Project 2: Final Video, Reflection and Problems Faced

Here is the final video of my group's video:

Making this is far more challenging than Project 1 as the inclusion of a team would require cooperation and timing when compiling our work together. I practically reused whatever I learned from Project 1 and apply it to Project 2, allowing me to make major changes to the effects that I reused like Disintegration and Weather Change. Aside from that, I experienced what it was like making a full-length video in a team and that made me learn the importance of coordination.

The first problem I encountered was finding a proper location for our film. Due to the comedic and religious feel behind the story, we wished to, for the sake of irony, film in a forested area as most religious folks often separates nature from supernatural religion. We planned for Botanic Gardens and upon reaching earlier than planned, we decided to find a place to eat. When attempting to return, we got lost and decided to change to Bukit Timah, which was closer. It was kind of a blessing as Bukit Timah's forested region and quiet surroundings makes it perfect for our scene.

The second problem is our lack of green screen, which forces us to improvise. In scenes that normally requires green screen, we would either film the background or screenshot the background while editing. This presents two other problems: No camera shake (which makes it appear fake) and no coordination with the upper layer's camera movement, which thus requires motion tracking. This is especially prevalent with the hole at the 3D Shooting scene where the hole did not coordinate perfectly with the camera shake. Motion tracking was heavily used for that scene.

The final problem comes from our lack of acting skills. Our voices are sometimes too soft to be heard, forcing us to voice act at some parts. Last minutes changes to our scenes force changes in the script and thus, forgetting our lines became rather common. And finally, at the 3D Shooting scene, Leow was not supposed to drop to the floor but nonetheless, he decided to do so. Because of this, I had to mask him out, which was extremely tedious and very difficult. The results were not even perfect and attempts to correct the scene, such as filming again, were not foolproof. Hence, it was left as it is.

That concludes all the problems I faced.

For those interested, here are the bloopers:

Project 2: Storyboard

This is the storyboard for my sequence. It resembles the final video but changes were made, especially on the last effect, as it became difficult to make some of the intended effects:

Project 1 Final

This is the final render of my Project 1 video. It more or less resemble what I intended with the storyboard so I am happy and especially proud of my work. A few errors are still present and were not fixed due to lack of time or difficulty. Regardless, the video is mostly a success to me:

Project 1 Production Phase 3: Second Complex Effect

After dealing with the disintegration effect, I moved on to my next one: Weather Change effect, also based on a tutorial on VideoCopilot. The effect works in conjunction with the disintegration, in that the background will feature the weather change. The tutorial included a lightning strike upon a person but I did not include that, amongst other things. I also did a sky replacement. Here's the result:

The earlier parts of the vid was completely ignored despite the very obvious errors because those parts were either going to be trimmed or overlapped by the disintegrating screen on top of it. There are other errors present, such as the lightning bolt area being on top of the rain. Those will be remedied before the final rendering.

Also, note that the meteors from the storyboard was left out, along with the sword-summoning scene which is replaced with merely a red lightning bolt display. These are some changes made due to problems encountered.

Project 1 Production Phase 2: First Complex Effect

While I was filming, I took a lot of footage, most of which are similar except that it is taken from different perspectives or camera angles. One thing I learned from my past video-making experience is that it is safer to record more than you need in case the original plan did not go as planned. Here is an example. This footage was not used in the final render:

Fortunately, even though I took a lot more footage than needed, all the necessary ones were taken perfectly without any flaws so the extras were not actually needed.

After getting all the needed footage, I decided to go straight for the complex effects before compiling everything together and adding in other needed effects. My first one is a disintegrating effect, which causes the screen to slowly burn away from the top-left corner to the bottom-right. The effect is based on the disintegration tutorial from VideoCopilot. After going through the tutorial, I made some personal customizations and this is the final result, albeit without a background.

Please excuse the earlier parts of the video, which is nothing but a black void, as the blank portions were reserved for other footage.

Project 1 Production Phase 1: Storyboard

This is the storyboard I drew before I began filming. The words written are summarized and very brief. The final filming and special effects may differ, hence the storyboard is not final and is subject to change:

Because I am acting as a character, the storyboard refers to the actor (myself) by the character's name (Dark Viper). An intro and ending sequence will be included and will not be removed in any way.

Week 3 Lab 3

This is the result of me doing the Bleach Bypass tutorial. I recycled the Pope video:

 

This was a rather quick tutorial and I learned quite a bit from it. I can see how it makes the video better, although it ultimately depends on the scene.

These are the renders for part 2. This exercise was quite challenging so I had difficulties with the work:

For the first video, I redid about 3 times. I started by reducing the red tint and adding in a slight blue tint. I then reduced the saturation, mostly red, for the other colors. After that, the video will look similar as intended, albeit being very dark. That was where I faced a bit of difficulty. I ended up modifying the contrast/brightness and touched a bit on the gamma/exposure. Ultimately, I'm proud of my final render.

I did mostly the same for the second video, except that I changed the tint first. On a humorous note, I initially thought that it was an image rather than an actual video. Hence, I modified the video based on the first frame and ended up exaggerating it badly when I noticed how the background mountains and the foreground are always dark unlike the reference image. When I realized it was a video, I readjusted the contrast, brightness and color tone and got my final render. It is not exactly like the reference image but close enough and I'm fine with it.