FILIMING AND AFTER EFFECTS
We decided to film using one of Jen's cameras as it was easy to handle, had good quality and was right for what we needed. I did all of the filming as we had to get the right shots and to be fair, there were only three of us so someone had to use the camera! I also had an idea of most of the shots in my head, so I thought it would be easier if I was behind the camera.
Below is the raw footage of the part I worked on.
Below is the raw footage of the part I worked on.
Above is the pre comp footage of the lightning as well as it's path. The actually keyframing of each part took a very long time as the lightning consisted of two points that were to be manipulated. Also, the lightning would sometimes freak out and I'd have to rein down certain attributes of it to get it working nicely.
Below are images of some of the lightning editing. As you can see the timeline shows a great deal of keyframes. It took a while and a lit of trial and error to get the lightning to look right and glowing enough to look cool.
Below are images of some of the lightning editing. As you can see the timeline shows a great deal of keyframes. It took a while and a lit of trial and error to get the lightning to look right and glowing enough to look cool.
This was done before the glow and lightning was properly added.
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This is pretty much the final edited video edit that I continued to work with for the newspaper.
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Above is just a still image of a part of the lightning being produced from the wand.
Considering we were going for a Harry Potter Newspaper type piece. I started to test these on mock ups. We had the idea of three different newspapers to showcase our three edited videos and they would spin on shot towards screen then settle so you could watch the video, then spin away. Below are some tests working with the idea. By this time, I hadn't fully edited my video, so the colouring is a little different.
Considering we were going for a Harry Potter Newspaper type piece. I started to test these on mock ups. We had the idea of three different newspapers to showcase our three edited videos and they would spin on shot towards screen then settle so you could watch the video, then spin away. Below are some tests working with the idea. By this time, I hadn't fully edited my video, so the colouring is a little different.
Here I literally took an image from google to test how we would spin in the newspaper.
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Here you can also get a glimpse of Jen's hilarious edit on the first video. This was another test.
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Here is the final test I did, slightly different from the last. It was after this we decided this wasn't working out, so we had to go back to the drawing board.
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Above I finally started changing more things around on my video. I changed the colouring of the video again and then I boosted the contrast so you could see everything a bit better and the black popped better.
Above was simply to test the colouring on the video.
Below was the layout I chose for the newspaper. The black blocks indicate where the videos should be going.
Below was the layout I chose for the newspaper. The black blocks indicate where the videos should be going.
Above is a camera test I tried out. I wanted to zoom into parts of the videos and make them look a bit shaky and just generally cool looking. However, couldn't really work out a good way to move the 3D camera or even just zoom or scale to flow right. The animation kept going jerky and things weren't going so well. In the end we decided to scrap the movement and focus on a static shot and getting the text moving right instead.
Here is another early test. I wanted to see how well the text moved so I did a quick render.
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I actually swapped the two videos on the right page because I thought it fit better. Here I also added more movement to certain parts of the areas.
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These were the different compositions I dealt with along the way of making the newspaper. There were quite a few including the background and videos, the page 1 text, the page 2 text and the final camera adjustments. The last image shows what the final result looks like (and which you can watch on the video below.)
Below is what the final product looks like. This is simply a still however and you can watch what it looks like below.
Below is what the final product looks like. This is simply a still however and you can watch what it looks like below.
MY OWN FINAL NEWSPAPER
THIS IS NOT OUR JOINT FINAL PIECE.
We decided to use Jen's newspaper version because it seemed it was more Harry Potter-esque than mine. As much as I like my own (below), for the sake of the whole thing, we thought hers would be better in terms of achieving our final idea.
I still really like my own version because I learnt a heck of a lot just by doing it. I really enjoyed doing the motion graphic type stuff, such as the text and laying things out. It was hard and confusing at first, but I got there in the end.
We decided to use Jen's newspaper version because it seemed it was more Harry Potter-esque than mine. As much as I like my own (below), for the sake of the whole thing, we thought hers would be better in terms of achieving our final idea.
I still really like my own version because I learnt a heck of a lot just by doing it. I really enjoyed doing the motion graphic type stuff, such as the text and laying things out. It was hard and confusing at first, but I got there in the end.
EVALUATION
In the long run, I know all the skills I learnt from this will be helpful for future projects. It was disappointing being unable to use Nuke for the project since it seemed like a really interesting and useful program, but luckily After Effects was just as good for our idea. I think I did as well as I could on this project despite the fact that visual effects has never particularly been my first choice in career path. I applaud those who can do it so well as it is a highly technical process.
I really enjoyed putting something that wasn't real onto a real piece of footage. I found it quite funny when I got my video done as I couldn't believe I had done it. With my video edit, I don't think I did anything that looks ground-breaking with my special effects, but for me it was a personal achievement. It was really frustrating to work on, but made me feel highly proud when done.
Strangely the layout and movement of the words on the newspaper took a little longer than adding the special effects. However this may have been because we had so many layout ideas and we had different ideas on how we wanted to take it. That's why we did different newspapers in the end that we could then choose which we preferred.
In the end, me and Jen managed to make something really cool and different. I like what we produced and will be taking a great deal of After Effects and editing knowledge back with me for other projects.
I really enjoyed putting something that wasn't real onto a real piece of footage. I found it quite funny when I got my video done as I couldn't believe I had done it. With my video edit, I don't think I did anything that looks ground-breaking with my special effects, but for me it was a personal achievement. It was really frustrating to work on, but made me feel highly proud when done.
Strangely the layout and movement of the words on the newspaper took a little longer than adding the special effects. However this may have been because we had so many layout ideas and we had different ideas on how we wanted to take it. That's why we did different newspapers in the end that we could then choose which we preferred.
In the end, me and Jen managed to make something really cool and different. I like what we produced and will be taking a great deal of After Effects and editing knowledge back with me for other projects.