project

planning the week ahead

Friday, October 24th, 2008
at 11:18pm

Image by Rakka via Flickr

Next week i’m off college, but i’ve a lot of work to do. I have about 80% of footage and sound to work with so i can begin to put together a ‘final’ demo version of our college video.

At the minute, i have over 300 video files sitting in a folder, 500+ sound effect files and over a hundred images. Over 13 gigs in total of raw material. That’s a hell of a lot of work.

I’ve renamed all those 300 video files and sorted them in to folders as it’s vitally important i’m well organized. You have to be when producing any sort of lenghtly film with loads of footage and effects.

At the minute i have some titles/introduction complete, plus the finale. In total, about 20 seconds of actual video but it probably took me 8/9 hours to do. I also have a custom mp3 made which runs over the introduction.

This week, i’ll need to start cutting up video and using our different camera angles to good effect. I’ll also draw out a timeline of events for myself to keep me on track. The final video will be about 30 minutes in length and i’d imagine i’ll be swapping angles and changing scenes every few seconds to make it look as polished as possible.

I’ve no idea what the final product will look like, but i’ve already got some ‘world class’ stuff in it which will definitely blow people away. Our plan now is to make this in to a dvd with full menu’s and fancy introduction + an actual DVD case & cover to present the dvd in

God help the other groups who are doing similar projects - that’s all i’ll say - they don’t stand a chance

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1st term over

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
at 8:55pm

Image via Wikipedia

It’s been a very long first term for me in college. I started back on September 7th and it’s only now i’m getting a ‘break’. My timetable has also been harsh this semester… 9-5 daily and i get off at 4 on a Friday. Living about an hour away from college, you can slap another 2 hours on to that 9-5…

I get up at 7am, leave at 7.30am and aren’t home ’til just after 6pm. Add to that study time at home and assignments etc… and it’s a long week.

I also try to blog daily here, inevitably i’ll suffer from ‘burn out’ if i keep that pace up, which is the reason why i’ve taken the odd ‘day off’ like yesterday on this blog.

Yesterday i completed a custom made mp3 file for our video project which took some time. I’ve also completed several short animations and effects for it. The bulk of the work will be done next week when i’m off from college for a week

This video project is by far and away my biggest college project to date and also by biggest video project to date. Even though it’s not actually worth *that* much, it’s just something that we’ve all decided to go for and do to the best of our ability.

My plan from day one was to average around 70% in all exams and so far i’ve managed that. At the minute my average is around 75% and my lowest score so far in any exam has been 57%, which is also my worst subject.

Off the Ball

Monday, October 13th, 2008
at 10:03pm

As part of one of my college modules, i had to create a poster / banner for a fictional game. Could be on any topic and the only guidelines set were that it had to be priced at $39.99 and it be made by a fictional company called ‘games up’.

It was pretty well received… didn’t think it was anything special myself as it lacks a ‘web 2.0′ feel and looks half film / half game. The images could have been cartoonized or touched up with power meters and rather than have 4, i could have just gone with one and less text for maximum impact.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the rings around the ‘Off The Ball’ logo - they just sit there and add nothing whatsoever only to break up the logo from the main text / images. Anyway, like i said, it went down well so there you go… more perfection isn’t needed

I’ve also just thrown together a really quick light saber effect demo and put it up on youtube;

We’ve plans to take in a Jedi & light saber in to the Dragon’s Den as part of another college project. Above is really patched up job, but it was simply to demo what sort of effect can be got. The real thing will be much more polished than all of these short clips i’m uploading here and there. Anyway, as you guys can see, it’s college that’s eating up all my time

First week back in College

Friday, September 12th, 2008
at 6:41pm

This week was my first week back in college. I started on Tuesday. Although a lot of people are reluctant to be back, i was looking forward to it. I love projects and having things to do each week rather than one big exam at the end of the year - that’s probably the single biggest advantage of this course and the reason i like it.

We’ve already been told we’ve got a group project or two and have to present it to people, but due to the fact there’s only a handful of people in my class we’ve already formed a group and have begun planning a ‘Dragon’s Den’ mock up which we’ll film and edit and then present. I’d hazard a guess the other classes won’t even from groups for another couple of weeks, never mind come up with ideas and choose one

photo credit: unknowndomain

We’ve an excellent impressionist who can pull off just about any character out there. With the right props and script it’ll look fantastic. I’ll be taking on the editing role. Although i’m still a novice editing videos, i’m the best we have. This time, i’ll be using adobe premier pro cs3 and really going for a professional look.

You can bank on it being done right. I love that stability i can offer - even it takes me days and days to do something, it’ll be done My last video took about 11/12 hours in total to complete and i did that pretty much non stop one day. I’ll probably spend more time on this one. Even though it’s a hell of a lot of work, i’d love to be able to come up with something top class. It’d be another feather in my skills cap.

It’ll be invaluable experience if i can do a job on this - it’s not like creating a website or designing… it’s much more difficult imo as you have music, video, text and special effects to deal with and all require loads of thought and testing. Anyway, once i get that done, it’ll be going up on youtube

My modules this semester are;