Sunday, 4 May 2014

Overall References


Now that I have finished all three elements of this assignment I decided that it would be a good idea to go back and make reference to all of the sources I have used. I have done this at the various points throughout my project however it makes more sense to summarise these in one single post. I am going to split this blog post up into three sections and then add the image and the reference to each.

I am going to start with Photoshop. I think I used the most sources for this element. All of the sources and references can be seen below:

1. Sourced: http://absinthrill.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/about-sex-and-city-2-in-us-marie-claire.html Accessed: 06/02/2014






4. Sourced: http://www.popsugar.com.au/fashion/Cameron-Diaz-Brooklyn-Decke-Jennifer-Lopez-More-Step-Out-Style-What-Expect-Premiere-Red-Carpet-Snoop-23117848#photo-23117843 Accessed: 13/02/2014


5.  Sourced: http://bilborough752.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/research-age-certificate-min.html Accessed: 21/02/2014.


6. Sourced: http://verus-ar.com/bar-code/ Accessed: 21/02/2014.


7. Sourced: http://wakpaper.com/large/Sky_wallpapers_59.jpg Accessed: 24/02/2014


8. Sourced: http://famouswonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The-Eiffel-Tower-on-sunny-day-in-Paris.jpg Accessed: 20/02/2014.


9. Sourced: http://fabulouscelebrities.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Cameron-Diaz_8.jpg Accessed: 19/02/2014.




10. Sourced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:15_home_video.png Accessed 21/02/2014.


11. Sourced: http://localtvstlmoms.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/fireworks-safety.jpg Accessed: 24/02/2014


12. Sourced: http://www.mediatrack.nl/pdf/DVD_Video.jpg Accessed: 21/02/2014




14. Sourced: http://wakpaper.com/large/Sky_wallpapers_59.jpg Accessed 24/02/2014


The second element I am going to source is for Illustrator. All of the sources and references can be seen below, it is worth noting that some of these references are duplicated where I have used the same image as in the Photoshop element above. When using Illustrator I made my own images more than used internet sources.


1. Sourced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:15_home_video.png Accessed 21/02/2014.




2. Sourced: http://www.mediatrack.nl/pdf/DVD_Video.jpg Accessed: 21/02/2014



 3. Sourced: http://bilborough752.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/research-age-certificate-min.html Accessed: 21/02/2014





All of the other images used on this disk label were either created from scratch myself or have been edited and adapted in Photoshop and hence these images are hence references above.


The third element I am going to source is for Premiere. All of the sources and references can be seen below:

The Other Woman: Sourced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcaZ3StTfI. Accessed: 13/04/2014.



Friends With Benefits - Stay Friends: Sourced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY2bTDCw8jQ. Accessed: 13/04/2014.



 Midnight In Paris Trailer: Sourced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atLg2wQQxvU. Accessed: 13/04/2014.


New York City Vacation Guide: Sourced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtCMtC50gwY. Accessed: 13/04/2014. (This video was too large to upload)

Sex And The City 2 Trailer: Sourced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-aOpznm44. Accessed: 13/04/2014.


At this point it is worth noting that this blog post is for reference only, I have sourced and referenced all of these features at the relevant places throughout this assignment, this is simply a recap of all of my sources as a double up.




Overall Evaulation

Now that I have come to the very end of my assignment I have decided to evaluate the process as a whole. As you can see I have been previously evaluating at the end of each section however I think it would be appropriate to look and compare these three sections. Within this blog post I will look at which was my favourite element but also which element I didn't enjoy quite so much. I will then look at which final product I am most proud of and why. I will also look at how I spent my time overall, whether I feel this was evenly or whether I think this could be improved. I will finally comment on how I feel about this assignment overall and whether I would do anything differently if I was to undertake this task again.

My favourite element of this assignment is the Photoshop phase. I really enjoyed working on this aspect of the assignment. As this was the first stage of the assignment I felt like I had a much freer reign over what I could produce and maybe this is why I enjoyed this so much. I was starting from a blank canvas. I really enjoyed all of the tools Photoshop offered and found these simply to use which allowed me to explore areas further. I love the colour scheme I have been able to create using Photoshop, and the way I have been able to keep this consistent across the board. I really like the fonts and the way this looks professional with the other elements on my DVD inlay. I feel this aspect has so many different elements and I am really pleased at how well these have all been brought together in one final piece. This leads me onto the aspect of this assignment which I didn't enjoy quite so much. This was the Illustrator element. I found this aspect much more tedious and after using the mass of tools which Photoshop has to offer I was disappointed with what Illustrator had to offer. I found Illustrator much harder to use and I now had to follow the previous colour and style scheme which I had created in Photoshop. I initially thought this would work fine as they are both Adobe products however this didn't work in the same way. The fonts I had used in Photoshop was then not available in Illustrator. This meant that I couldn't keep my design completely consistent. I did find another font which worked but was slightly different however I wasn't 100% happy with this. I was really happy with the logos which I had been able to create in Illustrator however overall I feel this is my weakest section. Based on all of this I am most proud of my Photoshop element. So far I haven't really mentioned Premiere. This is based on the fact that this was neither my favourite or least favourite element. I didn't mind using Premiere. I found elements which I really liked and then other elements which I wasn't so keen on. I found that this was quite an even balance for me. I am happy with my overall Premiere trailer however I feel it could have been improved slightly and hence this isn't my proudest element.

Looking at how I spent my time overall is quite difficult because I personally didnt see one aspect to be more important than another and hence I 'aimed' to split my time up evenly. That said the Premiere element is worth more than the other two so arguably I should be spending more time on this element. This didnt actually work in this way, I ended up spending much more time on the Photoshop than on Premiere. With Photoshop I spent alot of time perfecting the small elements rather than a specific aspect.  I found that it was these small elements that always took so much longer than I had initially imagined and hence this timespan ran away with me. I think the Illustrator element took me the least amount of time. This was my least favourite element and maybe this reflects the time spent however I wasn't aiming to do this. I spent the most amount of time creating my second logo in Illustrator. I really enjoyed creating this and learning new techniques. The Premiere element of this assignment didn't take me the longest but it also wasn't the quickest element. I feel I probably spent just the right amount of time on this element. I was able to research into aspects which go above and beyond the specification as well as quickly hit all of the mandatory requirements. Looking at the assignment in broader terms I feel that I spent an equal amount of time on the blog and the practical aspects. At the beginning I felt that the blog would be the harder aspect of the assignment as I am not one to write everything down and hence this didn't excite me at all. Once I got into the blogging I began to enjoy it and found myself creating a pattern of working practically followed by a post to back this up. This system seemed to work as I was then able to cover all aspects without missing elements. In terms of the marks for this it would maybe suggest that I should have spent more time on the practical elements however I found the blogging more time consuming and this is why I feel this is actually about even.

Looking at all of this in summary I feel that the assignment has gone really well and that I have been able to show a wide range of skills. I feel I have been able to learn the mandatory requirements well and then give myself time to look around the subject to go over and above the mandatory requirements. I feel my blog reflects the work I have undertaken and the time I have put into this assignment overall. If I was to undertake this task again I think I would do more planning. I felt I overlooked this at the very beginning as I was too keen to get started but actually I think my life could have been made much easier if I was to have undertaken extensive planning. The beginning of the assignment was the most important for decision making and I feel the decisions I made on the design and concept could have been improved if I thought past the first stage. I feel my planning mainly looked at the Photoshop element when ideally I should have planned for all three elements to make sure it was a feasible idea. I feel I managed to work around this well however I could have made my own life easier if I had of thought about this sooner.

Thursday, 1 May 2014

Premiere - Evaluation

Now that I have created my Premiere DVD Trailer. I am at a stage where I am happy that it is completed. With this in mind I have decided to evaluate my product. The main aspect I will be looking at is what works and what doesn't work, what I like and what I am not so keen on. I will also look at changes that I would make if I was to undertake this task again along with an evaluation of how I spent my time and if I would change this in the future.

I am going to start with the aspects that I like and don't like about my DVD trailer. My favourite aspects are comedy of the clips I have chosen. I like the way this had made the whole DVD feel light hearted when the underlying issue is probably slightly less comical. I like the way the comedy clips always show the female to be in control of the situation, this shows the girl power I was going for throughout the whole of this assignment. I particularly like the initial clip of Mila Kunis, I feel this clip is very prominent and memorable and I hence feel this was a really good way to start the trailer. It is also funny without being too much.

My second favourite element of my DVD trailer is the transition I have created from one place to another, this is in the form of New York to Paris. I feel I was able to choose appropriate clips to suit each location. The title clips between these two help to set the scene although I think the transition is obvious enough that if this title was to be taken out you could still understand what was happening and I really like this aspect for that reason. The New York clips help to set the scene of what has happened while the Paris clips show that this isn't a problem for the girls. The mood changes as the place changes and I feel this really works well with both clips and audio.

An aspect which I hadn't really put much thought into was the length of the clips. To begin with I simply cut the clips to suit which aspects I wanted to take from the original footage however when I play back my DVD trailer I am really pleased with how I have managed to use both longer and shorter clips. I feel the shorter clips allow diversity and keep the audience engaged as the scene is always changing while the longer clips allow for the story as such to be told. Again this has changed with the location and unintentionally I have managed to have my longer clips telling the story while my short clips keep the audience wanting more. This makes sense as the longer clips are meant to inform the audience however the shorter clips at the end really get the viewer hooked which is very similar to most good DVD trailers.

This leads me on nicely to my least favourite element. This is the titles. Initially I really liked these as in the preview section of premiere they seemed to look perfectly fine however after exporting these were really poor and hence I went and changed these slightly. Even with these changes I still feel that these are the weakest aspect of my trailer. I did try various fonts and colours to try to improve this professionalism however nothing seemed to make a considerable difference. At this stage I feel the titles are average, I don't think they let the trailer down as I think the rest of the trailer makes up for this but I do think that the overall professionalism of the trailer would be increased if these titles were improved.

The next aspect which I want to look at is how this element of the assignment ties in with the previous. Consistency has always been a big aspect for me as I believe that consistency is the key to a professional product. I think in some respects I struggled to achieve this with my DVD trailer but I think this is mainly based on the fact that my other two elements, in terms of the DVD Inlay and the Disk Design, were tied together by colour. Apart from titles I had little way of adding and bringing this colour scheme into my DVD Trailer. Of course I kept certain things consistent like the actors and the general theme but to me these were obvious things. You wouldn't go and make a DVD trailer which included different actors to those which you were advertising on the front of your DVD Inlay. This said I did end up using a few extra actors as these really made the clips I used. These are not included on the front of my DVD Inlay but I could justify this in terms of saying that these are not main characters just regular actors in my film. I feel that in an ideal world I would have maybe created my trailer first and then tailored my other elements around this as images are a lot easier to come across than film footage.

Along with the idea of consistency comes the titles. Originally I used a bright pink main body colour and then a light purple outer stroke. This was to suit my colour scheme however as mentioned above this was hard to read and looked unprofessional and hence I then changed this to a bright pink main body colour with a black outer stroke. This made the text stand out but now didn't really work with my colour scheme. After deliberation I am not to bothered by this factor as I would rather have a title which can be easily read. I still used pink in the title so it is not completely different.

As you can see from the beginning of my DVD trailer I added the company logo onto my first title clip. This hit the mandatory requirement as well as acting as a element which tied all three areas together. I am pleased with how this looks however I feel I could have improved this further if I had of added my film logo. This is something which would have been simple but I simply forgot.

Looking at the video transitions I used I feel that I used a wide enough mix to create diversity while keeping them consistent by repeating some. The main two which I used were Cross Dissolve (this is one used heavily in industry) and Additive Dissolve. I felt these two gave off the most professional and smooth transitions. I did also use a couple of other transitions which can be see in an earlier blog post. I feel that sticking to two main transitions kept my trailer consistent while adding a couple of different themes every now and again kept the trailer interesting. I also didn't use transitions between every clip as I feel this is unnecessary and can end up looking unprofessional. I did have to be careful where I decided to do this as some clips really needed a transitions. It worked out that the longer clips suited the transitions more than the shorter clips and hence my positioning reflects this. I changed the length of some transitions again based on how it worked with the clip and overall I am happy that my trailer runs smoothly from one clip to another with or without a transitions. I feel I have changed the length of the transitions to suit the clips and I feel that the transitions are noticeable but not too prominent.  

With only three main audio songs I decided to add transitions between these. Due to the fact that the audio is so key to a trailer I had to be really careful about how and where to position these as they were very noticeable. I started with the constant gain transition as this seemed appropriate as the trailer went from no sound to full sound. I then added exponential fade to the end of this clip and the beginning of the next clip. These are on separate audio layers and hence it was difficult to make this work however I am overall pleased with the transition I created here. Constant Power was one of my favourite transitions as you didn't lose any of the original music they both simply played over each other. This was positioned between the second and third clip. I ended with Exponential Fade. Again the reasoning's for this are self explanatory as the music needed to fade out. Overall I feel these few and simply audio transitions have made the audio run a lot smoother and the start and ending of the trailer appear much more professional than if the music was to simply start at full volume and the suddenly end.

Overall I feel that my DVD trailer looks professional and is as consistent as I feel possible with the other two elements of my assignment. I am really pleased with how each clip has come together and how the intended DVD theme has been portrayed.

With this in mind I am going to look at what I would change if I was to undertake this task again in the future. The main aspect I feel I would change are the titles. I think I have made it clear throughout that this is, in my opinion, my weakest element of the DVD trailer. Although I did try many different designs with these titles I feel that I would look into changing these if I was to undertake this task again. I also think I would look into adding different songs, I do feel these work well but I question whether they are others which may work better. This is something I haven't looked into and hence have no answer for at the moment however I think the first song in particular could be improved and hence I would most likely change this if I had the chance again.

The final aspect I am going to review is the way I spent my time.  The most time consuming element of this task was gathering my sources. It took me ages to find the clips which I wanted to use but also ones of good quality. I feel this is an aspect which I could have done quickly if I hadn't of been so fussy and hence I don't regret spending so much time on this because I feel it is time well spent overall. I would rather have spent more time on this and have higher quality clips to work with than grab the first clip I found and then ended up with a varying quality trailer. I spent a considerable amount of time playing around with all of the different transitions, both audio and video and the video effects. I am currently in two minds over the amount of time I spent looking at these. On one hand I feel that by playing around with these at the beginning I then had a strong ground to work with as I knew which I liked and which I didn't. I also feel that looking at these at an early stage gave me a chance to change my mind if I found a transition or effect that would work well on a certain clip for example. On the other hand however I feel that I stuck to quite a niche group of transitions and effects that I arguably wasted so much time looking through them all. I think that I probably could have managed by trying different transitions and effects as I went along however I felt a lot more comfortable knowing what they do before adding them to a clip and hence I think I prefer to trial aspects before rather than during and for that reason I don't think I spent too much time on this I feel that maybe in future I should just prepare for this as it ended up eating into the time which I could have been creating my final trailer. It took me ages to get my titles to a place which I was happy with, this is in terms of my first shot and my final titles. I feel I did spend a lot of time on these however as I am still not 100% happy with the result I would definitely spend a lot more time here if I was to undertake this task again.

To summarise I feel that I am happy with my final product even though there are elements which I feel could be improved. I feel that I have learnt a lot in regards to time keeping and how to spend my time which I could take forward into other aspects of my degree.

Premiere - Features Used Throughout

Now that I am at the end of the Premiere aspect of the assignment I have decided to reflect on all of the tools which I have used throughout this stage. I am going to highlight all of the mandatory features which I have covered and how I have done this. I am also going to look at any extras which I have looked at and then discuss why I have added these to my final premiere project.  

Mandatory Features:
  1. import images and video
  2. correct frame size
  3. correct frame rate
  4. trimming clips
  5. adding transitions to clips
  6. adding titles over clips
  7. Quicktime movie file encoded with the DV codec
Extra Features:
  1. Audio Transitions
  2. Video Effects
  3. Markers
  4. Labels
  5. Colour Mattes
  6. Lumetri Looks
  7. Resizing Clips
  8. Audio Volume
  9. Group/Un-Group
So lets look at where I have used all of these features and where you can find evidence of this. Starting with importing images and video. The image I have imported to use is my company logo which can be found in the opening title clip of my DVD trailer. As mentioned in my evaluation this was added to tie all the elements together as well as hit this criteria. The screenshot below shows the title which has this logo on.



The second part of this criteria was to import video. I imported a variety of clips into my premiere workspace in the form of mainly DVD trailers. The evidence for this can be found in the blog post titled: Premiere - First Stages Of Creation.

The correct frame size and frame rate are all settings which can be found when the initial sequence is created. The preset I used for my sequence was DV PAL Widescreen 48Hz with a  Frame size: 720h 576v (1.4587) and Frame rate: 25.00 frames/second. The reasoning's behind using these settings can be found in the blog post titled: Premiere - Sequence Settings.

Trimming clips was one of the easiest pieces of mandatory criteria to hit as I needed to trim almost every clip to only add the relevant aspects. I trimmed the clips using the Mark In and Mark Out options. More details on this can be found in the blog post titled: Premiere - Trimming And Adding Clips To My Timeline.

The next piece of mandatory criteria to hit was adding transitions to clips. Again to me this seems like something you would simply do out of habit to improve the quality of the video you are trying to create and this was simple enough to hit in my opinion. Not only did I look at the transitions which I used for my DVD trailer I also took this one step further and explored a wide range and then analysed what I would or could use that transition for. For this reason the information I have blogged in regards to transitions can be found in the blog posts titled: Premiere - Adding Video Transitions and Premiere - Video Transitions.

Adding titles over clips were the next aspect to look at. Titles were simple enough to create but very hard to achieve a professional look. Again like the transitions above I ended up looking at the different options I had within the titles section and then the title settings I actually used and hence there are two blog posts to reference here, these are: Premiere - Title Settings and Premiere - Adding Titles To My Timeline.

The final piece of mandatory criteria to hit was exporting a Quicktime movie file encoded with the DV codec. Due to the fact that I had created a sequence which also hit this requirement however the settings and reasoning's for this criteria can be found in the blog post titled: Premiere - Exporting My Final DVD Trailer.

Now it is on to the extras which I have added and learnt myself. The first is audio transitions. These work in the exact same way that video transitions work however there are much fewer options. I did the exact same with the audio transitions as I did the video transitions in terms of playing around with them before I began to put together my final DVD trailer. For this reason there are two blog posts to reference, these are: Premiere - Audio Transitions and Premiere - Adding Audio Transitions.

The video effects and Lumetri looks are both very similar as they both add an effect to the clip. For this reason you can find the information and reasoning's for these in the blog posts called: Premiere - Adding Video Effects, Premiere - Lumetri Looks and Premiere - Video Effects.

Labels and markers were both aspects which I learnt from a tutorial I found online. These didn't make any difference to the exported product but helped the readability of the timeline as I was able to add colours and comments at various points. Group and Un-Group also falls into this category. More information on this can be found in the blog post known as: Premiere - Extras To Improve The Readability Of The Timeline.

Colour mattes were another aspect which helped with titles. The information for these can be found in the blog post known as: Premiere - Colour Mattes.

Resizing clips was something which I hadn't really mentioned throughout my blog as I thought it was just simply something which was done and didn't need mentioning however I now feel that it may be worth noting. To resize the clip I simply double clicked on the clip in the preview window. I was then able to move the points in or out to either zoom in or out. The issue with this was that you couldn't stretch the clip or adjust the height. This meant that in order to get the clip to fit completely you would have to let some of the black show. This is something I didn't want and hence in some cases I had to sacrifice some of the clip to cover this. The screenshot below shows the resizing options.



The audio volume can be something heavily overlooked with it comes to premiere however it can make a massive difference to the overall final product. If the audio is too loud and that actors are fighting over it the trailer could sound unprofessional and hence adjusting the volume of these two aspects are key. The blog post which relates to this is: Premiere - Trimming And Adding Audio To My Timeline.

Overall I feel I have a good mix of features used for this DVD trailer. Some make more difference than others but sometimes its the simplest things that can help the most. I am really pleased with how many different features I managed to explore on my own as well as how simply I managed to cover all of the mandatory features.

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Premiere - Changes After Exporting

When I thought I was in a place were I was happy with my final trailer I exported this to see how it played on the given media player. I was then able to look at my trailer much better to see any room for improvements.

After viewing my exported draft of my DVD trailer I found two areas which I felt required attention. These were a transition towards the middle of the trailer and the majority of the title clips except the rolling title and the cinema date at the end of the trailer. From this I was then able to open up my Premiere project and play around with these aspects again.
 
After playing with the transitions which is in place between the Housekeeper and HusbandAndBrother clips I decided that it might not actually be the transition which is the problem. I think I trimmed the clip too much which left some of her speech cut off. This was causing this aspect to both look and sound funny. I trimmed this clip again to make sure the clip started just before she began speaking. I then decided to change the transition which was on this clip to Cross Dissolve. I finally moved this transition back into the previous clip more so that the transition didn't take over what the actor was saying. This can be seen below.

I then felt that the titles were really hard to read. I was surprised with this aspect as in the preview screen I was really happy with the way these looked however on the bigger screen these looked stretched and unprofessional. The colours I had chosen to use also didn't really work together and hence I was then able to change these. I decided to use a black Outer Stroke as this made the title stand out. I then adjusted the width of the text to make it narrower and finally the overall size so that it wasn't quite so prominent on the screen. These changes made the title screens look more professional and also a lot easier to read.
 
Once I had made these changes I then needed to export for a second time, to do this I simply followed the exact same steps which I had the first time. All of this can be seen in the previous blog post.


Premiere - Exporting My Final DVD Trailer

Once I was happy with my trailer I had made in Premiere I was able to export the media in order to play this from a media player such as VLC or Windows Video Player. To export my DVD trailer I used the File, Export and Media options. This brought up a large dialog box which had a variety of options to change and adjust based on how you want the media to export. Both of these stages so far can be seen below.



From my assignment brief the exporting aspect of this project had mandatory settings which I had to use in order to pass. This stage was vital in achieving this as I was able to adjust the format and the preset to meet this criteria. The following paragraph was taken from the module guide which shows the mandatory features my DVD trailer must cover.

'This must be edited in Premiere, and you may import previously created elements from Photoshop or Illustrator. You will be expected to demonstrate, at minimum, import images and video, setting up a Premiere project with the right frame size and frame rate (and widescreen), trimming clips, adding transitions to clips, and adding titles over clips. You will submit this video as a Quicktime movie file encoded with the DV codec.'

From this you can see that my project must be the right frame size, frame rate, be widescreen, be a Quicktime movie and use the DV codec. The frame size and frame rate options were set when I created the sequence at the very beginning of the project. I will run over this again in my evaluation. The widescreen setting was also set at this point and again will be run over in the evaluation. The Quicktime and Codec aspects were set at this exporting stage. The first option down the right hand side of the screen gives the option to change the format that the DVD trailer is exported in. For this I was able to chose Quicktime and hence hit this aspect of my criteria. This can be seen below.


The next editable option was Presets. This allowed me to hit the DV Codec aspect however there were a wide variety of options which I could use. The sequence I previously created used DV PAL and hence I used the same format here as when I created my sequence. The reasoning's for choosing this Codec can be seen in an earlier blog post.


All of the other settings here were left at default. I then selected Export were the following dialog box appeared. Once this was finished I was able to watch my DVD trailer without the use of Premiere.




Premiere - Importing Media From Tutorials

So now that I had undertaken my lightening tutorial I decided that I would like to use these in my final DVD trailer after all. Although I could in theory just trim the clip and start from scratch all in my Assignment project I felt that it made more sense to actually export the clip I was happy with from one project and then import into my assignment, this would save time but I was also really happy with the look I had achieved from this tutorial and for that reason felt no need to try to recreate this. With this project open I then simply exported the clip. I used the settings which were needed for my overall DVD trailer as this should aid the professionalism when I come to finally export at the end. The settings I used can be seen below.
 
This clip can then be seen saved in my documents as a Quicktime Mov file. This can be seen below.

 
The exported clip can be seen below.


I was then able to import this clip into the Assignment Project in the same way that I imported all of my full DVD movie trailers.

This stage was repeated for the second clip which I used a tutorial for and the screenshots to show this along with the exported clip can be seen below.