Lost at Sea was an activity we did to improve our teamwork skills. The task was to rank a list of items from least to most important in a scenario in which we were stranded at sea and needed to survive. First, we did this individually, which was done in order to see our opinion and then we ranked the items again in groups after that. It was interesting to learn about how everyone in my group ranked their items, and although it did not make me feel that I was wrong with my choices, it definitely made me reconsider. […]
Author: Tina
Intro to the Mesh Tool
This lesson was an introduction to the mesh tool in Illustrator, which I opened up a poster-sized canvas to begin. I started by creating a basic shape, which was at first a circle and became a balloon, by clicking the direct selection tool, clicking on anchor at the bottom left and dragging down. With the shape selected, I went to object, create gradient mesh – four rows and four columns to start out. It was recommended to click preview to see the mesh before selecting okay, and since it looked quite good, I went ahead to make […]
Sound and Editing
Sound and editing are another two incredibly vital aspects within cinema. In this online lesson, we learned about a lot of technical elements and identified a few in examples from movies. Sound Ambient sound is general background noise and can be used to fill silences in order to make a setting feel more real. Dialogue establishes character and relationship and is an important way to provide content for the plot/story. Music is also used a lot, to heighten emotion and/or drama of a scene or help interpret the mood or genre. It can also build up or release […]
Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping is the process of cutting around or tracing objects and characters to remove them from footage or edit them and is usually used because chroma keying isn’t available or sufficient. It can be quite tedious, so patience and control are needed. To try it out for ourselves, we used a short video of a man walking and learned colour grading, rotoscoping and degrading. Demo Bring in the footage into After Effects. Drag it over the shapes icon and make a new composition. Go into layer, new, and click adjustment layer. This places a holder, so you can […]
3D Layers & Lighting Effects in AE
So far, we have been working in 2d on After Effects, meaning we have been using the x and y axis. When it is time to work in a 3-dimensional space, a third axis is introduced, called z. X left and right, y is up and down, and z is forwards and backwards. So the z provides that depth which allows objects to be seen in a third perspective thus making them 3d. To have our first taste of working in 3d in After Effects, we began with making some text and showing the 3d space through lights […]
My LUT
Firstly, let’s answer the question – What is a LUT? LUT stands for lookup table. It is a file that transforms one range of colours to another range of colours, and are mostly used in films and video edits to give them a unique look and feel. Most recently, they have started to be used in photography as well, as they are quite versatile and some people believe them to be like filters, or tools used to enhance the photos. My LUT Do you want a professional way to change the colour of your Haloween video? Do you want […]
Colour Theory 2
In this second lesson on colour theory, our focus was on LUTs, which change the way the colours of a video look. They are colour grade presets and can make flat colours looks much sharper, stand out and increase contrast. We also learned of a website called Gumroad where people make Lut packs and market them. I think it’s great that there is a website where you can buy and sell lookup tables (which is what Lut stands for). We grabbed a simple Halloween clip off of Pixabay and imported it into Premiere. Right after that, in order to make […]
Intro to the Puppet Tool
Firstly, a recap to refresh our memory! In under ten minutes, we were asked to create a swinging rope with cc bend it and possibly think about what the puppet tool would be. I found this to be a very simple task, but I still didn’t make the bend quite as natural as I would have liked. Nevertheless, getting the job done quickly allowed me to guess what the puppet tool would be. My guess was that it is a tool which allows you to manipulate the limbs of a character and animate their motions, because of the word ‘puppet’ […]
Illustrator Masterclass – Creating a Portrait
This lesson was dedicated entirely to Adobe Illustrator. We learned how to create a portrait in a very interesting black and white graphic style, which creates a stunning result that looks incredibly complicated but is actually very simple and, with some practise, easy to do. In order to create a portrait with this style, firstly, we had to choose who to draw. The example presented to us was Eunice Kathleen Waymon, a musician, arranger, and civil rights activist, in recognition of black history month. We also had a few other examples to choose from if we wanted – and I […]
Mise en scene & Cinematography
Mise en scene is a French term and it is basically what is put in a scene or frame. It is all of the visual info in front of the camera that communicates essential ideas to the audience. There are five elements to mise en scene, settings and props, costume, hair and makeup, facial expressions, lighting and colour, and position of the characters or objects in the frame. Every aspect has hidden meanings that send signals to us for how we are supposed to feel. Settings and props are incredibly important, as they are usually the first things you see […]