Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Week 13 Tutorial - Final Week!

Final week of class!

  • Get feedback on your schemes, narratives, storyboards and any final advice on modelling or editing.
  • Continue working on your Assignment 3 videos.
  • By this stage you should have defined the concept and direction for your final video, have a workable storyboard that you can follow for your modelling and video editing, and should be working on refining your ideas, modelling your scenes, and producing video edits in AfterEffects (and Premiere if you are using it).
  • Read back through past weeks tasks to assure that you have fulfilled all blog requirements tasks. Being sure to have the tasks completed will add to your overall grade for the course.
  • Since there was more of a “drop-in” policy undertaken this session, attendance hasn’t been great from most students. This means the 5% - Attendance and Participation mark will based on Participation alone. This will be judged by your engagement with the tasks throughout session.
  • The 10% - Blog Mark will be based on the quality and progression of your blogs throughout the session, as well as a progress post for Assignment 3.
  • If you haven’t done them yet, DO THE VIDEO CO-PILOT TUTORIALS!

Assignment 3 Progress Post

  • To be submitted to your blogs on Monday, 31st October. Tutors will give feedback on your Assignment 3 Progress Post through blogger comments.
  • This should include your completed storyboard, your 300 word narrative, still images showing exactly what you intend your final video to look like, and a draft video of your final submission.


I will be available for private consultations to review your work before submission on request. I will be available most times during the week, so contact me to set up a time. I would like to see you all take advantage of my offer to review your work.

Final Due Date Extended - Midnight, Thursday 10th November

Good Luck, and feel free to email me anytime with any questions you may have!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Week 11 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 12

  • Continue working on your Assignment 3 Visualistaions, reading back through past weeks tasks to assure that you have fulfilled all blog requirements.
  • By this stage you should have defined the concept and direction for your final video, have a workable storyboard that you can follow for your modeling and video editing, and should be working on refining your ideas, modeling your scenes, and producing rough video edits in AfterEffects an Premiere.
  • Decide on the music that will accompany your visualistion, and consider sound effects that will compliment your content.
  • Get feedback and assistance with any modeling or conceptual issue that you may be having.
  • Capture any footage that you want to incorporate into your videos, and test the footage with Voodoo Camera track to be sure that you get a good track.
  • BECU have video cameras that you can borrow for the task.
  • You should work on having rough compositions of your whole video, modeling or composing in video editing software ALL of your scenes to varying levels of detail, essentially creating "sets" for each section of your intended video.
  • At this stage, they can still be fairly roughly models, but you should have all your main elements modeled or roughly animated, so they can be refined and rendered for the final stages of this project.
  • Create low quality videos of all of the main sections of your intended videos, concentrating on camera movement, and animation of main elements.
  • You can view your video software as an animated story board at this stage of the process, by combining rough animations, quick test render videos, and scene transitions, you can get a feel for the flow of your video, considering music and sound effects to enhance the experience.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Week 10 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 11

  • Based on your story-boarding to date, start modeling in max, developing After Effects and Premiere projects and combine your content into rough scenes. Creating your main scenes compositions and animations intentions, setting the timescale and animating test cameras that can be refined at a later stage for the final renders.
  • Concentrate on elements that you think may be tricky to model or animate, so you can get help with modeling solutions and effects solutions from the tutors.
  • As you capture footage, model your scenes and put together your films you may have different ideas about the details of your narrative. This is fine, and expected, as this is a fluid process between your narrative, storyboard, models footage and final animations. As your ideas develop, you can go back and edit your narrative, and storyboard to align with your ideas, and refine your final animations.
  • Complete your 30 - 40 image storyboard!
  • When creating your storyboard, consider coherent styling across the range of images, visual progression from one frame to the next and a logical ordering device (such as discreet numbering for each frame).
  • Post your storyboard to your blog in a logical and clear sequence. Post high quality images, so each individual frame can be easily scrutinised. You can post each frame as an individual image or post in groups of frames, but all frames should be clear to see, and cropped well in photoshop.
  • Your storyboard also comprises an element of your Assignment 3 grade, so it is in your interest to make your images visually attractive and convey a clear understanding of your narrative.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Week 9 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 10

  • Revisit your 150 word theme outline, and using concepts, and ideas raised in your chosen article, expand and develop on your initial words to make it into a 300 word defining piece of writing, that clearly outlines your intended narrative.
  • Consider this like a creative writing exercise.
  • If you haven't started to storyboard your ideas yet, start with 10 expressive images of important "moments" from your intended video. These images can be digital montages or sketches, but should be attractive images that can stand scrutiny in their own right.
  • Begin creating an extensive storyboard for your intended animation, concentrating on beginning, middle and end, highlights and exciting moments of your narration, a climax, and resolution to your video. Also include storyboard elements for titles, scene transitions and credits.
  • You should generally have a story board image for around every 5 seconds of your video, depending on the speed and complexity of the scene. So if you intend a 3 minute video, then you will need around 30 images in your story board.
Independant Study
  • Finalise the concept for your video, and refine your 300 word narrative, using feedback from your tutors. Ideas drawn from your article, and summarised in your 200 word review/synopsis should be evident in your narrative.
  • Using your 300 word narrative as a guide to help you define your "story", continue producing your 30-40 images for your final storyboard (generally one image for around every 5 seconds of intended footage). Use rough sketching and quick 3D modeling to express the feel of each frame of your storyboard, thinking about the feel of your video, and how visual language will be used to convey your ideas. Any models you create at this stage can form the basis for your refined models in your final animations.
  • Consider the overall flow of your video, being sure to include a beginning, middle and end, and incorporating ideas such as suspense, excitement, interest, surprise, climax, resolution and catharsis, using camera work and scene transitions. How do you keep the audience captivated, and how do you produce an emotional involvement for the viewer using visuals?

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Week 8 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 9


  • Read Through the Assignment 3 Brief from Blackboard.

  • Think of a concept for your Final Video.

  • Decide on a subject area and direction for your final video.

  • Write an initial 150 words outlining a theme, or visual direction for your video. This will begin the idea generation process for your final video.

  • Find a minimum of one online Journal article, using Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, CuminCAD, or similar database, that interests you, and helps inform the direction you would like your final video to follow.

  • Read through your article and write a 200 word synopsis/review of your article. (If you have chosen more than one article, write a synopsis for each one.) Include a full reference on your blog.

  • Create a rough visual outline, or storyboard comprising of around 10 sketchy images, that begin to define your video. You can either use physical sketches, or digital sketches (models, images, montages, etc.) as your rough visual outline.

  • Obtain some "real" footage, and produce a "test" showing the successful integration of digital and real content.

  • This can be as short as a few seconds, this is just to get you familiar with Camera Tracking for 3D integration.

  • When obtaining "real" footage, the more controlled the camera is, the better. If the footage is too shaky, or combines rotation with panning too much, the tracker will have a hard time estimating the camera properties. Also "feature" points are very important! These are objects in your scene that have a clear quality to them (such as a high contrast to the background, or static geometry that is distinct, etc.), that the tracker can use as reference points for estimating the camera.

  • You may have to attempt your tracking a few times to get the best result. If the footage is proving too difficult to get a good track on, breaking the footage into shorter clips can help.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Week 6 – Tasks (In Class)

  • Get feedback on your images, influential video, 150 word narrative and your rough sketched 15 image storyboard to guide you through the majority of this project over the break.
  • Refine your 15 panel Storyboard for Assignment 2, to be a work of art, depicting the progression of your music video, showing any major transitions or scenes that you feel should be conveyed. Post high quality image/s of your storyboard/s to your blog.
  • For the second Assignment, we have been working mainly in After Effects, and have learnt (through tutorials) to work with multiple “compositions” within After Effects. If you are starting to get overly complicated AE projects, there is a better workflow which involves using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects in tandem using the Dynamic Link function.
  • Premiere and After Effects can essentially do the same thing, though AE is more of an Effects program (for adding, editing modifying small clip segments), and Premiere is more of an Arrangement program (for putting lots of small clips together. In the end you work wherever you feel more comfortable.
  • Here is a link to a video in the “Adobe Video Workshop” site: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0256 that shows a quick demonstration of using the Dynamic Link from Premiere to After Effects. This site has many other useful guides and tutorials.
  • Continue working on your Assignment 2 music video.
  • You can run through the Camera Tracking Tutorials using Voodoo Camera Tracker (files have been placed on emustore in the samples folder for this course, if you think it is pertinent.

o Blender and Voodoo Tutorial 1/2

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO4kmT-n3lU

o Blender and Voodoo Tutorial 2/2

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5POnW5Pkam0

  • When exporting your final video, I suggest using “H.264” as the output format. This format gives relatively small file sizes with good quality.
  • When exporting from 3Ds Max, I suggest using PNG image sequences. This gives you images rather than a video to work with, and reduces loss of quality. It also gives you transparency within your images.

Tasks to be completed over the Break

  • Submit Assignment 2, Due Thursday 1st September.
  • Read Through the Assignment 3 Brief from Blackboard.
  • Think of a concept for your Final Video.
  • Decide on a subject area and direction for your final video.
  • Write an initial 150 words outlining a theme, or visual direction for your video. This will begin the idea generation process for your final video.
  • Find a minimum of one online Journal article, using Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, CuminCAD, or similar database, that interests you, and helps inform the direction you would like your final video to follow.
  • Read through your article and write a 200 word synopsis/review of your article. (If you have chosen more than one article, write a synopsis for each one.) Include a full reference on your blog.
  • Create a rough visual outline, or storyboard comprising of around 10 sketchy images, that begin to define your video. You can either use physical sketches, or digital sketches (models, images, montages, etc) as your rough visual outline.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Some Inspiration - Green Screen Magic

Here is some common editing that you see in movies and TV... this should help give you some ideas on how to construct scenes using composite pieces of footage and images.


Thursday, August 18, 2011

Week 5 – Tasks (In Class)

Peer Review

  • Peer Review two of your fellow students work. Use the peer review Marking Schedule from Blackboard (also on Emustore), under the Assignment Briefs section.
  • Peer Review the person above you and below you within blog list from the Course Blog.
  • Fill out all fields and give brief constructive comments.
  • Post images of the reviews that you do on other students to your own blogs, and submit two word docs to emustore with the file name format of: StudentMarked_Marker.doc.

***************

  • Continue doing After Effects tutorials, getting a feel for some of the techniques that can be used by you.

  • Try applying techniques from the tutorials using your chosen music.
  • I have provided a bunch of professional Sound FX, along with some After Effects Tutorials in the samples folder for this course, on emustore. You can also find many other sound effects with a quick search on Google.

\\emustore\Resources\samples\benv\BENV2402 Time based Visualization - Harkins\Sound FX Media and Tutorials

  • You may want to consider mixing in sound effects to your video to provide counterpoint for certain elements.
  • You can use Adobe Soundbooth to crop or edit your audio files.
  • You are welcome to use external content, but it must be referenced correctly. A good place for Royalty Free Stock footage is: www.archive.org

Tasks to be completed by Week 6 class

  • Refine your 150 word draft text for this Assignment with the help of tutors feedback.
  • Based on your 150 word story, sketch out a rough, approximately 15 panel storyboard for your music video, concentrating on scene transitions, and the way you will link and combine your media, to form a coherent music video that both supports and is supported by your chosen music. Consider titles, credits, text, special effects, real footage, digital footage and graphics for your videos (credits should include all references for images and music), include these as story board components if they are relevant.
  • When developing your story board, consider what (if any) real footage you intend to capture and incorporate with your digital media. You may want to start laying out your storyboard in after effects as place holders for your final video, so you can get an idea of timing, etc.
  • Leading from ideas developed in your rough sketched storyboard, start capturing some initial footage (real or digital) using a good quality video camera or Max. Be controlled, and don't overdo the camera movement. It is also a good idea to record some basic measurements of the physical area you are filming if capturing real footage, so you can create a Max model that equates to the real world.
  • BECU has video cameras that you can borrow for this purpose. You may want to start combining content from Max files, rendering out elements to start incorporating with After Effects.