3208 Doodlez

Ok, I'm in the lab copying the last disc. Right after this, I'll hand it in and this marks the end of this module. But before I say goodbye, I will do a quick recount of the events that happened for the past few days.


Short summary:
- I used Encore to do the DVD menu. A pretty simple menu I think. I wanted to do something more.... cool and extravagant... but alas.. no time!!! arghhhh!!
- I uploaded Assignment 4 on youtube 2 days ago and I am rather impressed at the quality of the video. Still quite good! wow... not bad...
- I edited the other Assignments and put them all in the DVD as intended. Yep yep. would like to post them on youtube now.
- I edited 10 clips worth of Learning Journal on After Effects and it took so long to render it that I couldn't do anything on After Effects as it renders! arghhhh!! -_- and the whole com lagged. Sheesh. I should have done the work at AS6.

Here are the links to the Assignments:
Assignment 1: http://nm3208.thruhere.net/
Assignment 2: http://nm3208a2.thruhere.net/
Assignment 3A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTyLEoofzII
Assignment 3B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMSmGj-1R5c (they disabled my audio!!! argh!!!)
Assignment 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNUbHM7U9es
Final Project (CNM): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-34kllLars
Final Project (Game Show): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9hK6v8VpIw

Will be updating this entry soon.

Here is the final video on YouTube:




Hope you enjoy it! :)

I just filmed the Learning Journal earlier today. It was SUPER FUNNYYYYY LA. Haha... Imagine talking to yourself in front of the camera while you're lying down.

>_< HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA.... LOLS. I really felt like I was going through a psychotherapy session with myself. It was quite.... therapeutic. Recounting what happened for the past few months and all. Haha...

I said quite a lot of things I realised. Each clip was like... around 5-10 minutes long. Yeah... I tend to ramble on and on and on and on and on.... AND THERE'S NO ONE AROUND TO SHUT ME UP. Yep. So there you go. One long Learning journal set of videos.

Ok, going to do more editing. Cya..

Ok, I just printed out the DVD cover design plus the accompanying CD design as well. Looks good in my opinion. Here's what it looks like:

Ok, here's some updates on these 2 Assignments.

1. I did the proper colour corrections and touch-ups with the curves and all. and OMG it looks so much better than before! WOW! :)))
2. Will be changing the Assignment 2 website a bit to suit to the theme more. Making it look grundgy and dirty and wat-not. But the pictures will be the same. I just have to do my aligning as per normal. I got used to that since Assignment 1.
3. Assignment 3 will have to stay the same in terms of pictures and lyrics I feel. I couldn't make it rhyme without changing a lot of the other stuff. It's like a snowball effect I'm afraid. But still, it's good enough to fit into the theme. So as of now, I'm just going to pour in more After Effects magic on it. The last time I did this assignment was during the time when I was still quite a noob at After Effects. But now I'm more comfortable with it, I really show try to do more about to make it look awesome.

Ok more to do now.

The name of this entry gives a little insight to what my theme will be for my portfolio. Bought the 'props' already. I'm getting help from Bibi on certain 'psychological' matters. And I'm ready for my session with the psychiatrist.

Hehe.

Won't tell you just yet... :)

Ok, we have finally reached the end of this whirlwind of a module! :) YAYNESS!!! I must say, I am both happy and sad that it is finally over. I really love my classmates. I really do. They make this whole module fun, on top of having a great lecturer Julian as well as the cool assignments that we had to do.

Despite the heavy workload we all had to endure over the past 12 weeks, I must say that I truly gained A LOT from this module as it exposes me to software and techniques which I would have other wise not have even begun to imagine or grab my hands on. I'm pretty glad with what I gained from this.

I'm happy that I'm no longer afraid of using After Effects. I feel quite comfortable using this software now. Premiere Pro is okay but I didn't get much chance to use this as most of my clips for the final projects had to be (in one way or another) be edited in After Effects. And so, it just felt more comfortable using After Effects teh whole way. But I daresay I'm comfortable with video editing software in general so it's not too bad I guess.

Ok, so its PORTFOLIO TIME!!! WHEEEEE!!!! :)

Well, I was offered to join the other girls in my class to do a collective portfolio with a "Survivor: Heroes VS Villains" theme of some sort but I rejected the offer as I wanted to do something different. Plus, I really wanted to learn how to create my own DVD menu from scratch by myself instead of having to rely on others to do the designs and effects for me.

Anyway, I really wanted to expose myself to Adobe Encore. I think it's important that CNM students like us should learn as much as we can about the various forms of medium and how to create them. How else can I effectively manage a team of designers one day (or advertising campaigns and the works) if I myself do not know how to create the essentials myself? What kind of a leader would I be then? I do not aim to simply do video-editing and designing all my life of course, although that's what I hope to start out with. I do have visions of going into the broadcasting industry and managing projects from a managerial standpoint and not from the "sit-down-and-listen-to-superiors-telling-you-what-to-do" standpoint. But I gotta start from the beginning and climb my way up. It's humbling and a necessary rite of passage I feel. Only then can you be a effective and respected leader.

The past few days had been hectic with presentations and assignment deadlines, so right now I'm going to get down and dirty with this final portfolio. I have this theme in mind but I do not want to reveal it here just yet. At first I thought of a bloody revenge theme but then...that would be similar to "Trapped" and such, right? The main idea there is portraying a specific emotion throughout the theme.

I choose to be different. I'm gonna try to see this from a different perspective altogether. I'm sorry but I really can't help myself when my creative juices are flowing. I don't usually settle for the ordinary. I love to brainstorm for new and original ideas. Makes my day just thinking about it. :) In my opinion, although I find my classmates' collective Survivor idea to be pretty awesome, I do worry for them as there are 8 of them and there's bound to be an uneven distribution of work. Some may end up not even knowing how to make DVD menus. But I can't assume of course. Not my place and business. I sincerely wish them and my team members Jalea and Sharon all the best. :)

I have found a few resources on helping me with this project. I already managed to source out for a printing company that deals with DVD covers and such, so yep. Good. :) Plus, I have been watching tutorials on how to make DVD menus for a while now, and I am going to start working on that very soon too.

But first I'm going to decide how I want to portray my Learning Journal as well as how I will arrange my Assignments. I will not be putting them in chronological order. It will be changed up a bit to add to the story and theme. Hehehe... I don't want to reveal this just yet.

Video 1: Creating New Magic



Video 2: Game Show (Making Choices)

So here goes. I have not blogged in a very long time about the Final Project and there has been quite a lot of changes that happened to the 2 darling videos that me and my teammates worked so hard to create. I'll break it down into two parts to quickly summarise the things we did.

Video 1: Creating New Magic

- Had a change of heart about the whole idea for this video. We decided to go with something a lot simpler and related to CNM instead. The main reason for this was due to the limited amount of time we had to edit the clips from the first video plus filming the narrator scenes starring myself. I did not have enough time to edit and neither do Jalea or Sharon. So we had to scale down our idea pretty quick and come up with something simpler.

- Got this cool idea to use the slogan that we created for our CNM revamped website, "Creating New Magic" and we created a video that showed clips which are 'otherwise' considered to be magic, except that we created all of the effects using After Effects.

- It turned into a 1 minute video that shows different parts of NUS but with a CNM 'magical' twist to it. The effects we put in varies in type. Sharon did the Fireball effect, Jalea did the sketchy road effect, and I did all the rest, including the rendering of the entire video.

- I used Video Copilot's plugins such as SureTarget 1.5 to create the overall flying effect of the words and videos. Had a particle simulation in the background. Then for the most part, the effects I did later on were a mixture of presets and a lot of effects put in. There is a lot of motion tracking throughout the whole video as it requires the effects to look in sync with the video movement. Plus, I tried as best as I can to make them look as realistic as possible.

- Problems faced: THE RENDERING. It kills me to see the rendering failing on me time and time again. I had to have faith that it will work everytime, even if it failed after 19 seconds into the clip. -_- It was so troubling! Arghhh... But alas, the 15th time was a charm for me (after having After Effects crash on me for about 5-7 times in the past 4 days). I had to redo huge portions of this video simply because I did not anticipate it to crash on me at particular times. So thus, a good deal of work was not saved each time. Yep. I basically had to rebuild the video from scratch using bits and pieces from other project files.

- One solution I found out to work on the video was to render the different effects individually first and then add in the .avi clips into one main composition together with the background and particle effects. Easier for me to modify the video and I realised that my chances of successful rendering are a lot higher. :) So win-win for me. Yay!

Video 2: Game Show (Making Choices)

- This video follows exactly as stated in the pre-production documentation. So I guess I'm quite happy with the result since it all went as planned. It exceeds a bit over 3 minutes but I feel that it's not too laggy or anything. Sharon helped to organise the clips from the greenscreen session and Jalea organised the clips from the flashbacks. I patched all of it up together in the end.

- I keylighted all the greenscreen clips as best as I could. It's a bit rough but it's the best I could do in the short period of time I have. Used a lot of masks to hide the imperfect portions and used a combination of simple choker and matte choker to smoothen the edges. Then, I added in the respective backgrounds. I asked Jalea to design then in 5 different colours, one for each of the characters in the video. I felt this is appropriate as it can reflect a bit about their character and personality or to simply differentiate them from one another. Plus, it looks nicer.

- Most of the music came from danosongs.com, created by this very talented guy called Dano I think. Royalty free of course. It was a tough job sorting out the audio and putting them in proper decibals because the RAM preview in After Effects is super laggy and ridiculously slow to the extent that It is very hard to even put preview audio and clips together. So I basically worked 'blindly' throughout the whole process of video editing, just praying that the audio turns out right.

- Problems: Other than the huge problem I talked about earlier, RENDERING is still a huge problem here. BIG BIG problem. It took me nearly 20 tries to get a successful rendering. As usual, my com crashed a few times while trying to do a RAM preview.

Ok, so I feel that this entry is turning out to be a very long one. Hmmm... Will be embedding the videos up here later.

Today I will be filming 2 more flashbacks for the game show. It was delayed for days because of the rain and all. Plus these boys are super busy. But other than that, the Game show video is on track I feel.

Here's what happened so far:
1. Filmed the Bachelor 2's flashback with the Bachelorette. Got many different areas of filming. Library, BK, Lover's park... etc...
2. Passed the clips to Sharon and Jalea to begin editing a few days ago already. We are splitting the work up. Tedious to go through 300 over clips alone right.

As for the first one... I had a creative epiphany days ago. Got me thinking about something really simple but very related to an ad feel for CNM. This will be a surprise... Shhhhhh....

As the title suggests, BEEN THERE, TRIED THAT. -.- The woes of my superhero scenes.

Haha.... Guess what. I actually shot the fighting scenes twice. One time at Lover's Park behind Central Forum and another time at the walkway to LT11. Both times... we got harassed by bees and mosquitos during the shoot. Jalea was badly bitten by mosquitos and Bibi.... well, let's just say that she does not EVER want to act for me ever again.

Anyway, so here's what happened so far:
1. Finished filming all the scenes needed for this Assignment.
2. Currently sieving out the clips and editing them too.

And we're doing all this WHILE doing the final project. Yep. So it's super tiring for all of us.

Will be continuing now. Tataa..

I invited my dear friend Bibi (someone who I owe very much) to act out Assignment 4 with me. Since I'm crazy and all, I thought it'd be in everyone's best interests that I become the VILLAIN. :)) *evil grin*

Well that would make her the HERO. Obviously. She asked if she could wear a mask. -_- She's enthusiastic I feel.

Ok gtg. Tataa...

I just had this sudden urge to immerse my entire kentic typography assignment in water... metaphorically of course, but somewhat literally... Learnt something about 3D Falloff and Sudden Target recently. Now I'm excited to edit my typography. Will be changing the look completely. With the new downloaded presets, I should be able to overcome that camera problem of mine.

Wow. I'm getting excited already. :)

Here is my very sketchy attempt at making a comic book layout for the many different video clips that I will be creating. Each segment will be a video on its own, with a comic layout overall. If I have the time, I will do this comic book layout. If I do not have the time, it will be simple transitions from one clip to another as per normal.

Ok, I finally came up with a good story (I hope). So here goes...

National University of Superheroes Showdown:
- The evil villain is at her lair, concocting an evil masterplan to destroy NUS. Sounds effects play in the background as she shows the audience her blueprint and a quick calling card that says, “Destroy NUS”. Why does she want to destroy NUS? Because it rejected. Mind you, it’s the NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SUPERHEROES. And this villain was rejected. For very obvious reasons.
- She flies off from her lair and heads towards NUS.
- Meanwhile, the protector of NUS, a superhero, sensed there’s danger. She braces herself for a fight.
- The both of them met at a desolate location in NUS to fight it out. Some dialogue here.
- Close-up of hero and villain’s eyes changing colour to show anger. (Blue for hero and red for villain).
- Villain starts first by developing a fireball and throwing it at the hero. It almost hit as she tried to protect herself. It stopped right in front of her. She flings it away.
- Then, the hero created lightning from her hands and aimed it at the villain which led to an energy wave at the villain’s spot. The villain screamed in pain and looked up. And she did a force field that knocked the electric wave off.
- They both took some time to recover. Taunted each other with more words and dialogue.
- They both geared up for their ultimate move. Energy blasts from both ends both pointing at each other and meeting halfway. The blast was so powerful it’s very hard to make it last from both ends. So they both broke it off.
- Till next time, hero. And then the villain flies away. To be continued… The End.

I actually had grand masterplans of making it looks like it's in a comic book... But of course, 3-D version and all, with the page flipping and the video segments play out in their little areas of the page just like a super duper interactive-to-the-next-level comic book themed video. But I doubt I have enough time to produce something that awesome and spectacular, when I've got Final project and editings of 3 other Assignments to do plus a Portfolio and all my other modules begging for my attention (I'm also leading another group doing an ad for the shoe brand Charles and Keith, and my goodness, that is also a lot of work).

Here are some rough sketches for the storyboard:

Oh btw... I forgot to mention.... Everyone can comment my posts now.. :)

Awesome. This is a pretty cool assignment I think. I start popping up with all sorts of cool superhero effects. After looking at the many tutorials on visual effects, I came up with a list of possible special effects that can be used in this assignment. Listing them out would better help me visualise what could be possible in a video and how they can be integrated and combined together to have a decent flow of events.

Special Effects which are possible with After Effects:
- Energy ball
- Lightning strike
- Time Freeze
- Super speed
- Soul-sucker
- Fly
- Transport
- Fire
- Blast
- Invisibility
- Healing
- Cloning

My favourite ones are the Energy ball and Lightning Strikes... :) Because I can look really powerful doing that. Hehe... I love looking all powerful. There is also Shockwave and Energy blast which are related as well. I can perhaps use these few effects in my video.

I also intend to do a Time Freeze, Invisibility and Fly as they are one of the more straight-forward effects which are easily learnt from tutorials. But we'll see if I got the time and energy to do all of it. Haiz. So much work. So little time.

So then I thought of an epic battle scene at NUS. Hmmm.... A good story perhaps? But the context needs to be more relatable to the NUS audience, namely the students, so I thought of a simple fight between two students over something really stupid or some weird vendetta. I don't know yet.

Will be continuing this story soon.

Next week should be the last week of shooting for my group! Yayy!!! But due to the erratic timetables of everyone, it might be carried over to next next week as well. But fear not! My weekends for the next 2 weeks will be dedicated to 3208, now that my other modules have eased up on the assignments. *cringes, fear of jinxing it* And then it's time to begin editing the videos. Let me ease my thought process into the 2 videos:

NUStory:
1. Alrite, everything is going as planned. I got good shots for this documentary so far. More to come next week when I'll be filming myself and the remainder of the scenes with my friends.
2. The idea about transitions must be complimented with sound effects and proper camera angles.
3. The scenes left to shoot are as follows:
- Kee Onn's tutorial scene with me
- Bibi's fun scene with me all around NUS
- All my personal scenes with the camera everywhere (Sci, Biz, Comp, etc.)
- A reshooting of a scene with my 2 friends at Engine canteen. Too noisy that my voice was drowned out. Argh. It's so sad.

Making Choices:
1. Ok. We have completed the BIG GREENSCREEN scene with all the actors and actresses, including me of course. :P And a certain lecturer dropped by to say hello too... *wink wink* hahahaa.... The shoot went well. Managed to get good shots of everyone. We ended at around 9pm, which means that it took up about 2 hour plus to do everything. Not bad I think. Hmmm...
2. Now all there's left to film is the intro scene (which I added recently, not in the script I put in the pre-production script) and flashbacks for the 2nd and 3rd bachelor. Yep yep.
3. I've also planned out a simple storyboard for the editing of this particular video. It's very different from what I've seen so far but it's very common in comedy shows. I am going to try to pull this off. Will show you guys the storyboard very soon.

I better confirm my filming schedule with my people now.. Phew.... The number of SMSes I sent out this month are going through the roof. Gosh...

Alrite people. Here's the break-down.

1. I've been getting 3208 nightmares where I spent days working on after effects. Plus I actually sleep-talked about after effects to my boyfriend over the phone. Now that's creepy. 0_o He thinks I'm obsessed now.
2. I realised it's still not too late to really work on my Assignment 2, 3A, 3B, and eventually... Assignment 4. Which brings me to...
3. I've been looking up on after effects tutorials here and there everywhere, expecially video copilot (I LOVE YOU ANDREW KRAMER). Been learning a lot of good effects that I could use for Assignment 3 onwards. Hmmm... Which now brings me to...
4. I am going to revamp my Assignments 3A and 3B completely. Using the same materials (such as my photos, that little script I wrote out, Damaged lyrics, and etc.), I am going to step up my after effects skills now and I will attempt to create something more awesome and mind-boggling.

Yes. I am going to do more 3-D effects now... LOLS. Wish me luck. :P I will describe more of the changes I plan to make very soon. As for now, I got a Final Project shooting plan to do.

Ok, so I did the the whole layout and everything. Plus all the syncing between the audio and the text. Quite ok I guess... For a first-timer at kinetic typography. :)

A list of what I did:
- Created 14 different compositions for each line of text, and in each one, I animated them according to the audio.
- I planted the 14 compositions on a large composition (about 2000 pixels wide and 2000 pixels in height). I decided not to play around with 3D and stuff as I did not have enough time plus I'm still learning how to look at the canvas in 3D. It's somewhat mind-boggling. :S Grrrr....

Now, I need to do next to plant cameras into the main composition and animate them to show the respective portions of the composition.There is no overlapping of text so it should be relatively easier I guess. Yep. Will be doing that later...

Tataa...

*Previously on Assignment 3B* (in that narrative drama series style... hehe...)

I've thought about it... hard.... and then I thought about it some more.... Haish. What a tough decision. The feeling of freedom as opposed to staying true to NUS.... Which should I choose?


*ponder ponder ponder*

I made my decision. I am going to choose the option that could allow me to be most expressive and creative. I choose....

'Damaged' by Danity Kane. :D

Do, do you got a first aid kit handy?
Do, do you know how to patch up a wound?
Tell me
Are, are, are, are you, are you patient, understanding?
Cause I might need some time to clear the hole in my heart and I

I tried every remedy and nothing seems to work for me
Baby, baby this situation’s driving me crazy
And I really wanna be your lady
But the one before you left me so

Damaged, damaged, damaged, damaged
I thought that I should let you know
That my heart is damaged, damaged, so damaged, so damaged
And you can blame the one before

So how you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
(Baby, I gotta know)
How you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
(What are you gonna do baby?)
How you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
(Baby, I gotta know)

I edited the original MP3 and faded it out nicely to be exactly 1 minute. I picked this one in the ended as the beat is firm and strong, and in my opinion, it helps with the accuracy of the text animation and the lyrics to the song as they are sung. I have done previous videos which included syncing meticulously with the song, and it is tough when the singer just blurs his words when he sings. My previous work had included "5 Colours in your hair" by McFly, "Pump it" by Black Eyed Peas, "Hey Ya" by Outkast, "Superstar" by Jamelia, and many more than had all sorts of pop songs. The funny thing is, these all happened WAY BEFORE I learnt about copyright. -_- I was such a small little girl when I created those videos. No wonder a lot of my videos got banned after a few months on youtube. Hmmmm...
Here are just some of my rough designs for the typography which I plan to do:

Today, we went ahead and filmed more scenes. This is a quick list of the scenes we covered:

1. Narrator scene with Friend 2 in the library while studying
2. Narrator scene going crazy in front of books
3. Narrator scene with Friend 2 outside library, prelude to Engine canteen scene
4. Narrator scene at Burger King as a flashscene to show The Deck

So far so good. It was tiring but fun at the same time. Haha... I could say that the shots turned out to be good. Yep. Plus we noticed that there are more people filming here and there.... And it's not the 3208 people... Some other module perhaps...

Tomorrow, I will be going down to Sheares Hall to film a bit of a jamming session after lecture, as a flashback for the 'Bachelorette'. That should be interesting to do. Hmmm...

Wednesday, I'm going to film Bachelor Number 3's flashback scenes around campus. Hehe.. I got some new scene layed out for him. Yep yep.

One more change. The game show filming has been shifted to Friday night due to some addition to cast and minor adjustments to timing and all. I got 8 people to coordinate so it's not that easy really. Phew! >_<

Next week will probably be more solo filming for the narrator (aka ME) and Bachelor 2's flashback with Bachelorette. Oh, and an extra scene for Bachelor 3. And we will be reshooting the Engine scene with Friend 3.

Yep. Ok I gotta go and do my 2,500 word term paper due soon. Tata... :)

Here was what I presented to class the other day.




Well, I'm hoping to really improve those transitions, making them less annoying than they are right now. Yeps.

Ok, after my first few days of filming with my group, I learnt a lot of valuable lessons. I'm looking through the videos I gotten from one of the scenes and I think we need to do reshooting. Yep. But the others are fine.

So far, the scenes we have covered are:
- Bachelor 1's flashback @ Rugby match
- Friend 2's flashback @ PGP
- Engine canteen dialogue with Friend 2

The last scene in the list.... I'm gonna hope for a reshooting. Now, here comes the part about 'valuable lessons learnt'.

Valuable lesson number 1: Make sure the sound is clear enough to be heard. Too much background noise is no good. Big distraction. And I realised that my handycam's capabilities in capturing audio is not so powerful.

Solution: We're gonna reshoot the scene and this time, I'm borrowing my brother's iPhone to record the sound. I will be putting it very near the actors so as to capture as much of their voices as possible. And then, afterwards, we can merge this audio together with the handycam's audio to amplify the actors' voices over the background noise. It will take precision and accuracy for it not to be all echo-ey and stuff.

Valuable lesson number 2: Make sure you know what you're doing when you film. From what happened with the canteen scene, there were so many ideas on how to angle the camera and such from so many people. Hard to decide on which angle was best. We tried all sorts of angles. Bleah. In my opinion, it did not look good. My faces looks weird. I am SO not photogenic. :(

Solution: We really followed the different rules that apply to filming shots. For example the 180 degrees shot. We even tried doing different degrees of filming a character, whether it is a full body shot or a half-body shot or a close-up. But we realised a half-body was good enough for most shots.

Valuable lesson number 3: DON'T SMILE SO MUCH ON CAMERA!!!! urgh. This is entirely my fault. I'm just not that natural with the camera. Must be because of my astonishingly low self-esteem.

Solution: Be more confident. And lose some weight. I'm so fat.

Next week, we'll be tackling all the solo scenes and doing the big GAME SHOW scene on a saturday. We might have to pick up poor Jia Xiang from his house cos the green screens are heavy... hmmm...

Ok, so after showing the first draft to the class, I knew what I had to do to make my Ken Burns assignment better.

Here's the list of changes I hope to implement soon enough (will spend one night burning midnight oil to do the editing):

1. Do colour correction on all the pictures, which I have yet to do since it was a rush just to complete the assignment to show the class the other day.

2. Redo-all the transitions into those zooming in kinds and do the usual motions on the pics for the Ken Burns requirement. I feel this is important as I noticed that a lot of my peers merely did transitions and movements that did not highlight the sacredness of the Ken Burns effect, which states the use of motion on pictures to highlight key aspects of a certain part of a picture in a way that looks like it came from a movie (I hope I got the interpretation right) plus the idea that the movement can say a lot about the kind of picture it is and what story it brings out to the audience.

3. Add on more lyrics to the video. I was going to add in more pictures focusing on the small things we take for granted in NUS (like the power sockets, the clean toilets, the NUS lift, the many stairs, cool activities to do, etc.) I got new pictures of NUS from my filming locations recently and some do look good, so I thought, hey why not just add it in here?

4. MAKE MY SCRIPT RHYME!!! This will be my ultimate goal. I will attempt to make my whole script rhyme. But if I can't, I will just stick to that melodious tune I had going on in the beginning.

I do intend to keep it emotional and real, as that is simply the style I chose to do, and I aim to make it look good at what it's supposed to do: to make other NUS students cry after seeing it.

I am considering Photostory to do the simple transitions and working on those videos on after effects and add the script on after effects. But if I get really good at after effects from my 3B experiment, I will consider doing more complex motions on after effects for everything. But it will also depend on how much time I have to do this.

KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY.

Wow. Haha... Never thought I'd be doing this. I've seen such videos online here and there a while back, but I didn't really take note of the fact that it's a technique called 'kinetic typography' or as others would call it, 'motion typography' or 'typo'.

I have to admit, I LOVE the idea and technique of making something that could be mundane on its own (moving text around here and there), into something amazingly eye-catching and attractive it that natural way.

Of course, after looking at the many examples on youtube and elsewhere, it's possible to do kinetic typography on basically anything from songs to president speeches to dialogues from movies and comedies. As long as it's the words that count and that's what you want to enhance (which are the messages embedded in the text), well then, you can do the whole kinetic typography thing on it! :)

I did some research on what I wanted to do, since the whole class rebelled on the idea of the president of NUS's speech. At first I thought it would be boring to do the speech and everything, but I realised that Dr. Julian was only trying to ease our burden and at the same time making it educational for us by giving us that short speech clip to do our typography on. Then, it's all fair plus we don't have to waste anymore time finding content to do typography on.

But you see, the moment this assignment was given to us, I've always wanted to do kinetic typography on some songs that I love and thought would look awesome. I immediately thought of some ideas that I would like to do already.

I thought about doing either 'Whatcha Say' by Jason Derulo or Danity Kane's 'Damaged' as both had really good beats and firm vocals in them that would look very good on typography. They were good choices in my opinion mainly cos it has not been done before (as far as I can tell, since I have yet to see versions of them on youtube).

There were songs that I thought of initially like 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga (like what we talked about jokingly in class), 'Down' by Jay Sean, and 'Fireflies' by Owl City. But they've all been done repeatedly by amateur designers like me, as part of school projects (so it seems).

I also thought about delving into a dialogue I particularly liked which was The Big Bang Theory's Lizard-Spock Expansion episode, where Sheldon explained to Raj about an improved version of Rock-Paper-Scissors, which is Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. The dialogue is super fast and super funny, and I thought it could be a good choice as well.

I've thought about it... hard.... and then I thought about it some more.... Haish. What a tough decision. The feeling of freedom as opposed to staying true to NUS.... Which should I choose?

*ponder ponder ponder*

I made my decision. I am going to choose the option that could allow me to be most expressive and creative. I choose....

I had a BIG change in this Assignment since my last post. I thought of something better. Going to have a different feel to it altogether now. Wheeee... Here's an update.

So I went to take pictures around the campus recently for this Assignment... paying close attention to my photography techniques. I really took note of the golden ratio and all. Plus the focal points in a shot. You know, that 9-part grid technique. And I have to admit, my photos look a lot better than ever, ever since I gotten conscious abotu the way I angle my shots. Hmmm... Cool. :)

I'm currently working on the video now. It's not done yet but it will be soon. Due to my time limitation (plus mid-terms this week! EEEKKK!!! >_<), I decided to go with a tip Jia Xiang offered me and the other students: Create simple transitions with a simpler video editing software, export it as a movie and then make it look better with After Effects.

Yup, so that's what I'm trying to do now. But I'm having problems with the video I imported into After Effects. One of the picture kept going missing. It's really weird. I tried changing it even, but no luck. Haish. A kink I must somehow overcome.

So here's a little snippet of what I thought of so far:
- I decided to go all sentimental with my pictures. I actually came up with a non-rhyming poem (although the last bit does ryhme)
- I got some very melodious royalty free music that fit nicely with my storyplot.
- Speaking of the storyplot, I followed the Assignment 3 guidelines and came up with an introduction, a middle part and an ending.

The title of my movie will be "More than just a university". The movie will comprise of 32 pictures with into and ending scenes, narrated by short sentences. The pictures are not funny, but when coupled with certain sentences, it seemed rather hilarious to me. :) I wonder if the rest would find it funny. It is about 3 mins long (don't worry, it did not exceed).

The music I chose came from danosongs.com. I picked 3 songs to be played in the video.

A brief description of this movie would be a guide through my entire journey in NUS, in chronological order. 

Here's the storyline for the entire movie and each line is a new scene (pic):

Title Scene (with title and my name)

Your flags wave, (pic of flags)
Greeting me, (pic of welcome sign)
As I started out my journey. (pic of university hall)

I was once lost, (
But then I was saved.

Along this winding journey,
You showed me a straight path.

I soared to new heights,
And saw the beauty that surrounds me.

When I had to walk a mile,
You gave me a free ride.

Be it a snack,
Fast food,
Or a gourmet spread,
You made me run for more,
While I remain afloat
As I make every shot count.

Amidst the learning journey,
I was swept in a calm sea,
Regaining my sanity,
As I rejuvenate
In your vast abode.

As I await my destiny,
I looked up, and there you are,
guiding me through
My final phase.

I will rejoice and pose shamelessly here,
Waiting to be part of something new.

Although my time here would eventually pass,
I will never forget you.

Because to me, you are
More than just a university.

I showed the simple version of this (done by Photostory) to my dad, and he said it was touching... Awww... :)

Ok, I have to go now. I may not have school today, but I have to hand in the CD and a storybook for the Random Blends exhibition. See ya.

I just thought of a theme.

"There's no place I'd rather be."

This theme is all about NUS as a campus. It allowing me to explore, create moments, meet friends, the perfect environment for work and play, etc. It's going to be heartfelt most of the time with a bit fast paced in the middle.

Now what I need to do is:
- Storyboard
- Music accompaniement
- the kind of arrangment of pictures...

I'll have to think more about it.

Ok, so we got news of Assignment 3 yesterday. Sounds simple? Perhaps. But I really wanna do something different and creative. While Dr. Julian was explaining (come to think of it, I think he's the only one reading this blog) about Assignment 3, I have this idea formulating my mind.

Let me try to visualise it here in words. Hmm. It's something like... a grid of 9 pictures at a time. And each photo will swivel around on itself to show another photo. And the whole theme is "Sights of NUS", revolving around the vibrant locations and places to see and do in NUS. I will take crafty snapshots of places which I can cut up to form a jigsaw of different images pieces together tastefully. Maybe I can form the word NUS out of pictures? Hmmm..... that will take coordination... and accuracy in the details and sizes...

Well, that's one idea for now.. I want to see if it's possible to do first.. If not.. I'll think of a narrative plot.. I have this great idea on how to end it.. A picture of me, left of the picture, back facing the camera, looking up at the night sky (and I will edit the photos and insert bright stars), and the words "Where do you want to be?" and flash the NUS logo, at the bottom right hand corner. The scene will be dark, so the words can be clearly see in white. I'm thinking... for this plot... maybe if I have the whole thing to be like... different locations in NUS that will represent things people do there.. not just taking pictures of the garden or what not la (I have no idea what people do in the garden at NUS... god knows...). Maybe pictures of lecture theatres, science labs, library, computer areas, dance studios, canteen, etc.

Ok, that's what I have at the moment... Will be thinking more into these ideas...

After putting hard work into them, I wanted to just put this up for the world to see...

This is the Planning stage for our big FINAL PROJECT! 2 videos of NUS! You know what. I'm excited. Really. Despite the hectic schedule, not enough sleep, tons of stress, what gets me going is the thought of being creative and doing something I'm passionate about. I love doing videos, graphic designs, any form of media really. It makes me feel... amazing at the end of the day when I get to share the finished product with everyone else.

I have directed and edited about 20 videos by now, most of them from my days in Junior College, part of my job in Student Council other than making annoucements in front of the whole school and doing administrative tasks. So, I guess I'm pretty happy when I get a chance to direct and edit 2 major videos which could one day be of use to the Office of Admission.

Alritey, so here's what happened so far:
- did the pre-production document
- laid out the scripts (but they are subject to change here and there based on which friends agree to be filmed on the video)
- watched a lot of TV to get ideas

It was truly a whirlwind of ideas when I was brainstorming.. whoa... like... totally.  Oh, and here's a more updated take on the planning stage of the project.

I have friends from very cool CCAs doing awesome things within NUS and outside. So I asked around and I think I'm able to get a band to perform some songs for me! We're still talking about it and who know... I can get something good... some sound effects for the transitions perhaps? Or even a cool game show theme song! I know GLEE the series makes use of choir vocals and the marching band sounds fro their transitions as well as sound effects that follow certain events (like some one storming off after getting angry)

Then, something in me got me thinking.

I realised that a lot of my ideas center around the other things we can do in NUS, rather than the main thing we do in NUS, and that is to study and do our modules. To me, it feels ok because that's my angle. It's hard to emcompass everything about NUS into 3 mins and still be able to be detailed about all the aspects.

It's really a matter of breadth and depth, isn't it? How much range do you want to put in, and how much depth are you going to venture in? Everyone will make their decisions differently on this. For me, I feel that it's best (at least for this project) is to go all out in the specialty that I chose, which is stuff other than lectures and tutorials. It is still NUS when you think of it. Most of us students have so many things going on other than simply studies.

Furthermore, another reasoning would be that filming the academia will be hard to schedule as lecturers, tutor, will find it difficult to accommodate us. And also, if students and parents want to know more about the academic prospects of NUS, chances are they will skip videos altogether and go straight to the details and official information presented on the NUS website. It's just the impression that videos are for fun and laughter. So thus, I'm going to be sticking to the fun aspects of NUS. :)

That's it for now. More on this soon enough!

Hey, so it's been quite a while since I blogged huh? Yeah, been rather busy with all the projects and assignments and what-not. Let me just quickly summarise my first Assignment. Which was group work too.

Summary:
- Coded all the pages to link to one another. Wasn't so difficult as I could simply copy-paste teh webpages, then edit them to their different looks.

- Jalea did all the designs and headers. I simply put them in place.

- Sharon tried her best to come up with a design of her own, but that didn't work out well as her design looks more suited for a airplane insurance website.

- So in the end, due to the limited amount of time, and seeing as none of us knew Javascript well to make the pages more interactive, we were left with design ideas waiting to be implemented by real programming people. Haha.. I mean.. that's just my honest opinion about the whole issue.

It's not easy creating a fully functioning website with all the different interactive elements simply by knowing CSS. It is undeniable that we'll need to venture into really awesome HTML and Javascript langauge to come up with super cool websites. And seeign as how none of us are Computing students, it was highly unlikely that I could learn a crash course in Java and still be able to create amazing interactive elements that can work and be maintained easily by others on this little website that we created in over a week.

I know my limitations to this Assignment very well. Yes. But I also know that my design ideas have no boundaries. I am aware of the things that are possible in website creation and although I do not possess the ability to make it happen within a week or so, I am sure that there are others who could take my idea and make that happen.

So thus, to me, Assignment 1 was more about my team coming with ideas that could be feasible in actual real revamped CNM website rather than coming up with a final WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) product where you take whatever that you see on our revamped website.

Thus, here is the website: http://nm3208.thruhere.net/

If I can, I will try to neaten it up further for a nice presentation on Tuesday. :) But for now, I will give a quick run-down of the website elements:

Elements:
- One unique feature to this revamped site is the new page called CNM Galleria. It is supposed to be a platform to showcase work from past students from different media modules. It is about time that CNM prides itself fro their students work online. Although I'm sure their work has spread far and wide without the CNM department's help (for example, YouTube, Blogs, publications, etc.), it would be better if CNM could link up all those resources to the website.

- Another idea I'm vouching for is CNM News. Students need to be updated with whatever that's going on with our department. For example, new modules? Lecturers? Career talks? Internship openings? Things like that. It would give CNM Students a closer feel to their department rather than having to refer to FASS for news.

- Since we are required to have the navigation bar above, I realised it is highly useful for navigation. Plus it saves space. So therefore, we will not be adding any additional links on the mainpage as there will just be unnecessary overlapping. And I do not want to control the user's ability to go to a page (like say if I were to disable all the sub-menus and force the user to go the that page so that it can link up to another sub-page.... ICK. NOT GOOD).

Alrite, here's what I have for now. Will be blogging about the Pre-production Planning soon.

Ok, so I created my website with a total of 14 pictures. Now, let me explain the story behind the pictures. Ok, I tried to be different by showing an un-typical day at school, well it's basically a day in the university when there is no 'school'. Haha... Thought it was super funny in my mind when I pictured it. Looking at the simple website I created... Not bad but not like WOW either... SO I may have to redo this again... it's nothing exciting... just plain boring in my opinion.

The link to this website is here (for now): \\cnm\web3208\TUE\u0802372\A2\Draft 1\Siti Assignment 2.html

I will get a server of my own later, and upload it there...

Alrite.. I don't want to be late for class...

Alritey, I am actually at a birthday party right now. My boyfriend's sisters' birthdays. The 2 adorable girls are ALMOST twins. They look alike, but one is a year older than the other. Hehe... So cute. The room is filled with a bunch of very loud kids. But I just thought of something good. A new idea just formulated in my head!

Well, thank god that I brought my digital camera today. After this, I will head out to school to take the snapshots. Yes, it's a Saturday and I am going to school just to take pictures. Hahahaa... :) Oh, the dedication I have.. LOLS. *rolls eyes*

Oh right, back to the idea. I have brainstormed of the different shots that I wanted to take. For both Assignment 1 and 2, PLUS the final video project. I realise all our projects are more or less related to NUS. So I guess it doesn't hurt to take extra cool shots of the school while it's not littered with students on a weekend.

Oh, there's one more reason for me taking it in the weekend. One very good reason. It involves a twist in my story. I think, by now.. if Julian is reading this... I'm pretty sure he's seen so many previous projects having similar twists. Think he knows what I'm about to do. If not... I'll explain... :D

I'm not going to elaborate on it now.. Am going to execute the plan first. Then, I will tell all. Hehee..

Oh yes.. I'm about to leave soon I think. GTG.

Ok so we had our first group meeting. Me, Sharon and Jalea. Trio of girls. Awesome. Could get along well with them.. Hehehe... Oh right.. We discussed the layout and the kind of special elements we should incorporate into the website. And also things like what to put in and what not to put in. Some of the ideas I had previosuly during the last lesson, we kind of brought it forward, with their approval of course. And now we're sourcing out for ways to enhance our design even further.

As of now, we all agreed to keep this CNM website simple yet professional-looking, something that looks clean-cut and suave, not kiddish or too colourful or anything of that sort. Mainly because it doesn't tie in well with the other departmental websites within the NUS domain. We gotta look good for everyone, right? Even potential researchers could be the target audience. So we really started to think carefully. What is our main aim?

We then decided on a focus. We're gonna make the website idiot-proof and noob-friendly!!! Gonna have a clean grid with big buttons and signs... Nothing messy. Targeting the main dempgraphics that would actually visit our humble little CNM website. Yep. More details soon... I have to go for lessons now... Tata...

Assignment 2 is about 'a day in the life of a NUS Student'. Hmmm.... Basically, I have to take pictures of a typical day in school.

Now here's the sad (or amazingly awesome for those who might get jealous at what I'm about to say) part. I only have 1 proper day in school! It's the Tuesday. Today is Friday and I have to yet to take some good shots. I did bring my camera but I feel so conscious about taking it out in public and start snapping pictures around school like some crazy paparazzi. So I thought it might be a good idea to take photos with my groupmates Sharon and Jalea later on after Jia Xiang's workshop session. It would seem less awkward when people know that we're simply media students doing a project together. Plus, we get to kill 2 birds with one stone by taking pics of the university for our website as well! Yay!

Ok, so here's some ideas that sprouted out since when got the assignment. My very first idea formulated about 5 mins after Julian talked about this assignment. I can envision myself getting shots from my perspective, but in a tasteful way.. Like I want the audience to know that I'm just simply doing my thing, and not taking pictures with a camera.. know what I mean?

Well, for now, I'm going to try this idea out. Alrite, so for now, I'm going to be figuring out the CSS for Assignment 1 with my team. Oh right.. I should put that in a different entry.... Kk...

So the first assignment for the semester  would be to edit the current CNM website according to the guidelines given to us via the NUS Web Design Guidelines file. Yep. Pretty cheeeem stuff I thought. Hmmm...


The first idea that came to my head was to create a simple clean-cut layout that pays more focus to the links which students are more likely to click on. Just using my common sense I guess. Furthermore, I have my own opinions about the current website already that I would like to change. Well, I might as well list them out right now. This might come handy when my group decides on what would make the best design layout for this website.


Before I list my potential changes, I actually thought about the aspects that I must consider when I am designing a website with this specific purpose:


1. Target Audience: Important to know who is my target audience (who will be looking at this website, basically). A professional look would make our department look more.... worthy of entry and if its too colourful or too much design, it will be more of a distraction as opposed to being useful, as when someone visits this website, chances are that they are there to find information fast, and not to be wowed or mesmerised by the design they see on the main webpage, and to find themselves a bit confused or taking a while to adjust and learn how to navigate through the website. I want their learning curve to be next to nothing. Zilch. They can totally navigate their wair around the website intuitively. It's all about INTUITION!

2. Accessibility of links and information layout: Must consider how information will appear, in what manner, and how links will be formed from a set of info to another set of related info. I'm trying to imagine a potential, possibly better overall sitemap layout that could serve as a better website than the current one. Navigation is key. fast navigation, quick links, big buttons are best in my opinion.

3. Time taken to load: The time to load must be fast too. Cannot be so slow. Thus although I originally wanted everything to be a Flash applet, I realsied that it would take a long time to load. Plus all the hassle in updating the information via Flash. Now that would just be a pain in the *****.


Here are the changes (in general) which I hope to implement for my new website design:

1. Header: Right now, we don't seem to be conforming the header with the guidelines' one. So we're gonna be doing that I expect. I do have the preference of using the blue header instead of the orange one. Since I'm so used to seeing the CNM website in blue. Haha... :)

2. Links: In any website, I think it's good to have a few key links being highlighted or given precedence over other links. Rather than having all the links placed in a list to the left side. I would 'highlight' the links which I think are the most important or the links that students go to the most.

3. Displays of students' work: I thought that since we're a CNM major, CNM students regularly produce all sorts of designs and media forms as part of our regualr assignments and projects in various modules. But no one every gets to see it! :( I later on found out from my fellow classmate that she felt the same way. My idea was to have a form of platform to showcase certain digital media on the website. For display purposes. Which I thought would be cool I guess. So far, everything that I hope to design, I'm capable of scripting it out, plus the Flash and wat-not, since I know how to create Flash movies (I did Flash games before though). But I am trying to find better ways of displaying the work and making it easy for students to donate their work to the CNM department for display. If only I could find an proper outlet....


Other changes that I intend to make would probably be the CSS style sheets the website uses and such, particularly for the print and screen. Those would be according to how well and easy it is to read on screen/paper. The rest I think I will be discussing with my team about it soon enough! :)


Here's just the rough 'sketches' I did to realise my designs, very minimalist I'd say. I love straight lines, straight cuts, clean and crisp edges, very simple without the hassle of shadows and bevelling and such. I think they are just too detailed for my taste.

Welcome everyone! :) Ok, I thought of continuing my 2208 blog, but then I decided to go for something different. I feel like just creating a new blog and make it my canvas or something. Would like try improving the design of this blog too... Hmmm...

So here goes... Wish me luck.... I'm gonna try doing some stuff to the blog...

Oh and by the way... our first Assignment is to edit the CNM website.... You can check out my progress on that in my new blog entry...

See ya later!

Siti