Lara McEvoy - 319311
Unit 13: Final Major Project
week 13: 29 - 3/5/24
This week was about finishing off my edit, both the practical element of it and the write up for practical skills. To start this off I continued working on the edit for 3 days, making the small adjustments and fixing issues I have noticed. Making these amendments now still allows me to have time to finish the writing, but still having a high-quality end product.
30/4/24 -
Today I set myself the aim to finish adding in b-roll, and to make progress on creating the credits. The credits are how the piece ends, where the audience are given a chance to think about what they have just watched, so they still need to be fitting with the aesthetic of the piece. As I need to keep the aesthetic going, I decided that just having the video fade to black, having standard arial font credits slowly fade in and out want to go to work. Much like my lower thirds, I wanted these to have the same feel and aesthetic. But before I could even make a start on writing the credits, I needed a background to go with this. In my logging I had noted down a clip which wasn’t needed for the bulk of the documentary but a clip I still wanted to use, within this clip it is all of the main characters after the finale was over all walking around and hugging one another. This clip I love because it shows the family feel that the dance school has, and seeing as I am ending it on Emily talking about how wonderful it is, I feel as though this clip could work quite well.
Seeing as this clip was going to be going behind the credits, I chose to blur it and bring the opacity down slightly. I turned the opacity down to 70.3% as this helps it to be more muted and not as vibrant, and the blur to 45.0. Having the blur at this level means that you can still clearly see what is happening in the background, but it shouldn’t distract the audience from the credits. Also, it creates a smooth background for the credits to go onto. The images below show the before and after.
Before
After
From this, I decided to use the same font as the lower thirds, but I didn’t know if I should have them write in like the lower thirds, or have it fade in. So, I tested both options out. In the first test I went for the simple fade in, the writing was centred both vertically and horizontal so that it was completely central.
While its simplicity works and it fits the aesthetic, there’s just something that doesn’t sit right with this. It doesn’t feel like it fully fits in with the aesthetic. Because I have written in the lower thirds, using the same font, I feel it will be better to have them written in. However, I shall see how it looks once I have created the written credits test.
When creating the second credit idea, I debated about the time that this is going to take for me to create all of the credits like this. While I like how the lower thirds look I understand that they will take a while, and this decision is going to be made on both whether the aesthetic fits, and if I have the time to do this. Luckily creating this test took less than 30 minutes to create, as shown in the timelapse, so if I decide to go for these credits then I know I have more than enough time to create them.
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Once I had put them into premiere, I decided that I really like how they look. I feel as though they fit the aesthetic and give off the vibe that I want them too. Along with this it creates continuity for the audience as the lower thirds were done this way, so its only right for the credits to follow this.
Now that this decision had been made, when I got home, I chose to get these finished. This was mainly because I didn’t want this to be something which I procrastinate on saying ‘oh I’ll get them done tomorrow’ as I know me, and I will get distracted from doing them. Doing this also meant I have less work to do tomorrow allowing me to push forward and make progress with other smaller tweaks I need to do. However, I will mention, that I got to finishing the credits themselves but there is a long section of the clip left and the music fades out nicely, so I need to work out what to put there because I don’t want to cut it but there needs to be something, I will figure that out tomorrow. The final credits are shown below.
1/5/24 -
One of the clips I have used within the edit features some of the younger pupils at the dance school, but these pupils haven’t given me consent to be in my documentary. Now this is something I realised earlier on in the edit but because I wanted to push on with adding the b-roll I pushed past it, so now I have done that I have the time to add in the blur. Adding in a blur over their faces just means I am being safe and respecting that they didn’t give consent, so hiding their identity. While this is only the backs of their heads, at some points they do move around so the side of their faces can be seen, so this is just the safest option.
To do this I used the Gaussian Blur effect, with a circular mask rather than a drawn one. Once I had added in the initial circle, I turned the blurriness up to 37 as this was enough to hide their faces, but not too much that it distorts them completely
After establishing the blur level, I then used the play button to have Premiere Pro to generate the tracking for this. But as expected, it wasn’t 100% accurate, so I went through and changed the tracking to ensure that the faces were covered. This did include adding in a second blur as on the right side, one of the children’s faces pokes out, so I followed the same trail as before.
With the two on the left, I had to create individual masks for them as both moved up and down a lot more than the other three. This was a lot more difficult to do but because I followed the same trail it was easy enough to do, and not take up too much time.
Mask 1
Mask 2
Creating the blur was a lot easier than I thought and works as intended. As much as I love the shot without the blur, I understand that this is needed due to no consent being given for them. The blur acts as barrier for them, showing that they are there but they are unable to be identified, which is needed for this scenario. How effective this is can be seen below, the image to the left is the before and the right is after. I had worried that this bur would distract from Ella, as she is the main focus, but watching it through and looking at the images, I am confident that it doesn’t distract from Ella and keeps the audience engaged.
Before
After
At the end of the timelapse I started to explore the use of a flicker to make my archive look more like archive. The archive I have used was filmed by a professional company so some of the shots look like the ones I have shot, so I need to do something so that the audience can easily differentiate between the archive and my footage. I was able to find a tutorial, shown on the right, which I will follow as this seems to be popular and it comes with assets for me to use. As I ran out of time, I will work on this tomorrow to see if adding in a projector flicker will show the difference between my footage and archive material.
Editing Timelapse
Flicker Tutorial
2/5/24 -
As I mentioned yesterday, I am focusing on the projector flicker effect. I decided to initially follow the tutorial word for word using all the effects he did, which included a border. The border he used is very generic and something that is almost overused on social media at the moment, but I still wanted to give it a try.
The video to the left is my first try at the projector flicker. To create this, I had to create three video layers, and add the border on top. Once the border was added I then moved the clips so that the bottom could be seen in the line above and the top could be seen in the line below. This is shown in the image's to the left.
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Doing this gives the impression that this is a reel of film, which I kind of like but am unsure if I will keep the border. After the border was in, to make it seem more vintage, I added in a layer of grain. Then I adjusted the opacity of this to 70 as you want it to be grainy enough but not overly grainy so that you cannot tell what’s going on. For the footage I’m using, as it’s older anyways, you cannot tell a huge difference from the footage with and the ones without, but I’m going to keep it in there to emphasise the fact that this is archive.
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The next step was to add in the film blur effects. From the video there were 7 to choose from, giving me some variety to play around with. To start with I added in 3 different ones, as shown in the video above. But after watching it through a couple times I didn’t like how it looked so took one of them out. I really like the flicker as I feel it really adds to the footage, proving that it is archive and giving the audience something to use as differentiation.
Because I was unsure on the use of the border, I made the decision to take it out. While I understand that the border is there to help aid the emphasis, for me it feels too cliched, I’ve seen it too many times used on social media. For my intended audience this may not be an issue but if this is something I am concerned about then I should take it out, given it works without the border of course.
This change was simple to do, and I feel it still works really well. The video to the right shows me testing this without the border but still with the three flickers. I feel that this still works really well, or even better. It’s not pushing it too much to be like ‘THIS IS ARCHIVE NOTICE’ its small subtle flickers, imitating a projector, giving connotations of old footage. As mentioned above I took out the three flickers and lowered it to two, which can be seen in the video below.
Though there isn’t much difference between the two flickers or three, it isn’t overwhelming for the audience which is what I want to avoid. As I have added in flickers, they couldn’t be too intense as I have to be aware that there may be photosensitive viewers in the audience, and I don’t want to upset or harm anyone. Along with this it needs to still be visually easy on the eye, so to aid this I turned the opacity down to 50% as this is less intense on the eyes.
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The final result can be seen below, used throughout the whole of the ‘when they started’ section. Personally, I really like how this looks, I feel it aesthetically it works and that the audience watching will be able to understand the reasoning behind it.
This week has been really productive and allowed me to get to a stage where I am pleased with how the work is going. Next week, I need to really try and focus on LO6 and LO7, planning these out so that I can make a start on them asap!