started to think about the movement and design of my previous work. When I was shooting the stop motion fighting, I didn’t try much on the flow of the movement and the structure. It would be nicer to make a better plan of the movement. What I’m not satisfied with is our stop motion is too fluent. It doesn’t have the kind of visual effects that it supposed to be. Also, after the last workshop about time lapse, I now know a better way to deal with stop motion. These two workshops had been very helpful if they could start a bit  earlier.

This week here we comes time lapse. Actually before the workshop I already watched a few clips of time lapse but I didn’t know how to do it. This time I finally get to know the true face of time lapse. In my perspective, it’s sort of like stop motion but mainly focus on landscape, objects rather than movements. Time lapse is beautiful, especially for those took long time to capture the landscape. I also think that time lapse is good to be the transition between movements. In the workshop it was my first time to know 5D and the small time controller. Likewise, the guest told us to use Quicktime to edit the image sequence. It’s actually very helpful to know this. When I was dealing large amount of images before for stop motion, I was using iMovie, Premiere and Monkey Jam. All those three softwares are hard to adjust image sequences. While Quicktime is a lot easier when it comes to import and setting up frame rate. In the studio, the guest also taught us how to adjust the photo size, aperture and etc before we start. This is also important because in my previous experience, I never care that much and always realised problems when I came to editing. When dealing with images, it’s very crucial to do the preparation work, adjusting everything then start taking the photos. It is not saying that we can’t edit afterwards, but when your work involves hundreds of pictures, it will be tough to edit that much.

Aesthetic, always confusing and now it’s on the discussing board. Like we heard from the class, many of the popular online videos are made with no budget and low quality. But then, there are also some really good quality online videos, mostly have a main theme almost like a short film. In my point of view, the reason why those low quality videos became succeed relies heavily on the content and the creativity. Many homemade videos are funny, capturing an impressed moment, showing a new style of life or discovering something new. They are more connected to the daily life, reducing the distance between audiences and the content as well as full of creativity compared with the traditional programs. Then how to differentiate us with non professionals? I guess not everyone enjoys low quality videos all the time. For the content, we can always be creative but close to life; for the style, we can play with high quality and low quality, better editing and better use of the characteristic of the small screen o computers.

Finally we came to present the final draft of our first video. Other groups’ videos are amazing. I think they are really good at handling the abstract aesthetic and the colouring of the images. One is the split screen, the colour was very beautiful and there was a small surprised; while everyone was focusing on the one with a guy talking but there is another guy walking towards the rail track slowly and lay down. The sound effect was also nice because it feels like going with the mood of the video, and manages to control the feel of the video. The music video is about ghost and focus on the sound track specially made for the poem. I think it was nice to play with the lights and the rhythm, and this merges the sound track with the visuals perfectly together. The other one is a typical online video since it uses split screen, stop motion and it’s about social networking. I think that is the best one to fit in all the tags that we meant to put in the videos. The content explores the disadvantages of social networking, the desire of real interaction and the hypocritical side of the society. They use stop motion as the transition of the girl with a mask climbing on her, which is creative as well. Though I think the ending of the first sketch is better because it concludes video better. As for the stop motion video, it’s simple and concise. Though I think it’s a bit too short and hard to relate it to the poem. We’ve also got some feedback on our final video as well. Actually the final video is still a bit rough because we really don’t have enough time. Feedbacks include more effects on the fighting scene; a tighten structure of the story; fight scene still too long; the colour is not contrast enough and the ending is a bit confused. In fact I really put a lot of effort on Photoshop while I need to edit images one by one. But I would try to polish my video a bit more and work harder on the editing.