Mandated state and federal standardized tests are stifling student growth.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
PE_7 CS5
7:40 PM
Matthew E. Park
For my final video for this class I decided to make an entire project from start to finish with Adobe Premiere. My plan for the idea involved using the chroma key feature or 'green screen' effect. Now, I've used green screen via iMovie in the past. The effect is decent, but iMovie does not allow you to edit and customize your key. The green screen I have access to is just a curtain, so there is always a lot of color variation. You can see shadow like ripples in the background of the video I linked above. Premiere gives you much more control. First of all, Premiere gives you the ability to crop a key, which will reduce problem spotst, by creating what is called a garbage matte. I created a four point garbage matte for my project.
Notice how the color isn't even. By cutting out unused portions I reduce potential problems with the key. Next, premiere allows you to look at your key as a black and white by switching to alpha color.
For a good key the transparency should be solid black and the subject should be white. In my pic above there is a lot of gray areas that will hurt the overall effect. This can be corrected by tweaking the settings of the key.
By adjusting the shadow and pedestal settings, I was able to clean up my key.
Now, I must admit that I leaned heavily on lynda.com for this project. Even with that great resource, the process took much trial and error.
In the end I think the effect worked out pretty good. Click here to see my final video for this class.
Notice how the color isn't even. By cutting out unused portions I reduce potential problems with the key. Next, premiere allows you to look at your key as a black and white by switching to alpha color.
For a good key the transparency should be solid black and the subject should be white. In my pic above there is a lot of gray areas that will hurt the overall effect. This can be corrected by tweaking the settings of the key.
By adjusting the shadow and pedestal settings, I was able to clean up my key.
Now, I must admit that I leaned heavily on lynda.com for this project. Even with that great resource, the process took much trial and error.
In the end I think the effect worked out pretty good. Click here to see my final video for this class.
PE_6 CS5
7:17 PM
Matthew E. Park
This week I decided to continue my exploration of After Effects and Premiere. For my first project I decided to go back into After Effects and tweak the Christmas photo show I made last week. I decided to add an opening title screen.
Once again, it took my a little bit of time to figure it out. The Adobe products are intended for professional use, so making them user friendly isn't really a primary concern. First of all, unlike iMovie, AE gives you the ability to create text boxes and move them anywhere in the frame you would like them.
The other cool thing about creating titles in AE is the number of preset text animations. The presets are actually part of Adobe Bridge. The following pic is just an example of what is available in the organic folder. There are actually about 15 text animation folders.
Once the titles are created you add them to the time line where you can place and slide them in relation to the rest of your project.
The titles appear in red on the time line. The timing can be adjusted by simply dragging the ends to increase or decrease the amount of time they are on the screen.
Here are the results.
Once again, it took my a little bit of time to figure it out. The Adobe products are intended for professional use, so making them user friendly isn't really a primary concern. First of all, unlike iMovie, AE gives you the ability to create text boxes and move them anywhere in the frame you would like them.
The other cool thing about creating titles in AE is the number of preset text animations. The presets are actually part of Adobe Bridge. The following pic is just an example of what is available in the organic folder. There are actually about 15 text animation folders.
Once the titles are created you add them to the time line where you can place and slide them in relation to the rest of your project.
The titles appear in red on the time line. The timing can be adjusted by simply dragging the ends to increase or decrease the amount of time they are on the screen.
Here are the results.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
PE_5 CS5
6:53 PM
Matthew E. Park
This week we made another Hollywood style trailer to promote our holiday food drive competition. It turned out pretty good, but I was unhappy that I was not able to make some text additions that I wanted to make. I wanted to add the names of a few faculty members to promote them as the stars of the fictional film "Quest for Cans." The iMovie 11' templates will not allow much customization and even exporting and importing back into iMovie is still a problem due to the limited text feature. The clip played for the students on Thursday without the text I wanted to add. Since Thursday, I have become brave enough to use CS5, and I was able to add the text I wanted with Adobe Premiere (Pr). Next week I'll know how to do this in time for the release to the students and staff.
Pr is a professional quality video editing program, and it is quite daunting. Luckily, a few Lynda.com tutorials showed me how to add titles to a project. Even with that, I stumbled through the process.
First of all, compared to iMovie, the text creation and editing interface is awesome. There are many more fonts, colors, and full freedom for placing the text on the clip.
Once the text is created it shows up in the toolbar on the left hand side.
From here, you drag the titles to the timeline.
Each title can be animated by dragging preset effects unto them from the toolbar.
Once everything is laid out, Pr gives you many output options for rendering the final project. I went with .mov mainly because it seems to upload to viddler without losing integrity better than some other formats I've used.
Once again, this took a lot of time considering the final result, but I think it looks good. Remember, most of the dynamic text in this clip is courtesy of the iMovie 11' template I used. What I added in Pr is the star title text that shows up three times in the clip.
Pr is a professional quality video editing program, and it is quite daunting. Luckily, a few Lynda.com tutorials showed me how to add titles to a project. Even with that, I stumbled through the process.
First of all, compared to iMovie, the text creation and editing interface is awesome. There are many more fonts, colors, and full freedom for placing the text on the clip.
Once the text is created it shows up in the toolbar on the left hand side.
From here, you drag the titles to the timeline.
Each title can be animated by dragging preset effects unto them from the toolbar.
Once everything is laid out, Pr gives you many output options for rendering the final project. I went with .mov mainly because it seems to upload to viddler without losing integrity better than some other formats I've used.
Once again, this took a lot of time considering the final result, but I think it looks good. Remember, most of the dynamic text in this clip is courtesy of the iMovie 11' template I used. What I added in Pr is the star title text that shows up three times in the clip.
PE_4 CS5
6:24 PM
Matthew E. Park
I decided to take the plunge and create a project using one of the applications in Adobe CS5. I have to admit that I find the Adobe products a bit intimidating. iMovie is one thing, but Premiere and After Effects... That's a whole different ballgame. I decided to keep it simple since it would be my first experience with one of the applications in the CS5 suite. I decided to make a holiday photo show of my boys using After Effects (AE).
First I created a background movie in iMovie by stringing together six photos that I changed to black and white. I then imported this movie into AE. I also imported all of the color shots I would use in the photo show. All imported items show up in the window on the upper left of the screen. I learned this by watching the AE essentials on Lynda.com.
From this window you drag the items you want down to the timeline. You need to make sure they are on the right layer or else they will not show up. The layer can easily be changed on the timeline by dragging and dropping.
Once the objects are set on the timeline, you can now add effects and transitions by dragging and dropping them from the effects and presets window on the right hand side.
Since this is my first experience with AE, I followed Lynda.com's advice and stuck with presets. The number of effects and animations is amazing, but AE does allow those more inclined than I to actually create custom effects through an internal programing language.
Once the project is laid out, AE allows you to compose the project into a wide variety of formats. I chose .mov. The last step is to press the render button and wait for the project to code.
Overall, I found the program a bit tedious, but I was blown away by its capabilities and the possibilities. I'm glad I got my feet wet. Here is my final project. It's not that great for the amount of time I spent on it, but all in all I'm pleased considering it's my first attempt.
I did bring it back into iMovie and add a stock holiday theme.
BP_11 NetRocket Commercial
6:17 PM
Matthew E. Park
The music was created in Garageband and the animations are courtesy of Animation Factory.
