FINAL

Final Video Abstract

My goal for this video was mainly to tell a story--two swimmers each training individually, and then the big race between them. The video was also a way for me to explore what I could do with underwater shots--I wanted to experiment with the unique symmetry that the lane lines, walls, black tiles, and surface all create beneath the water. After three hours of shooting both underwater and above-water shots (split between two days) I had enough footage to put together a story. To give the race a dramatic feel I then found a song that I thought would work and set the footage to the music. Color corrections in FinalCut Pro was the longest and most tedious part about editing the video, but in the end I think it was worth it--I managed to somewhat synchronize the above-water and underwater color tones, as well as bring out the yellows and blues in the flags and lane lines. The following post details the process of creating this video.

Storyboard

Below are the two storyboards I planned out before shooing the video footage. The first thing I did was sketch a bunch of pool landscapes. What I wanted to do was establish the setting with a myriad of shots of the pool from different angles--looking out from the bottom, an aerial shot, looking up at the surface, etc. Then to establish the two different swimmers, I sketched out a close-up of each of them facing the opposite way. My hope in doing this was to let the viewer know that there were two different swimmers in the video. The rest of the sketches are of the back dive and of the race, and the end is also where I had the idea of quickly alternating shots between the two hands as they touched the wall. 

Production Log

Week of March 25: Write storyboard. Get waterproof housing for camera. 

Week of April 1: Corrected final storyboard. Filmed some preliminary shots--swimmers racing above water.  Filmed wide aerial view of entire pool. Later in the week I filmed most of the underwater footage: the underwater dive, the flipturn, the underwater finish of Swimmer 1, the jump into the pool of Swimmer 2. Also filmed the underwater scenery shots for the beginning of the video, as well as Swimmer 1 falling backwards into the pool.

Week of April 8: Edited the footage I had so far into a pre-production video and figured out what I still needed. I also color-corrected some of the footage I had already. Then I finished the filming--I filmed the aerial shots of the swimmers, the above-water views of the dive into the pool, the close-ups of the swimmers' faces, and Swimmer 2's underwater finish. I also chose the song for the video.

Week of April 15: Made the rough edit of the video, but still needed to coordinate the colors. I used the proc-amp in FinalCut Pro to make the water look less green in the above-water shots, as well as synchronize the lighting in the various shots. For the underwater and above water footage I used the color correction to bring out the blacks to fix the color of the water, as well as bring out the blues and yellows in the lane lines and flags of the pool. 

Week of April 22: Some final color editing, mostly with the lighting and water color, as well as fine-tuning the music coordination. 

Pre-Production Video

Here's the link to the pre-production video, which was put together with the music and color-corrected for the water and lighting. The black screen with text is what I did to replace the footage that I still hadn't shot by this time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pQ4n1BmK4Q&feature=youtu.be

Final Video

Here's the link to the final video, which has all of the footage, color corrections and music, as well as the credits. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LlI6rjr1A0&feature=youtu.be

Self-Evaluation

I'm happy with the way the video turned out. The music may be quite over-the-top, but it makes the footage dramatic and interesting. My friends and I also had a lot of fun shooting the footage, and it was a great feeling seeing the video come together. The hardest part for me was learning how to use the color-correct tools in FinalCut Pro. It took me a few hours just to find the proc-amp, never min figuring out how to use it. But once I got a hang of it, I saw clearly why it was worth the trouble. The lighting in the video came out looking much better than originally, and when I showed the final version of the video to my friends they said that the lighting in the video looked better than it does normally in the pool. 

I learned a lot while making this video--not only about FinalCut, but also about techniques for shooting video, how lighting is so important, the different types of shots and angles, and of course, all the problems that you could run into while shooting video. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm very interested in continuing to shoot and edit video. 

MIDTERM

Portfolio Abstract

For the six images that comprise this midterm portfolio, what I concentrated on the most was the story--I want these images to get the viewer thinking, piecing a story together from what the image shows. I believe that the story element of an image is one of its most important qualities, because whatever the viewer gets out of the image is ultimately the thoughts it stirred. Two techniques I used the most in my compositions were compositing images, as well as a strong blur tool to create distortions. The portfolio's aim is to have an almost surreal feel to it, while also telling a story in each image. Water, nature, and general abstraction are the themes found in most of my images.

Portfolio

First Image: The Distance Lane

For The Distance Lane, I wanted to do a tribute to two friends on my old swim team. My two teammates and I (on the left) were the only three distance swimmers on our team, and we prided ourselves on having the hardest practices and swimming some of the most grueling events, so I wanted to convey a feeling of closeness. First I took an old picture of the three of us and used a combination of the magic wand and lasso tools to select us; then I pasted us into a different file. Then I took a picture of the Rutgers University swimming pool (where we always had our biggest meets) and used the same selection as before to crop the pool into our shape. I put the picture of the pool behind us and lowered the opacity of our picture, so that the pool showed up in our shapes. To preserve the details of our faces, I painted over the pool picture with the same blue-green color as the water--that way our faces could clearly be seen, but still keep the same color. I then took a picture of our old YMCA and used the same selection as before to crop that to fit around our heads, so that it wouldn't be visible behind our opaque faces. As a final touch, I put a picture of each of us diving beneath each respective person and typed, "Distance Lane," in the corner.

Second Image: Drinking Nature

I don't know where I got the idea for this image, but at the time I had taken the original picture of the pond, I remember thinking that I just wanted to stay in that place forever, to absorb the beauty around me. And after looking at the picture I took, I thought, "what is someone actually did absorb the beauty of nature?" I took a picture of someone posed as if he were in ecstasy, glorying in the sheer beauty of nature, and darkened it until it was a black figure--as if he were a soul void of any qualities, and was going to literally absorb nature to fill him up. I then used a strong blur tool to make it look as if the various components of this scene--the sky, the trees, the water--were being sucked into the figure. I tried giving it a sense of depth, although I'm not too sure this turned out as well as I had hoped. I really liked the concept, however, as well as the effect the blur tool had--as if the figure were absorbing the essence of the water or trees. 

Third Image: To Each his Own

For this image, I used a picture of my friends and I which I have always liked--the five of us sitting contemplatively on a cliff, looking out over a vast space. What I did was crop out each of us, and fill our shapes with each of our respective interests and hobbies. The idea I wanted to convey was that we're all very different from each other--we all have dissimilar interests--and yet what brings us together are these moments. Although we're very different people, we've come together to share this beautiful scene, and that brings us closer. To achieve this, I started on the figure all the way to the left (incidentally me) and cropped him out. I put two layers with pictures of my interests beneath the layer of the main picture, in the space of my shape where you could see them. Then I merged the three layers together. I repeated this process with each respective shape.

Fourth Image: Eggbulb

I thought this composite image from earlier in the class always had an interesting mix of colors and contrast, as well as a cool effect with the prongs going in and out of the lightbulb. What I did to improve it was crop the extraneous materials on the outside of the lightbulb, and make the lightbulb bigger. To make the lightbulb's color stand out more than it already was, I upped the contrast and a very small bit of saturation, and lowered the brightness but slightly raised the highlights of the picture. That way, the purple really stands out, especially the glowing wire in the middle. I also slightly improved the edges of the prongs by smoothing them a little more.

Fifth Image: Crab Climbing

Every time I see a super-macro or close-up image, I always find myself thinking what it would be like if a person were just as small, and was interacting with the picture. This picture of a handful of hermit crabs is one I took on the beach with my friends. First I painted out someone's face in the background behind the thumb, so that the face would not be a distraction. I then found a variety of photos of people climbing and hiking, and carefully made selections around them with the magic wand and lasso tools. Then I put the climbers into the picture where it looked like they could fit--where the hands could look like they were grabbing, or where the feet would be positioned. In a few instances I added a shadow where needed, as well as the reflection of one of the little climbers in the shiny dark shell towards the top. There are ten climbers in all, and I like how the longer one looks at the picture, the more one sees--not just more climbers, but the details of the shells and hermit crabs as well. It looks as if the hands in the picture had scooped up a bunch of hermit crabs, and happened to find tiny people climbing among them. 

Sixth Image: The Jellyfish

Nature is often stranger than fiction, and that is arguably best exemplified by jellyfish, some of nature's oddest creatures. The original picture was taken by me this past summer, on a day when hundreds of these jellyfish washed up in the shallows of our beaches. I took a waterproof camera to take pictures, but because the water was so murky, the only way to get a clear shot was to hold the camera beneath the jellyfish and take the picture facing up. The bright sun, however, took away a lot of the detail. So after originally correcting the image for a previous assignment to reveal what details I could, I decided to take it a step further. The bottom edge of the jelly was still lacking detail and color, so I cropped a small strip of the jellyfish that did have detail and color and pasted it along the bottom edge. Next, I wanted to brighten the jellyfish's body. Using the brush tool, I painted various details onto the body and kept the center dark, but painted gradually brighter colors emanating from the center. Then I duplicated the picture of the jellyfish into a new layer on top of the original; I lessened the opacity of this new layer, and that gave the painted effects on the original layer a realer quality. I also used the blur tool to give it some tendrils, as well as the little tentacles trailing from its back edge.

Self-Evaluation

I definitely feel that I've come a long way in Photoshop from the beginning of this class. When I first came into the class, I only knew two things--the brush tool, and how to brighten or darken an image. Now, however, I've learned many new techniques such as the selection tools, how to enhance images and use the histogram, how to composite images, etc. Not only have I learned new techniques, but the class has also taught me how to look at images in a different way. Now I look for the composition of the image--what framework, if any, it was structured around--and I find myself paying attention to elements such color, line structure, spacing, etc. 

As a journalism major and an aspiring journalist, I know that the entire profession I plan on joining is making a  massive shift from printed to digital media. The digital media I'm learning from this class will give me an edge in the job market because of this digital shift. I feel that my work has evolved even from the beginning of this class, and that my new habits of paying attention to color, composition, and the like, already show in my later work. I know, however, that I've only just scratched the surface and that I still have a lot to learn. What I have already learned and improved on makes me eager for more. 

Compositions

For this week's assignment, we were told to create a composition using a "harmonic framework," or a series of lines to create shapes that would harmonize the composition. This was the result:

For this painting I wanted to add a story component to the artwork, so I scanned an old pencil drawing of a Maori sea goddess and modified/painted it on photoshop. I wanted there to be a contrast between the seaweed woman's straight posture and her staff's angle, with the curling tendrils to give a kind of disparity to the rules of straight lines. Here's the framework behind the painting:

The second composition using a "harmonic framework" is a picture I took in Williamsburg, VA of a judge's hands in an old court reenactment, writing with a quill and ink. 

I wanted to create the illusion that the ink was dripping down the old man's hands, down the crevices wrinkles in his fingers and onto the paper. I wanted the focal point of the image to be where his two fingers were grasping the quill, as well as the opposition of the lines formed by the quill and the trail of ink. I used the black pen and a little blur tool for the ink. Below is the framework for the composition: