Crit and Changes

Yesterday I presented my finished video to the class, overall the feedback was good and I came away from it needing to made a few changes. The comments that were made were:

• The start of the film needs to be faded up from black to bring it in gradually and beep made quieter
• Some of the text could do with being in a different font face to make it stand out
• The "ask not what" section could do with staying on the screen longer as it is the main part of the speech.

Changes

To make the first change of making the countdown fade up from black, I opened my final cut version of the video and using the pen tool dragged the opacity line down to 0 at the start and 100 at the end of the clip so it gradually fades in and to change the beep level I simply dropped the level down to -12 for the whole beep sound clip.

Because of the time scale I have, I wont be able to change how the text looks as it would be too time consuming and with it I risk putting my whole video out of time. 

Full Video

After adding the scratched effect to the whole of my film, I have now completed it and it is ready for crit on Tuesday.


Here is a complete storyboard of my film

And here is my fully edited video.

Creating the effect- Final cut

After making all of the elements I needed to create my video, all I needed to do was add my countdown timer to the start of my clips in final cut and add an old effect to make the video look like it had grain and scratches on the film.
This is a still from my film before I put the scratched effect on

I downloaded a scratched film clip which was 5 seconds long, to add this over top of my clip I put it in final cut over the top of my clips and text in the timeline as you can see below, however the clip has a grey background so covered the whole of my clip as shown below.

To sort this problem I changed the blending mode by right clicking on the overlaying clip and changing its composite mode to multiply as shown below, this made my scratched layer play over the top of my clips without blocking the clips out, this effect has given my clips the full old cinema effect I was looking for, I think they now look like they could be projections from an old camera. 

Making the countdown- Motion

I wanted a countdown timer to go at the start of my film so I started by drawing up the basic shape in Photoshop and saved it out as a PNG. 

I then dropped this into motion and added the number three in the centre, I also added another PNG of just a line to act as the hand going round.

In the time line I cut the number three length right down and added a two and a one to go after it. While the numbers counted down I needed my line to move around like a hand on a clock, to do this I changed its anchor point down to the bottom of it which was in the centre of the larger cross, I then used the record button to make it swoop round the screen creating a proper cinema countdown. 

Making the video- Final cut

After I had completed my text, I opened final cut pro and created a new project. The first thing I did was to import my text and sound elements. To make sure that I could get everything lined up right I decided to delete the sound off of my text movie and add the speech over the top again in final cut. 

Before i could make a start on editing my clips I needed to change them into prores files. To do this I opened compressor, selected all of my files and changed them to Apple ProRes 442 (HQ) by dragging that setting onto my clips. Once done I submitted all of my clips and opened batch monitor to see what was processing, here are some screen grabs from that process.

Once that was completed I then started filtering through my clips on final cut and picking out sections I liked using the in and out points (I and O on the keyboard) to extract the selected sections into their own clips I used cmd+U on the keyboard. This helped me filter through the clips and have a clearer idea of what I could do with my clips. 

Once I had all the clips I though I would need it was on to editing them so they looked more abstract. For most of the clips that meant zooming in on them. To do this I double clicked the clip to make sure it was selected in the viewer window, I then went to the motion tab and changed the scale, below you can see screen grabs of this.

This is the technique that I used on most if not all of my clips to make them more visually interesting and abstract. 

After I had edited the clips in this way and had arranged them on the time line in the order I felt they looked best, I then went about getting the "old" feel. To do this I first changed the colour of all of my clips so they were all sepia, to do this I double clicked on a clip to make sure it was selected, went to effects/video filters/quicktime/colour tint

Once I had done this I went back to the viewer window and selected the "filters" tab, in here I could change quite a few things but the one that was most important was changing the tint to sepia.

Once I had changed the tint to sepia, I saw my clip go from bright orange to a dark, tonal clip which looked much more like something you would see in 1961.

The other thing I decided would make these clips look older would be to make them flickery and jump around, to do this I used the Razor blade tool and cut up each clip a lot of times. 

Once I had done this it was a case of using the arrow tool to select parts and delete them, I then cut up the remaining clips and swapped them around to make it look as if the film had got stuck in the projector and jumped back a frame, I also added a Gaussian blur to some of the sections of clip to make them seem less in focus. I feel this effect gave my clips the feel that they were old jumpy projections and gave them a slight Charlie Chaplin look. 

Making the video- Motion

After having shot all of my clips, I decided the best way to do this would be to do the text first and to add the clips underneath later as the text is what is going to be most important in my video. 
To do my text I started by opening motion and making a new project at Pal DV size.

After this I then imported my 1 minute sound clip that I previously cut to be the right length. To do this I simply used the file browser on the left hand side and when I had the right sound clip highlighted I clicked "Import". By doing that I could instantly see my audio on the time line and I could see the levels when I click into the Audio Editor on the main timeline.

All that was left to do was add my text, to do this I simply used the Text tool, typed the word that was going to be spoken, made sure the size was right to its importance and placed it where I wanted it to go. 

The hardest challenge with this was getting the text to appear and disappear at the right time to when it was spoken, cutting the actual clips so they appear and disappear for the right length of time was the easy part, by just clicking on a clip and dragging the ends in or out, the hard part is getting the timing right with the speech, this took a lot of time and countless amounts of playbacks! Here is what the timeline was starting to look like.

I did the whole thing bit by bit, constantly replaying what I had already done to make sure it was all in time. Here you can see the finished text with the speech.

Filming

I had difficulties coming up with what to film in advance as I needed my shots to be very abstract and hardly recognisable. I decided the best thing to do would be to go out and film various things and see how they work when they have been zoomed in on and cropped in final cut.
I started filming my cactus plant as it had many textures and shapes, I did a few different shots, panning up and down the plant, side to side, the small pebbles being pushed across the screen and I also filmed water running down the side of the plant as well as zooming in to look at the sand absorbing the water, this last idea of the sand absorbing the water came from one of the clips in the Dexter video I previously posted where he had a piece of tissue that was absorbing blood as you can see below. 

The next thing I filmed was me cutting into foods like tomatoes and an egg, again for this the idea came from the general theme of Dexter's opening titles as he shows a lot of foods being cut and made to look different as we see them everyday, also in keeping with this idea I filmed a pan of boiling baked beans as this gave a nice bubbly, boiling look which I can use.

Another thing I filmed was a shot glass of vinegar and to this I added  bicarbonate of soda to make it fizz and bubble over, this so far is my favourite clip as it has a lot of texture I can use. 

Coming away from the food theme I have also shot some close ups of some ribbon, a head massager and the light shining from a magnifying glass to give an interesting pattern which can be used under my text. 

Here are some stills of my clips,