Theresa Walker- Revision Plan

     I’m currently cutting music from Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette to make the soundtrack for my movie. I couldn’t find a direct clip that fits all the points of my story, so I’m cutting segments from different parts and stitching them together. This is very time consuming since I have to find breaks in the music that cut easily, but I think it will work out. I plan on putting longer breaks in the narration of my story, specifically at the beginning and the end to give the audience some time to focus on the music. After I have a good soundtrack, I will adjust the pictures to fit. Then I will rerecord myself reading the story while watching the video and the music track, so that the narration fits the music. I’m planning on trying to change up my reading style, and am going to experiment with more/less dry tones of speaking to see what works. I’ve been cleaning up the cropping I did for the different layers of the pictures in my rough cut. I am also probably going to put a white outline around the subject layers. I watched a documentary that used that technique with historical photos, and I liked the paper doll effect that it made. I am going to change some of my backgrounds for scenes like the pistols and the bullets. For the scene where Berlioz travels from Rome Genoa on the train, I am going to get a little picture of a train and have dashes trail it, with a picture of his lost disguise. I am still planning to make this in GIMP rather than premiere or aftereffects, since I am much more comfortable with GIMP, and it is not overly time consuming to work with individual images. I think adding an animation towards the end of the story would feel awkward, since I’m going for a bit of a stop-motion effect with still images.

Opacity and Video Cropping

Using Opacity : 

1   1. To make an image/video more transparent you must first make sure the image/video is selected.

2   2.Then, open the Editing task panel at the top of the screen, click on “Effect Controls” from newly opened panel.

3   3. You will notice that Opacity already appears as an editing option under Video Effects along with Motion and Remapping.

     4. Next, click the arrow to the left of “Opacity” to access the drop-down menu.

     5. A percentage will appear, hover over this percentage, then click and slide to the left to lower the image’s opacity until you achieve your desired transparency. 

Cropping Videos/Images :

1    1. To crop an image/video you must first select the image/video you wish to crop.

2    2. Then, open the Effects panel, select Video Effects, and then Transform.

3    3.Under Transform you will find the option to Crop. Drag the word Crop over to the image/video you wish to edit (the hand will highlight the clip if you are hovering correctly), now you can drop the effect onto the clip.

      4.Now, open the Editing panel and then select Effect Controls (you will notice that Crop appears as an editing option now).

5    5. Hover and slide the percentages to the left or right depending on the size of your image/video (the image disappears based on how far you slide the percentage arrows).

(In the case of my video, you can see that the larger video has been cut to fit the size of the smaller one, the sides are now black where the video used to be)

Lauren Herron Revision Plan

    In planning to revise my project, I would like to experiment with how to play a video of myself under images of the friends I talk about in the story. I realized that my last rough cut was very monotonous and that the repeated videos of me standing by the pond were dull. I want to convey a similar feeling, but in a more interesting way. My story tells of how I still feel connected to my friends from my time abroad and how I have, in a way, extracted bits of their personalities and incorporated them into my own persona. This is why I want to play a semi-transparent video of myself while I show a series of images of my friends.

    The last feedback I received mentioned that the more concrete details I included about my friends were a step in the right direction, so I thought that it would be a good idea to include a visual when I describe the friends. I selected images that really capture the essence of the individuals and so these, over a video of my face, act to demonstrate my internal feelings of oneness with the women. I’m still having some issues with cropping the images and video to the right size, but I hope I can adjust them to fit more seamlessly together. I was planning to either cut them down in size or apply a fading to the video of my face so that it doesn’t look like a rectangle, but rather, just a ghostly apparition in the background. I want to make the video a bit ethereal, to make the images less scrap-book-y and provide a connecting point to the fleeting feelings that arise in my audio.

    I like the changes I have made to my audio and don’t plan to edit it anymore—at least not heavily. I added a new emphasis on the original “shiny bubble” metaphor from my very first audio version because I found images of spilled oil from my neighborhood in London and also images that I took of children playing with bubbles on the banks of the Thames. All in all, I plan to continue in the same direction with my revisions, but I want to make sure that my video is more seamless. 

Maddy Fisher Revision Plan

In revising my project, my main goal is to include a variety of video and still images. I am trying to use the bright and polished time-lapse video less frequently, instead only using it where it specifically applies to what I’m saying. As a result, I have incorporated many more still images.

            I want to include many pictures of my family and myself. When I first talk about asking my mom for her answer, I included a photo of me with both my parents because I don’t have a photo of just my mom and me. I hope to get more photos when I go home over Thanksgiving. When I ask my dad, I include a photo of my dad and me. Later on, I put two photos of myself onto the same background. I thought that including the two images together was more compelling.

            I am still working on the section where my dad gives his scientific explanation. I really liked the black and white footage of cloud formations, so I used a clip from that. I juxtaposed that with still images illustrating Newton’s theory. I am still debating whether to make those images more detailed and specific.

            In terms of sound other than my voice, I included very subtle noises from nature to augment what I was saying. In the very beginning, I use the sound of birds chirping to add to the image of blue-skied, lovely day. I used nighttime noises such as crickets chirping when I talk about the moon following me. When I talk about thunderstorms, I have some storm noises in the background. I use the sound of a plane taking off when I discuss how planes are able to stay in the air.

            At the end of my video, I am experimenting with opacity. I made the background of the video a photo of the sky. Then I layered on two different videos of the clouds, making them opaque so that the background shows through. I think that this incorporates many perspectives of the sky and makes it more visually dynamic.

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.