submission yesterday. nothing much to do, just showed bertrand our work. he commented that our video was fine, just seemed abit lazy. i don't know, looking back, i feel it wasn't that we were lazy, just that this was our concept from the beginning. also, for the whole duration of the pledge, all three cameramen must know exactly what shot to give. i guess our production was simple in some areas, but difficult in others. i don't think the other groups have a multicam sequence like ours, where every single shot was planned, rather than each camera having a certain responsibility, and then deciding how to put the footages together later during editing.
for this assignment, i think i like jake's group's production the best. the star running around singapore, it was super well done in my opinion. but then again, it's jake, you don't expect anything less from him, especially when he teams up with jem. kind of makes me feel a little sad that i wasn't in their group. but ah well, i survived through the block, and did well, in my opinion, despite of circumstances, so i guess that's all that matters.
oh, i also have to re-export the clip and submit it on monday, because it was exported with the wrong settings. that was why the quality was that bad the first time round.
alright, abit of reflection. after this module, i realised that CHOOSING THE RIGHT GROUP MATES is an important thing. of course, i didn't really get to choose, cause the limit was 4 per group, and jake, jem, mal and betty were sitting side by side, while the rest of them had their own cliques, so, like many other modules before this, i got stuck with leftovers. seems like a fate i'm resigned to. but then again, at least derick's not bad, and sarah, when you keep her happy, is good as well, aaron definitely has the potential to be very good, if only he gives a damn about anything. that's just my opinion. as for myself, well, i guess i'm the kind who likes to tag along for the ride, but if no one's driving i'll pick up the steering wheel. this module kind of proved as much.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Wednesday 13/5
yesterday was our production day. one member went MIA, 3 guesses who, no prize.
aaron did call me in the morning today to say that he was sick yesterday, but i guess i doesn't really matter, cause we weren't exactly helpless without him. hmm, i think this blog is starting to become a bitching vent for me, but hey, it's the end of the block soon, that's something i can look forward to.
so, production. we borrowed our equipment in the afternoon. seriously, the uncle has some problems man. i heard last year for p2 he refused to lend some equipment to jingyuan's group, based on the claim that as 2nd years they don't need such good equipment, until she got so pissed that she "argued back loudly" to him. now that we're all in our 3rd year, when we went to borrow equipment and i needed three 1k lights, the uncle gave me 2, and said i didn't need anymore. felt like slapping him right there and then, but i decided to be civilised and explained my situation to him, to which he replied that since it's only an exercise i don't need so much equipment. that's when i really felt like slapping the ignorance out of him, but then i realised that i still needed to borrow equipment for my p3 and FYP, so i slowly explained to him my situation, again. good thing he relented and gave me another set of 1k lights. but one of the lights in the box had a bulb blown, that selfish ass.. but it's ok, i only needed one anyways, the other one worked perfectly.
so anyways, before i keep going on about that uncle (some guy should really talk to him), i'm going to go back to production. sarah, derick and i went to the tv studio at around 1pm, after being excused for our P3 class, since it's only presentation and we had presented ours. we set up the lights and went through the camerawork, since it was the only time we had to practice. when we were ready, sarah got the talents to come in, and we started filming. we synched the cameras with audio (i shouted "sync". duh) and we had to reshoot 3 times, because i screwed up the first time, and derick and sarah the second time. after the third we shot a safety shot, wide shot on all three of them, and that was it. went surprisingly well.
today, we uploaded our footage and cut them together. derick edited and i was there to oversee. ended up with only 30 seconds. in our shot, the blue curtain in the tv studio could be seen, but that was solved by lowering the blues and increasing the yellows in colour balancing. after the clip was exported, we brought it to the 3D lab where i added in the text sequences in after effects. derick said he didn't know how to do it, but i think he didn't totally understand my method of going about it, so in the end i did it. not much work though, done in under an hour. just added in some text here and there from the pledge. rendered it, and our video was done. the quality was abit low though.
aaron did call me in the morning today to say that he was sick yesterday, but i guess i doesn't really matter, cause we weren't exactly helpless without him. hmm, i think this blog is starting to become a bitching vent for me, but hey, it's the end of the block soon, that's something i can look forward to.
so, production. we borrowed our equipment in the afternoon. seriously, the uncle has some problems man. i heard last year for p2 he refused to lend some equipment to jingyuan's group, based on the claim that as 2nd years they don't need such good equipment, until she got so pissed that she "argued back loudly" to him. now that we're all in our 3rd year, when we went to borrow equipment and i needed three 1k lights, the uncle gave me 2, and said i didn't need anymore. felt like slapping him right there and then, but i decided to be civilised and explained my situation to him, to which he replied that since it's only an exercise i don't need so much equipment. that's when i really felt like slapping the ignorance out of him, but then i realised that i still needed to borrow equipment for my p3 and FYP, so i slowly explained to him my situation, again. good thing he relented and gave me another set of 1k lights. but one of the lights in the box had a bulb blown, that selfish ass.. but it's ok, i only needed one anyways, the other one worked perfectly.
so anyways, before i keep going on about that uncle (some guy should really talk to him), i'm going to go back to production. sarah, derick and i went to the tv studio at around 1pm, after being excused for our P3 class, since it's only presentation and we had presented ours. we set up the lights and went through the camerawork, since it was the only time we had to practice. when we were ready, sarah got the talents to come in, and we started filming. we synched the cameras with audio (i shouted "sync". duh) and we had to reshoot 3 times, because i screwed up the first time, and derick and sarah the second time. after the third we shot a safety shot, wide shot on all three of them, and that was it. went surprisingly well.
today, we uploaded our footage and cut them together. derick edited and i was there to oversee. ended up with only 30 seconds. in our shot, the blue curtain in the tv studio could be seen, but that was solved by lowering the blues and increasing the yellows in colour balancing. after the clip was exported, we brought it to the 3D lab where i added in the text sequences in after effects. derick said he didn't know how to do it, but i think he didn't totally understand my method of going about it, so in the end i did it. not much work though, done in under an hour. just added in some text here and there from the pledge. rendered it, and our video was done. the quality was abit low though.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Monday 11/5
today i guess i kinda screwed up in a few ways in regards to my members. firstly, i thought there was 9am class today, and i told aaron and sarah, since they did sms me and ask me what's the plan for assignment 2. ended up with all of us coming early for nothing, because of me. but still i guessed that we could still discuss some work. however, i was proven wrong, cause the moment i mentioned that we shold try to discuss our work they seemed to zone out. ended up all of us took a computer (we were in the 3D lab) and did our own stuff. aaron was facebooking and sarah was, i don't know what the heck she was doing. she did ask me about the blog entries though.
in the meantime i tried to do my screenplay for my p3, but in the end i decided there wasn't much time, since we're shooting tomorrow, so i decided to brainstorm for some camera angles for our assignment 2 shoot. quite a fruitful decision, because i decided during the brainstorming to add some text into the video where the darkness was supposed to be.
another mistake i made, i guess, was misinterpreting sarah's words. we were supposed to have a group discussion that afternoon after our classes, but aaron told me he had to go somewhere, so that's ok, but sarah when sarah asked me if she could leave i thought she meant whether we were still discussing anything inside the 3D lab, so i said yes.
in the afternoon after i met up with derick and he called her i found out that what she meant was whether she could be absent for today's group meeting. ah well, after my discussion with derick we both kind of agreed it was better for only the two of us to be there. if aaron was there he probably would have.. wait, i don't know what he would have done since he missed so many discussions, so i guess we'll never know if has really constructive comments or great ideas to share. sarah would shoot down quite alot of things, and in the end we'll probably come up with only a title for our video, like how the first discussion went. when i met derick i had about 1/3 of the storyboarding done, since for this assignment i'm just going to film one multi-cam sequence with people saying the pledge, so it's quite short. we ended the day deciding the camera angles, positions, talents' positions and lighting required, so it was a good discussion.
in the meantime i tried to do my screenplay for my p3, but in the end i decided there wasn't much time, since we're shooting tomorrow, so i decided to brainstorm for some camera angles for our assignment 2 shoot. quite a fruitful decision, because i decided during the brainstorming to add some text into the video where the darkness was supposed to be.
another mistake i made, i guess, was misinterpreting sarah's words. we were supposed to have a group discussion that afternoon after our classes, but aaron told me he had to go somewhere, so that's ok, but sarah when sarah asked me if she could leave i thought she meant whether we were still discussing anything inside the 3D lab, so i said yes.
in the afternoon after i met up with derick and he called her i found out that what she meant was whether she could be absent for today's group meeting. ah well, after my discussion with derick we both kind of agreed it was better for only the two of us to be there. if aaron was there he probably would have.. wait, i don't know what he would have done since he missed so many discussions, so i guess we'll never know if has really constructive comments or great ideas to share. sarah would shoot down quite alot of things, and in the end we'll probably come up with only a title for our video, like how the first discussion went. when i met derick i had about 1/3 of the storyboarding done, since for this assignment i'm just going to film one multi-cam sequence with people saying the pledge, so it's quite short. we ended the day deciding the camera angles, positions, talents' positions and lighting required, so it was a good discussion.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday 9/5
hmm, entering into the last week already. hope we can finish everything in time.
didn't have class for the week, except the first day, so didn't have much to post about. basically our group met up on wednesday to discuss about the work, but didn't really come up with much. derrick couldn't join us, cause he was helping his grandmother to fix something, can't remember what exactly. i went to the meeting with 2 ideas in mind. the first one will be shot at somewhere in town, maybe orchard, and there will be scenes of people walking around. then suddenly one person will stop and say the first line of the pledge, another will join him/her for the second line and so on. kinda like this idea actually. thought about it while jem and i were discussing it on the bus the previous day.
the group chose the second idea though, which will be shot at TV studio, where all the lights will be off and there'll be complete darkness, and around the studio will be 5 people, each lit in sequence with a single 1k light, which will make them shine in the darkness. we were thinking about shooting other scenes, and have studio segment as the multi-cam sequence, which is required in the brief, but in the end we decided to scrap it to just interviews with random people about their views on the pledge.
thursday, supposed to meet up to consult bertrand, but ended up only sarah and i came. aaron couldn't make it, not sure why, and derrick's absence was my fault, forgot to inform him earlier. so anyways sarah and i finalised everything, then went to consult bertrand. he pointed out that in order to shoot the lights coming on in sequence, a dimmer would be needed, so that the lights don't just turn on suddenly, but we didn't have that, so he suggest that instead of using the light to introduce new people, we could use the main subject to block the rest, then, with camera movement, reveal the others. have to be very well planned though.
so anyways, meeting with the rest tomorrow morning to finalised things before shoot on tuesday. we have our cast ready, just need to loan out everything first. let's hope everything goes well.
oh yea, bertrand said instead of 15 posts, it is now reduced to 10, which is good for me, since i already have 9. think i'll do about 2 more, one for tuesday and one for wednesday or thursday, wen we're editing.
didn't have class for the week, except the first day, so didn't have much to post about. basically our group met up on wednesday to discuss about the work, but didn't really come up with much. derrick couldn't join us, cause he was helping his grandmother to fix something, can't remember what exactly. i went to the meeting with 2 ideas in mind. the first one will be shot at somewhere in town, maybe orchard, and there will be scenes of people walking around. then suddenly one person will stop and say the first line of the pledge, another will join him/her for the second line and so on. kinda like this idea actually. thought about it while jem and i were discussing it on the bus the previous day.
the group chose the second idea though, which will be shot at TV studio, where all the lights will be off and there'll be complete darkness, and around the studio will be 5 people, each lit in sequence with a single 1k light, which will make them shine in the darkness. we were thinking about shooting other scenes, and have studio segment as the multi-cam sequence, which is required in the brief, but in the end we decided to scrap it to just interviews with random people about their views on the pledge.
thursday, supposed to meet up to consult bertrand, but ended up only sarah and i came. aaron couldn't make it, not sure why, and derrick's absence was my fault, forgot to inform him earlier. so anyways sarah and i finalised everything, then went to consult bertrand. he pointed out that in order to shoot the lights coming on in sequence, a dimmer would be needed, so that the lights don't just turn on suddenly, but we didn't have that, so he suggest that instead of using the light to introduce new people, we could use the main subject to block the rest, then, with camera movement, reveal the others. have to be very well planned though.
so anyways, meeting with the rest tomorrow morning to finalised things before shoot on tuesday. we have our cast ready, just need to loan out everything first. let's hope everything goes well.
oh yea, bertrand said instead of 15 posts, it is now reduced to 10, which is good for me, since i already have 9. think i'll do about 2 more, one for tuesday and one for wednesday or thursday, wen we're editing.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Monday 4/5
went through the whole class' works today. took a look at it, some of them were pretty good. i particularly like jake's group's work, very interesting, with gary's hair. one thing that really surprised me was, how did raymond's group get audio feed? it's either 1) jac found the jack for them, or 2) they played it on a boombox or something, cause that's what jac suggested for me. think i'm gonna go with the first guess...
in any case, we were briefed on the second assignment; to produce a video for a competition we can't win, about the pledge. so basically what happened was that the course manager wanted us to submit "example videos" for this stupid competition, so in the end the assignment was changed to this. kinda stupid, in my opinion, i would have much rather stuck to the original, not as much work to do i guess, that way i can focus on p3 also. with more work to do, i guess it would all fall on me again. this time i'm gonna try and make sure the workload is spread. don't wanna have to do everything again. anyways, i decided that derrick should be the editor for this project. would have done it myself, but since the brief said the visual mixer cannot be the editor, i guess he's the next best person to do it. not really sure of sarah's and aaron's proficiency in finalcut, and what's more the editing time will be quite short, so i want to make sure the person who does it will be able to give on time.
in any case, we were briefed on the second assignment; to produce a video for a competition we can't win, about the pledge. so basically what happened was that the course manager wanted us to submit "example videos" for this stupid competition, so in the end the assignment was changed to this. kinda stupid, in my opinion, i would have much rather stuck to the original, not as much work to do i guess, that way i can focus on p3 also. with more work to do, i guess it would all fall on me again. this time i'm gonna try and make sure the workload is spread. don't wanna have to do everything again. anyways, i decided that derrick should be the editor for this project. would have done it myself, but since the brief said the visual mixer cannot be the editor, i guess he's the next best person to do it. not really sure of sarah's and aaron's proficiency in finalcut, and what's more the editing time will be quite short, so i want to make sure the person who does it will be able to give on time.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday 29/4
today's production was a whole lot better than monday's. besides slight delays in setting up, due to unforeseen things like the microphones not picking up sound and the 900 camera's flat battery, everything went according to schedule. also, everyone came by 9am, so i guess it's an improvement, although only derrick and i were there at 8.45am, the planned reporting time.
ok, bertrand said i still talked abit too much, like for example, i was supposed to go for a dry run, but it was still recorded, meaning it should be exactly like what the actual recording should be, but i told them it was a dry run, meaning if they screwed up it was ok. looking back at it, i kinda wonder why i did that. maybe deep down i just didn't wanna cheat their feelings..
another thing is, when i was playing the video of yvonne's p2, which had worked perfectly fine on the 2 dry runs that we had, it played for about 5 seconds, then hanged, so i had to quickly switch back to like. good thing derrick cued the talents well, and also that andrea was alert enough, so that we didn't have to cut back to her blank face. however, the ending shot, which was supposed to be a zoom out from derrick's camera was very jerky. for awhile i wondered whether i should do a re-run, so as to make everything perfect, but when bertrand said it was ok i decided not to. was worried i might eat into the other group's time, which wouldn't be fair to them. thinking back, i feel kinda guilty. the video stopping was nobody's fault except the laptop, but i think i might have accidentally "saboh-ed" derrick's grade as the cameraman. hopefully he will only be graded on his duties as floor manager, which he did very well in.
ok, bertrand said i still talked abit too much, like for example, i was supposed to go for a dry run, but it was still recorded, meaning it should be exactly like what the actual recording should be, but i told them it was a dry run, meaning if they screwed up it was ok. looking back at it, i kinda wonder why i did that. maybe deep down i just didn't wanna cheat their feelings..
another thing is, when i was playing the video of yvonne's p2, which had worked perfectly fine on the 2 dry runs that we had, it played for about 5 seconds, then hanged, so i had to quickly switch back to like. good thing derrick cued the talents well, and also that andrea was alert enough, so that we didn't have to cut back to her blank face. however, the ending shot, which was supposed to be a zoom out from derrick's camera was very jerky. for awhile i wondered whether i should do a re-run, so as to make everything perfect, but when bertrand said it was ok i decided not to. was worried i might eat into the other group's time, which wouldn't be fair to them. thinking back, i feel kinda guilty. the video stopping was nobody's fault except the laptop, but i think i might have accidentally "saboh-ed" derrick's grade as the cameraman. hopefully he will only be graded on his duties as floor manager, which he did very well in.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday 28/4
had a talk by a cinematographer from shooting gallery today about lighting. not exactly a talk, more like a hands on tutorial. i came late for the start of the lesson, so i missed what he was talking about. but shortly after i came the class was split into 3 groups. for my group, we were told to go out into the canteen and plan a wide shot and two close-ups of two people talking, with the bright daylight directly facing the sun. gave us quite a bit of a problem, trying to balance the lighting so that it won't be to jarring. tried out many different positions of the lighting, then changing the camera postion, but the background was either too bright or too ugly.
in the end the solution was to place a 1k light outside the canteen to shine it inwards, and 2 other kinos to balance it out. i was outside holding on to the 1k, making sure it doesn't topple, so i'm quite blur as to what they did to balance the light. couldn't hear or see anything from down there.
anyways, showed sarah and derrick my opening titles and asked what they thought of it, and sarah said that the speed at which the words comes out were too slow. tweaked it, rendered it out and our titles were set, complete with an audio soundtrack.
however, as i found out later that day, it was quite impossible to feed audio into the mixer, because jac doesn't have the audio jack. i suppose it can still work without audio though. dont think we're actually graded for that.
in the end the solution was to place a 1k light outside the canteen to shine it inwards, and 2 other kinos to balance it out. i was outside holding on to the 1k, making sure it doesn't topple, so i'm quite blur as to what they did to balance the light. couldn't hear or see anything from down there.
anyways, showed sarah and derrick my opening titles and asked what they thought of it, and sarah said that the speed at which the words comes out were too slow. tweaked it, rendered it out and our titles were set, complete with an audio soundtrack.
however, as i found out later that day, it was quite impossible to feed audio into the mixer, because jac doesn't have the audio jack. i suppose it can still work without audio though. dont think we're actually graded for that.
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