Light and Time - Final Piece

So here is my final piece for light and time.  Following on from the previous driving video experiments, I made this video on Premiere Pro.  I really enjoyed making the previous videos and knew this is where I wanted to go for a final piece.  It has both original videos speeded up, with the last video in reverse speed.  I knew I wanted it to be quite dark and I wanted to make most of the environment disappear along with the black road.    I therefore changed the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, put a glow effect on and a lens distortion effect.  As you can also still see the road markings in most of the video, with some of them now distorted, it feels to me like you are travelling down something at high speed, almost like you are on a track.

Even though I put a music soundtrack on, I also put a rollercoaster sound effect with the sound of the tracks to emphasise this in the appropriate parts of the video.  I also added a wind sound effect to create atmosphere by making it seem like you are travelling in the open air.  Adding sound effects is something that I really enjoyed doing.

How is it related to light and time?  If there was no light there would be no video and it is related to time through speeded up film.  Originally I had around 15 minutes of film but after editing parts and speeding it up, I was left with just over under 6 minutes.

I am so happy with this video.  When I originally got given the brief for 'light and time', I was struggling to think creatively and couldn't think of an idea that didn't show light and time in a subtle way, apart from with the slit scan.  It was only when I stopped thinking about what the brief meant and experimented more, when my final piece came about.  It usually always happens towards the end of the project, where I get and idea that I am happy with and end up going with that.  I very rarely have a solid idea at the beginning of a project.

Music by Netsky

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Light and Time - Experimenting with Effects

For the following two videos I placed a video recorder on the dashboard in my car and recorded two different journeys I made in my area.

For the first video I wanted to know how to do a split screen with two videos.  I put both videos into After effects and rescaled them so that they played side by side.  I then changed the hue/saturation, vibrance, levels and put a glow effect on the video next to it.  The video on the right is also in reverse speed which I did on Premiere Pro.

Personally I think split screen looks good and I enjoyed editing both videos.

Music for the split screen video by Daft Punk


For the video below the split screen, I just put an extract effect onto one of the original videos.  I wanted to put more of an emphasis on the places travelling by and the environment rather than the road itself, which I think the extract effect does quite well.

This video was made in Premiere Pro.

Music for the extract video by AdamF

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Tracking motion in After Effects

Have a look at this short video I spotted on Vimeo. The style is sort of similar to the video I would like to make as my final piece, however, I do not plan on using motion tracking to create mine.

http://vimeo.com/4079366

Light and Time - Developed Slit Scan animation

Here is the developed slit scan animation that I had originally made as a final piece.  I spent weeks planning this thinking about the order in which the scans were going to be placed and the speed of the animation.  It includes over 1251 scans, with some darker random scans at the very beggining, at about 10% speed/duration.  As the clear scans fade into each other I changed the speed to around 0.2 and duration to 1.20 for each clip, as I purposely wanted the clear scans to fade into each other slowly, to see shape and colour.  I then changed the speed to around 60% to run faster and then gradually to 100%.  I chose to change the speed of the animation and place certain scans in different places because I still want the viewer to see a beginning, middle and end, so that the animation has a point.  The middle of the animation being during the day capturing peoples movement, colour etc.  Then working through the darker scans as people disappear towards the end of the day.  I did not just want to put over a thousand random scans together, as it would have no meaning. 

I also tried to get the music in sync with the video which was quite a task as it was such a long song.  I edited parts out where appropriate, but there is a part at the beginning that is slightly out but I tried my best with it.

One big problem I had was having to rename all the scans.  Each time the computer made a scan, that image automatically went into a folder, but when the folder was full, I had to stop the scan, move all the scans out and delete all the ones inside it.  This was in order to make a new set.  The problem was that in each folder the scans were named the same (output 1, 2, 3 etc).  I therefore had an extremely tedious task of renaming over a thousand scans, so that After effects would import them correctly.

To make this video I rendered it in After effects and edited it in Premiere Pro.

How is it related to light and time?  If there was no light there would be no scan.  It is related to time through time of exposure i.e. how often the computer makes a scan.

Overall, I am very happy with this piece and I enjoyed making it.  It was going to be my final piece, but through experimenting I created something I am much more pleased with.

Music by Drums of Death

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Light and Time - Slit Scan experiment

Having never looked at code before, I took the opportunity to try and understand a little bit about it.  Using Processing I created code that would generate a slit scan, through using the camera on the mac to scan objects or people.  Each time it made a scan it saved that image.  At this point I had over 300 scans in which I put together to make the animation below.  I did however change the code to generate a different scan every time.  For example, I may get one clear scan and the next may just be black with a row of white lines.  I really like how random each scan is and I am happy with this first test animation.  This has really interested me in terms of maybe developing into a final piece.  However, I would have a much longer animation with over 1000 scans and change colours on Photoshop etc.  I may have the animation starting off really slow with the clearer scans fading into each other and slowly appearing more random and at a faster speed.  I would also want to scan as many people as possible, as this would make for a more interesting animation in terms of shapes and colour.

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Light and Time - Chess stop motion

For this stop motion piece I went into Huddersfield town centre to the chess square.  The chess pieces are free for the public to use, to play a  game of chess with.  I went down with a friend to photograph the game at every stage to make a small animation.  My friend moved each piece one by one, as I photographed each move.  The photographs were then put together as an animation using Premiere Pro.

I am really pleased with this but I did have problems with photographing when it came close to the end of the game.  As the pieces made their way back to the basket, I started zooming in to see the pieces more clearly, but as it got to the last few shots, my battery was running out fast.  To try and preserve the battery while my friend moved the pieces, I kept turning the camera off.  However, by doing this and rushing to photograph the last few pieces, I couldn't get the right amount of zoom I had previously.  This meant that when the photographs were put into Premiere Pro and animated, the last few moved in and out which did not look right.  What I ended up doing was putting all the photographs from the ending into Photoshop and tried to crop parts and resize so that the animation would run smoothly.  However, you can still see slight movement towards the end.  The ending is a bit of a let down for me, as the in/out movement I feel ruins the animation.  Apart from that, I am really happy with the game itself.

Music by The Art Department

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

Light and Time - After effects water experiment

As part of the experimental stage I made this video in After effects.  I originally filmed two different parts of a small waterfall near to where I live for about 20 seconds (each video).  I then put them into After effects and changed the hue/saturation to make it a purple colour and played with the curves to darken it a little.  I also put a turbulent displace effect on them. 

For the second part of the video, I took the sound of the waterfall from the original video and used the audio mixer to sync it in with the music track.  This part was done using Premiere Pro.

The reason for me doing this experiment was for me to get more familiar with adding effects to video using After effects, as it is not a piece of software I use often.  I also wanted to experiment with sound by seeing if I could have the sound of the water in sync with the music track.

I am happy with this experiment, as I feel I achieved what I set out to do.

Music by AdamF

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.

After effects experiments

These small experiments were done on After effects.  It is the first time I had used keyframes to animate on After effects.  Even though they are short, basic animations, I did find the process of animating them quite hard and I am not really happy with them as I didn't achieve what I set out to do.  I have watched tutorials on After effects, but non have seemed to help me understand it any better so far.  It is a piece of software that I have had difficulties with and have always found quite complicated.  However, it is something I feel I should persevere with and try to learn more about in terms of animating, as it will be very beneficial to me.

                                 

Time is Nothing // Around The World by Kien Lam

Check out this time lapse video I found on vimeo by Kien Lam.  Taken over 343 days in 17 different countrys, with 6237 photographs.  I have never seen a time lapse video like this, it is brilliant!



http://vimeo.com/34400428

Cinematic Cut

For these two videos, I took a few skateboarding videos off YouTube and edited different parts.  I then put the edited parts into one video.  When I was choosing videos to download, I only chose videos that I thaught would work quite well together.  I also kept the original soundtrack for both. 

The video at the top was originally quite a long video, so I just edited bits out and slowed down/speeded up parts.

The second video I feel is the better one.  I did however, make it a little bit too dark by changing the brightness/contrast, so to improve it I would just lighten it a little.

This is the first time I have edited video.  It was very time consuming but I enjoyed it and gained a basic knowledge on how to edit video on Premiere Pro CS5.