I just finished a critical reflection, but if the last one was good and helpful, I can say that this one should be even better. Fiction Adaptation,, what a lovely but insane unit. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be stressful. I get usually stressed when editing some projects just when something is not coming up properly, but with this unit it wasn't just the fact that some things were not coming u properly, but the fact that I got so packed of work that it started to become really really hard. The main idea was to get to start in my fiction as early as I could, but the Digital News unit overtook a lot of time, specially since I was the editor. I didn't want to edit the Digitial News as a simple thing, because if there is something I am known of is experimenting new stuff and having some nice VFX in my videos. Digital News was the project that I which I was able to do a lot of effects and a proper good editing and due to all the different elements that were incorporated to that video, I started not having time, plus the fact that I still needed to attend uni. The thing I struggled the most was getting my idea straight. I went from doing a stop motion with post its to doing a 2D animation in the computer. Big step to be honest, but at this point I believe it was worth it. When I decided to make a 2D animation with characters that actually moved a little bit, which were going to tell a story, I knew that I was getting into something complicated. I had design characters for some minor things, a lot of logos and effects, but I had never had created a proper animation at all. I didn't even know if I could do it, but I really wanted to do it. It came up to a point where there was no turning back to be honest as I had started already making the characters and I was getting quite excited about it. The risk I took by doing this animation was really big, because what would have happened if I didn't have time to finish it or even worse, didn't even know how to do it. I am not a professional drawer and as a matter of fact I have never been able to properly draw with pen and paper that well. For some reason when it comes down to graphic designing and actually creating stuff on the computer, I am a bit better. It has been really hard to make all this stuff, specially working on your own and i think my critical reflection will be the one making understand everything I had to go through.

My video was basically divided by 4. I needed to create an animation, compose an original song with my poem, film the real life scenes and blog. It was almost impossible in my opinion. Since I hadn't done any of this before, the actual making of all of this took me ages. My biggest problem and factor that I had in the creation of the whole video, was the editing of the digital news. That process took me ages and a lot of effort and I sincerely just couldn't do both projects at the same time properly. It wasn't till I finished editing Digital News that I was able to sit down and work 100% on my fiction adaptation video, excluding the fact that I had to work on the essay as well. For me it was really hard because it wasn't like a normal shooting were you just prepare, do some research, make a script or shot lists, book a camera and off we go. I had to develop characters, model them, sketch, create, animate them and all that took ages since it was me on my own and never had properly done it before. Having that said, apart from that I still needed to compose the song, play the music, get a singer that will sing it as I wanted to, plus I still needed to film the real life bit which took me ages to film since my actress got very ill for over a week, plus my blog. All this literally was so overwhelming that I couldn't just sit and do it all. I believe what I learned the most in this unit is that if I am to try something new, I should try one thing at a time and not more than one unless I have some people helping me or I have the proper time for it. In order to properly create all this video I had to go through some really rough moments. Regarding my animation, at first I didn't know how to do it or anything. It was just annoying the fact that I didn't know where to start or anything. Once I was getting it done, the most annoying bit of all was to work with the animation on my mac. Due to the use of so many graphics, the rendering process to even just edit the animation on After Effects, was insane. I had to set up the quality of the preview to a quarter of the real one so I could work in general as in full or even half it would just crash or take up to a minute to load 1 frame. The main reason I took ages to do this was due to the amount of graphics I had to deal with and how my computer didn't handle them properly. I couldn't use the ones in the studios since they are either the same or worse than mine, which is what is taking me to sell my mac and hopefully buy a new one in February. As for the music, I believe that was even more stressful than the video itself. I have created songs before, but just lyrics and not proper melody or recorded anything professional. I though I could do it as I play the piano a bit and I know how to use music production softwares like Garageband and Logic Pro, that could help me get it right. I was quite wrong in a way. After trying a lot, I managed to get the poem into a song, but the whole thing went down to wether the song fitted the video or not and at the beginning the answer was no. The whole idea was to create a melody that fitted to video and then have the actual voice fit the melody and the rhythm. For that I decided to hire a singer at singerspro.com, which was going quite well as I got someone that I liked a lot and though voice would fit perfectly and he was up for it, but my problem is that after sending him everything he said he was going to have a look at it and apparently did not. My mistake was that I assumed that he was working on it and waited till thursday to call him and ask him. I contacted him wednesday before deadline and didn't reply at all and I was just assuming he had a lot of work and was working on my project. After ringing him all day Thursday, he picked up around 18:00 and told me that I had been speaking to his dad, since he is his manager, who first, happens to have the same name and second, had misinformed his son telling him that it was for thursday the week after, which it was not going to work at all. I got so angry and annoyed and stress at that moment because where about was I going to get someone to sing my song the way I wanted at 6pm who would fit and be willing to work with me for a couple hours. With stress I started calling some people I know around here and started knocking some door in halls of residence and by my luck there was someone that was willing to help me, Patricia Dixon from the first years. Although her voice didn't really fit the song, I had no option whatsoever, it was her or nothing or just keep knocking and see if someone else would help me. The issue is that she had to go out and wasn't coming till around midnight which is when I gave her the stuff and she started recording everything till 5AM. After me getting her recording and hard work, I put it with the video and I realised it didn't really work that well, but it was already to late and I had no option but submit it like that. I was so annoyed and stress because my good work was not looking as good because of my singer dropping and just ruining my song, but in the end I guess I have to live with it. As for the real life bit, as I explained in a previous post, Sophie, the girl in my movie, got really sick just around the day of filming, which was a Saturday and just couldn't do it due to being very sick and throwing up with a couple infections. It was too late for me because of the fact that I had been working on an animation with her image and it was going to be really hard about 1 or 2 weeks before deadline to find someone that looked like her or just find someone else completely and have to start over my animation which was going to take ages. I had no option but to wait till she got better which happened about a week after that Saturday and that finally just made me happy because I knew I could start putting something together on Final Cut and didn't have to worry about that anymore. As for my blog, i believe that was another really worrying bit because due to all this work plus the whole work for my digital news, i genially didn't have any time do a good blog for this unit and I admit it openly. I don't know if it was time managing or just having to much work for one person, but my time started to reduce overtime more due to having so much stuff to do.

If there is something I could change right now, it would be getting more people to work with me or help me at least with composing the music which took me a lot of time. I believe I could have handled the animation and my essay with not that many issues, but the music as well on top of the blog was just overwhelming. I think that what I learned the most here is that when I feel I don't have too much time or have too much work, I should't put to many tasks on myself. This unit more than anything was a properly learning unit and not just because of composing a song or doing an animation, but mainly because of all the issues I had and all the work I had to do. It was horrible. I am glad I got to make this project and the animation went right at least and managed to compose something even if it was last minute and not as good with my video, but I believe is an experience and something I wouldn't trade at all. I love the fact that tried something new and I am proud of doing it, although the outcome wasn't the expected one. I believe that the work and design of everything went fine, but the way I delivered it wasn't the best. I will take this unit as a big learning step for future units and just wait to see what happens to my grade, which I hope doesn't affect much. If you made it this far, thanks for reading my critical reflection.

Chris

Here is my final video!

Shooting was a very stressful and painful situation. I was set and ready to shoot on a Saturday having booked a camera on the previous Thursday, but Sophie happened to be very ill and couldn't do it. My biggest problem was that I had started doing the animation with her character already that it was almost too late to change it and start over again as I had put a lot of work into that. After talking with her, she said that she was happy to do it but whenever she felt a little bit better. It was coming down to the first week of December and I was still without shooting which was getting me very concerned, since if in the end I had to change the whole animation, I probably was not going to have time at all. Gladly after a lot of infections and bad days, Sophie started feeling a bit better and we filmed over a week after the day that we had planned. I had a massive relief.

On the actual day of shooting, the shoot itself only took around 40 mins. Since the real life bit of my video only lasts around 1 minute and a half, I knew exactly what I needed. I explained to her that the most important bit was for her to act sad or at least not happy at all or be smiling. She actually didn't quite well in my opinion. For the shooting I wanted a candle that was going to be a good element for the ending of my video. The main idea I had was to have close of on a round candle, which would darken the surroundings of it, which after blowing but was going to give about 2 seconds of pitch black that later in post I would make it as cutting to black. One thing that I needed to be checking all the time and struggled a lot with was a big mirror that she has in her room since I realised that things like the tripod or even myself were in it at some points and needed to get rid of it all the time.

Apart from all that the shooting went quite well. I didn't know where to put the tie that she picks up, as the original plan was to have it in some sort of special box, but Sophie gave a better idea that I liked even more which was having in under the pillow, which makes it much more special as well. Although it was long waiting and a bit of a stressful situation, it did work out actually pretty well. I ended up using Aimee's camera, a Canon 500D.

My characters where quite tough to create. What I wanted to create was basically like a system where I had all the clothes of my character with the facial expressions and just change it and play with it around. In order to do that I needed to design a basic skeleton for my characters which was going to work for both of them most likely. Having absolutely no hair or clothes or anything the very original drawing of my character was this:

With this base all I needed to do was basically start adding the hair and clothes and give it a little bit of shape which was going to lead slowly into the creation of my actual characters. The things I needed to work on was the hair of Sophie, which needed to match the real one, brown, a bit straight with waves and having a flick on the right side. After that it all went down to designing the clothes as well. This was a bit of the outcome of her without the facial expressions:

The idea was to have the facial expressions apart so hat I could just change them every time I was to vary instead of having to have a character with every single expression every time. I was to design just the face that then would be added to the character above. This is an example of a standard face:

With this base created, I could now just play with the character and just start creating all the different outfits and expressions that I wanted to use. 

After knowing and developing a bit my characters, I decided that it was time to start sketching and designing my locations. Before even designing them I needed to know which scenarios I was going to use. In order to do that I needed to know more or less what type of scenarios I was going to need. Here is a breakthrough of it:

Lab

The lab is to show that Sophie is a scientist and that is her place of work. It will be a a chemical lab.

Office

The office is the same case of Sophie but with Dave, it is to show that Dave is business man and with his suit it will make it a bit more clear

Coffee Shop street

A very important one is the coffee shop viewed from the street, which will help to see both characters leaving the buildings where they both work, so that they bump into each other at the Coffee Shop. 

Train Station

The train station is just to be a very simple scene where Sophie goes back home, being excited about being asked for dinner

Bathroom

Sophie's bathroom is to be used twice. The first time is just to show that she is home and happy and that is to get a shower and get ready. As for the second time is just to her changing her clothes after knowing that Dave arrived

Shop

The shop is for Dave, in order for him to buy the groceries to cook Sophie the dinner he promised he would. 

Sophie's House Street

I needed the street where Sophie leaves to show that Dave is arriving and him calling her letting her know that he is downstairs waiting for her. I also needed to create this location in night time taking into account that is dinner. 

Sophie's Bedroom

Her bedroom is to be created to show a scene where she is not ready after getting a call from Dave saying that he is downstairs. She just panics looking what to wear. 

Dave's Kitchen

This scene is to take us into Dave's house where the characters had just finished having dinner. After some nice talking, it will lead to some intimate intercourse. 

Beach

After my title with couple months after, the beach is gonna take part on having both characters exercising together 

Park

The park is most probably one of the most important places. It is going to be the place where Dave is going to propose to Sophie, where she will say yes.

Airport

The airport is also another very important beat to show that Dave is leaving for a flight with his pink tie, which Sophie then will recover after his death. 

The first thing I did after creating my story, was developing and creating my characters. I knew that I wanted two people, a guy and a girl, from which the girl was gonna be shown in real life and the animation when the guy was just to be seen in the animation. The idea was to develop the characters a little and know exactly how I wanted them to look like.

The Girl

The girl for the video was meant to be someone young, small, skinny and with dark hair. My idea was to have someone that looked cute and sad and for some reason that was exactly what I wanted. I happened to know someone exactly like that who was willing to help and act in my film, her name Sophie Moore. She is quite what I had in mind and fitted perfectly my character and what I wanted, which is why I got quite excited when she said she was up for it. The idea in real world part is for her to be sad but exaggerated as it has been a while since he died. I don't want to see her crying like he just died, but more like remembering him in a happy way, like he is the one she will never replace. Sophie has that cute face that I needed and I believe it will work out. I decided to keep her name for the character in the video. I tried to create a character that looked as much as possible as her which was quite touch in my opinion. Here are the images of her:

The Guy

As my male character is not to be seen in real life, I could play up a bit more with his design and create him more the way I pictured him. I imagined him being handsome, taller than her, usually with a suit, in his 20's, hair color similar to hers and skinny. He is a nice and very outgoing person, falling in love first sight with Sophie, Dave is the kind of person that would try all attempts to be with her. After trying different designs, this was the final version of Dave with his suit:

After submitting a script for my fiction, which wasn't even related to my final idea, I realised that it is quite hard and tough to make a script about an animation, specially if there is no voice. After having a tutorial with teacher Helen, we agreed that a much better thing to do was to make a storyboard. In my case a storyboard itself was taking me too long and my entire project, having also the whole editing of Digital News as well, was giving me so much work that I decided to create the video in own way. For that I started with drawing and sketching the scenarios in which the characters would develop the story and with that start designing all my animation. 

In order to create and start sketching and designing all the backgrounds I needed to make sure where all my story was going to take part and for that I started to develop it. Having taken into account teacher Helen's ideas and advices, the story originally was going to be all happy and the story of a girl in love, but since the poem is a World War poem and the ending of it is quite sad, teacher Helen mentioned me that ideally I should have a sad ending and that is exactly what I worked on. I decided to keep the love story, but with a sad ending, killing all Disney clichés and giving it a different twist. The whole idea started moving around what to do with my male character, which I also needed to give a role. At first he was a doctor, then a soldier and in the end he was just a businessman. At the beginning I wasn't exactly sure of what to and I decided to go for it and just kill him. The question was now, how was he going to die in my movie?? Many ideas came at first, from getting old, disease, being shot, etc. Finally my decision was to kill him in an airplane crash. As he is a businessman and travels, the idea was that in one those trips his plane crashes, where he would die.

After setting up the most important bits for my movie, I decided to fully develop my story which was this one:

A girl would start at beginning of movie in real like, Sophie, she sad and trying to carry on with her life. Turning on a candle and with a girly room, Sophie was to grab her computer in which she will play a song that reminds her of David, the man she engaged with. The song is to be one I composed, which is the way I am to introduce it to the video. After that she will start to stare at the screen a little bit sad as she is remembering and she will start seeing the animation on her computer screen, which is not really there, she is just imagining it. The animation is going to be the story of her and David from the moment they meet till the moment he dies. She being a scientist in her lab, him being a businessman in an interview, both of them leave their respective buildings and bump into each other in front of a cafe. As they see each other they realize it is love at first sight. He apologises with her and invites her for dinner, which she ends up agreeing with. After that with see her back home in her bathroom all excited about this moment like a girl in love, as David goes to the shop to buy some food to cook her. He arrives at her place to pick her up, but she is not even ready. Panicking like a normal girl would, she rushes into getting a nice dress and goes out with him. He takes her home and in the kitchen they just realize that they are both in love with each other and do not waste anytime and that is when he just goes for it and jumps towards her. After a couple months of them going out and already together, I show a couple scenes of them doing things like running on the beach, being christmas time, just shoring that the time has been passing by. One day at the park he asks her to marry him and she says yes. After such happiness, she takes him to the airport, where he takes a plane and that is where he crashes and dies. She get the news and we see her crying in from of the police station. With her crying, we make another transition back to the real world where she is upset. Closing her computer, she reaches towards her pillow where she keeps the tie he was wearing the day of his death, which she obtains thanks to the police. She keeps it in order to remember him every day and night. She starts playing and touching it which then she takes towards her chest and smiles, showing that remembers him in a good way and the love she has for him. For the ending she stands up and blows the candle which will cut to black. 

One thing that I like to be a lot is critical. Criticism is a very good but hard thing to do, because not only requires the ability to see things that maybe some other can't, but also requires the skills of doing it without making anyone upset or at least trying not to. People say is easy to criticise others but is hard to criticise yourself, but I believe that with all this projects and the help of my teachers, I have been able to learn to criticise my own work even better every time. The first thing that crossed my mind when we got the brief for our Digital News Unit, was that I wanted to work with Helen and Danny again after our very successful Documentary that gave us an A as a grade. I can tell I looked back at my documentary after finishing my Digital News video and I can't tell my level of criticism has raised as I can see more and more things that would have changed or I would have criticised 7 months ago when we submitted it. I have felt quite confident about us as a group, we call ourselves "The Best Team Ever" because not only we are friends, but we are quite sincere with each other, specially when it comes down to work and we respect our work a lot. If there is true and some do more work than others in the end, one thing that I love about my group is the ability to discuss ideas and bring some to the table without fighting, arguing or having anyone being lazy. When you need to get the work done, it gets done and we all become part of it one way or another. 

For this occasion we had to find 2 different stories for our news channel that fitted our brand and more importantly, that were interesting. After we decided to do a sport news channel, since we all love sports and we have been wanting to do something related to sports, I had the idea of doing something about pole dancing which at the beginning might have sound as a joke. I went for a training at Epsom for my Student Warden job and I met someone there that does pole dancing and at the beginning it was quite weird to me because I had never met someone like that before, but after she told be all this stories about what they do and all the strength they get form it, I really could have told that it was something much bigger than a woman touching a pole and being "sexy." I mentioned that to my team and to my surprise they actually liked the idea of making something about pole dancing and that is when it came down to finding what kind of story we were going to have. Helen found some stuff related to the Olympics which I was completely unaware of and we thought it could make a really nice and entertained story, since people love this new stuff and the same way this girl changed my mind on pole dancing, we could change some other people as well making them see that pole dancing is exactly what they see in movies, which degrade women because of what they do. After finding the academy and getting everything set up, we made our way to the Pole Persona academy in Rochester, which actually ended up being a nice an interesting place to film. The very main issue that we had there was that one side of the room was completely full of mirrors, which became an issue for us regarding camera angles since we couldn't have that side at all without a proper angle, otherwise we would be there in the reflection. Another issue was the space of the room which wasn't as big, I could say it was about the size of the Lecture Theatre 1 more or less, giving us less space to move and since we did a multicam shoot, we had to make sure that we could focus on our shots but at the same time not be in the middle of each other, otherwise would just ruin the other persons shot. It was a little bit hard at some points, but I believe after 10 mins in we got used to it and learned our ways to move and how to do it so it looked professional. To be honest one main thing that I learned that day was that communication during a shot is essential as sometimes as you shooting something you might not be seeing something else but someone else in your team might and they can point you in that direction so you can get that other shot as well. Mirrors and small spaces are also part of the list of learning strategies as even though in the documentary we had mirrors as well, that was more of a bigger place plus we were focus on dogs and just one side of the room, when in pole dancing you have all this tricks and 4 different poles in different corners of the room plus the 2 cameras shooting at the same time. One of the main ideas we had when it came down to interviews was to have something in the background relevant to what we were shooting which in our case was having Angie doing some tricks while we were interviewing Beth, but we got a nice depth of field so that Angie was blurry so that people didn't get distracted by her. One of the ideas I had that sadly didn't work out, was to try to put beth in front of there mirror and have angie doing the tricks from the reflection of there mirror, but we could;t find the right angle as the poles were in not favorable places which led us to doing that first and final option. Apart from that I believe that was a very good day at shooting. We used a lot of advices form teacher Helen from the documentary unit like framing, continuity, getting relevant shots, background noises, the use of multicam for different angles and close up shots, plus eye levels when interviewing. After a long day it was a good wrap up, back home to have a look at the nice footage. 

For our second story we had Roller Derby which was a tough story to find in my opinion. We struggled a lot on finding our second story as we originally had the freestyle guy from Manchester that was going to be part of the film but said no in the end and the main thing we wanted was a cool ad different sport, but also something that could give us a story, something people would tune and and say I am interested, I want to watch this. We sat down in the same room and googled exotic sports, interesting sports, sports whites balls and we found lots of interesting stuff that finally led us to Roller Derby. A sport from which I had never heard about, something local, fun, an amazing team such at it is Kent Roller Girls and very interesting story since we found out that Roller Derby is the fastest growing female sport in the UK. We knew we had found the perfect thing for our channel, with only one issue. There was no contact number and their email bounced us back a couple times and after managing to send it, we knew we had no other option than to wait to see if someone ever read that and replied. Can say that today we haven't even got a replied from that email and wonder if someone ever got it or read it. The second option of concussing them which ended up being the lucky one, was through their Facebook page. After a bit "stalking" or better said research, I realised that they posted something on their Facebook page at least once a day, meaning that there was someone there reading and logging into that Facebook which was the perfect chance for sending a private message to see if that person every read it and replied. I sent a message to them and off we went for the long waiting. After more than a week of waiting we almost got resigned and started looking into new stuff, when suddenly I got that amazing reply from Jo-Commotion saying yes and helping with all the necessary stuff for arranging a day to shoot. At first we were going to film Wednesday here in Chatham when they get together since it is a bit closer to all of us, but then she helped us saying that the best place to film was sunday's at Herne Bay since the space was bigger and they did more training and proper sprints, which equals to matches in football foe example. We analyzed it, managed to get Hayle Pike, Helen's best friend to take us there along with Jamie Terry and off we went on this adventure 40 mins away from home at night to film and get involved with this world of Roller Derby. At first when we arrived it was a very awkward moment as didn't really know anyone and were not sure of what to expect but after talking to Jo Commotion and couple other girls and seeing how excited they were about the filming, we got a bit more into it. The very first discussion we had happened that day when we were deciding how to start the live segment as I didn't want to start straight way with an interview without first explaining what Roller Derby is and all that, but in the end Helen and Danny managed to convince me and we did it their way which tbh ended up being quite nice and smooth and I completely love it now. I was very very happy, because our main goal was to shoot the live report form Jamie in one go as if it was really live and we did, which I was quite shocked because I thought surely something was gonna go wrong like we could forget a question or someone would mumble, maybe a lot of 'uhms' but not, he and the Lady Killer, the girl we interviewed, were amazing and we managed to do it in one go as we planned and as if it was actually live. After that we did a very nice multi cam shoot again when I was operating the main camera, Sony EX having a big and main shot of everything that was going on, when Helen and Danny were using the Canon having more of close ups of my general shots. Those close ups, specially in interviews ended up helping a lot as I had to cut 1 question out if the interview with the Lady Killer due to timing and the only way I could have cut it was if I had a close up of her and we did thanks to that pre production and preparation and I learned that having two cameras or at least two angles of the same action can help a lot when it comes down to editing. After shooting for 2 hours, we called it a wrap, were very excited about the film and the nice answers we got from the live interviews and off we went again ready for the editing. 

When it all came down to the editing and to creating our own image, we decided to go really for it. We didn't want to stick just to the brief and just create or submit what teacher Helen had told us to do, but we decided we wanted more than that, we wanted a true identity and something to look back at in a couple months or years and be very proud of. We created our own very original logo, bought the rights a music we wanted, created our own website, got our very two unique presenters, found two amazing and very new stories, travelled a lot in order to get our stories done, did a lot of graphics and VFX to make our video look more professional, designed and created a green screen studio, had our own very original intro, very own youtube channel, create profiles of the team so people could know who we are, created our very own teaser for the show and so much more. The amount of work that was done for this project was insane. Days and nights of editing, designing effects, looking at endless tutorials to learn how to do new stuff, but if there is something I have learned and keep learning with very project is that the very minor details and some cool stuff can make such a big difference. It is fair enough that not many people know how to use After Effects or even Photoshop, but taking time to learn all this stuff even if you are not to become an editor, makes a big difference when it comes down to making your own videos as you can expand your possibilities endlessly, plus with every project I learned how to create new stuff, effects that work and that don't and with an advice that Simon gave me in my first year, which was to try to create videos without to many VFX, I have been learning much more when to use them, when is it too much and more importantly, when to stop, because if there is a good thing that sometimes becomes a problem to me, is that once I start with visual effects and editing, it is very hard for me to stop as every idea I get that think it could be cool, I go out there, watch a lot of tutorials, look into other people's work and start learning and creating until I create something similar to what I want. I can officially say that my Digital News video is my best and most complete video so far among every single one I have made in my life and feedback from my teacher has helped me a lot to grow as an editor, director and camera man. Learning how to think and plan ahead the editing wen doing the shooting is very important, because there you know how you going to cut, the tone you want to use, how you want people to use say some words, which after filming is could be too late to go back and reshoot. For the very first time I can watch this video and go back to all the months of hard work and can say with no doubt that I am very proud of this work and so far it has been my favorite unit. Has helped me get better at what I do best, editing, plus it covers a bog range of elements in any production, form getting actors, to planning, shooting, editing, interviews, B-rolling, research, brand creating, open to the use of a lot of graphics and most important, learning how to work as a team, because if there is something you cannot do at all in this industry, is to work on your own. 

Hope this has been enough for my learning and I will sure miss this unit, which in my opinion will be hard to beat as my favorite. Well done team!

Chris Sarmiento

Editor

For our news channel we decided to create a website that would become a very easy site for everyone to access our videos and also have a look at the stories from the day. The main idea was to create a simple website including: 

- Home Page

- About Us

- Videos

- Contact Us

For the creation of the website I used a simple website creator called Weebly, which allows me to create something nice in a very neat way. To visit the website go to www.tekkerstv.weebly.com

The first bit was to create the home page. I decided that since the most important bit about the website was for people to be able to find our video and also to read a bit more about the stories that we talk about in the video, the home page needed to have both things and it is why I put the video in big as soon as people open the site. Here was the outcome of the home page:

 After that came up the creation of the About Us page which was basically a simple summary and biography of we are as a team. It will give people a look at us 3, Danny, Helen and myself and also both our reporter, Francesca and Jamie. I also put some pictures of us taken on shoot for profiles which will also allow people to see and identify who we are. Here was the outcome of it:

Next we had a simple Videos section which would include all of the videos that are also in the channel. The website is being updated with a  lot of short videos like the team having a go at pole dancing or some tutorials as well as the main videos like the show and the teaser. Here is the outcome of it:

Final is the Contact section which is a very simple contact form that will send me an email with any comments that anyone will send us regarding the website or the video or any sort of service. Here is the outcome of it:

Here is our very final video after such a long wait. Hope everyone enjoys it, thanks to everyone that helped us and supported us. We are very proud of our work:

This is our quick teaser for our news channel. After speaking to teacher Helen we decided to create a Teaser that didn't just talk about the upcoming stories in the show but also about us as a channel and the team so you can see who are the members of TTV before even watching our show. Enjoy the teaser:

Here is my critical case study on ITV and Channel 4. It was a very interesting experience as I had never watched the news in the UK before, but here it is.

Critical Case Study

Finally the intro for TTV. This is our final piece for the intro. The main idea for the intro was to create something very sporty but at the same time that look a bit newsy. In the reflection of letters as you will be able to see we included sports such as pole dancing, roller derby, skating and gymnastics, since they all are sports and none of them require a ball. Hope you enjoy the intro. For information about the music, can visit the post regarding the TTV main theme where it is explained how we bought the rights for this song. Enjoy:

During the editing of the Roller Derby segment, one of the ideas that we had was to freeze the image when Jamie mentions the Jammer and the Blocker, so we can identify who these people are in the game clearly. A very nice idea that I had was to create a simple effect which was to darken the background and highlight the person with a yellow outer stroke, adding an animated text saying "Jammer" or "Blocker." If this is a bit confusing, you can have a look here at the tutorial to understand more of what I am talking about. In order to be able to do this effect you will require:

- Your video clip which you want to freeze

- After Effects 

- Photoshop. 

No internet connection is even required. Hope you enjoy my tutorial:

For the digital news piece I created a Twitter effect for a section in the pole dancing package. It is a very simple but effective effect and I have created a tutorial so that people can also do it at home. It only requires to have:

- Internet
- After Effects

Here is my tutorial, hope you enjoy it:

We started looking at a bunch of songs on Youtube and Audiojungle but somehow didn't manage to find any song that actually fitted with our intro and brand and that also was sporty instead of very newsy like BBC or CNN. After a lot of search we found a video on youtube form an After Effects template called Silver Sport HD. Here is the link for it on Videohive:

http://videohive.net/item/silver-sport-hd/152697

Then the whole problem was that I wanted the song that was in that template, so I looked in the description and I found out that the song was called Action Sport Show Opening. We listened to the song and I told my team to buy it if everyone agreed to it and so we did. Here is a link the song at audio jungle and the receipt of payment for the song:

http://audiojungle.net/item/action-sport-show-opening/33125?license=music_standard&open_purchase_for_item_id=33125&purchasable=source

In order to start creating the virtual studio I decided to use only After Effects. At the beginning using Illustrator was a good idea since is designed to edit images and create ones as well, but I decided I wanted to do everything on After Effects and in my opinion it wasn't that harder that I though it would be. The first thing was to look for a base, a background, something to start working on. The most original and very first thing I started with, came from a vector image in the massive vector and images selling website, Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com)

Although it is just an image that is meant to be for something else, I decided to convert it into a studio that could fit with our brand and this is where After Effects started taking place. The main reason I picked this image as a point of start, was because it already had the monitor we needed, although that is something I could have added myself, it included lights and had the resolution I needed in order to play with it with our making it pixelated. The first thing I did of course was creating a new composition and added the image to it on After Effects. The main change that I did first was zooming into the image, since the actual size didn't work to me. I decided to change the scale of it, cutting all the right side from the TV. After that the main thing I wanted to do was to give it a more straight look, since the image is quite in a circle. In order to do that I had to convert the image into a 3d object and rotate it so it looked from a different angle. Although it was a bit hard to find the right angle, it ended up being fine and this was the outcome of it: 

After that it came putting up something in the background. The first idea was to have something on the top left corner saying Breaking News, but it didn't really suit our channel which is why we decided to put Sport News instead. In order to put it I had to create the text and make it 3d on After Effects in order to be able to rotate it and bend it in every way possible as the purple but is not flat but curved. This was the outcome:

The aim after that was to start using the screen and put something there related to our channel. I created a video/animation of our logo to put it up there, that way we would have logo in the background. I will do a post next with that animation and how it was made. This was the outcome of it:

Added to that I had to add a Hard Light so that the image looked like it was coming from the TV and it wasn't just an image on top of it. One main thing when you gonna add an image to a composition that wasn't there from the beginning is that you need to match it with the colors, lights and shadows. The hard light makes it a bit darker so giving that feeling. Next step was to make the middle of it a little bit lighter, but the edges still dark so it still remain looking as the image was actually on the TV and wasn't added after. In order to do that I had to create a mask and make it round around the middle leaving the edges out of it so it kept the hard light tone. This was the outcome:

The issue I had next is that since it was a video it gonna finish after a bit and I didn't want that, because that would mean that the screen on the TV will go black or when use the studio again, the video will just play again every time which I don't want, I want the animation to play only when we introduce our presenter for the first time. In order to do that I created a freeze frame on After Effects so that the animation would stop right on the logo reveal and stay there for the rest of the video. This is a freeze frame (grey little square)

After that it was all set up, all I had to do was to add the Lower Third for the introductory bit and then add Francesca to make it final. This was the very final outcome of it:

The very last issue was something that I realised had to be done as it was important for the look of the studio. The main thing was the position and scale of the presenter. Since it was a green screen and I had to insert every section separate as they were different files, I had to make sure that the scale and position of her was exactly the same. In order to do that I wrote down the values of both of them and then just changed them overtime I had to do them. These are the values and were to find them:

After having a look into the stop motion idea, I decided that I was not going to be able to do it, taking into account that it required a lot of time and more importantly a very own area that I would be able to completely isolate so that things like light, positions or even stuff that could be moved, didn't affect the continuity of the video. Having that said, I started looking into very new ideas, but that at the same time sticked with my original plan, which was not to do a usual video with actors and flashbacks, as I though it was very cliché already. I wanted to do an animation, something new that I hadn't even done before. As a matter of fact, after thinking and thinking what I could do, I decided that I wanted to create my very own 2D animation. I have never been very good at drawing, but I am good at designing and creating and playing with shapes in the computer and that is when I said, why not and took the big risk.

The idea is to tell a story through an animation with the poem as a song playing in the background. My original plan was to make the story just as an animation,  but an advice that Simon gave me was that I should introduce the animation with some real life action. I liked the idea a lot to be honest and that is when I decided to create the animation, which was still going to be the main focus of the film, but at the same time was to be integrated and give a reason to it. The idea now was to start with real life, have animation and end with real life as well. I decided that I liked that idea a lot.

After setting up the idea, I talked it through with teacher Helen, who liked the idea as well, but gave me a couple things to take into account. The first one was to make sure that the music fitted, then she told me that I also should introduce the animation with real life, but I had to be careful with the way I did it since she didn't want that for a bad transition, all the hard work looked a bit bad. Taking all that on board I started working on it.

The virtual studio was a very big thing for the group, but specially for me as I was the one creating it. At the beginning the idea was just to find a template of a nice studio and adapt it with our colors and use it, but it didn't really seem to work. The original studio was something I had in my possession from a previous training and it is all royalty free, so the idea was alright, but then the problems started to come. I finished the first studio and brought it for our green screen training, but neither Danny or Helen liked it and in my opinion I didn't really like it that much either. This is a screenshot of the design of it:

The idea was to have the anchor standing and presenting the whole news segment form there as some relevant videos or images were in the background in the both big screens. The virtual studio is not bad, is just very flashy and doesn't really suit our brand, which is why we decided to create one from scratch and just do exactly what we needed. We discussed different ideas on what we all thought that was necessary to have in the studio. Here is the list of it:

- A monitor

- Anchor in a mid-shot

- A small studio

- Sport look

With all those elements I started searching and looking for some ideas to create the studio. I looked into studios like Sky Sports and ESPN, but none of them were really virtual, which didn't really help on what I wanted. The only thing that did help, was to have more or less a look at the kind of light and how the layout should have been. This are both the examples on what I looked at:

ESPN

Sky Sports

I realised that it wasn't going to work, so I remembered something that was definitely going to help me and it was the gaming news I look at sometimes from a very big company like it is IGN (Imagine Games Network) which is an online only news company. They have their own channel and massive brand on youtube and by looking at of their segments again I realised that what they were doing was more or less exactly what I wanted for the final studio for our project. It included sort of a mid-shot, some of them include a screen and it is very online newsy, which goes with ours as well since it is online only. This is a screenshot of what make me had the idea for our studio:

Although it has a real working place on the background of the right side, it has more or less the ideal scheme for ours. It has some sort of monitors, so virtual areas, sort of a mid-shot and it does look very according to the their brand. After looking at it and taking everything into account, the whole idea just started to emerge.