Saturday, March 28, 2009
Screening reflection.
Working with Faizal and Kim Luk is a great experience for me. I found out that Kim Luk photoshop skills are great and faizal's animation are still as good as ever. I feel that i didn't contribute much as i doesn't have a strong area to start with. I learn alot from them but still dare not try it because i am scare to have ruin the video.
Apart from that, i also found out about myself is that i can only be an actor and not the director or editor. It is because i found out that editing and directing to me is really cannot make it issue for myself but i am willing to learn from scratch again.
-Xian Ming
Friday, March 27, 2009
Day35
IT's been a fruitful process during these two months, working with Faizal and XianMing.
Credits to Faizal: I learnt how to paint with photoshop from him.
some animating techniques from him and lip dubbing.
From Xianming: I learnt more editing techniques
Well there still alot of things i had learnt from them which I can't call upon.
My Reflections:
Getting angry with group from group members is very normal when things are not running smoothly. We ought to solve the problems together instead. It is also imortant to respect team members. Reasons: some might tolerate or some might fall out with you and never want to work with you in the future.
* What matters in a group is not always about being the best but is about how they overcome the obstacles( whether emotional or technically) and learn together as a group to achieve a common goal.
Today's screening was interesting. I could see many different results and processes from other groups. Some have very simple but effective masterpieces. Whereas, some have amusing effects. Faizal was busy doing his video fundamentals. So both me and Xian Ming presented when we first to present. Xianming spoke it all. Hahas, I' don't whether this presentation have marks or not but i am speechless if there is no questions shot at me. I am proud of the result of our work eventhough it might look inferior to some others.
Goodwork Xianming and Faizal... we have rooms of improvement
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Reflection
Overall, i feel that i'm not that good either as sometimes, i would show out my temper and even informed Kim Luk that i would be late. Causing him to be in school very early alone. That was the start of P1. I'm sorry for not giving my all for this project.
-Xian Ming
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Day34
We have not design our CD cover yet.
-Kim Luk
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Day33
A team needs support and help from each other. Thus we are now still a team. : )
GUNGHO! GUNGHO ! GUNGHO!
- KIM LUK
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Day 32
After so long, our group still had the claymation part to do and interim 2 is on thursday! I'm sure that we wont be able to finish it by then. After putting some of the rough cut footage together, i feel that our video are too long and needs to cut away some scene. But cutting away some scenes means that our video wont be as good. Hope that it could turn and well for everything. I shall use all my energy in the editing even if i don't sleep.
-Xian Ming
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Day 30
Faizal and Xianming went to do some voluntary acting for Jeremy's film except for me. I guess they have learnt some experiences from it While they are away, I spent the afternoon with the desktop in the 3d lab, figuring out how to key away the shadowy parts of the video. Well i was hoping to solve this challenge so that we don't have to reshoot the entire green screen part. Then there was a powerfailure. Everyone went whining about not saving their works.
Then Faizal and Xianming came back during the late afternoon. Faizal did some animations and i realized it was Xianming's birthday. Xianming went off early to work. Meanwhile i went around to look and learn from other coursemates' works.
Faizal finished animating the animations of the video. Well, I did not managed to key out the minor shadows. I thought it would be better to reshoot again but this time round with strong lightings to get rid of the shadows. We are now progressing on to make the claymations for our video.
GUNGHO, GUNGHO,GUNGHO!!!!
- KIM LUK
Friday, March 13, 2009
Day 29
I have learn how to mask and make away the green screen. A lesson learnt, NEVER CAST ANY SHADOW WHILE USING GREEN SCREEN! Now i have known that green screen is the hardest thing. I think i will try not to touch green screen in my future project.
-Xian Ming
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Day 27
Many people were using the studio. Thus, the studio need to be booked for using. Luckily Jovi's group booked the studio for that day, and we shared the studio with them. There were other groups there too. We had to wait for the other groups to use the green screen before we could start.
I was watching how Featrice and Caster's group were shooting their video with the green screen. Whereas, Xianming was busy doing his H&C waiting.
We started quite late in the evening around 6.00pm. Fizal was scared of heights, he needed someone to hold the ladder before he could stand on the ladder to shoot.
Everything was quite smooth. There were some shots which require aerial top view and we need to have Xianming lying flat on the ground. We had to untie the green screen and lay it on the ground and hang it back again. We ended at 9pm plus.
Once again GUNGHO GUNGHO GUNGHO! everyone
- KIM LUK
Day 26
-Xian Ming
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Day 25
Sadly, there aren't any more P2 cameras. And filiming is pushed back to Monday with all the changes we had to make. Nice.
Did a lot of animation today. Pretty worn out, but it's times like these im glad to be working in a team. Kim Luk painted a bunch of stuff including the animation's backgrounds(guy has talent, woah) and xian ming helped to colour the animations. hopefully filiming can be finished by wednesday and then we could move on to post-production, which i suspect will take quite some time. dont really know how this is all gonna turn out. hopefully well. :)
good news is we finally decided on the sequence of events. there's no proper scripts but we do have a non-timed animatic and a pretty clear idea of what we're gonna do. I'm glad that we didn't go with that angel/devil idea after all, coz it would have had ALOT of animation in it, not to mention it being much longer than 7 minutes, which turns out to be no very long, haha.
--faizal
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Day24
Day 23
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Day 22
feel pretty bummed out that we worked on stuff for the past 2 weeks that wont even BE in the final, but i guess the time wasnt that wasted...it was a learning process after all, and i was sort of relieved that there's not so much animation in it as there was before.
--faizal
Monday, March 2, 2009
DAY 21
First thing we did was to borrow walcom pens for drawing our animations.
Then we headed to the Mac lab to experiment with the green screening, using animation with a green background on a background image. We used aftereffects to experiment the green screening, and we managed to put the animation character on the video.
Then we continue to experiment on how to put shadows on the animated character without affecting the background.
During the late afternoon, we headed to the animation lab. Faizal did some drawings on the story. Whereas, me and Xianming were experimenting on flash and after effects.
Can't wait to do more work for the impending production.
Tomorrow we will be consulting Yoke ee before we can start production.
We are still reviewing our ideas and improving on it. : )
- KIM LUK
GUNGHO, GUNGHO GUNGHO everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Day 20
Anyway, presentation didn't turn up so well for our class as many of us are too "ambitious" in our story. The only problem which Siew Ching voice out to ask us about our idea is the time issue. Actually, before today presentation, i had alrdy notice that our video timing will be overshot. So, we had already decided to take off or cut short the dialouge in our script.
After today presentation, i learn that something simple can also be shot in a way to make it look nicer. I hope i will be able to do that the next time. Currently, i learning lip synchronising for animation from a website which Faizal gives.
http://www.flashframer.com/create-a-realistic-flash-animation-lip-sync/
Let me share this. Hope it will be useful to the peeps who will be reading our blog. Things to remind myself "Please do not miss out class time the next time when planning for call sheets! Don't think everyday will be a free day with no lesson!"
-Xian Ming
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Day 19
Proposal was due very soon, and we hadn't really finalised anything yet. I wasn't sure if we had to submit EVERYTHING, or just our progress report. Well since Janice's group was doing everything i went with the safer option. Took pretty long, and i was the only one still touching it up when everyone else was done and watching Family Guy on Sham's laptop.
Scriptwriting
After SC explained to us the proper way of how to write a script(because books>teacher), we had to tweak ours a little to suit the desired format. also while writing the script we came up with a few song choice selections which we think are appopriate for the video. it also has that 'MTV' element from XM's idea by having current or recognisable tracks in it.
Animatics
Today we also recorded the entire dialog sequence for our video. spent well over an hour just recording, and gave us an idea of how long the production part of this project is gonna be. it's a shame that most of the dialog wouldn't be used for the animatics, since those took WAAAYYY longer to make than i had thought(what i got so far took like an hour to edit!) but the recording session served as a good rehearsal for the group anyway. also, some important tips to remember:
- record an entire scene in 1 take. editing can be done alot faster when 'cutting' one big clip than 'pasting' several clips together.
- the 3-10 rooms are not soundproof.
im sure there's more but i cant remember what they are right now.
--faizal
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Day 18
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Day 17
Monday, February 23, 2009
Day 16
-Faizal
Friday, February 20, 2009
Day 15
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Day 14
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Day 13
We consulted with SC about the basic outline of the chosen idea. She said the transitions were most important, and it kinda reminded me of what was on The Incredibles DVD, the voiceover said 'no scene stands alone' in a movie.
While writing, we designed the angel and devil characters for our story. Their designs were loosely based on characters that were in my sec 2 literature play, with a few alterations. Initially there was only an angel character, but by including the devil character, some comic relief would be added to the video. Their designs were kept simple and I kinda thought of Danny Phantom characters since they're easy to animate.
Once we were done with the transactions we were ready to write the script. Spent a great deal of time on it and realised that there's alot to do actually. But i gots faith in my groupmates can do it. jia you!
-faizal
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Day 12
Day 11
After presentation, my group decides to us Faizal's idea. Most probably will be the "Jokesaw" idea. It will be change if we feel that we do not have the time for that as it involves lots of work which require us to set up the scene. To me i feel that both of my idea were not as good as Faizal's idea. I will take P1 as my opportunity to learn things from him.
-Xian Ming
Friday, February 13, 2009
Day 10
Friday the 13th! and also consultation day. Spent a good amount of time yesterday thinking up proposals to ask teacher about. Only managed to come up with one by last night, a live-action/animation movie. Luckily though I expanded on an impulsive idea I had earlier and managed to make a decent story out of it.
So today in class we were breifed about how we were gonna submit the Part 1, individual part, of our assignment. It's pretty much the same format as our Third Age exercise, so no worries there. We were then told how to prepare for Interim One, which was groupwork. I finally learnt what 'pre-production' meant, I guess, lol. I was initially shocked to find out how much we had to do over six days, including:-
- final proposal
- storyboards
- moodboard
- visual references
- script(woah so fast ah)
- trailer(optional but still)
- and powerpoint
- oh yeah also TIMELINE as a production schedule
I guess it could be worse, haha. And seeing as how it'll be a group effort hopefully the production time'll be cut down.
Something important to note that teacher said was that what you pitch doesn't neccisarily have to be included in the brief. In other words, being "extra" might actually impress the clients in this business.
Presentation's on Monday(Tuesday for some lucky few) so I'd better start getting to work. Just a few more points to remember:
Objectives:
- attract target audience
- apply what you learnt
- *bonus points for applying Creative Storytelling and making the video a story instead of just a glorified slideshow
ok, just about done now. "happy" holidays!(weekend onli but nvm ah)
-Faizal
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Day 9
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Day 8
Through this, i learn that researching is quite tough actually because all our solution require good research as backing. This way, our client would be confident to spend their money on us. Research cannot be only in one aspect because some people might like it and some may not.
After the presentation, i feel that my group did not do very well because many question were being asked by the lecturer. We will have to buck up!
-Xian Ming
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Day 7
Monday, February 9, 2009
Day 6
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Day 5
The link are as follow:
http://www.playpark.net/forums/viewthread/5781/
Please feel free to discuss with us as this might be a help to you guys too!
So far, our group manage to come out with 2 ideas for our proposal. We are now generating ideas and noting points from our research so as to help us in doing a better job. Now, our group has done point form notes for our proposal and power point presentation and hopefully could finish by monday. Since the dead line has been postpone to wednesday, monday would be the best deadline to finish everything so that we would still have time to do some changes when there's problem. Personally, i feel that the bondings between younger generation and the older generation should first start from family and then to the older generation outside.
-Xian Ming
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Day 4
Today for class we talked discussed about the >60 Centre which is relevant to our first exercise. Teacher was saying how any concept or idea can be put into any medium, and MOI students shouldn't avoid print media just because we're mainly film students. We looked at a couple of brochures and books, and we saw how even films can be made to help people understand the situations of the elderly.
The first one we watched was 'This Is My Ah Gong' and this film brought to light how important it is to establish a good relationship with the SIP production house we'd be allocated to, since the student who made it got help from someone there to compose the soundtrack. The second one I dont remember the name, but I liked it better than the first. However, eventhough the 2nd one might be better story-wise, the message of the movie has swayed away from the original request from the client. The first one fulfilled what was stated in the brief and that's why Identifying the Design Problem is VERY important!
So after the lesson we had some time to discuss about our project. We already had one idea in mind that was approved by teacher after a little tweaking. And then the challenge for us was to come up with something else, since all our previous ideas could be categorized under that 1 idea. After throwing around some suggestions, we decided to have our 2nd proposal as an event instead of a building, like the first one. It could be a neighbourhood thing, which means even after the event, the younger and older generation would acknowledge each other if they ever see each other around. We thought the idea was pretty solid but an important thing teacher reminded us was to make sure that asides from bringing the teenagers and old people together at one place, we have to make sure to make them interact and talk to each other, which can be done by having games or seating the different groups with one another.
-Faizal
Day 3
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Day 2
2) Role Of a Designer
1)Research
-Quantitative Research -Qualitative Research
2)Explore
3)Challenge
4)Validate
5)Solution
Quantitative Research
- Research from many different group of people.
Qualitative Research
-Research that ask quality question so that we would achieve quality answer.
Come out with few ideas to the problem.
To choose an idea out of the few ideas we have
To see whether the chosen is working.
If its working, show how it is working.
If there's problem, show the problem and how are we going solve it.
After solving all the above process
Monday, February 2, 2009
Day 1
When we got to class we were lectured more about the ruless, and given a few more notes. One of them was reguarding our first exercise, which was to create two possible programmes to promote bonding between younger and older generation Singaporeans. I thought this was quite an interesting task as it is an actual competition that we will be using for classwork. Kind of like ComDI. After the lucky draw to decide which group we would be allocated into, and discussing the blog name and URL, we were done for the day. Class ended a little early, so my groupmates, Xian Ming, Kim Luk and I went to the library to do a little research before Kim Luk had to go for his next lesson.
--Faizal.