Due to the fact that I do not need to digitize my videos, I could import the m2ts raw video files into Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 at the CATI lab in CNM.
The first round of editing was tough because I did not have a clear idea of what kind of shots I would want and what kind of effects to add later. I pieced the clips in the order I wanted and cut out various NG shots. I applied the reverse timing effect to the clips that needed it and realise a huge problem that I have.
In some of the reverse video clips, because we weren't aware of it, my brother was actually walking backwards. And there were also continuity errors, like in the scene where clothes were thrown at my brother, the blanket was supposed to be messed up, but it was folded. Small details like this was missed and I only realise it when I watched it on my computer.
I did not have a choice but to reshoot parts of the video. I called my brother, and he was totally not happy about it.
But when it comes to video, I do want things to be close to perfection.
Reshoot scheduled for next week.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Assignment 6: Storyboard
The objective this time round is to create a video, from 1 and a half minute to 3 min, with at least one kind of special effect or superhero power.
I wanted to create something that has to do with being normal but yet still have to do with super powers. I have this idea that most of my friends will do on 'the discovery of super powers', so I wanted to avoid it to avoid being normal.
However, there is a time constraint because I need to film this video while working on the final assignment with my group mates. Thus, I wanted something that is significantly impressive but yet not too tedious to execute.
This I present, 'Nearly Late... Superhero style'
The basic storyline revolves around this normal teenager who faces the same problem many people do, being late for school. Thus, I show how some superhero powers can come in handy to such situations. Then at the end, I leave some room for the audience to think. What is TV and what is reality?Where does reality end and TV begins? Is there really a distinct line between these 2 dimensions?
Although it might seem like something too heavy to be expressed in a max. 3 min film, I believe it can be done.
Pictures would be uploaded soon. My next problem would be to look for a willing cast. Or one which I can take advantage of.
I wanted to create something that has to do with being normal but yet still have to do with super powers. I have this idea that most of my friends will do on 'the discovery of super powers', so I wanted to avoid it to avoid being normal.
However, there is a time constraint because I need to film this video while working on the final assignment with my group mates. Thus, I wanted something that is significantly impressive but yet not too tedious to execute.
This I present, 'Nearly Late... Superhero style'
The basic storyline revolves around this normal teenager who faces the same problem many people do, being late for school. Thus, I show how some superhero powers can come in handy to such situations. Then at the end, I leave some room for the audience to think. What is TV and what is reality?Where does reality end and TV begins? Is there really a distinct line between these 2 dimensions?
Although it might seem like something too heavy to be expressed in a max. 3 min film, I believe it can be done.
Pictures would be uploaded soon. My next problem would be to look for a willing cast. Or one which I can take advantage of.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Final Assignment: Editing for the 2nd time
Because of the extreme conditions during the other editing night, we had to do a check for the subtitles as well as some of the editing that we have done the night before.
After running a check through the NUS video's subtitles, I went ahead to continue editing the CNM video. The CNM video still did not have an audio file to go with it so I had to look for one. Freeplaymusic.com was one of our choices as it offers music that is free for all non-commercial uses. Thankfully, Wang Yi, my group mate, found a good light-hearted tune to go with the CNM interview video. Thanks, Wangyi!
We also had a lot of problems with some green screen errors. We did not realise it when we added the background before but upon previewing the video, parts of our friend's body disappeared because she had an accessory on. And the guitar in the 'Music Conservatory' scene also disappeared! We panicked and called Jia Xiang for help.He taught us how to do masking and tracking, such that the mask will follow the subject and cover up the green screen errors. It's really amazing how something like that could save our work.
Now that the audio is in, the backgrounds are done, all we can wait for is the presentation.
Cheers!
After running a check through the NUS video's subtitles, I went ahead to continue editing the CNM video. The CNM video still did not have an audio file to go with it so I had to look for one. Freeplaymusic.com was one of our choices as it offers music that is free for all non-commercial uses. Thankfully, Wang Yi, my group mate, found a good light-hearted tune to go with the CNM interview video. Thanks, Wangyi!
We also had a lot of problems with some green screen errors. We did not realise it when we added the background before but upon previewing the video, parts of our friend's body disappeared because she had an accessory on. And the guitar in the 'Music Conservatory' scene also disappeared! We panicked and called Jia Xiang for help.He taught us how to do masking and tracking, such that the mask will follow the subject and cover up the green screen errors. It's really amazing how something like that could save our work.
Now that the audio is in, the backgrounds are done, all we can wait for is the presentation.
Cheers!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Final Assignment: Editing through the Night
A post before I collapse onto my bed.
My whole group managed to get permission from Mr Dennis Ooi of the CNM department to use the CATI lab through the night for video editing. I ended school at 4pm and started editing from then on.
We have already mixed some of the beatbox sections and have a basic beat based on a metronome to follow. We set the metronome at speed 92 and followed the beats accordingly to put the videos in. After we were done with the beatbox section, we had to start working on the rap section of the video.
To our horror, we realised that 2 of the files were captured to a corrupted format. The file could be viewed on a video player but could not be open in Adobe Premiere Pro. I ran to the MDL to borrow a DV camera and a firewire to do exporting into Zhiyun's laptop because it was near 5pm and the lab was about to close.
At midnight, we managed to get a couple of friends to help with the recording of the voiceover for the rap. We recorded in the playroom because at that time of the night, it was the quietest place to be.
After we were done with recording the voiceover, we continued working on things like green screen removal and touching up of the missing bits on the people due to lighting problems or very bad reflections. I never knew doing manual tracking is such a tedious task. I had to use an extra video mask in order to cover this moving object that shows holes showing the green screen.
After touching up, we experimented with adding background for the videos. Our first issue was with the difference in colour between the background and the subject. As we want our focus to be on the subject, we decided to either tone down the saturation of the background or to blur in totally.
I did some blurred background while my friend tweaked the colour on After Effects. In the end, we decided to go with the desaturated background as the blurred one made the buildings seem unreal and worse, something that our audience, the freshmen, could not relate to.
At about 3am, we were all very very tired. Zhiyun and I both started the day at 9am and was really suffering from severe fatigue at that point of time. The conditions of the room did not help as the room was small and stuffy and at 3am the temperature in the room went up to 32 degrees. The air-conditioning was off because it was centrally controlled. And the door have to be closed if not there will be an alarm. It was just terrible.
But we pulled ourselves together and edited as much of the video as we could.
In the morning, we had a rather satisfactory version of the video, with some ends untied.
I think it was a night well spent. Despite the extreme conditions.
My whole group managed to get permission from Mr Dennis Ooi of the CNM department to use the CATI lab through the night for video editing. I ended school at 4pm and started editing from then on.
We have already mixed some of the beatbox sections and have a basic beat based on a metronome to follow. We set the metronome at speed 92 and followed the beats accordingly to put the videos in. After we were done with the beatbox section, we had to start working on the rap section of the video.
To our horror, we realised that 2 of the files were captured to a corrupted format. The file could be viewed on a video player but could not be open in Adobe Premiere Pro. I ran to the MDL to borrow a DV camera and a firewire to do exporting into Zhiyun's laptop because it was near 5pm and the lab was about to close.
At midnight, we managed to get a couple of friends to help with the recording of the voiceover for the rap. We recorded in the playroom because at that time of the night, it was the quietest place to be.
After we were done with recording the voiceover, we continued working on things like green screen removal and touching up of the missing bits on the people due to lighting problems or very bad reflections. I never knew doing manual tracking is such a tedious task. I had to use an extra video mask in order to cover this moving object that shows holes showing the green screen.
After touching up, we experimented with adding background for the videos. Our first issue was with the difference in colour between the background and the subject. As we want our focus to be on the subject, we decided to either tone down the saturation of the background or to blur in totally.
I did some blurred background while my friend tweaked the colour on After Effects. In the end, we decided to go with the desaturated background as the blurred one made the buildings seem unreal and worse, something that our audience, the freshmen, could not relate to.
At about 3am, we were all very very tired. Zhiyun and I both started the day at 9am and was really suffering from severe fatigue at that point of time. The conditions of the room did not help as the room was small and stuffy and at 3am the temperature in the room went up to 32 degrees. The air-conditioning was off because it was centrally controlled. And the door have to be closed if not there will be an alarm. It was just terrible.
But we pulled ourselves together and edited as much of the video as we could.
In the morning, we had a rather satisfactory version of the video, with some ends untied.
I think it was a night well spent. Despite the extreme conditions.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Final Assignment: Digitizing DV tapes
The first part of the whole post-production process would be to capture the DV tape footage into digital format. We booked a computer at the MDL today just for this purpose.
Digitizing is simple but it takes a lot of time. Especially when we have 4 DV tapes to convert. We have 3 and a half tape worth of footage from the hidden camera in the corner, and half a tape of actual footage for our CNM video.
We sat in the lab for very long...
..converting..
...converting...
It was a very simple but painful process because we could do nothing but watch the footage run in real time.
Then, we had to get a copy of the video out of the computer only to realise that it stands at 20gb per file.
I decided to borrow my brother's 250bg hard disk drive and return the next day to get the video.
I never knew a video file could be this huge.
Tomorrow is the actual start of the editing. My group is quite worried about the deadline so we decided that we would stay over night in school on Friday just to do more editing.
Digitizing is simple but it takes a lot of time. Especially when we have 4 DV tapes to convert. We have 3 and a half tape worth of footage from the hidden camera in the corner, and half a tape of actual footage for our CNM video.
We sat in the lab for very long...
..converting..
...converting...
It was a very simple but painful process because we could do nothing but watch the footage run in real time.
Then, we had to get a copy of the video out of the computer only to realise that it stands at 20gb per file.
I decided to borrow my brother's 250bg hard disk drive and return the next day to get the video.
I never knew a video file could be this huge.
Tomorrow is the actual start of the editing. My group is quite worried about the deadline so we decided that we would stay over night in school on Friday just to do more editing.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Final Assignment: Filming
After my koto ( Japanese tradtional musical instrument ) practise, I rushed to the playroom to set up the equipment for the shoot. Zhiyun and Wang yi worked together to set up the green screen while Rae and I put up the camera and lights. I read a lot of tutorials online the night before about setting up lighting for the green screen and tried my best to create even lighting for the green screen so that editing would be very much easier when we get down to it. We were quite efficient as everything was done before the cast arrived at 12 pm.
We arranged the shoot such that those who finish their parts the most quickly and more efficiently would get to leave earlier. We have some alumni from the previous years and some of the students from other parts of NUS amongst the cast. This is because this is not just an FASS project, but a NUS one. Thankfully everyone was very co-operative and waited patiently for their turn for their section of the video.
The first part of the filming process was to record the sounds that we will re-mix into a beatbox. Everyone was running out of ideas of what kind of sounds to make and we ended up with a lot of possible sounds. Then we proceeded with the scenes for the rap. We got the people to lip sync to the rap because we figured that it would be very tough for them to memorise the rhythm and rhyme of the rap well.
Jia xiang was present too, because we contacted him earlier for him to appear in our video, as well as to check if we are doing things right. Although we did warn and tell our friends to avoid wearing colours such as white, yellow or green , which will make them 'disappear'into the green screen, he was concerned about some of the props that we were using.
In one of the scenes, we got one of our friends to play a guitar in the background. The guitar, as most guitars do, has a glossy surface and Jia xiang told us that it might disappear when we do 'green screen removal' on the video editing software. My group thought about it and decided to continue filming with the guitar as it was an essential part of the video. Editing might be a lot more tidious but we believe it is worth it.
We also changed several scenes such that a lot of the props would be replaced by computer graphics. For example, Nilar was supposed to 'push' a real book off her head. But we did a few takes and it just looked weird and thus we decided to use computer graphics for this shot. We did the same for some other takes as well.
At the same time that we were doing this filming, we had a very innovative and creative idea. Throughout the whole shoot, we had a little DV camera at the corner of the room, capturing our whiole filming process. We plan to use this footage as part of our CNM video.
Utilising the time for one video shoot to do two, I thought that was really pretty ingenious. Nevertheless, we are still worred as to how the video will turn out. I never knew that video filming for such a short video would take so much time. In the end, we filmed for 7 hours and left the playroom only at 830 pm after clearing up the place.
We arranged the shoot such that those who finish their parts the most quickly and more efficiently would get to leave earlier. We have some alumni from the previous years and some of the students from other parts of NUS amongst the cast. This is because this is not just an FASS project, but a NUS one. Thankfully everyone was very co-operative and waited patiently for their turn for their section of the video.
The first part of the filming process was to record the sounds that we will re-mix into a beatbox. Everyone was running out of ideas of what kind of sounds to make and we ended up with a lot of possible sounds. Then we proceeded with the scenes for the rap. We got the people to lip sync to the rap because we figured that it would be very tough for them to memorise the rhythm and rhyme of the rap well.
Jia xiang was present too, because we contacted him earlier for him to appear in our video, as well as to check if we are doing things right. Although we did warn and tell our friends to avoid wearing colours such as white, yellow or green , which will make them 'disappear'into the green screen, he was concerned about some of the props that we were using.
In one of the scenes, we got one of our friends to play a guitar in the background. The guitar, as most guitars do, has a glossy surface and Jia xiang told us that it might disappear when we do 'green screen removal' on the video editing software. My group thought about it and decided to continue filming with the guitar as it was an essential part of the video. Editing might be a lot more tidious but we believe it is worth it.
We also changed several scenes such that a lot of the props would be replaced by computer graphics. For example, Nilar was supposed to 'push' a real book off her head. But we did a few takes and it just looked weird and thus we decided to use computer graphics for this shot. We did the same for some other takes as well.
At the same time that we were doing this filming, we had a very innovative and creative idea. Throughout the whole shoot, we had a little DV camera at the corner of the room, capturing our whiole filming process. We plan to use this footage as part of our CNM video.
Utilising the time for one video shoot to do two, I thought that was really pretty ingenious. Nevertheless, we are still worred as to how the video will turn out. I never knew that video filming for such a short video would take so much time. In the end, we filmed for 7 hours and left the playroom only at 830 pm after clearing up the place.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Final Assignment: Props
Raemarie ( Sorry Dr Julian, I am used to calling her Rae. And from this post onwards, she would be Rae ) and Zhiyun went to buy some props for our shoot on tomorrow.
I was in charge of making sure that we get the room and equipment for the actual shoot. I booked the equipment from the Media Development Laboratory 3 days ago and got permission to use the Playroom on Saturday for a whole day video shoot. The others made sure that everything else is in order and that the cast will turn up on the day itself.
Today, I had to make the props while Rae and Zhiyun did a recording for the cast to refer to while we film them tomorrow. After the recording is done Zhiyun and Rae will be back with me to do the props too. We had to make a few things in order not to spend too much money on the props.
We bought clown's noses and paint to colour it orange like we wanted it. The noses were originally red ( due to the fact that most clowns have red noses ) . The main reason behind the noses was that we wanted something that would identify our cast as NUS ambassadors, or rather, students of NUS rather than normal people. We considered orange or blue shirts, but it was all to common. The idea of using an orange nose surfaced and we decided to use it because besides acting as an identity for NUS students, it also adds on to one of the points that we want to convey; NUS's students are actually very fun !
Besides the noses, we printed out and made a pile of flags to use as props in the video. The whole process of making props was tiring and time consuming. I do believe this would be worth it after the actual video comes out.
It seems like we are using more and more time. And I have lesser and lesser time to blog.
Well, I'm looking forward to the video shoot!
I was in charge of making sure that we get the room and equipment for the actual shoot. I booked the equipment from the Media Development Laboratory 3 days ago and got permission to use the Playroom on Saturday for a whole day video shoot. The others made sure that everything else is in order and that the cast will turn up on the day itself.
Today, I had to make the props while Rae and Zhiyun did a recording for the cast to refer to while we film them tomorrow. After the recording is done Zhiyun and Rae will be back with me to do the props too. We had to make a few things in order not to spend too much money on the props.
We bought clown's noses and paint to colour it orange like we wanted it. The noses were originally red ( due to the fact that most clowns have red noses ) . The main reason behind the noses was that we wanted something that would identify our cast as NUS ambassadors, or rather, students of NUS rather than normal people. We considered orange or blue shirts, but it was all to common. The idea of using an orange nose surfaced and we decided to use it because besides acting as an identity for NUS students, it also adds on to one of the points that we want to convey; NUS's students are actually very fun !
Besides the noses, we printed out and made a pile of flags to use as props in the video. The whole process of making props was tiring and time consuming. I do believe this would be worth it after the actual video comes out.
It seems like we are using more and more time. And I have lesser and lesser time to blog.
Well, I'm looking forward to the video shoot!
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