Reflection

Reflecting on my time spent in COM 210, there are a few things that come to mind. The first being that I overall enjoyed this course. I had some experience in most of the programs we learned and used, but it was very helpful to not only gain more experience with these programs in a class setting, it was also nice to get critiques and tips on projects created with these programs.

My favorite project was the Photoshop poster I created. I was the most familiar with Photoshop beforehand so I felt the most comfortable using that program. Additionally, the skills we learned with multiple layers, merging layers, and opacity of layers was a  skill set I had been working on previously and I was helped very much by the tutorials.

I learned all I wanted to from the tutorials and anything I didn’t I researched and figured it out on my own. I think I would have liked to learn other programs like Adobe Lightroom that I am less familiar with because I feel like some of the smaller Adobe programs are very useful but don’t get much attention.

Moving forward, I think the skills I learned will be very helpful in my future career. One of my possible is running/working with a production studio, which would require knowledge in Premiere and Audition. Additionally, an alternate career path I’ve considered is a graphic designer and in that case the tools I learned in Photoshop and Illustrator will directly be essential to the work I’d be doing.

I found that when troubleshooting a problem YouTube tutorials proved the most helpful due to the abundance of content available on the site, and the visual element of being able to see where something is located or how to adjust it, compared to just having to read it all.

Final Video Project

For this project I decided to create a visual guide to the three different steps of the production process. Pre-production, writing and rewriting, production, filming, and post-production, editing. This project relates to my course topic because all of my project thus far have focused on the production company I made, Good Morning Productions, and this is a step by step guide on how that production company would operate.

This projected is hosted and narrated by Reece Yugawa, who has worked on all steps of the production process and has worked alongside me in the past on several projects.

Design Process:

Starting out, the biggest inspiration for this video was behind the scenes videos I’ve seen. DVDs and blu-rays usually have a special features section and there are sometimes behind the scenes tours, video essays, or informative videos breaking down different parts of production. Specifically, I remember one where Steven Spielberg goes around the Universal backlot and explains the different parts involved in making a movie. This was very inspiring for me when I first saw it so I wanted to create something similar and maybe provide some helpful advice as well.

I tried to make the different transitions I include have significance to what Reece was doing or saying. If you saw a page of a script being turned I used a page peel transition or if you saw Reece focusing his camera, I used a dissolve focus transition between shots. Then I used some audio fades to que in and que out the music I used.

I started by following Reece while he was filming a video interview for a commentary video he’s been working on. I started with him filming, scrolling through his script creator site, and then editing the video. Unfortunately, Reece fell ill so I had to include B-roll of another friend, Ashley Beard, who Reece was also filming. Luckily Reece recovered enough to record an introduction and closing and a few more interview parts. Ashley Beard graciously allowed me to use her in the project.

Technical Detail:

When it came to constructing the video I started by importing all the clips I had. Then I organized them according to pre-production, production, and post-production. I then inserted Reece’s interview and editing out all the ums and pauses. After that I started building the video around what Reece was saying so that his narration had a visual representation.

I used the pitchshifter audio option for Reece’s interview. As I said Reece was under the weather and you could hear it in his voice. I also had Reece ADR his beginning interview because his voice was cracking so bad it was almost unusable. Reece’s voice sounds a little deeper than usual because of this pitchshifting of the audio, but I kept it as consistent as possible so it would not be too noticeable.

I had a lot of trouble at first with some of the audio. I used the DeNoiser tool, and pitchshifting to help fix Reece’s sick sounding voice. Music also helped make his voice sound less alone and empty so that was advantageous to making him sound less sick.

Citations:

Thinamajig from audionautix.com

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