Stacey Dolan University Projects
Stacey, this is my Uni Production Projects blog
Finding facts for Birmingham and Cheltenham
Reflection
Upon reflection both Poppy and I prefer our final piece of Birmingham the most. For me personally I think there is extra ‘texture’ to the shots as there is more going on in terms of stuff like the architecture and the canal boats, which looks good with the tilt shift effect.
Filming was simple enough, we decided on locations that we thought would look good on camera but that were also relevant for promoting the area. Cheltenham’s regency buildings looked nice, and Birmingham’s varied locations looked nice, Gloucester was harder to find photogenic locations to shoot, but because of the sunny weather what we did shoot looked good, however we should have probably researched the area more as we’d never been before so we could have had more varied shots.
Editing initially was stressful. We followed the After Effect instructions I’d written down when being shown how to use the software by our tutor, however as is typical for me, when it came down to doing it ourselves it didn’t work as easily. We found some youtube tutorials, and after finding one that we could understand and follow we decided to use their techniques - eventually we even found quicker ways to do it than the tutorial. Once we’d picked up the technique we started to whiz through it.
Exporting became difficult when random shots weren’t exporting with their effect so we decided to simply edit them in Premiere Pro as that seemed to work. We hadn’t used Premiere Pro before but we quickly picked it up. We’d struggled finding music for our pieces, we were going to work with Music students but differing deadlines made it difficult, and some of the online royalty-free examples were either not actually free or just not good enough. So we decided on using the instrumentals to Owl City’s song as their techno sound suited the video, and Death Cab for Cutie’s song as the mood fitted the piece.
Overall we really enjoyed this work, again as it was something we hadn’t done before. I’m sure had we been learning the program for a while the pieces would have looked amazing but we’re happy with how they turned out for our first try, I think adding the music and the factual text also gives them more a purpose during watching.
* COMPLETED PIECE 3: Birmingham Infomercial *
Our final and favourite piece - a Birmingham Promo - filmed all by Stacey and edited by both of us.
* COMPLETED PIECE 2: Cheltenham Infomercial *
This is our second piece - A Promo of Cheltenham. We decided to add facts to the piece as it gives it more of a narrative and purpose.
Filmed and Edited by both of us.
* COMPLETED PIECE 1: Short Gloucester Promo *
We started with a small promo for Gloucester featuring a few landmarks - we couldn’t find many photogenic places to film so the piece is short, we will make the Cheltenham one longer. If we were to shoot this again we would research more thoroughly where to go and film. But shooting this enabled us to start seeing how the tilt shift affect would look.
We decided to add music to the pieces, initially we were hoping to perhaps work with the Uni’s music students, although differing deadlines made this awkward, From having watched videos that used tilt-shift we thought the techno sound to the songs we chose fitted the visuals well. Personally, I couldn’t find any free music online that suited the pieces. Upon posting them to Youtube we have acknowledged all copyright to the artist.
Filmed and edited by both of us.
Rendering takes so long!!! :D
Screen shots of our work !!!
Finally nailed TILT SHIFTING!!!!!! WOOP!We tried several different tilt shift techniques on After Effects but some just wouldn’t work, in the end we tilt-shifted using the technique shown in one of the Youtube tutorials (How to Fake Tilt Shift Photography by ECAbrams), eventually we found a way to tilt-shift even quicker and simpler than the tutorial.
Shooting Day 2-
Town Hall
Ladies College
Promenade
Queen’s Hotel
Testing out tilt-shift after effect on stills. Contrast and blur
Probably my favourite, and easiest to follow, tutorial.
Important notes:
Shoot from up high, at a distance, static camera,
Lens blur.
Colour saturation/ hue - hyper-real.
Effects - gradient curvature graph - whites and blacks.
Effects - brighten and contrast - lower contrast, higher brightness
Lessen frames per second and/or speed it up.
Posturize time - frame rate - 4-6 frames p/s.
Composition - composition settings - Advanced - Tick preserve frame rate when nested/ render queue
Rectangle - blur - feather.
Learn Tilt Shift effect in 6 minutes
Is it better to shoot from up high and from a distance?
-That’s usually how the tilt shift is used. But “better” really needs a comparative. So maybe it would be more interesting to see a shot from another angle? If the intended look is to make things seem like tiny toys then for sure get up and over them since that’s usually how we are used to viewing childs toys on the floor. But don’t let that limit the possibilities
21/03/13 - Initial test shooting.
Also, I emailed several premises asking for permission to film. So far the salon across from the Town Hall have successfully replied.
Year 3 MCC327 Assignment
So for our final year production assignment we decided, as with last year’s green screen, to try something new. This time we are using the Tilt Shift technique to make a promo video for Cheltenham, showing off its best features, and possibly other areas.
I had watched a few videos of tilt-shifting on video, and showed them to Poppy. We both loved the effect, but noticed the videos were shot often for the sake of showing off the effect and that we would need some kind of purpose to our piece, especially since some of the online examples had the advantage of shooting from skyscrapers and helicopters already making them more impressive.
Some examples, and sources of inspiration will follow.
