The beginning of the end

phew phew phew....

i am finally finished with my project, i had been spending the last two days sleepless and event though my expectations were quite high for this project, i dont think i achieved them to the full capacity, but nevertheless i am extremely happy with the way this project turned out for me.

For this project i did encouter many problems which included firslty the dvd studio pro was just not working for me at first at even though all the connections seemed right, and still the transitions were not working at all, then i had to change the format of the movies which seemed to do the trick.

The second problem was not so much the program but the amount of time it was taking me to do one zoom in earth animation in the After Effects, which took almost the whole day as i had to watch like 2 hours of tutorials to learn how to do it. But i am glad i did as now i am excellent in using this program.

Finally my other problem lied with the case as i had to disjoint peices and i had no idea how to fix them together as my idea for the case is pretty out of the box.

In the end i am extremely happy with my work and am very suprised to how much i can pull off.

Progress

So, For the last couple of days, i have been working out what my interface is going to be and what my case would look like.

My overall theme is going to be "The World", and have the interface as the globe and give the user the choice to choose the continent which pops up with the specific project.

On the other hand my dvd case is also going to go with the same theme, and im going to have my dvd inside a Globe, in the middle, still havnt figured out how i am going to do this but i am going to figure it out.

Last PROJECT (DVD)

We are down to the very last project and i have been really looking forward to this project as this is a sort of real world project and i think will help in later years.

I have not yet thought of a good design yet, (it is very hard!!!!) but i am getting my footage and content sorted, i have a general idea of what kind of content i will have and how it is going to transition into different things.

Very exiting couple of days!

48 HOUR Film Festival

Sooo, 48 hours is finally over!!
PHEW.......

This was probably the most stressful project i have ever done!! and its only worth 10 percent. Also this was probably was one of the most exiting and real world constraints included project i've done.

Over all i really enjoyed making the film, even though we got the film 15 minutes late. I think our assigned area (Action/Adventure) was probably a dream come true as we woudve hated to have something like Romantic Comedy!!

Our movie is called BAD APPLES and is a very stylish and cool crime action short film. I think that we had some really good(killer shots) in the movie which really made the movie even more cool.

Some of the problems that we encountered while making the film was that we could not get the film off the camera onto the avid as we were using a High-Def camcorder and it took us pretty much half the day to get that working. After all our editing and fixing up the film we had a huge problem with the video where we were missing the audio, when we finally did get the audio in, the damn audio was out of sync!! after that we had a HUGE problem getting the video back into the DV tape (The reason why we handed it in late)



In the end i think that our project turned out pretty good/cool and am happy with the amount of work we got done in that time. I think Morgan would be quite impressed with the quality of the film and how good it actually looks and the shots we have in there.

Presentation....

Soooo today we had our presentation and in my opinion, i found it extremely tough!!!

I think my presentation didnt go that well,the comments given by morgan were constructive comments which will help me in future projects. For my project it was pretty much impossible to get original footage, so i tried my best to work with what i had and what i could find.

Therefore because of the my project missing original footage, i think i might get marked harshly.

Audio

For my docmentary style video i had an idea to put some instrumental music, mayebe something with a saxaphone which in my opinion will be a really stlylish feel to the movie.

More on the project itself....

well i've pretty much edited my movie, ive string together a sequence of films over my voice which is reading a script.
there are a lot of still images in the movie, as i wanted the movie to look and feel like a STYLISED DOCUMENTARY. I do how ever have a lot of relevant clips that i got through archive.org

Relief (Phew)

well yesterday i got an email from morgan that we had an extention for the project which was awsome news as i was just going hard into editing and getting everthing done as fast as i could.

In a way i didnt really want the extention as i was into a zone of my concentration, and i was editing perfectly.

More Troubles....

Another trouble popped up which included students not returning their equipment on time, which made a huge problem for me as the project is due on friday and i still have to record my voice. I did however got a recorder of the shop downstairs in the building but that was no use as it was a crap phillips mp3 payer that was no good when it came to recording!! and even those are not available now!!

EXTENSION please......

So, now that i had my idea and i had most of the footage and the research i needed to go ahead with the project, Went to the Design school and the computers had no power!!!!!! most of the school had a power outage. So, now i had to put in double the amount of time to make my documentary!

I HOPE TO GET AN EXTENSION for this project

Final Idea

So after a lot of research. My idea for the project is going to be on "paparazzi".

I think this is a very interesting area to explore, i think it would be very interesting to feel what its like to be followed every day,hour and second of your life and being watched beyond your control. Also how the celebrity copes with the pressure and what they do to protect themselves and their family.

Another area i want to get into would be to have a look at to what lengths do the paparazzi go to chase down the celebs.

Thoughts on Project 3

i have found it really hard to come up with ideas for this certain project. In my opinion in these kind of projects it is actually quite hard to come up with the initial ideas as there are no boundaries and you could do pretty much what ever you want.

In the holidays i did some research on documentaries and how they are made and what type of techniques are used to make them more effective. They did help quite a lot but i still needed an idea. The videos showed by morgan were also very helpful and gave us a very good insight into film/documentaries.

Thoughts on PROJECT 2

Therfore...... at the end of this project i think i am pretty happy with my ideas and the way work has turned out.
The thing im mostly happy about is that i always manage to do something very very different which has worked really well for me so far.

This project in my opinion was a huge step up from project One in terms of ideas and the amount of detail in general. The thing that really bugged me about the project was that i was reallly abstract and was extremely hard to understand the brief and the concept of the project. Watching the previous work helped me a lot in the way of what we are actually suppossed to do.

In the end i actually really enjoyed this project and thought it was a huge learning curve for me and will defenitely help me in the future projects.

CLAP...... CLAP..... CLAP...... CLAP.....

Near The END.....

So, my project is finally coming to a finish, i have 4 seperate videos that i will put on the web site.

MY MAIN IDEA IS PRETTY MUCH TO DISPAY THE SITE IN DIFFERENT PROSPECTIVES, FIRST PERSON, SIDE LINE, BACK COURT.
and the footage i used i impoted into adobe After effects to emphasise the court like the Lines on the court (used effects to make them stand out)

ON the other hand, my videos in my opinion will be quite visually good in a way of the footage itself, but my AUDIO is very minimal as i only wanted to emphasise some aspects of the audio, so there is almost no audio except for some shot bursts of rackets, etc.

Problems Revisited..

As if the problems with avid wernt enough, i stated experiencing some problems with Dreamweaver as well.
Because my web page consisted of 3 different videos in 3 different positions.
The problem was that i inserted the exact code a multiple times for the different videos, and when opened and previewed only one video showed up.
So i am still having a battle with the code in the program, as a single mistake in the code totally stuffs up the entire program.

Continuing (Part 2)

So, ive pretty much finished my footage that i needed to shoot (got up at 5.30 in the morning to do it!!!!), then transported to the avid program.

Avid has always been a very confusing program in some ways, as i had a lot of problem getting the file into avid in first place. Therefore i had to spend a lot of time trying to do that (kept giving me errors), after i finally got the video into the program and then started editing it, breaking it up into pieces to decide what sequence i wanted them in.

I decided to have 3 videos in total which added up to a total of around 4 to 5 min.

Continuing...

So, i've just been working on my project in the time between. It has been pretty hard as i've had to shoot a lot of footage and i will be shooting some more footage tomorrow as the footage i have i very very shaky and out of focus which is not going to work for me at all. This has been hard as i am trying to film myself playing badminton in first person.

Therefore after talking to my Lecturer today, he game a lot of good ideas to work with which i will be trying out.

Also i've almost finished my work on the web page that i will be using for the project.

PROBLEMs Arising!!

I have a little problem facing me, as i will be shooting the video while i will be playing the sport; i have no idea how or where i will keep the camera, a solution i think to that will be to have some sort of head gear for the camera. Another thing i might do is to just keep the camera very jittery to make the desired effect.

Concept

After thinking about the project, i decided that i wanted to do something different like i did with the first project.

Therefore the place i will shooting my video on a badminton court, i will be shooting the video in first person and will be playing the sport at the same time, so i want to get the desired effect of a first hand experience of playing in a confined space and sticking to that space as much as possible, in this case the court with all the markings on the floor.

Also while i am playing the game, certain points in the footage, i will change the contrast high or low to emphasize the importance or the feel of the shot.

Start of Project 2

So, last week we got a glimpse of the new project and what will be involved in the project. I had a really hard time understanding the concept/idea of the brief as it was really abstract and the words in the brief really didnt mean anything to me, which is why i as unable to mail Morgan a storyboard.

But after reading over the brief again and again and again and looking at the previous work, i came up with a quite a different idea that i think will be quite challanging and also quite different and fun to do.

Near the end of PROJECT_ONE

so, we are nearing the end of the first project and up till now ive had a lot of fun learning editing.

The main problem i have faced in this project is that what i should come up with as in what my video is going to be about. As the examples showed in the lecture were very interesting and very achivable for a student to do, but coming up with that idea was the hardest bit in my opinion. Learning avid and all the features it offered were next in line, it was both fun and frustrating when editing in Avid, its was sometimes very confusing working with Avid.

Therefore i had to spend a lot of time experementing with all this stuff, whereas it only took me a little time to put together my final video. I did however find it very hard to manipulate the audio in the program and still havent figured it out.

I did enjoy making the website, and most of all i loved the lectures, i really enjoyed them as they contained a lot of different and interesting media.

So, i am pretty much finished and am just making some final touches with my videos and web site and am pretty happy with what i've come up with (even though its on a controversial subject).

I think it will be interesting to see what other people have done.

In the end i really enjoyed the project and am looking forward to what is to come!!

Wide World of YOUTUBE

Here are some of the videos that i found while researching some editing techniques, some of them might not be related but what i like about them is the way they engage the user into watching then again and again. Therefore i think there must be a technique to that and it will most certinly involve some atristic editing. Enjoy -

Thoughts/Review (Film Editor Walter Murch)

Firstly, i want to comment on the open lines of the article about how the in the modern day, Actors/Actresses, Directors and Producers get all the glory and the spotlight when it comes to the success of a film. Editors are given almost very less to no recognition at all. I think Walter Murch is a very good example when it comes to the amount of work put in into a film, the amount of detail into every single shot and every single second of a movie, which is why i am not surprised by the number of awards and nominations that he has got.

Another interesting thing i noticed, and think is that when you like and love your work, your job gets obsessive which in my opinion Murch is, but in a good way, as in that he knows all the right things to do. I also did not know that there was a lot of mathematics involved in the editing business.

One of the interesting comments that i really like were -

- "Two frames different will mean whether the film is a success or not...", I think this is not true at all, as if you look through the eyes of a normal person, they would not judge the film on a single frame or shot.

- "with every movement of our eyes, an invisible editor is at work, cutting out the bad bits before we can ever see them."
This i think is a statement that is very true and relates to my comments made earlier about the amount of recognition given to a Editor.

Brain Scramble

SO.... after a lot of thinking and developing AND editing, it was really hard to come up with some ideas about the project.
I thought this would be a great oppertunity to make some footage about world issues like racism among blacks. Therefore i researched a lot of videos, downloaded them, edited the ones that i liked.
One of the problems i am facing doing a munted video on racism would be to not make it very offensive, as there will be certain parts that might have a bit of profanity and some comments that might offend someone. Therefore i think i have to be very careful of what i include in the project.

TED

An interesting site showed by Morgan to us - www.TED.com

EDITING ur THOGHTS

So.... for the last couple of days i've just been downloading a lot of video and audio off the archive website.

Also started experementing with some of the editing features like the quicktime pro and mpegstream and the main program Avid Media Composer. So, i've been trimming all the clips that i want in quicktime so that i can import them to Avid and start churning out some decent footage.

In the last studio session we were intrduced to a little bit more details of the avid program, how to create files/profiles, how to edit the footage in the main screen, sub-edit, etc.
Im still learning the software, at the moment finding it a bit confusing to work with the software therefore will be going through the tutorials that are provided on the web.

Beginnings of the new project.....(Chapter_1)

so, today we kinda went through with the course outline and an intro to the first project called " MUNTED MEDIA " (sounds interesting right!!) well it is!

Here is what i found when i researched munted a little -

MUNTED _
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-completely twatted of your face & gurning like a water buffalo.
-Broken, not workable for its origanal purpose.
-To have intoxicated yourself with alcohol and/or chemicals to such point where respectable levels of social and/or physical functioning become problematic; where you are also (quite possibly) chewing a lot.
-a screwed up demented object
-stuffed up, wrecked.
-damaged, broken, deformed, fucked-up, drunk

-In short, a state of complete and utter trashedness!
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during the session, we were exposed to a few new tricks and tips on editing in quicktime pro, also what kind of file types to use and which ones are the best to download. Therefore learning that MPEG4 and quicktime (if available) are probably one of the best ones to download.

Also i looked at the web site that was recommended for open source media. ( www.archive.org )
it did have a lot of interesting video and audio clips that flourished a lot of ideas in my big gigantic brain.
So, pretty much i for the rest of the day i will be downloading clips and hoping that some of my ideas will flourish into something quuite unique.

First Lecture!! (EXCITING!!)

Today was my first lecture for DMDS 211. It was a very interesting start, got an overall overview on what the course is about and what sort of stuff is going to be involved with some of the projects.
I also got to know about our lecturer - Morgan Barnard, whose got a very interesting site which showcases his work throughout his career. (www.morganbarnard.com).

After a bit of intro, we got our first little task which required us to shoot an introduction video within our groups of people, which actually was a lot of fun and ended up in us getting to know each other fairly well.
We used a normal DV sony video camera to shoot, and our basic idea was to try and have stop motion, but the problem was that the camera had a delay of about 5 - 7 seconds before the next picture could be captured. Therefore when watching the video we had to wait a while before the next shot. If we had a choice to edit the footage, it would've transformed into a very cool video!!

The day was good and had a little taste of what is coming in the future projects.

INTRO

Heloo the people out in the world,
My name is Karan and i live in THE HUTT, been in welington for about 5 years, i am a 2nd year Software Engineering student and also a 2nd year Design student.

This is my blog that i will be posting my thoughts and developments in the world of Digital Media Design Course 211