Jordan's Technical Sessions

Jordan's Technical Sessions

This blog entry will consist of the skills I have learnt in the Adobe technical work shops with Jordan using Premiere Pro, After Effects and Adobe audition. This entry will be Showing my progression and journey from week 1-6.

In these workshops I learn how to put footage together, how to make my animations move and how to make animation out of shapes and slowly grasping the way to learn Audition- I will be having a play with these programme over the summer.

Thursday 4th March 2020

(Animation) premiere pro lesson 1 & experiments

For lesson one of our technical sessions we was taught the basics of Premiere Pro, where we had to find short clips free to download from a website called: Pexels Videos
 Here is a link: https://www.pexels.com/videos/ to create an animation working on creating a basic animation focusing on the visuals.

On that session we were basically taught the basics on how to keyframe footage on Premiere. 

We was shown the basics of Premiere Pro where we were shown the preview box, the timeline, the footage itself and other components we experimented with basically adding various blend modes, in the same way you would with photoshop besides the fact that in this case the footage is motion image as apposed to a still image.  When doing this I learnt a lot in the space of an hour and a half as I was shown the utmost basics of the programme to get me started, and as I say I learnt about blend modes, how to change the colours to my imagery and other interesting effects I could apply to my video footage in the most basic way to give us a basic idea.

Thursday 12th March 2020

Music video Premiere Pro 

(Imagine Dragons work)

For our second lesson wetas taught how to make a music video, how to edit footage, for this we had to down load a song by Imagine Dragons, the music video for this was about a farce boxing match and we see he angle of fighting the blue and red corner so that is basically the list of this lesson.

With this lesson to which you'll see on this video, I learnt how to edit imagery, with various blend modes, I also learnt how to Key frame imagery using Premiere Pro which is the start and the end of sections of an animation for film making for smooth transformational movements through various frames. Along side that we was also shown the basics as to how to put sound onto my footage. Another thing with this programme which I am learning but I forget to do is to put your files into a folder and import the files onto premiere, it is a good thing to do otherwise premiere won't recognise your footage say if you moved your footage into another folder for instance, Premiere Pro isn't a mind reader and it won't recognise your files otherwise as I am currently learning.

I liked this lesson as it enabled me to quickly grasp the basics of Premiere Pro as I was able to learn the visuals side of it and the audio side of it but in the most basic way so I had an idea on how the programme works.

Thursday 2nd April 2020

After effects: (The Anatomy one)

For this workshop we was shown the basics on how to use After effects, admittedly I felt this programme was technically more challenging to grasp than premiere but once you get started and learn the basics the away you go kind of thing. I can't lie but to admit I found this quite a struggle to get to grips with when we were doing the workshops was very lost, and I thought to photograph each frame from Illustrator and then create footage that way just to teach me the basics. Unfortunately I was unable to get to grips with After Effects at this point.
Here is the video Anatomy of a murder opening titles designed and made by Saul Bass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTs1DfwKDcw

Wednesday 13th May 2020

Although on Wednesday the 13th May I eventually started to understand the basics on After effects after doing the other workshops also, I decided to draw each shape on Illustrator the same way as I've drawn Mr Blurt and saved each part as a separate file and decided to attempt making this footage. What we was supposed to do is recreate the Saul Bass Opening titles to the Anatomy of a murder as accurately as we could and adding our own elements to it also. Here is my footage and progression below. 

Way Too fast! 

The problem I had here was the key framing, the beginning of the video was perfect, its the part when its just the head and onwards,  where the  keyframes became a problem, this was because I made the key frames too short means that the image/frame is going to move quickly and the frustration was the fact that it made the type lose its legibility

Feedback from a mate outside uni

Anatomy of a murder

The first five seconds of the animation I created, is spot on! almost identical to the original video which I can humbly say I was proud of I really liked this segment to my animation and I find Saul Bass's wor truly inspiring. What I learnt about the way he animates in his animation you'll find body parts appear suddenly as apposed to dragging the footage into the animation which is what I am learning and discovering with my work, which in this 5 seconds I have done differently, I wanted there to be movement with the body that was just my interpretation on it. But this clip I am impressed with as I've took a step up from my learning from not having a clue to suddenly being able to create this footage! It is probably my most improved pieces of animation in my opinion, it is almost identical to the original video, t he movement is slick and very smooth and the type is legible and in the right place as is the body parts, this clip for me is spot on.

Added some colour

This clip is basically exactly the same footage as the flip above but the only difference is the colour, which I got that because of a filter from Instagram where it coloured my backdrop a pale Orange and Navy blue for the body-parts which seeing as those colours are contrasting and complimentary this works well plus one of Saul Bass's posters does actually have a orange backdrop just a much darker backdrop- so it makes it all the more meaningful to use the colours orange and blue. 

Feedback

For this variation I have changed the speed so that the type is more legible and I was able to add a crafty effect which really liked, it is different to the video but it worked well visually so I added it in, which is of a leg kicking some of the staring credits over to the other side of the page so the hands can grab the text. I liked this clip visually, I think it works well and the detail of the leg kicking the text is very smooth and slick and the keyframes are separated much better than on the first clip where the video was going too fast.

Jordan's Feedback

Paul's Feedback

Peer feedback for all three clips From Noah

This clip here is examples of Saul Bass's work and has his voice in there too, this Clip I found interesting and felt the need to include in this work. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPBWvfMKV10

Something in the end of this clip below Saul Bass says "I want to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary" - Saul Bass

Which is what I wanted to recreate in my interpretation of his motion graphic work.  His work is a true inspiration and I would love to learn more about this graphic designer in the future. 

Thursday 24th April 2020

After effects Lesson 2


For this lesson, we had to recreate another attempt to edit another Saul Bass video but this time  Psycho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwq1XHtJEHw

This one was trickier because of the way you had to drag the shapes onto the screen, I found this to be quite complex and when I did this session with Jordan Via Zoom because of lockdown  I was completely lost and was stuck on the two lines also I was still struggling with after effects at this point.

As you can see at this point I was struggling! this was pretty much as far as I managed to get when  I was on the chat with the group... the thing is struggled with was the key framing which is essential with After effects because without that your imagery cant and won't move, key framing determines the movement of the shape of the objects. Key framing determines the speed of the movement also the more keyframes you put the more fluent the movement.

I then gave this a second attempt and it went much better than I anticipated it to, I learnt how to move the rectangles and I understand how to do the key framing stuff now, where you have to click on the shape you want to move then go to the arrow sidebar and click the stopwatch to position (which means the object is at begging position) and then move the curser on the timeline ever so slightly and then move your shape and repeat till you're happy with it basically. But Jordan
has given me a step by step guide I have followed which is:

Step 1: Make sure Object is in its starting position (e.g off the side of the screen)
Step 2: In the layers panel, click the little arrow on the layer, then click the arrow net to the word 'Transform'
Step 3: Click the Stopwatch on the line that says 'Position' so that it turns blue.
Step 4: Move the playhead on the timeline to where you want the animation to end
Step 5: Move the object (either with the mouse or dragging the numbers on the 'Position' line) and a second keyframe will automatically be inserted

Alfred Hitchcock Type separation 

I then followed this step by step regime and I learnt how to keyframe shapes and move them, alongside that I was also down how to put text into the shapes but I found out how to split the text so I can separate the text like the psycho video. I am pleased with this because it enabled me to learn the basic skills on After effects and enabled me to experiment.

Feedback and instruction which was useful to learn about the text arrangement.

Thursday 1st May 2020

After effects, Lesson 3

Puppet Tool & Script

For this After effects lesson, we was shown about the puppet tool and the script. The puppet tool is a tool you can use on After effects to move your character in pivots by clicking on different parts of the character  whilst moving the timber same as for key framing you move the character. The way you do the script is a bit more complex, as you have to clicl positions n the timer and where there are numbers you have to change the numbers and then type wiggle or another action you want your character to do. 

For this exercise we had to pick a background, have characters without a backdrop and an inanimate object so I used my own characters which I drew up before and then created some footage together.

Clip 1, Puppet tool on Basket Ball

This clip I managed to successfully use the puppet tool and experimented with it. I like how I made the basketball deflate kind of effect, I thought it was quite an interesting test. For me it was just good to learn the basics behind the puppet tool.

Clip 2, 10 Second Animation

I got Hulk and Iron Man playing basketball. At this point I was getting used to using the key framing tool and started to understand the basics of After Effects. you'll notice I have used the wiggle effect with the basketball. I will mention about this animation in more detail in another Blog entry.

Jordan's Feedback

How to Apply Script

(I can't lie, I did do this in the second video, I did find this complex to get to grips with.)

Mr Blurt- 15 second Animation

I got into After effects, so later on that day I decided to test myself on putting all of what I've learnt together in this video of Mr Blurt, some sections are better than others- I can't lie. I Drew my character in separate shapes which I then saved individually. I then imported those files to After Effects and then I started to create my footage, my favourite section and this was a struggle was getting my character to walk, as I found this quite tricky and advanced, although he isn't moving very far it goes to show that's what you can achieve in the space of 3 hours. I found it tricky as some of it looked as though the character was jumping and legs were going everywhere, which I quickly solved. I have applied what I've learnt by understanding the Key Framing and the use of the puppet tool, the only thing I didn't use was the script tool, because I found that technique quite complex to understand and it didn't work with my imagery to use that effect.

Feedback from Jordan