3208 Doodlez

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....

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...

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... :)

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...

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!