Angeline's Paradisiaque Palaise

Archive for September, 2010

Reflection Video 1

Life is not easy i have to say. When I looked back to our first video , I found we have been somewhere I have never been. And it is a good expeience to work with different types of people, and encourage them to work with you . Also i was inspired by different people . They gave me their honest suggestions and encourage me to do better.

1.  Creating ideas

The idea  is based on the poem. and after interviewed with the poet , i just got the idea about how to make a good visual explanation and development from words. The poem is abstract but the visual is going to different way it is vivid and telling the audience stories.

Based on the interview with poet, we want to create  a friendly and easy-going atmosphere online video. it is about an interesting and simple story but we used some visual skills to make audience laugh and relax. It is not punching them by heavy emotions, it is touching their mind.

2.  I am more familiar with stop-motion creating.

As i really like stop-motion effects , but i was not so sure about the whole process about how to create a stop motion video.  So making video A is an opportunity for me to learn. And we made it finally. But imagination by different environments and locations.  we asked the actors to do some actions with imagination and plans for editing.

3.  i gained more final cut skills

The cool thing is that the video we made is more like cartoon ,  more funny by putting images we created to our video.  As a very useful tool, final cut makes the original video combined with images perfectly.   We do not treat those still images as simple as before, it can be a unique video , and it also can work well with other format images.  It did change our point of view.

4.   How to meet the deadline

The deadline of the sketch and the final product is very strict, so the whole shooting and editing plan has to follow the deadline carefully as well.    The whole group has to be very well organized about each date of each part.

the group meeting and shooting  dates are bold and distinct from other events in my diary.     And we have to deal with different schedule with group members and actors.  Some changes may influence the whole project accomplishment.    So sometimes we have to have Plan B after Plan A.

5.  Teamwork

I have to say it is difficult and also it is very important.  This project also helped me to improve my communication skills and time management. Sometimes , there is different ideas among different group members.  Sometimes I felt like i was pushed by some ideas which are hard to accept for me . But the thing is that we discussed our ideas through with patience.    And also I learnt to listen to others’ suggestions and never to be embarrassed to correct myself.

6. be confident

sometimes we are not sure about our own selves. but the thing is that you never know if you never try. well. To be smart is to know what the stupid is. I think I was that stupid enough to try my ideas and give out my opinions so i would never make the same mistake again.

Also thanks to the regrets , so i gonna be aware of them.

So Hey the next video ! i can make u better !

stop-motion

Good news , they replied me !

After heard of that my group mates complain that those emails that they sent to those professionals still have no reply, I put more effort in contact with potential guest speakers, and also keep looking for more , finally I got 4 replies which means that we do not need to worry there are not enough professionals will come to our seminar . yeah . !  But i think 4 is too many and Rose told me the same thing , so i thanked that filmmaker in USA and apologized.

1. Ron Brown  :  Professor teaching people how to get a media job
also his new tv series is a web-based series and it’s making money from Day One ! and he said he s happy to tell you guys all about it and how to do it.

http://www.getamediajob.net/

2.  Sean Carney:   he has recently set up a production company Red Snow Productions. For the past year he has been Producing a short film titled ‘Shoo Death, Don’t Bother Me’ and has been researching and utilizing social media techniques in marketing for films, so in that sense he said he knows the subject quite well. so he would be happy to help out .

3. Anthon

http://www.melbournefilms.com/

Melbourne Films helps companies meet their video communication as well as web and multimedia solutions everyday. Whatever they need, we have the ideas, the drive and the vision to help you. We inspire our works to continuosly grow with strong support by its passionate and highly skilled in-house team. Our extensive and trusted network of creative professionals means we can fulfill short-term turnaround and a range of varying business needs – from anywhere in the world.

4. And I also got a reply from a filmmaker ( he was from USA)  , he also replied me, but as u mentioned we ve already got a lot speakers . So i think I will just leave it here .

week 7

This week we had a workshop about stop-motion.    As we know, stop-motion is a useful technique for us to create frame by frame, and it is about creating illusions.

So before we create our stop-motion videos we have to think about the actions of characters, and their locations.  And we have to take notes of it. And visualizing our ideas is also important, like making a storyboard. And we need to do is to prepare the scene where the photographs will be taken, especially about the illumination. Even a little change of lighting and figure positions will affect the persuasiveness of the movie.

Here is a useful website, teaching some methods of creating stop-motion videos.

http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/handbook/

and here is a good collage website of stop-motions. http://www.motionn.com/search/label/Stop%20motion

Combined with our workshop and my research, I got what I expected to  learn :

Stay out of the way of or position the light source so you don’t create distracting shadows over your animation that change with each frame. Set your camera’s white balance and exposure settings on manual mode so they don’t change with each shot. When you are beginning, try shooting the sequences where characters are moving. in stop motion. When they are talking, just take single shots of their faces. It speeds up the process, and it actually looks okay.

the more frames per second, the smoother, but more time must be invested. Don’t get discouraged if your video turns out to be very short. An hour’s worth of work may turn into a 30 second video. It all depends on the frame per second rate. You can use anywhere from 6-30.