Revision Plan

I feel like my story has grown and developed a lot since the beginning of the semester. But i am still having some issues with the way my story is being perceived. I think the problem might be that I need to add a more personal touch to the story. Adding still photos was succesful in representing my overall story and concept but I feel that by adding videos and personal photos I can create the story I am envisioning.

I think my audio part is pretty set and I am happy with the way it turned out but I am going to re-record my voice and take out some unnecessary words. After looking at my transcript, I believe I am using the word "and" a little too much so I am going to get rid of all the unnecessary "ands."

Although I want to add personal videos I definitely still want to keep some still photos in my story. I have recently learned how to create the Ken Burns pan and zoom effect in Premiere Pro so I am going to implement my new found knowledge to add effects to my images and give them life.

I am also going to make some technical changes to my story and the way everything is layed out. My story is a figurative metaphor so I want to split my story into parts. The first part where would be the literal representation of the story I am telling and then I want there to be an abrupt transition so that the second half can be easily perceived as the metaphor. Another thing I am adding is short clips of my life to represent the whole metaphor of "going through life" and "growing up." I am using my phone to take quick videos of my day-to-day activities and then I am going to import them into premiere and edit them so they flow together nicely. I believe by adding these elements to my story I will be able to finally create the story I have envisioned.

Creating a Ken Burns Zoom Effect

1. In order to create a Ken Burns pan and zoom effect we will have to establish key frames for the zoom and position parameters.

2. First, choose the image that you want to add the effect to.

3. With this clip selected you can navigate your cursor to the very FIRST frame of the clip. This is where you are going to place your first keyframe.

4. Go to the effects controls located near the top of the window.

5. Click the stopwatch icon next to the SCALE and POSITION parameters. By doing this you have added your first keyframe for the scale and position of the clip.

6. Premiere Pro automatically adds keyframes when a parameter is adjusted.

7. Now navigate to the very LAST frame of the clip to adjust your scale and position parameters. Increase the scale a little bit and adjust the position to add zoom effect into the main subject of the image.

8. Make sure the scale is slightly lower at the FIRST keyframe.

How to remove background in Adobe Premiere

Revision Plan

For my next revision I plan to re-record my audio but work majority on adding video and improving my images. There's a certain bigger picture I am striving to achieve with my piece and improving my images and adding video is, I feel, key to achieving this. 

         

I edited my audio script line-for-line. Refining my sentences and taking out unnecessary or wordy language really made a big difference.

Next, I plan on using some techniques to make my images look alive. Almost like they are moving. Hopefully I can do it with just my camera but it’s possible I might use some Premiere techniques or even Photoshop. I also need to work on sizing my pictures. A few of them were too large and I wasn’t able to size them to fit the Premier frame. I was able to figure out how to size them and will be implementing that for my next revision.

  

Lastly, I plan to add video. Currently I don’t have any video in my project. Adding video will really heighten the experience I hope to convey to my audience. The videos I plan to add will be short in length but it would be interesting to play with video effects. I don’t have a lot of experience with video so this will be a learning experience. But I really think it would add a great deal to my project. I plan to learn all that I can and implement it to video that I already have and add new video as well.

Overall, I’m refining my audio script, adjusting and improving my images and adding video with certain video techniques.

Revision Plan

My story has developed a lot since the beginning of the term. I have revised my storyline a lot throughout this process, not only adjusting my general direction of where I wanted to go with it, but also with my words and how I portray my point of view to my audience. The majority of the changes that I have already made to my story were the text itself. My story started out being very black and white and a literal representation of what it stood for to me. Upon revisiting it, I started to see the potential it held for a more figurative representation and decided to go with that instead. Since my idea evolved and my photos were a visual representation of my spoken words, I realized that I may have to rework my entire script, which I did recently. I feel that now, my story portrays to my audience what I intended it to do in the first place. I feel that I have properly conveyed my story through my words and sounds, but now I still need to do more revisions to make the visuals of my story match the words and ideas that I want to leave my audience with.

Some of the other changes I have already made have to do with the technical aspects of my project. I have smoothed out my flip-book-eqsue clip, as well as the blurred lake image in the beginning of the film. Since I have been working on the project throughout this revision process, I feel that the only major task left is to fine tune the visuals and make them as authentic as I want the story to be.

After presenting my working story to the class, I realized that my visuals need a lot more work. Now that my story has evolved, my visual translation needs to evolve more as well. The images that I currently have work in some places, but I intend to make them match up more with the words as I speak them, and also to add more content in order to reduce the black space that exists currently. One idea from a classmate is to show myself growing up overtime as I talk about how camp has helped me grow and mature. Since I want to maintain the authenticity of the photographs and use only my own or those that actually were taken at my camp, this use of visuals would fit in perfectly. I also would like to find more photos of my friends and I at camp that match figuratively or literally to my text.

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)