Sunday, April 25, 2010
Project 4: Video/Sound Editing
Mia did an amazing job with the video editing in Premiere Pro and next time we met she had a cut with all the video and photos spliced together to form the whole movie. We watched the movie and it was obviously lacking cohesion and flow (at not fault of Mia). Shots would transition from one focus to another with no explanation. We anticipated this and felt it would be fixed once we added in sound. As a whole group, we went through all the scenes filmed on one computer and the Wizard of Oz movie on another computer identifying the timestamps of the sound clips we want to add into the movie. I ripped the audio from the movie and extracted each of the sound clips we wanted and handed them off to Mia. We then worked on Mia's computer to adjust the timing of the video to match up with the audio that we were adding. We met again the day the project was due and added in additional sound effects that we had Andrea record as well as orchestral theme music based off the musical score of the Wizard of Oz to fill in the rest of the video that we had no sounds effects specifically identified for from the movie.
Project 4: Filming
We had a total of 3 days of filming, one at Andrea's apartment for the video recording for Kansas scenes and two at the Digital Art and Animation Studio for the still photography of Oz scenes in the dark.
DAY 1
The first day of filming at Andrea's was done entirely by Andrea and Mia while John, Dan, and myself went to the Blacksburg and Christiansburg RadioShacks to gather all the resources we needed to make the LED shoes. Before we split up, we discussed as a group what we wanted in each transition then Mia and Andrea did a great job making it a reality. Andrea dressed up in a Dorothy costume she had from the Halloween a year before and Mia filmed with the digital video camera. They completed all of the video recordings of Dorothy in Kansas that we needed in around 2 hours since there were no additional sets or dialogue.
DAY 2
The second day of filming was done upstairs at the Digital Art and Animation Studio by the entire group. At this point we had finished creating all of our planned sets and costumes and had all materials that we needed to do the still photography in the dark to show off our world of Oz. Mia took all the photos while the other four of us moved the sets into place for each shot and positioned the characters and lights. Before we actually setup our black backdrop we didn't have a definite idea about how we would position our sets and costumes in frame. We ended up using a mixture of items behind the cardboard to prop them up and people holding items from behind the black backdrop. We also needed two people keeping the black lights in position to get the glow effects to show well on film. We got a lot of scenes finished and discovered that we were missing a few set items that we would prepare for our next day of filming. A lot of the first day was a learning experience.
DAY 3
The third day of filming was also done upstairs at the Digital Art and Animation Studio by the entire group two days after the second day. It was much the same as the second but we had the process of taking photos in the dark and character movement down, the shots we got this day looked a lot better than the shots from the day before and we even redid a few scenes. We had spent the Wednesday in between fixing some sets and costumes. The movement in the shots today was much more fluid and there was less random teleporting in these shots. One issue we continually struggled with through days 2 and 3 of filming was the sensitivity of the circuitry on the LED ruby slippers, mainly the connections to the batteries. We opted out of buying special connectors for the 9 Volt batteries and instead tried to solder the electrical wire directly to the batteries which did not work very well. We finished all filming that day and Mia went home with all of the photos.
DAY 1
The first day of filming at Andrea's was done entirely by Andrea and Mia while John, Dan, and myself went to the Blacksburg and Christiansburg RadioShacks to gather all the resources we needed to make the LED shoes. Before we split up, we discussed as a group what we wanted in each transition then Mia and Andrea did a great job making it a reality. Andrea dressed up in a Dorothy costume she had from the Halloween a year before and Mia filmed with the digital video camera. They completed all of the video recordings of Dorothy in Kansas that we needed in around 2 hours since there were no additional sets or dialogue.
DAY 2
The second day of filming was done upstairs at the Digital Art and Animation Studio by the entire group. At this point we had finished creating all of our planned sets and costumes and had all materials that we needed to do the still photography in the dark to show off our world of Oz. Mia took all the photos while the other four of us moved the sets into place for each shot and positioned the characters and lights. Before we actually setup our black backdrop we didn't have a definite idea about how we would position our sets and costumes in frame. We ended up using a mixture of items behind the cardboard to prop them up and people holding items from behind the black backdrop. We also needed two people keeping the black lights in position to get the glow effects to show well on film. We got a lot of scenes finished and discovered that we were missing a few set items that we would prepare for our next day of filming. A lot of the first day was a learning experience.
DAY 3
The third day of filming was also done upstairs at the Digital Art and Animation Studio by the entire group two days after the second day. It was much the same as the second but we had the process of taking photos in the dark and character movement down, the shots we got this day looked a lot better than the shots from the day before and we even redid a few scenes. We had spent the Wednesday in between fixing some sets and costumes. The movement in the shots today was much more fluid and there was less random teleporting in these shots. One issue we continually struggled with through days 2 and 3 of filming was the sensitivity of the circuitry on the LED ruby slippers, mainly the connections to the batteries. We opted out of buying special connectors for the 9 Volt batteries and instead tried to solder the electrical wire directly to the batteries which did not work very well. We finished all filming that day and Mia went home with all of the photos.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Project 4: Scripts, Sets, and Costumes
We decided to start meeting at Andrea's apartment to design the sets and costumes. Dan, John, and I brought cardboard over and I bought different colors of black light paint and glow in the dark paint as well as a black light. We went over all the scenes we had chosen to include in our film and decided upon the characters and set elements that we needed to create. Andrea stenciled out designs in pencil onto the cardboard for the characters and sets and as a group we painted them. The set elements that weren't painted were done with Christmas lights which required no preparation, both I and Mia brought in some that we already had. The only costume element that remained to be completed was the LED ruby slippers.
First for the LED ruby slippers I had done research online to determine different prices and shipping times as well as learning how to create LED circuits. Shipping times from most places online were going to take too long and would delay our schedule for finishing the project and they couldn't offer us any personal advice so John and I went to check out the different options offered by RadioShack.
Our first trip to RadioShack John and I talked with two employees about our project and photographed all the different LED's we considered using, noting their prices and specifications as well.
We returned to the group who was painting sets at the time and filled them in on what we learned. No one in our group had real experience with circuitry. I had done a minimal amount of soldering and John, Dan, and I had taken Physics II years ago where we learned concepts of circuitry.
Dan and I drew out a diagram of the circuit on paper and analyzing the shoes we determined that we could only supply 18 Volts of energy since only two 9 Volt batteries would fit on the shoe. We wanted as many LED's as possible on the shoe and the lowest voltage LED's we found were 1.8 Volts. This meant that we could only use 9 LED's which took a total voltage of 16.2 Volts so we could leave a potential drop in voltage for a resistor so the LED's wouldn't blow.
We then used Ohm's Law to determine the resistor we needed to use. We have nine 5mm 1.8 volt 20mA high intensity red LEDs, two 9 volt batteries, a 100 Ohm resistor, and a slide switch circuited in sequence on each shoe. Ohm’s Law states that V=IR where V is voltage in unit Volts(V), I is current in unit Amperes(A), and R is resistance in unit Ohm’s(Ω). To determine which resistor we needed we changed the equation and plugged in the following values:
First for the LED ruby slippers I had done research online to determine different prices and shipping times as well as learning how to create LED circuits. Shipping times from most places online were going to take too long and would delay our schedule for finishing the project and they couldn't offer us any personal advice so John and I went to check out the different options offered by RadioShack.
Our first trip to RadioShack John and I talked with two employees about our project and photographed all the different LED's we considered using, noting their prices and specifications as well.
We returned to the group who was painting sets at the time and filled them in on what we learned. No one in our group had real experience with circuitry. I had done a minimal amount of soldering and John, Dan, and I had taken Physics II years ago where we learned concepts of circuitry.
Dan and I drew out a diagram of the circuit on paper and analyzing the shoes we determined that we could only supply 18 Volts of energy since only two 9 Volt batteries would fit on the shoe. We wanted as many LED's as possible on the shoe and the lowest voltage LED's we found were 1.8 Volts. This meant that we could only use 9 LED's which took a total voltage of 16.2 Volts so we could leave a potential drop in voltage for a resistor so the LED's wouldn't blow.
We then used Ohm's Law to determine the resistor we needed to use. We have nine 5mm 1.8 volt 20mA high intensity red LEDs, two 9 volt batteries, a 100 Ohm resistor, and a slide switch circuited in sequence on each shoe. Ohm’s Law states that V=IR where V is voltage in unit Volts(V), I is current in unit Amperes(A), and R is resistance in unit Ohm’s(Ω). To determine which resistor we needed we changed the equation and plugged in the following values:
V=IR
=> R = V/I
=> R = (2*9V – 9*1.8V)/20mA
=> R = (18V – 16.2V)/20mA
=> R = 1.8V/0.02A
=> R = 90 V/A
=> R = 90 Ω
A 100 Ω resistor is the closest value and it does not need to be too precise. Also note that V in this equation is the potential drop between the voltages of the batteries and the LED’s (2*9V – 9*1.8V=1.8V).
We attached the LED’s to the shoes through the holes in the sequins and soldered red electrical wire to create the sequential circuit. We duct taped the batteries to the base of the shoes to hold them in place.
Project 4: Planning
This class we began looking at the different steps we had to complete for a successful project and planned how we would accomplish them. We would need to come up with a script and identify all characters and set elements that we wanted to design. We determined what materials we would need for set and costume design, different colors of black light paint, black lights, cardboard to paint on, black felt, and Christmas lights. We needed to rent a video camera to film the scenes in Kansas and we planned to use Mia's digital camera to take the still pictures in the dark.
We really didn't know precisely how we wanted to do the filming in the dark but we did some test shots with both the video camera and still digital camera in the dark with a small light to see how they would work. We checked and found that we could get the room upstairs in DAAS to incredibly low light levels so we decided to use that location to film our in-the-dark scenes. For the Kansas scenes we decided to film in Andrea's apartment where we often had our group meetings.
After we would complete the filming, we knew that we would need to do a lot of film editing to compile all of our motion and still shots together. We also didn't want to worry about sound while filming so all cohesiveness and context to the story would be added through post production sound editing.
The final part of our planning was how we would exhibit our short film in the art show. We wanted to show our video on a wall using a projector and we planned to display different set and costume elements for viewers to look at so they could see the difference between what we worked with and what they were watching on screen.
We really didn't know precisely how we wanted to do the filming in the dark but we did some test shots with both the video camera and still digital camera in the dark with a small light to see how they would work. We checked and found that we could get the room upstairs in DAAS to incredibly low light levels so we decided to use that location to film our in-the-dark scenes. For the Kansas scenes we decided to film in Andrea's apartment where we often had our group meetings.
After we would complete the filming, we knew that we would need to do a lot of film editing to compile all of our motion and still shots together. We also didn't want to worry about sound while filming so all cohesiveness and context to the story would be added through post production sound editing.
The final part of our planning was how we would exhibit our short film in the art show. We wanted to show our video on a wall using a projector and we planned to display different set and costume elements for viewers to look at so they could see the difference between what we worked with and what they were watching on screen.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Poster Presentation
As a project milestone to demonstrate the progress that we made and to get feedback from the class on our project, we were assigned to create a poster. The poster would also be used as a promotional item for our exhibit.
Together we all came up with a general design for the poster, Andrea created the poster in Photoshop and I was assigned the task of writing up our work progress and future plans. Andrea spent a lot of time creating the visual design and effects for the poster. We even included a film strip along the bottom showing the visuals of what would happen each day along with the sticky note detailing each scene to be included on that day.
We were all unsure of what should be on the poster as we felt we had received mixed/unclear instructions. We were told it was supposed to be presentable at a conference which often means there will be a good amount of text on it. When we presented our poster to the class, we were then told there should be just about no text. We then reworked the poster design to include very little text and instead prominently display the film strip that Andrea had designed.
Together we all came up with a general design for the poster, Andrea created the poster in Photoshop and I was assigned the task of writing up our work progress and future plans. Andrea spent a lot of time creating the visual design and effects for the poster. We even included a film strip along the bottom showing the visuals of what would happen each day along with the sticky note detailing each scene to be included on that day.
We were all unsure of what should be on the poster as we felt we had received mixed/unclear instructions. We were told it was supposed to be presentable at a conference which often means there will be a good amount of text on it. When we presented our poster to the class, we were then told there should be just about no text. We then reworked the poster design to include very little text and instead prominently display the film strip that Andrea had designed.
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