As we approach the final week of classes, just some reflection about COM210!

I would have to say that my favorite project was the Premiere project. It is what I am interested in and currently studying, and I had footage that I finally got to use, which was also exciting. Overall, it was a fun project to work on.

I learned a few tricks in Illustrator, but the biggest thing I learned is the basics of Photoshop. I never really knew how to use Photoshop before taking the class, but it was good to learn the basics of it as many jobs often use Photoshop and hire people that know how to use it. I am pleased with how my project turned out.

I have wanted to work in video production for a while now, both in pre-production and post-production, so having it is always ideal for helping to sharpen those skills, and editing the interview I did was a great exercise in that. I am incredibly happy with the final product.

I well versed in the Adobe Suite, but a little time spent in After Effects would have been nice, as I am always willing to learn more about that part of the suite. There are so many different things you can do with it that learning some more about it would be great. Perhaps some time spent learning how to animate with AE? Skills like those are always good to have in the back of your brain.

I did not really find any good resources outside of the classic Purdue Owl and Easybib for when you are citing pieces of media. Useful, so you don’t screw up any citations.

Overall, I had fun learning new skills and sharpening old skills. While not a traditional semester, I was still able to learn a great deal and will continue to use what I learned in this class as I approach my third and final year at WSUV.

I decided to do an interview with Alan, one of the employees at U.S. Digital. He works on video projects for the company, which relates to my topic. The first step was to find a subject to interview. I had this footage laying around from a project that I wanted to do, so this seemed like a perfect time to do that!

Additionally, Alan was the right subject, as his job fell into the scope of what my blog was about. Not much research was done for the video, outside of talking to Alan before the interview to get some insight into him as a person. After speaking to him, I filmed the interview, capturing the audio on a lavalier microphone, and on my iPhone, making sure that he was the center of the frame. I was fortunate enough to be able to use their set-up and lighting, which is why it looks so professional, and the white background helped to add to the overall look of the interview.

In addition, I have done interview videos in the past, so they ended up influencing the video. I took my previous knowledge about video interviews into consideration when I was framing the shot, though I didn’t want to go for a traditional look; instead, I wanted to do a straight-on shot for the interview.

After I had captured the interview and a substantial amount of B-roll, I sat down in Premiere to put the thing together. I synced the audio and the video and began to trim what I wanted, following the storyboard I had outlined. Having the white background also added a layer of issues, as I needed to add a lot of B-roll to keep things interesting because it could get annoying to stare at a guy in a white void for 2 minutes, and it also helped me remove the “Ums and Ahs” from the voice over. I added some music to the video, and some basic dip to blacks and fade-outs to the video and audio, and I had a strong draft for the assignment. This strong draft helped me move towards an even better final video.

I got some useful feedback on the video. Not that many tweaks needed to be made, just some minor trims. Suggestions like adjusting the audio levels to make the narration easier to hear and adding some additional transitions. I added a dip to white during the light set up B-roll. Overall, the feedback helped me a great deal to have a great looking final video.

I decided to do an interview with Alan, one of the employees at U.S. Digital. He works on video projects for the company, which relates to my topic.
I have done interview videos in the past, so they ended up influencing the video. Not much research was done for the video, outside of talking to Alan before the interview to get some insight into him as a person. I took my previous knowledge about video interviews into consideration when I was framing the shot, though I didn’t want to go for a traditional look; instead, I wanted to do a straight-on shot for the interview.

I was fortunate enough to be able to use their set-up and lighting, which is why it looks so professional, and the white background helped to add to the overall look of the interview. It also added a layer of issues with it, as I needed to add a lot of B-roll to keep things interesting because it could get annoying to stare at a guy in a white void for 2 minutes, and it also helped me remove the “Ums and Ahs” from the voice over.

The first step was to find a subject to interview. Alan was the right subject, as it fell into the scope of my blog was about. After that, I spoke to him before the interview, then did the interview capturing the audio on a lavalier microphone, and on my iPhone, making sure that he was the center of the frame. After I had captured the interview and a substantial amount of B-roll, I sat down in Premiere to put the thing together. I synced the audio and the video and began to trim what I wanted, following the storyboard I had outlined. I added some music to the video, and some basic dip to blacks and fade-outs to the video and audio, and I had a strong draft for the assignment.

I had this footage laying around from a project that I wanted to do, so this seemed like a perfect time to do that! The footage was all shot by me. However, the music was from a royalty-free site, and free to remix.

I ran into issues with the media encoder not wanting to render but found that mine was simply out of date. (Nice going me.) Updating it fixed the problems.

Here is my storyboard and raw footage!

Open’s with introduction to interviewee (Alan) (Jazz music slowly fades in)

Alan talks about what he enjoys about his work

Cut to US Digital sign

Alan talks about how he got started in video production

Cut to B-roll of cameras on table

Cut to camera on stabilizer

Cut back to Alan, then cut to light being wheeled out

Alan talks about his education

Show Jordan writing on white board in meeting room

Cut back to Alan as he finishes talking and fade to black (Music fades out as well)

When sitting down to determine what I wanted to make. I knew that I wanted something that related to the origins of famous filmmakers. I have always found the origins of filmmakers to be something of interest, and I wanted to capitalize on that.

Of course, I couldn’t just take interview clips from other sources and splice them together to make an audio story. Instead, I would have to make my own. So, I figured that the easiest way to do that is to talk about how I discovered my interest in film making. Now knowing that it was going to be a self-interview/reflection of sorts, I knew that I wanted it to be similar to a radio story like on NPR. So listening to NPR and Story Corp helped to get the ideas flowing on how I wanted it to sound.

Soon, I wrote up a script talking about those beginnings. When writing, I wanted a symbolic sound to open and close the piece, so I chose the sound of my Flip Video Camera, the first camera I owned, to be that sound. Additionally, I wanted to find a way to incorporate an interview of a famous filmmaker to help smooth transitions between different parts. It took me a while to find an interview with a famous filmmaker until I was able to find the 60 Minutes interview, and took a segment from that, fulfilling that want with Steven Spielberg’s upbringing. After all of that was taken care of, I took to my parent’s closet so I could record the audio in a sound-proof place.

When gathering the audio for my draft, a lot of it was collected by me sitting in my closet with my lavalier microphone, the script in front of me and my phone in my hand. It was only a matter of cleaning up the background noise in the audio after I got it to be able to use it.

I received some great feedback from the discussions. As my biggest concern was background music, I was able to get some opinions of that, leaning in favor of adding it in. Ronnie gave a great suggestion on what to use, which greatly added to the piece. Additionally, it was recommended that I smooth things out a little more using fades, which was a quick and easy fix that again, greatly added to the overall final product.

I wanted to create something that related to the origins of famous filmmakers. I have always found the origins of filmmakers to be something of interest, and I wanted to capitalize on that. Of course, I couldn’t just take interview clips from other sources and splice them together to make an audio story, so instead, I decided to focus on how I discovered that interest.

I wanted it to be a self-interview of sorts, but similar to a radio story like on NPR. So listening to NPR and Story Corp helped to get the ideas flowing on how I wanted it to sound.

I wanted a symbolic sound to open and close the piece, so I chose the sound of my Flip Video Camera, the first camera I owned, to be that sound. Additionally, I wanted to find a way to incorporate an interview of a famous filmmaker to help smooth transitions between different parts.

I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to do a story that somehow involved how filmmakers got their start, but again, knowing that I couldn’t simply take a bunch of other news stories and interviews and make a Frankenstein’s monster of a story out of it. Instead, I would have to make my own. So, I figured that the easiest way to do that is to talk about how I discovered my interest in filmmaking. From there, I wrote up a script talking about those beginnings and took to my parent’s closet so I could record the audio in a sound-proof place. After that, I found a 60 Minutes interview with Steven Speilberg.

When gathering the audio for my draft, a lot of it was collected by me sitting in my closet with my lavalier microphone and my phone. It took me a while to find an interview with a famous filmmaker until I was able to find the 60 Minutes interview, and took a segment from that.

The idea I had for my audio story was to talk about how filmmakers got started in the industry. Finding stories of filmmakers talking about their childhoods, high school years, or later and how that got them interested in film making.

Here are my Audition tutorials!

Here is my final Illustrator logo design!

I created a logo for a hypothetical video production company called Final Cut Studios.

Video production, even if it is for corporations, or independent, that is still filmmaking, so it again ties in well to my topic of filmmaking. When deciding what to do, I did some research on different name ideas and looked at other logos, along with stock art, which helped me get an overall idea of the direction I wanted to do. Additionally, I took some inspiration from my Photoshop banner by using the same overall idea of filmstrips. Back when editing was done physically and not digitally, strips of film would need to be cut and stitched back together. Both concepts served as the inspiration for my design.

After that, I began with the sketch. Sketching wasn’t too difficult, I ran through a few ideas, such as having the film being ripped, or the film being burned or lit on fire, but I couldn’t get those to look right. I was looking at both names and sketching simultaneously, so when I came up with the idea, the design quickly and easily followed.

Once the basic sketch was done, and it came to draft the logo, it was easy with minimal changes between the sketch and the draft. I started out like all good artists start (I think) creating blocks! By applying a dashed line to the top and bottom of those blocks, I was able to give a decent film negative look. Seeing as most of my vector graphics were in a black and white color scheme, I opted to have the scissors stand out. I didn’t use anything that wasn’t outside of the creative commons for designing the scissors. I traced a royalty-free stock photo of a pair of scissors and then made changes to the shape of them. I made sure they were a bright, slightly off red, and applied a gradient to help draw the eye up towards the title. The placement and shape of the scissors also help to act as a leading line up the logo.

Lastly, I wanted a font that stood out and fit with the rectangular nature of my film strips. I went for a bold impact font to help with that standing out.

As for feedback, I received some excellent suggestions. For one, playing around with abstraction with the scissors. By making them more, well, abstract, it could lead to some fresh design. I tried playing around with that look but was unable to get a solid and coherent pair of scissors that didn’t get muddled and mixed in with the font. The second was to adjust the second film strip that had “Cut” on it. This was a quick and easy fix and helped with readability. Lastly, it was to add a border around the logo, as many websites have a blank white background. Again, this was an easy fix.

Here is my logo draft!

I created a logo for a hypothetical video production company called Final Cut Studios.

Video production, even if it is for corporations, or independent, that is still filmmaking, so it again ties in well to my topic of filmmaking.

I took some inspiration from my Photoshop banner by using the same overall idea of filmstrips. Back when editing was done physically and not digitally, strips of film would need to be cut and stitched back together. Both concepts served as the inspiration for my design.

I wanted a font that stood out and also fit with the rectangular nature of my film strips. I went for a bold impact font to help with that standing out. Seeing as most of my vector graphics were in a black and white color scheme, I opted to have the scissors stand out. I made sure they were a bright, slightly off red, and applied a gradient to help draw the eye up towards the title. The placement and shape of the scissors also help to act as a leading line up the logo.

When deciding what to do, I did some research on different name ideas and looked at other logos, along with stock art, which helped me get an overall idea of the direction I wanted to do. After that, I began with the sketch. Sketching wasn’t too difficult, I ran through a few ideas, such as having the film being ripped, or the film being burned or lit on fire, but I couldn’t get those to look right. I was looking at both names and sketching simultaneously, so when I came up with the idea, the design quickly and easily followed. When creating the draft, it was easy with minimal changes between the sketch and the draft.

When deciding what to do, I did some research on different name ideas and looked at other logos, along with stock art, which helped me get an overall idea of the direction I wanted to do. After that, I began with the sketch. Sketching wasn’t too difficult, I ran through a few ideas, such as having the film being ripped, or the film being burned or lit on fire, but I couldn’t get those to look right. I was looking at both names and sketching simultaneously, so when I came up with the idea, the design quickly and easily followed. When creating the draft, it was easy with minimal changes between the sketch and the draft.

I didn’t use anything that wasn’t outside of the creative commons. I traced a royalty-free stock photo of a pair of scissors and then made changes to the shape of them.