Changes to my Project

Today I met with my tutor and he gave me his opinion on my video. He said that it needed to be more vibrant and not as safe, and gave me some specifics to look at including the text graphics and the lips effect. I was also shown a grading plug in for After Effects called Magic Bullet that I could use to get some really professional looking grading very quickly. I took all of this feedback away with me and began making changes to improve the video.

I have gone back and looked at the keying of some of the shots which needed to be improved and I have done so. I have also changed the colours of the lips so that they vary from shot to shot, adding another dimension of interest to the shot. I then put all of my new and improved shots back into the After Effects project with the background and enlaced all the old work with the new. I then played around with Magic Bullet and found a few grading looks that I really like. Just grading my model and the background in different looks has made the entire video look completely different and much more striking.

Below are three examples of background grading looks, I personally think I will use the third one as it is the most dramatic.

The last thing I need to do to improve my project is to re-do the text graphics, as my tutor said they looked old fashioned and should be more striking and interesting, as they are an obvious part of the video.

Audio

Today I worked on finishing the audio for this video using Soundtrack Pro. I needed to take the voice recordings I had and fit them in place with the music, making sure that the volumes were all correct.

Now I have the audio finished I can put it in the visuals project and get everything rendered out to the spec needed for the hand in next week.

I managed to find a couple of really good techniques to create good camera flashes, so I ddi this yesterday and I am now completely happy with the visuals of this video.

The last thing I need to do is my evaluation, which will be in the next post.

New Music

I have been feeling recently that my piece is a little too long. Because it is a fairly repetitive piece I want it to have pace and be sharp and snappy and I felt that the shots dragged on for a little too long. Because I cut the video to the music track, I needed to revisit the music and make adjustments. Along with my brother, who has assisted me with this track, I looked at the music and cut it down from 1 minute 39 seconds to 1 minute 14 seconds. With this new music I have been able to cut down each shot so that the pace is much quicker. I also decided to add a super fast cut where the music does a drumroll before the big kick towards the end. I think this breaks the piece up a bit and adds another point of interest.

I am now going to revisit the camera flash effect because I am not happy with the flash effect I currently have at the beginning of the piece. I also want to add camera flashes later on in the video when the sound of the camera is reintroduced into the music.

Submitting for Feedback

Today I uploaded my video so far to Vimeo and sent the link to my tutor for his feedback. I am really hoping that he is happy with what I have done and there aren't too many things that need to be changed, as I only have a couple of weeks left before the deadline. Fingers crossed!