Toymakers Dream

Here is the video that I completed for my Digital Effects class. The editing program I used was Adobe Premiere Pro 5.

          Quite a bit of work went into this video. For one I had to think about the angle of the shots and how I wanted the angles to match up when I layered the characters into the background. Which was solved by shooting as many different angles as possible and if in the editing stage they didn't match up then there were a few tricks I could use to swing it. Such as zooming in on a slightly wide image to make it a close up, or horizontally flipping an image (as there is no text or distinguishable imagery in the background of the shots I did that in, it works). Of course in any project the best bet to solving a problem is just to shoot it right the first time, but in a pinch creative editing can do fairly well.
           Chroma key is a tool I used to layer the video and leave out the green screen. Another thing I did was crop along the characters edges so that any irregularities in the green screen would disappear, for instance where shadows end unexpectedly. About a minute into the film there's a shot where I clearly cropped her shadow messily. To clean that up I would have to go back and drag a 16 point cropping frame closer to her body and animate it frame by frame, getting rid of the larger shadow completely. Animating an effect frame by frame is called key framing, and is very time consuming. I feel I did use it quite successfully for most of the video except for a few small moments.
         Overall, it was a fun class and I now have a greater grasp of what is possible within video editing.

Digital Effects

         Last spring I took a digital effects class, there was a great deal of creative freedom in it as it was the first time it was being offered and the instructor was feeling out the best way to do things. Because of this allowance I decided to branch off and try my hand at green screening and key framing within a narrative form set to music. Nothing to strenuous in the special effects field, but time consuming if not done well in the shooting process. 

        As you can see, I tend to become deeply involved in my projects and attempt to portray them as best I can. I had alot of fun figuring out this set up, which is where I was placing my green screened characters. 

 

       The storyline for this film was one of the simpler one's I've tried. I matched it to a song I found off of this website years ago that has continuously buggered around my head with ideas. Simply put my storyline is of a toymaker who is dreaming/remembering a past acquaintance. I portrayed him "remembering" by placing him and the woman he knew onto the tabletop and having them dance to the music. 

      The idea changed as I planned it, and became much more simplistic than I would have liked. Originally I had hope to have the toymaker dancing with an overlarge marionette, who would be played by an masked actor. Unfortunately I did not have the resources or time to pull that off for the class.

I'm alive, really.

I can be a slacker sometimes, but only when it comes to things that don't have a deadline. Like this blog for instance. I'm already halfway through the fall semester of my senior year. Where did the summer go? 

Anyhoo, here's a follow up photo of one of the bronze pieces I made last semester, it's done! (and has been for awhile)

In my next few posts, I want to start posting about a few of my video projects and the work that went into them. I made two of them last semester, so it'll give me something to talk about. :)