Practical Skills

Self Portrait

For my self-portrait, I will use Procreate to take a selfie of me with objects that have to do with my identity behind me. My face will be light blue and the objects behind me will be a light pink more on the purple side.

Some things I could include in the background are my cat, clothes, food, weights, Jamaican flag, the English flag, and laptop.

This is a reference artwork that I am going to take inspiration from which I found on Pinterest. I like the use of tones on this artwork and I also like the contrast between the portrait and the objects behind him. The artist does a good job of showing the lights and darks of the images behind them.

This is my self-portrait which I used Procreate on my iPad to make. I used my style with bold ink outlines. To colour in the top objects, I used different shades of pink to show the darks and lights.

Experimental Design Inspired Piece - April Greiman 

I created this animated gif using After Effects alongside Procreate and Photoshop. To make it look like all the objects were in the air coming towards the camera, I used the camera tool in After Effects and also used depth of field to make it look like the camera was focused on the animated figure the whole time.

This is similar to April Greiman's work because she also uses cut-out images in the artwork. However, with mine, I animated it because in my FMP, the video will be animated. I also chose this artwork of hers because it relates to my FMP because I will also be using real images/footage alongside animated figures like the one I drew in the gif at the top.

Identity Video Process

Intro

I downloaded all the images for the different comments I had written. With these, I can bring them into After Effects and make a rough cut of what will go where.

Using those images, I brought them into After Effects and made a rough idea of how each clip would be positioned. This went quite well as it allowed me to easily position every scene for each phrase spoken within the voiceover which I haven't imported into the After Effects file yet.

This is a video of the rough cut.

I realised that the animated character stands out too much in each scene, so to make it look like it's actually implemented in the environments, I changed the hue and brightness of the blacks & whites to match the colours of the surroundings. Below, you can see a few examples of how this looks with "before and afters". I think this is a subtle but very effective difference.

After that, I needed to record the VoiceOver, so I used Adobe Audition along with my Blue Yeti microphone to record the script that I wrote. To limit the audio's volume, I added a -7db hard limiter to the sound so that it wouldn't go above that level. Most speaker users won't be able to notice this difference, but people that use headphones will be able to tell a big difference because in a lot of videos, the audio spikes a lot which can be uncomfortable to hear if you are wearing headphones, but by limiting the audio to -7db, this problem is removed.

After putting in the VoiceOver to Premiere Pro and linking the After Effects composition, I synced up all the clips to what I was saying in the video so it would make sense.

I also added ambient music at a low volume in the background alongside  some sound effects at the start to match what was on the screen (the animated character walking in the snow).

I also decided to change a few clips, such as the part where I say "race". After asking a few people what they thought of the video, they said to change that one clip, so to make it more clear that I was talking about race, I edited a still clip of the emojis page on iPhone messages with all the different races of emojis. To make it more dynamic, I added levels to each emoji and made them reveal one by one.

Doing this makes it a lot clearer to any viewer to know that I'm talking about race.

To make the objects and animations look more realistic, I added drop shadows as well as curves in order to embed these objects/animations than if I just pasted the images in without anything.

An example of this is the writing clip; to make it look more realistic, I added curves and tint to the paper on the desk to match the colours of the desk, I added a drop shadow to both of the arms which matched the direction of the shadows on the rest of the objects on the desk.

As you may have noticed, the last clip of the whiteboard screen was just 2 grey shape layers. These were a placeholders for the real images that would be placed in there. The line I say is "young to old" so I drew a baby face and an old man face to match what I'm saying. I drew both of these on procreate. I'm very pleased with this because it makes it extremely clear to the viewer what I'm saying.

19/04 Video so far

Fashion Interview

Take 1

Before recording the fashion interview, I did a sketch of how I wanted the shots to look. You can also find these in the Research section of my Blogger.

To set up the interview, I placed 2 blue chairs at a slanted angle on the backdrop. I also attached my microphone with a velcro tripod onto a boom arm and slanted it so that it was facing where the interviewee would be. I also put my camera on a tripod in front of the chairs.

To set up the lighting, I used a fill light on the left, key light on the right as well as 2 naked bulbs. I did this in order to brighten the backdrop and create some back lighting. It worked quite well, however, the naked bulbs were in shot which was a big problem as it was too bright in the actual recording. Below is how the wide shot was set up.

I had the same lighting for the other shot of the interviewer animation but this time I repositioned my camera so that the interviewee would be out of focus on the right.

Because I wasn't in the recording and I'd be making an animation for the interviewer, I had to record voice lines for each question. To do this, I set up the microphone on the table and did my voice lines. However, there was too much of an echo so I will need to re-record these.

To sync the audio up with the recording, I asked the interviewee to clap once so that I can match the waveform of the camera audio and the microphone audio in premiere pro. I also added a hard limiter of -7db to the microphone audio so it wasn't too loud and I also added the "DeNoise" effect at 11% to remove any background noise; this worked very well.

Using J cuts and audio leads, I edited all 3 camera angles so that they all looked like they were recorded at the same time, doing this made my work look great.

(The parts where I am reading the interview questions are just placeholders, the captions will be changed and the animation will be added in later, this is just a rough cut)

Even though I was very pleased with the editing, there were a few things that needed changing in the next re-shoots. So I asked my dad who does filming and graphic design as his job a few questions on what I should change for the next attempts. This is what he said:

    - Make sure your shots are in focus (this is something that can’t be ‘fixed in post’)

    - Make sure there are no hot spots (naked bulbs) in shot.

    - Have someone (anyone) sitting in place for the interview whilst setting up the lights.

So for the next recordings, I will include an introduction, better lighting and assure everything is in focus.

Take 2

Following this advice, I re-recorded it for a second time. This attempt, I moved the key light a lot further back and kept the key light in the same place. I also readjusted the naked bulb really far back behind the backdrop. Furthermore, I added a board near the key light so that the light would bounce off. However, despite all these efforts, there was one huge problem - it was way too dark.

Here are a few screenshots from the recording. As you can see, the scene looks very dull and it looks like there is barely any light at all, despite the camera being on the same settings as before. However, there were some good things about this recording; everything was in focus and I set it up a lot quicker than the first one. I was getting a lot better at the overall process of recording.

Take 3

After seeing the extremely dark footage, I realised that I needed to record it for a final time. This time, I would fix the lighting and keep all the other advice in consideration.

I used the XY setting so that it would only pick up audio from the front.

This is the lighting for the 3rd take. As you can see, it looks a lot better than the 1st and 2nd take. The key light was closer to the scene and once again, the fill light stayed in the same place. I also kept the naked bulbs pointing towards the scene this time instead of having only one on behind the backdrop.  By doing this, it kept both of those lights on which was very effective as it lit up the background very well whilst also making sure that it wasn't visible in the shot. Also, this time I put a bag in the chair where the interviewee would be to see how it would look with someone in the chair.

This is how this recording turned out; I was happy with this. Each angle was quite well-lit and everything was in focus.

I started editing this take and so far it looks good. I also included how it would look with the animation implemented in the 2nd angle.

This is the screenshot of the timeline before I linked it into After Effects to implement some of the animation. The pink parts are the placeholder captions, the cerulean ones are the 1st angle clips, the dark blue ones are the 2nd angle clips and the dull blue ones are the 3rd angle clips. The green bits at the bottom are my voiceovers and the music.

This is how the timeline looked after I brought it into After Effects. As you can see, all the non audio tracks were compressed into one After Effects composition.

After this, I started drawing the next animation and implemented it in all of the angles. This is how it turned out.

Health Interview

Take 1

This recording was filmed in the allotment. The focus was good but I ran into a problem which was that the sun kept getting covered so the footage kept getting darker and lighter. Next time I record, I will only have speaking in the parts where the sun is out fully so that I don't run into that issue. The camera was set up on a tripod on a chair, and the microphone was positioned in the soil on a tripod next to my mum.

Once again, I synced the audio with a clap (I will be doing this for every recording).

I also started editing it and THIS is how it turned out (take in mind that the animations are not implemented yet, the other 2 shots have not been recorded and I also forgot to record an introductions. These will all be implemented in take 2).

Peace Interview

Take 1

This recording was filmed in London at Soho Square Park and it went very well; I recorded it in one day. The focus was good and it didn't change much, however, I would've preferred if the sun shone down on that area a bit more. To record it, I used the camera I used for the other videos and a bigger tripod after learning to use one after recording my mum's interview.

I set up the microphone on the bench and the audio quality was very good. However, there was quite a lot of background noise, so I increased the volume of it in adobe audition, added a -7db hard limiter and added the denoise effect at 25% to remove some background noise whilst keeping the quality of the voice.

I then synced up the audio and footage and used the same process as every other interview.