Revision Plan - Catalina

For my most recent revision I plan to make the visual elements of my story more personal, fix minor details in order to make the story flow better, and to modify the videos of the Amazon at the end. There are several parts of my story where I use images from the internet rather than personal images. For example, the first image can be changed from the impersonal picture of a mute button to a picture of me with my hand over my mouth and the work “mute” written on my hand. Later in the narrative I have a picture of a girl with question marks above her head. I plan to change this image to a picture of me. There are certain pictures that I cannot make more personal however. For instance, the pictures of the child being bullied or the pictures of my friend and I when we were young. Although these images make the story slightly less personal, I think it adds dynamism to and enhances the relatable nature of the story because it demonstrates that many others have the same experiences: being bullied as a child and finding solace in a friend.

Furthermore, I will fix the quality of some of the images used by exporting them at a higher resolution. The images of my paper and work on ArcGIS were very blurry so they need to be enhanced in order for the audience to appreciate them. Additionally, there was an image of the Swanson School of Engineering logo that was not cropped correctly, so I will modify that.

Finally, the videos of the Amazon need to be refined. Because one of the clips I have at the top is much shorter than the one next to it, it disappears quickly leaving a black space for too long that can be distracting to the audience. I will slow down the shorter video so that it disappears at the same time as the one next to it and then the video at the bottom will grow to fill the screen.

Revision Plan

I am generally happy with the way my project turned out, but it isn’t exactly the way I visualized it, and I would like to change it up a bit. My biggest issue is with my footage. I had to rush to get all of my footage because I was going home that weekend, and Grace and I had very little time to meet. There are two different sides to my story: the past, represented with yellow, and the present, represented with black and blue.  My entire project is shot in the same room, which is somewhat dark and makes Grace look a greyish, washed-out color. I do have plans to use the color correcting features to remedy this, but I still want to create more distinction visually between the two stories. For the yellow parts of the project, I would like to get footage of Grace dancing outside in the sun, especially since I use the sun as a symbol for yellow and the happiness that I associate with it. The footage that I currently have I think works well for the black and blue parts of the story. I would even like to put this footage in black and white and see how that translates.

I would also like to experiment a bit more with sound. I think that soft ballet music in the background might be nice. Again, I would like to have a prettier song in the beginning and a darker song in the end. I would also like to experiment with sound effects that make it sound like we’re in a dance studio, such as the sound of Grace landing on the floor from of a jump, or the chatter of girls in dance class. Some of this may be as simple as using the ambient sound form the video clip. I am not dead set on this idea because I think sound might take away from the emotion that the silence creates, but I will experiment with it.

Revision Plan

My revision plan for the upcoming rough cut due of “Rooftops” is to focus almost entirely on the visual aspect of my project. I am very pleased with the actual audio of the story, and cannot find a place where I would want to alter the words. However, I’m less pleased with the visuals, because as I’ve mentioned before, I really wanted to film Firefist and I walking, especially to the rooftop. I couldn’t before because he was sick, but very recently I finally got the footage that I desired, and will work on making it fit seamlessly into my project.

As for the sounds, I’d like to keep the ones that are already in my project, but tweak them. I think that the chatter I have of FIrefist and I in the background as the audio story is playing works for the authentic, somewhat disoriented overall tone that I am going for. I’m not satisfied with the volume though. I currently have our conversation at a very low volume, but I still think it slightly distracts from the audio story itself. I will work on that more, or possibly toss it out entirely if that’s what I end up feeling is best.

Another thing I may want to focus on are the effects. I haven’t figured out what I would want my “trick” to show the class to be. I want to work on cool effects to figure that out, and at the same time find something that will really benefit my story in the long run. My ideal is that the whole project will feel kind of mysterious and imperfect.  From what I’ve looked into so far, I think this “old-film” type essence can be achieved through manipulating the timing and colors, but I’m excited to experiment with it further. 

November Changes to Story

The main tweak I want to make to my project is to slow down and re-record my audio. I have already recorded about three times, but I still feel as though I need to devote more time to slowing down and re-recording a couple more times. I need to sit down and say my story until I get it right. I could also benefit from some image editing in my story. I want to download gimp and play around with that a little bit – I really liked Theresa’s demo of that on Monday. My project can certainly benefit from some image editing that you cannot do in Premiere. I can certainly enlarge some images and play with the brightness of it. But I can also add pictures of people into some of the scenes of New York that I have. This would allow me to show two worlds kind of “colliding” if you will – the world of Ellis Island and the new American age, and today’s modern age. Perhaps this would cause viewers to think about how the first one affected the other, which is what I want. If I slow down my audio, this would extend my project. I may need to look for some new images to add. I know the eagle at the end of my last draft may have not been the best thing to include. But perhaps I can add in some images of “modern America” at the end of my project, as well as some more images of the old life of first-generation immigrants. This would further show a contrast between old and new and how the old contributed to the new.

Revision Plan

I feel like there is not a large amount of major revision needed for my project. The only major thing that I really want to do is re-record my audio. I want to try to slow down a bit and have pauses that are more deliberate. I hope that through these pauses I can leave the audience some time to absorb and comprehend what I am saying. I do not want to do this too much because doing so will negate the message that my story is trying to say. I think that the way I am speaking my story now is too rushed and mumbled. Besides this, the only other thing that I want to do is fine editing. I want to fix some of the cuts to make them fit better with the words that are being said. Right now while some are good, others just need some slight fixing. I also think that I want to look for some other stock footage for certain parts of my story. The purpose of the stock footage is to provide a literal and comical translation of what I am and saying. Some of the clips that I had chosen were not as literal as I would like, especially at the moment when I say “four men on an adventure”. There are a few other spots that stick out as not fitting quite perfectly, but this one sticks out for me. Right now, there are only two men in the shot, but I want to try to find one that has four. Besides these small details that I would like to change and the re-recording of my audio, there is not much else that I think needs changed in my project.

Reflection and Rotation

Hey guys - I originally was going to show you how to make the rabbit hole image twirl in my piece but after working with it, I decided that I no longer liked the effect. So, I found this tutorial that had two key elements that I thought a lot of you might like to use.

I personally haven't implemented it yet but plan to. The two aspects are the reflection and image rotation. Enjoy!

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