May 2022

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Sunday 1st May

Today was the day of my penultimate shoot. This was for Act 3 Scene 1 which is the Director’s interview. At this production there was only me as I was acting as the crew as well as the actor. I chose this as this half of the “documentary” kind of falls apart and breaks the fourth wall and I felt it was fitting for me to play the director as that is what it is in real life. But as it was only me on set it meant taking BTS Photos was a bit harder. So instead I filmed a timelapse to show me setting up the equipment as well as short videos of me explaining my idea.

When it came to setting up all the equipment it wasn’t too hard, mainly because I’ve had several shoots before this one so I have become fairly comfortable with the kit as well as setting it all up. But additionally this scene is also supposed to be intentionally more simplistic than some of the others. This is due to the fact that at this point it is only supposed to be the Director there as the rest of the documentary has kind of fallen apart around him. To symbolise this I used more simplistic lighting, simply having two lights on the right and left of me shining at me as well as making the framing more simplistic and making the character sit in the middle of the frame which juxtaposes to a lot of the earlier interviews where all the characters were framed slightly off centre. I also made sure to speak to the camera more, whereas I directed my actors to look slightly over or next to the camera. Hopefully this’ll make the scene feel more genuine as well as helping to convey the message that the “documentary” that is supposed to be real within this world is truly falling apart. And one final way I tried to break the fourth wall was by including the microphone in shot which once again reinforces the idea of the idea falling apart.

When it came to actually filming the scene it wasn’t too hard. I had already learnt the lines and there weren’t any complex camera movements so the actual recording went quite smoothly. It took me a little while to get the camera properly set up and framed though. This was mainly due to the fact that it was only me there. In order to properly frame myself I took a couple of test videos of me sitting in front of the camera. You can see my trying these out on the timelapse as I was setting up. But once I was able to get everything set up I was good to go and I didn’t run into any other problems.

Overall, I would say I’m very happy with this shoot. I think it definitely achieves it’s goal of breaking up the flow of the documentary and the framing as well as the lighting are exactly what I was picturing in my mind. And now that I’ve finished this shoot, it leaves me with only my final shoot tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go smoothly then and that’ll mean my production will be fully completed.

Sunday 1st

Monday 2nd May

Today was my final day of production. Today’s shoot was quite a mishmash of lots of cutaways, and smaller shots that didn’t easily slot into another shoot. This involved the cutaways for Act 1 Scene 3, the shots for Act 1 Scene 5 and a couple for Act 3. Before production began, I went over the shots one last time to check what I needed to do, but I also decided to change a couple of the things about the shots. Originally, Act 1 Scene 5 was handheld although after all of the work I've done so far, I now feel it makes more sense for it to be static using a camera and tripod. Lots of my other handheld shots are used to display more out of control moments in the story, or shots that look unintentional and I feel by using it for ACT 1 Scene 5 it would start to break up the that motif a little bit. Additionally I planned for shot 37 to be a zoom rather than a pull out. These were some simple changes but something that I felt would make the shots better or blend them in more with the rest of the piece.

To begin shooting, I produced my shots depending on their location. I began with the two shots which both took place within the kitchen location. This included the shots for Act 1 Scene 5 where Cody is eating breakfast and one of the cutaways for Act 1 Scene 3 where Cody drops the cup. These were fairly simple with the first shot only using the camera and tripod and the second making use of my phone and gimbal. I took a couple of takes for each of these and that will provide me with what I needed.

As my phone was already on the gimbal, we then travelled to the garden and shot, shot 11 for Act 1 Scene 3 where Cody struggles playing sports. Once again this was fairly simple and I was able to gather several takes. Me and my actor experimented with a couple of different ways of kicking the ball. Sometimes the actor would just miss the ball completely and other times they would kick the ball but quite badly. These alternative takes give me options later on down the line.

I then moved onto filming the rest of the shots that comprise Act 1 Scene 5. These are of Cody leaving his room, in the bathroom and exiting his house. Once again these shots were fairly simple as they only utilised a camera and tripod. I had to pay close attention to ISO, Aperture and especially white balance between all of these shots. Mainly as all the locations has quite different lighting and so making sure they all looked good in their own ways was important.

I didn’t run into any major problems, but regarding Cody leaving his house I made a small change. After Cody goes past the camera, I panned round and followed him for a bit. This was just something that I felt could look good while I was about to film it. However, in case I later changed my mind, I only started to pan as Cody left frame so if I decide I don’t want to include this change then I can easily cut it out and just use the original stationary shot.

My penultimate shot was of Cody watching the old interviews on his computer. Originally it was a handheld pull out however, I decided I wanted a smoother look to the movement so I changed it to a zoom out still keeping the over the shoulder. As the footage isn’t edited yet it meant, I didn’t want to put the actual interviews onto the computer screens and so instead a placed a green screen on one of the screens so that during post production, I can track the footage onto the green screen. Originally, within Act 2 I was going to include a reference to my options project on a computer behind Cody, however I changed my mind that day and framed Cody where there wasn’t a computer. However, today there was a second screen and so I took this idea from Act 2 and instead implemented it into shot 2. It doesn’t make any major difference to the overall plot but just acts as a little easter egg within the film.

And my final shot was for Cody’s last interview as he talks to the camera. This was the most complicated shot as I used the lighting and audio kit within this shot as well as camera and tripod. My actor was struggling a little bit with the lines here, so to make it easier for them, I shot a couple of takes of them just saying the last line as that is the only part that this footage will be used for. However, just to provide me with options I made sure to get at least one good take of them performing the whole thing. This means I can use either the whole footage or just fade to the one where they only say the last line.

And to finish it all off, I made sure to make a couple of audio recordings of the atmospherics within the location we were shooting as well as in the outside location. This is important for many of these scenes as they will have voiceovers and so getting the atmospherics will help if I need more audio to blend in the background.

Overall, I’m very happy with how the entirety of my production went. The majority of shoots I feel produced results which were exactly what I was aiming for. And I definitely think with all the shots I’ve produced I’ll be able to produce a good version of Cody Soboo: The Animated Man.

Monday 2nd

Tuesday 3rd May

With my production shoots now completed, it meant I’m left with lots of logging to complete. I’ve previously logged all my other shoots before the ones this weekend. Thankfully this only leaves me with the three shoots from Saturday, Sunday and Monday to log. However this is still quite a lot as a lot of takes and different shots were completed over the course of the long weekend.

And so today, I started on all this logging. And I was able to complete all my logging for the audio recordings. I thought it best to complete all of these first as they are quicker than the visual logging and there were less to log as many of my shots from Monday didn’t need additional audio recordings.

But today, I was able to complete the audio logging for Act 1 Scene 4, Act 1 Scene 5, Act 3 Scene 1 and Act 3 Scene 4. Throughout all these audio recordings there were no obviously terrible ones. The only ones I marked as bad or not to use were ones where the actor stumbled or forgot a line. It’s good to know that the audio is good as audio is a huge part of productions and so making sure my final piece sounds good is important.

Overall, even though there’s a lot less to talk about today, it was still a very useful task to complete. And over the next few days I’ll be able to finish all my logging, which will then allow me to head into post production with a good understanding of all my recordings as well as my log sheets to help guid me on which recordings are good and which ones I should use.

Tuesday 3rd

Wednesday 4th May

With my audio logging having been completed yesterday, my task today was logging the visual recordings that I had taken over the long weekend. This included logging for the cutaways for Act 1 Scene 3, Act 1 Scene 4, Act 1 Scene 5, Act 3 Scene 1, Act 3 Scene 3 and Act 3 Scene 4. Although this was quite a lot to log, thanks to my previous projects as well as my work so far in this one, I have gotten quite used to logging and how to log effectively.

And so, surprisingly, I was able to get all my last visual recordings logged today. It did take quite a while but it’s definitely useful getting them all logged today. Not only because it’s allowed me to survey all of my work but also as it allows me to be ahead of my production schedule. Originally, I had scheduled the rest of the week to finish logging and sorting everything out, but now that I've completed logging, I’ll hopefully be able to have a rough cut finished by the end of the week. This would be really good as it will provide me with more time to perfect my animation and audio.

While logging today there weren’t too many shots that were particularly bad. The majority of shots that I marked as bad or unusable were mainly down to either actors forgetting their lines or slightly rough camera movement. The only quite bad shots were in my secondary angle for Act 1 Scene 4 where in a couple of shots the top of the microphone is slightly visible. Annoyingly I didn’t catch this mistake while shooting, however there are a couple of takes without the microphone being visible so I still have good takes of the scene.

When I returned home, I uploaded all my logging onto my WIX website. This was not too hard of a process but it did take a while. All I had to do was screenshot my logging and present them alongside the journal entry that they corresponded with. I decided to order them by Acts and Scenes as this will make navigating them easier.

Similarly to yesterday, there was slightly less to talk about today, however the work completed was still really useful, and I’m looking forward to starting my rough cut in post production over the following couple of days.

Wednesday 4th

Thursday 5th May

With logging all completed yesterday I was ready to move onto post-production. However, before I moved on I made sure to evaluate my Production. Lots of my individual journal entries that I had presented on my production page already covered a lot of my opinions and thoughts about my production shoots and so this final evaluation was really a summary and conclusion of the process as a whole. However, it was still very important to get finished and completing it allowed me to move onto post production.

The best way to start any form of post production is with a rough cut, and so that’s what I created today. I simply chose all my shots and compiled them together. This took the majority of the lesson and still looks very rough but completing it first is important as it allows me to build on it while continuing through post production. Currently, it is literally just the shots all in order, no fancy transitions, the audio is still only the one from the camera, and there’s no animation added yet. It is also currently a little shorter than I had originally predicted, however I think it’s likely it will become slightly longer as I add and adjust parts of it.

I was already ahead of my production schedule and so completing my rough cut today is extremely useful and will allow me even more extra time to fine tune the final piece. With the rough cut completed, I plan to move onto Ebsynth and audio. Originally I had planned to do Audio last and while this will still be true for things such as the music, foley and atmospherics, I think I will fix the dialogue sooner. This is due to how I currently feel about the rough cut, as I feel it will become a lot better when the dialogue from the proper audio equipment is added.

In regards to my Ebsynth it will also really help to bring the piece to life, as currently it is just a normal person. But I can only complete the Ebsynth work at home as that is where I have the software downloaded. However, there are parts I can complete at school. And I started doing this today. Thanks to having my rough cut, I was able to copy the whole sequence into a separate premiere file and delete all the pieces that didn’t include parts which would require Ebsynth. Then using this new sequence, I was able to export the shots out 1 by 1 into separate folders to provide me with all the shots I need to use Ebsynth for. This will allow me to work a lot more efficiently when I come to completing the Ebsynth work as I’ll already have all my shots laid out and ready to edit with. Additionally it allows me to work with them separately which will make handling any problems a lot easier. However, separating them has made me realise how many of them there are. Which is 32 separate shots that need Ebsynth. I feel this is going to be quite a challenge and will probably take a while so I might try to start Ebsynth work earlier as I feel I may have to multitask with doing certain parts of the edit at college and then spending the rest of my time at home completing the Ebsynth. Especially as the Ebsynth is crucial to the final product.

Overall, today was only the very start to my post production work, but I feel I have made a good start. And I feel the work I have completed today will allow the rest of my editing to run a lot more smoothly and efficiently.

Thursday 5th

Friday 6th May

As I discussed in yesterdays journal entry, all my Ebsynth work needs to be conducted at home, which means I have my time at College to focus on other aspects of the editing process. And that’s exactly what I did today. And using my rough cut yesterday, I chose to work on adding the microphone’s recordings. This included the voiceovers as well as correcting all the dialogue and changing it from the camera’s audio to the recording from the proper microphones.

My process for completing this was as follows. I would copy the scene that I was changing audio. I was then able to use my logging forms to figure out which audio recordings related to the footage I had chosen. Then using the hand claps that I made sure to do while filming, I was able to sync the footage of the hands touching and time it with the sound of the clap on the audio recording. I’d had a good amount of practice in syncing audio from my options project and so I was able to complete the audio recordings with little issues.

I completed these audio recordings in chronological order starting with Act 1 Scene 3. For the majority of the audio recordings I added a slight denoise effect which helps to reduce the buzz of the background noise. In certain scenes you can still hear a slight buzz, however this will become less easily recognisable when the atmospherics and music is added, as they will help to blend the different audio tracks.

As well as the dialogue recordings I made sure to add in the voiceovers as well. This was slightly easier as they didn’t have to be synced with any mouth movement. However, it did lead to me changing the structure of the piece a little bit. I had to lengthen the childhood images to fit the voiceovers but I think when they get the extra style and transition it would’ve needed to be longer anyway. Additionally Act 1 Scene 5 was longer than the voiceover, so I cut the breakfast shot slightly shorter, as I felt it was running longer anyway. I also added the start of Cody’s school voiceover into Act 1 Scene 5 to help bridge the gap between the scenes. Finally, I couldn’t find a good place to include Director’s voiceover for Cody’s school, so currently it isn’t implemented. I simply couldn’t find a good place today, but I will try to fix this in the future.

Yesterday for my rough cut I had used a certain shot for Act 2 Scene 1 where Cody hears the bully talking about him. On the audio logging sheet, I had mentioned that there was a drilling sound in the background, but I had hoped that I’d be able to remove it in post as that was the best visual looking shot. However, after experimenting with the denoise effect and some other effects, I couldn’t find a way to remove it without ruining the rest of the audio. So instead I implemented my second best recording. However, one way I improved it was by still using the second half of the first shot. As a cut had to be made anyway for the quick pan, I was able to keep the second half of the better shot and just use the first half of the other one. This actually means there’s not to big as a difference as the second half was the better looking half, and so it’s good that I was able to keep that. But keeping the audio a lot better was more important than an ever so slightly better performance.

For Act 2 Scene 3 I decided to use a mix of the pre-recorded dialogue between the cameraman and the boom operator as well as the spare recordings of Cody saying “Leave Me Alone”. I chose to do this as I wasn’t a huge fan of the performance’s in the original recording. However this was fairly easy to do for 2 reasons. For one neither the cameraman or boom operators faces are shown and when Cody speaks he’s far away from the camera, and when he’s animated seeing his mouth move will be even harder. However, this was good as it allowed me to blend in the different audios a lot easier, and I believe it definitely sounds better now.

Additionally as I mentioned a couple of days ago, I was thinking of flipping the Doctor’s interview so that they were on frame right. I tried that out today, and it didn’t look too bad but I decided to keep it framed left. However, I think part of the reason I may not have liked it is due to the fact I was used to it being framed left. So next week I am going to ask one of my lecturers for their opinions as they will be less biased than I am.

Overall, getting the microphone dialogue added in today was definitely the right choice. It certainly helps to bring the piece more to life and helped me structure my piece a bit better, especially in regards to the voiceovers. I exported this version as well in order to demonstrate the evolution that the rough cut has made from yesterday. And over next week I’ll be able to continue working on the audio as well as the transitions and style of the visuals.

When I returned home, I continued doing some more work for the Ebsynth part of my post production. After fixing some of the shots from yesterday, such as Act 2 Scene 1 now that I have changed it, I converted all of the shots into the PNG sequences. This took quite a while as exporting them from Premiere wasn’t fast. But doing this today will allow me to move onto selecting and drawing my keyframes. I plan to start drawing my keyframes over the weekend and hopefully by Monday I’ll have some Ebsynth shots to add into my Rough Cut.

Friday 6th

Saturday 7th May

Now realising how long Ebsynth animation will likely take me, I decided to start today. And I felt it would be best to start with things that I would count as slightly easier animation, as that would provide me with more practice and experience to work my way up to the more complex animations. And after looking over the shots, I felt a good place to start would be with Act 1 Scene 3, Cody’s first interview. This is mainly comprised of static shots, but still has some more complex movements which should provide me with a decent challenge.

And so I started with shots 7, 8 and 10 as these were the easiest shots. Each of these shots I only used one keyframe for. And for all of my work today, I have created timelapses to demonstrate the way I made them. Shots 8 and 10 were particularly easy, and this was most likely due to the fact they were more close up and required less movement, as they were both in the secondary angle. In fact I’m very happy with these two shots and I’m hesitant to change them at all in fear of just making it worse. Shot 7 was a little bit harder as it’s more movement of the body and less close up than the previous two. However I still only used one keyframe. Currently, I think it looks alright, but there is the slight glitching and dragging of the animation which is something I discovered in my primary research. In regards to the glitching, when it’s only a minimal amount I don’t feel it looks to bad as long as the main body of Cody looks ok. Currently my plan is to make each of the animation shots so that they cover the body and the character looks good. Then unless the glitching is absolutely horrible or ruins the footage I will just leave it in for now. Otherwise I feel I will get too stuck on one shot and not leave myself enough time to complete the others. Then if I have enough time I’ll go back and create more keyframes for the ones that need it, which should then reduce the glitching.

Alternatively, I have a work around for if I do not have enough time to completely fix the glitching. At the start of many documentaries they sometimes have a warning or a brief summary of what is contained within this piece. If the glitching is still obvious my plan is to create one of these warning screens and write something along the lines of “Cody suffers from a fictitious ailment which glitches the line between reality and animation”. That way the slight glitchiness effect will be explained before it’s even seen. Obviously, I would make the final one sound better as it still has to keep in line with the rest of the narrative, especially the doctor’s interview, but that is my back up plan in case I can’t completely solve the glitchiness.

One last thing I noticed when creating these first 3 shots was that the footage that Ebsynth produces is ever so slightly shorter than the original footage. At first I was slightly concerned about this, but then I realised, if I just add the last frame again onto the end of the footage then it becomes the same length without noticing the copied frame, and so luckily that problem was relatively easy to solve.

I then moved onto shot 12 which turned out to be a real challenge. This is the end of the interview where Cody touches the wall, and the amount of movement turned out to be a real struggle. Originally I used two keyframes and these turned out ok, but only for about the first half of the footage and then in the second they struggled. So instead I created two more keyframes focused around the end of the piece. When inputting them into Ebsynth I made sure to apply them to the whole footage so that even though they would glitch in parts, lining them up would be easier. With these two new keyframes, I had four lots of animation to work with. In premiere, I spliced them up and used the best bits of each to create the final product. This was quite hard, and timing definitely became an issue as the actor’s body had to be covered by the animation so lining all the different shots up in time with the original footage was very important. In the end I’m relatively happy with the outcome and I feel it passes as ok but it’s definitely one I think I will come back to and work on a little more. Although doing this shot today will probably turn out really useful as understanding how to work with multiple keyframes and cutting them all together will definitely be a thing I will have to do several more times throughout the animating process.

After all the interview shots were completed, I went back and did the cutaways for Act 1 Scene 3. This started with shot 9 where Cody picks up and drops the cup. Unlike the interview shots, I could use a green screen instead of blue screen this time as Cody’s clothes were not green. Mentioning Cody’s clothes, I had to slightly adapt the outfit for the cutaways as my actor was wearing a hoodie and not just a t-shirt due to the temperature on the day of filming. This doesn’t impact the piece much but is something to take into account, especially if he needs to wear the same outfit later on. The only challenge for shot 9 was the fact Cody interacts with a real cup. Originally I kept the green screen around the cup however when I ran that through Ebsynth it messed with the animation. So, instead I went back and removed the cup from the keyframe. Then in premiere I created a duplicate layer of the real footage and used an opacity mask on the cup so that only it was visible. Applying this layer over the animation allows the cup to be seen. Currently, I think this shot looks a bit rough so it’s likely I’ll come back and try to do more work on it.

And my final shot was shot 11. Originally I was very scared to do this as I thought the movement would put up quite a challenge. However, with the three keyframes I chose, Ebsynth was actually able to create a pretty good rendition. I once again used a mixture of the three shots like I did for shot 12 and I would say this is one of the shots I’m most proud of today. There’s still a couple of frames where I think I’ll come back and work on it as sometimes the actor’s leg is slightly visible but overall I’m pretty happy with this shot.

In conclusion, today was quite a lot of work, but I’m pretty happy with the results. What I’ve learnt most today is the way I’m going to need to work with Ebsynth. Thanks to the work today, I’ve realised that not all of these animations will be perfect. That’s why, as I mentioned earlier, I will prioritise getting all the Ebsynth shots to a stage where I’m happy with them. Then once I have spare time I will come back and clean them up. This method should allow me to create better looking animated shots without having to sacrifice any other features of my piece.

Saturday 7th

Sunday 8th May

Continuing with my Ebsynth work today, I completed two more shots. These are some of the last shots that I view as easy to create, as they are both interview ones with little movement.

The first shot I started with is actually the last shot of the piece being Shot 39 where we cut back to Cody for his final lines of his final interview. I was honestly really surprised with how easy this shot was to create. I had planned to use only one Keyframe although I thought it was likely that I would have to use another just to fix any minor errors. However, once I’d gone through the process of drawing the keyframe in Photoshop and then running it in Ebsynth, the final outcome was actually pretty good. Once I got it into Premiere I realised there weren’t any glaring errors that really need to be fixed. Mainly the only trouble was getting the animation lined up in time with the live action footage. But once that was completed I was actually very happy with the results. There are a couple of glitches, for instance near the end the chin fades away a bit, but these are really minor and unless I have lots of spare time it’s unlikely I’ll go back and change them.

My second shot for today turned out how I expected Shot 39 to turn out. The other interview shot I decided to do was shot 28 where Cody gets interrupted mid interview. Once I’d done my first keyframe and ran it through Ebsynth, I realised the mouth for the first half of the animation was quite glitchy. To fix this error, I went back and created another keyframe using a frame from earlier in the shot. After creating this keyframe and running it through Ebsynth, I was able to use the same technique I used yesterday and use a combination of the two different animations to create the final look. Timing the animation with the live action footage was a lot harder in this shot than previous ones and it took me a little while to get it more in time. I also decided to size up the animation slightly to 102% as that helped to just cover the live action body underneath without being too noticeable or ruining the framing. I am happy with this shot, although I think I may go back and try to line it up a bit better with the live action footage. But the animation itself I’m pretty happy with.

Overall, today was probably the last day of easy Ebsynth shots, but I am very happy with the results. I’ve calculated that if from tomorrow I do 4 Ebsynth shots a day then I’ll have all the shots completed by next Saturday which will then keep me in line with my production schedule as well as providing me with the spare time I need to go back and fix some of the glitches and errors. As I have to do Ebsynth at home this means my time in lesson can be devoted to other aspects of post production which should then help me stay ahead of my production schedule and reduce my workload a little bit for the last week of post-production which should then allow me to focus on fixing errors in my previous editing.

Sunday 8th

Monday 9th May

With my lecture being in the morning today, it meant I could work on other parts of the edit before animating in the afternoon. And so I checked my production schedule in order to see which pieces of work I should complete. My production schedule said the other animated features should be implemented and so that’s what I started on.

I decided to begin with the animated graffiti in Act 1 Scene 3 as once that is completed that’s basically all the animation for that scene. I began with the easier shot, which is a static shot of the graffiti. In order to make this, I simply used my experience with Photoshop to draw over the original graffiti in order to make it look animated. This wasn’t too hard as I have quite a good knowledge of photoshop, but at first I wasn’t entirely happy with the finished product as I felt it look almost too fake. In order to fix this I lowered the opacity on the drawing so that a little bit of the bricks could be seen through and I felt this improved the look of it a lot.

I then moved onto the other animation in Act 1 Scene 3 where Cody touches the wall and it turns animated. I once again used photoshop for this, but this time used the video feature in order to rotoscope the animation. I had experience with rotoscoping in photoshop from my options project and so I was fairly confident with what I was doing. This took longer than the previous animation as it includes movement. Once I’d created the base movement into photoshop, I exported the video on a green screen into premiere. This allowed me to key out the green and place the animation onto the brick wall. I then copied the animation a couple of times so that it appeared as if Cody was controlling the amount of animation. And then when he takes his hand away from the wall it stays in position. I chose to present it like this as it acts as foreshadowing for Cody’s animated explosion as well as his fully animated room. The different ways that the animated graffiti appear demonstrate the different ways that Cody can control his animation.

Then as I had a little bit of spare time in class I moved onto some more of the green screen work as I’ve been doing a fair amount of that within my animation, so I felt that my green screen skills would come in handy now. I started with Act 3 Scene 2 where the director reveals Cody’s animated room. This was fairly easy as it involved keying out the green screen and replacing it with the drawing. Originally, I experimented with adding a camera shake to the drawing but it just made it look worse and a lot more fake. So instead I implemented some directional blur onto the image in order to add a little bit of movement. Currently I’m happy with how it looks, but I think I may implement a bit more of the blur to show more movement, however I don’t want to overdo it as then it’ll look too forced.

And the last thing I did in lesson was start work on the computer green screen for Act 3 Scene 3. Currently this is a work in progress. I’ve keyed out the green and replaced it with the video of the Doctor talking. I chose to use the Doctor as I felt that was the interview with most impact for Cody. I have started on keyframing the footage to match in time with the zoom out, and I’m simply using the positioning and scaling keyframes. Currently it is in time with the zoom but is still a little rough, so I'm going to improve this over the coming days.

For animating today, I had originally planned to try and get most of the intro animated, being shots 1-5. And I started this by doing Shots 1 and 2. However, this is where it began to fall apart quite quickly. I had originally used 3 keyframes for each of these shots, one of the person entering, them in the middle of the frame and then them exiting. I thought this would be sufficient for Ebsynth to be able to animate. However, after using these three keyframes for each, the result was extremely glitchy and definitely not up to the right standard. So for both of these I then went back and added an extra two keyframes. This definitely improved it, especially for Shot 2, but to be honest I’m still not entirely happy with them, particularly shot 1. Using the multiple keyframes as well as splicing them up in premiere, I was able to get the two shots to a standard I felt was ok enough to give them a pass for today. However, these two shots I am definitely going to revisit as they are nowhere near the look I was going for or the look that the rest of the shots demonstrate.

As these two shots took so long to take, I decided to move onto 2 shorter shots to finish the animating for today. This will allow me to focus more time on shots 3, 4 and 5 at a later date. So the third shot I completed today was the second half for Shot 28. This is when Cody storms out of the classroom. To be honest this was another shot I was slightly hesitant about but I feel actually turned out alright. I used two keyframes for the different sizes of Cody’s body as he moves past the camera and using a blend of these two animations helped to result in a good looking final animation. The hardest part about this one was lining it up in time with the live action footage, and I do think I could improve this a little bit more. I once again experimented with changing the scale of the animation to cover the body but this made it look worse in my opinion. The head does go a little weird towards the end of the animation but while its in motion it’s less noticeable and less of a problem. Overall, I’m happy with this shot but I still feel I could improve the timing with the live action footage a bit better.

And the last shot I completed today was the start of shot 30 where Cody storms past the camera man and boom operator. This was the easiest shot I’ve done, partly as it didn’t involve Ebsynth. When I looked at the frames for it there were only 19, and in fact only about 10 of them actually included Cody, and in fact only his shoulder and arm. And so I felt it would be easier as well as look better to simply rotoscope this in photoshop. I was able to use my experience from my options project as well as my practice earlier today to complete this, and I definitely feel I made the right choice as the shot looked completely fine using this method. I didn’t really have any problems with this shot and overall I’m very happy with it.

Overall, this has been a pretty tough day, especially with the animating. The main take away from today is going to be working on those first 5 shots even more. They are the very start of the piece and need to look the very best so I need to make them the best they can be. Today, I’ve got them to a satisfactory level but later this week and next week when the animation is mainly done, these will be some of the shots I devote the most time to.

Monday 9th

Tuesday 10th May

I started my editing today by doing a bit more work on the green screen computer from yesterday. This simply included adjusting the scale keyframes on the doctor’s interview a bit more. I was able to get it a little bit smoother, although I think I’ll continue to do some extra work to just get it even more smooth.

I then started work on one of my special transitions, which is my transition from Act 2 to Act 3. I had planned at the end of Act 2 for the camera to cut off due to Cody’s animated explosion and then cut back in for Act 3. To improve this transition, I wanted to make it seem like the camera was glitching in and out trying to fix itself. To sell this effect, I went on youtube and found a VHS glitching video. I looked through a couple and settled on the one I felt looked good but didn’t seem to over the top. I then imported it into premiere and placed it in the correct place. To sell the effect better I added opacity keyframes so at the beginning it faded in and at the end it faded out. I did the same thing with the sound, making it go from quiet to loud and then back down to quiet. These keyframes made the progression feel slower and more natural, rather than just instantly cutting into the glitch, which may have felt a bit abrupt. But overall, I’m very happy with how the effect turned out and I think it’s likely I won’t change it too much.

And the last piece of editing I did in lesson, was the addition of my title. This was important part of the piece for me and so I wanted to do it justice. At first I simply started doing it in premiere, but then I found all of the fonts within it didn’t feel right for the piece. So I then searched for how to import fonts into premiere. And I made sure to include the website I used within my bibliography. This website showed me that you can use Adobe Creative Cloud to import additional features. And so that’s what I did, I found one I liked and imported it into Premiere. After toggling the colour and shadow, I finished the look of the title. Then once again I used keyframes, but this time on the crop effect. These keyframes revealed the title slowly as Cody walks past it, and it looks exactly how I pictured it, so I’m very happy with the final result.

The four shots I chose to animate today were the ones for Act 1 Scene 5 where Cody is getting ready and setting off for school. The majority of these shots including shots 19, 20 and 21 played out the exact way my shots over the last couple of days have. I drew their keryframes, ran them through Ebsynth and then applied and timed them in premiere. There were a couple of minor errors such as in Shot 19 there was a bit where it was super glitchy which meant I needed to create an extra keyframe but on the whole these shots went fairly smoothly, most likely due to my ongoing Ebsynth experience. Shot 21 was quite interesting as it used two keyframes, one for Cody’s body and one for his reflection in the mirror, but thankfully it worked exactly how I thought it would and the two animations work well in synchrony with one another.

Shot 22 was where I ran into some more major problems. The actual animation wasn’t bad but the amount of glitches were quite a problem. However, over the last couple of days, I’d been thinking of a possible way to remove these and so I tested this theory on this shot. My though was that I could use an opacity mask to mask out the glitches that are far away from the main animation. This wouldn’t get rid of the glitches but could potentially reduce them. And so I tested on this shot, adjusting the mask frame by frame to adapt for the changing glitches. And luckily, it worked like I hoped it would. Although glitching was still there the level of it was heavily reduced. And in fact it worked so well that I went back to shot 2 and did the same thing to reduce the glitching that was quite prevalent in that shot.

Overall, today’s been pretty good for editing. The editing I did in lesson I was happy with and my animation, although a little rough at points will probably only need minor fixes when I come back to tweak them up. But on the whole they are pretty solid animations. I think I’m finally starting to see the piece come together and that’s a really good sign. Currently I’m slightly worried about the animation but as long as I continue with the 4 shots a day that will leave me plenty of time to complete fix ups next week.

Tuesday 10th

Wednesday 11th May

I started my editing today by completing one of my last pieces of animation. This is Cody’s explosion scene where the red animation bursts out of him. I used the same technique that I did for the graffiti. Using photoshop in order to rotoscope over the original footage. This was not too hard as I now have a decent amount of experience with it and the final result turned out quite well. Once I’d completed it in photoshop I imported it into premiere and lined it up with the original footage. I had to adjust the layering in premiere in order for the glitching to affect the red animation as well. Currently, I’m happy with this piece of animation, although I think it’ll improve when the foley is added. At the moment it lacks a slight bit of the impact it needs, but with the clattering foley I recorded, this should provide that impact. My current plan at the moment is to have the majority of visuals completed by the end of this weekend, and then next week I can look at properly adding in all the audio.

And the final piece of work I completed in lesson is one of my favourite new additions. This was the titles for the interviews, that introduce the characters. In order to make this, I used a number of techniques. I originally planned to make the whole thing in photoshop and then import it into premiere. However, I then decided to just create the background in photoshop and then do the words in premiere. I decided to do this because I wanted to be able to control the opacity of the separate parts of the titles. In premiere, I then added the words in addition to the backing rectangle. I already knew I wanted the titles to fade in and out, and so once again I used opacity keyframes to complete that. I started with the backing rectangle. I didn’t want it to become completely solid, so I left the maximum opacity below 100% so that you can still see the character and the background behind the title. I then did the same to the words, except I made sure to turn their opacity all the way up. Once I’d completed the first one for Cody’s interview, I was then able to copy the layers and add them to the other interviews, replacing the words with the different characters. Once I completed this for all the interviews, they were complete. For each of the interview titles, I added a little description below the name. For the Doctor’s one, I made sure to use the correct terminology and so I searched for the correct terminology and discovered the right word was “obstetrician”. I’m extremely happy with these titles and I think they really help to improve the feel of the interviews.

Once again I’ve added a couple of easter eggs within the piece, with most of the interview titles including references to other cartoons. The first one is Cody Soboo which I have previously said is an anagram for Scooby Doo. Then the Doctor’s name is D. Pines which is a reference to Dipper Pines from one of my favourite shows Gravity Falls.

The doctor also works as Mewni Hospital. Mewni is a place within the show Start Vs The Forces of Evil.

And finally the director is called Will Cipher which is an alternate name for Bill Cipher who is the main villain from the show Gravity Falls. These references don’t impact the plot too much but they simply act as fun easter eggs referencing the shows that have influenced and inspired my piece.

Additionally, we looked through some of peoples works in progress today including mine. People said they really liked the look of the animation, and many said they actually liked the glitches that appear, which I was quite surprised by. It was really good to hear some positive feedback on my piece and I’m glad to know that what I am making now people will like once it’s completed.

The first three shots I animated today were the rest of Act 1 Scene 1, being shots 3, 4 and 5. I chose them to do today as I had more time, meaning I could put more work into them. I used my experience with shots 1 and 2 to affect how I created these three shots.

To start with, I added 2 to three extra keyframes on top of the ones I already had to shots 4 and 5 meaning they each used about 4 and 5 keyframes. This was definitely worth it as in premiere I was able to cut between all the different ones, which would reduce a final piece that looked a lot smoother and better animated. The movement was the important part of this scene, and so I chose to make the drawings slightly less detailed, especially with drawing the face. I think if I’d drawn them more detailed Ebsynth would’ve struggled more which would have resulted in weaker movement and a worse animation overall.

Finally with these three shots, I used a lot of the technique that I discovered the other day. This technique is the use of opacity keyframes and mask. I used these quite a lot between these three shots and it really does help to just clean up the animation. Removing the glitches helps the central animation to stand out more, and using the mask helps to reduce the need of even more keyframes. Overall, I’m very happy I thought of this technique and I think it’s likely I’ll continue to use it throughout the rest of this project.

As these three shots took a while to create, I decided to choose a shot I felt would be easier for my fourth shot. And I decided on Shot 38 part 5 which is one of the shots in the compilation near the end, where Cody’s voiceover is heard over the top. This shot wasn’t too hard to create, needing one keyframe and an opacity mask, just to clear up the glitchiness around the face. Once again, I’m pretty happy with this shot and how it turned out.

Overall, I’m actually pretty happy with how today went. My editing in class was really useful, and I’m particularly fond of the interview titles, as well as the little easter eggs I was able to incorporate in them. And the animation today also went pretty well, I was slightly worried about shots 3, 4 and 5 due to my experience with shots 1 and 2. But I think that experience actually helped to improve today’s shots. I feel the more animating I’m doing the better the animations are becoming. And this means when I go back to tweak some of the early ones, I’ll know how to fix them and how to make them look even better.

Wednesday 11th

Thursday 12th May

With today being Thursday, and me wanting to complete the visuals by the weekend, I spent the lesson today finishing up on the last of the smaller adjustments. The first of these was the second fast pan in Act 2 Scene 1, where Cody storms out of the room. As I’ve discussed, I lost one of my actors for this shoot, which meant this second pan had to be slower. But this slow pan meant there was an uncomfortable amount of time after the bully finished talking but before Cody stormed out. I wanted to remove this awkward pause and so decided to quicken the pan so it cuts out that time. I started by speeding up the footage to about 200%, this got it to the length I needed it, but the footage just looked a bit weird. To fix this issue as well as make it seem more realistic I added some directional blur. Thanks to the animated room in Act 3 Scene 2 I knew how to use this tool. Adding in this bit of blur really helped to make it seem more realistic, and I’m a lot happier with this version of the pan over the original.

My second task for the day was creating the pictures for the Doctor’s interviews. These act as background details, and I wanted them to look like a Phd photo. I created these in photoshop as this is where I have the most experience. I took a frame from the original footage, removed the background and added a background and frame, as well as a little title block. This was enough to sell the effect that I was aiming for. Then bringing the final product into Premiere, I placed it into its correct position and slightly adjusted the base colour settings to help it blend it into the original footage. I then completed all these steps for the secondary angle to result in the second portrait. Originally, I had planned to take out the green screen I had used during production and place the image where the green screen had been. However, when I initially tried this, it just made the image look a bit glitchy. So instead, I simply placed my portrait creation over the green screen, without keying out the green. Although this isn’t what I had originally planned, it looks a lot better while still providing the same effect.

My final job for today was simply cleaning up some of the transitions through the piece. For much of the transitions this simply involved slightly adjusting where the footage cut or leaving a bit of space between shots. However for Act 1 Scene 2 and Act 3 Scene 3, I added in some opacity changes. Act 3 Scene 3 was the easier one, as I had a fade in on the doctor’s clip and then a fade out on the students interview. I’ve had quite a lot of experience with using opacity keyframes, especially with my animations and so I was pretty confident with what I was doing. On Act 3 Scene 3 the fades are there to further the effect of flashing back to that footage. And then on Act 1 Scene 2 there’s fades in and out of each of Cody’s childhood photos. These transitions are a lot smoother than the original cuts beforehand as well as giving it a more professional look. I experimented with adding some sort of background behind the images but they all looked out of place, so I’ve decided to stick with the black background. And finally I added a fade out to the end of Act 1 Scene 1 so that it fades into the first image of Act 1 Scene 2. This helps to bridge the gap and all these new transitions really help to improve the pacing of the piece in my opinion.

As I had a little spare time at the end of the lesson, I went over my animation once again and improved some of the opacity masks. This included a couple for Act 1 Scene 1 and the cup drop for Act 1 Scene 3 which turned out to be quite a large task. Overall, adding these opacity masks just created subtle changes for the animation, but in my opinion definitely makes them look a lot smoother and more natural by removing some of the major glitches.

The first two shots I animated today were parts 6 and 7 for shot 38. These were not too hard and with my experience from previous animations I was able to fix most of the minor problems. For part 6 I only used one keyframe, and then in premiere it required a bit of an opacity mask, just to help cover the little glitches that were a bit too obvious.

But I was really surprised with how well part 7 turned out. I completed it using all the methods I’ve been using previously, and with the amount of movement in it, I think it turned out really well. This is most likely due to the fact I used three keyframes. But either way, both these shots I’m quite happy with.

My next two shots were where things started to become a bit more difficult. These were shots 23 and 24 where Cody is walking to the classroom. I knew that between the movement, camera angle and handheld camera that these shots were going to be quite hard. For both shots I used multiple keyframes as Cody’s position on screen changes quite a lot. For shot 23 I was surprised as both keyframes turned out good results. However I hadn’t realised earlier that the blue I had used on my first keyframe was slightly darker than the blue I had used in all the other shots. Luckily, the second keyframe was still good animation, so I was able to use the entirety of that. And with the use of an opacity mask it cleaned up quite well.

Shot 24 was definitely the hardest of today. In total I did three keyframes which gave me varying degrees of success. But as each of them succeeded in separate parts of the shot, I was able to stitch them together for the final result. However, the glitching in shot 24 was quite extreme. But luckily the main body of the animation was fine, so I knew I’d be able to use an opacity mask. And after a little while of work I was able to clean it up to a point where I thought it looked good.

For both shots 23 and 24 I made use of the scale tool to slightly size up the animation. I decided to do this as due to the movement and handheld camera, the animation was not always covering the live action reference. So by sizing up the animations it allowed me to have my actor covered up more of the time, which definitely helps the look of the shots.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with all the work today. My editing at college has been going well and once I start the colour correction and colour grading tomorrow then I’ll be honing in on finishing the visual style of my piece. The animation today I’m mostly happy with and I think will only need a bit of tweaking later on down the line. By Saturday I’ll have all of my animation done, allowing me to start on finalising audio and fine tuning everything else over the course of next week.

Thursday 12th

Friday 13th May

My last big challenge for creating my visuals was colour correction and colour grading. And these were the tasks that I completed during today’s lesson. I have a bit of experience with colour grading due to my self portrait and music video projects, although these only really covered the basics. So when coming into colour grading today, I felt it best to find some guides to help in my creations.

I felt it best to colour grade chronologically or else I may lose track of which shots I have or haven’t colour graded. And so I began with Act 1 Scene 1 which were my sunset shots. I was pretty happy with how they looked, but I knew they could definitely be better. I scoured youtube for some good tutorials and settled on one, as the result they showed in the video was similar to how I wanted mine to look. And so I followed the tutorial to create my own colour grade. This involved basic colour correction, adjusting the exposure, whites, blacks and more. I then moved onto adjusting hues and curves. Then to finish it off. I duplicated the base layer and fixed an opacity mask around the horizon line so that only the sun was showing. This was a useful coincidence as thanks to my animation, I’m pretty confident with opacity masks. This opacity mask allowed me to complete further colour grading on the difference between the sky and the ground below it, without having to compromise for one or the other. And then the final result was completed. I am very happy with the results and I personally think it looks a lot better. After completing the first shot, I then used the tutorial to create the same colour grade on all the other sunset shots.

Throughout my piece, the sunset shots were the only ones which required a great amount of colour grading. The vast majority of the others only needed basic colour correction or slight colour grading. And since the sunset video had been so helpful, I found a colour correction guide from the same people to follow along with. This allowed me to colour correct the rest of my shots and I’m quite happy with how they’ve all turned out. A lot of my colour grades and corrections were more focused on making the backgrounds look good rather than the actor. For much of the shots the actor is covered with animation, and so I felt making the background stand out more was a bigger priority.

For some of my shots there was a slight bit of noise or grain within the footage. And I wanted to see if I could reduce this. And so once again I found a video to help me correct this. The video introduced me to the VR Denoise which I was able to use to slightly tone down the noise in my footage. Only a very slight amount of the effect was needed, otherwise the footage would become incredibly smooth and look horrendous. But with the slight effect, it really helps to remove the minor blemishes and just improve the footage slightly overall.

Today’s my penultimate day of animation and so I decided to complete one of the chunks of animation that I still had to complete. This started with Shot 37. At first I was slightly hesitant about this shot, as I wasn’t sure how Ebsynth would react to a zoom out. I thought it would be able to handle it fine as it was able to handle handheld shots, and luckily I was correct. I draw several keyframes, but in the end, I didn’t need all of them. Ebsynth was able to handle it very well, and although there’s a slight part of the actor shown occasionally, overall it looks really good.

My next three shots then all comprise shot 38, being the first 3 parts of it. All of these were fairly average Ebsynth shots, with each taking multiple keyframes and for parts 1 and 2 some opacity masks were needed.

Part 2 needed the most opacity masking and that actually took quite a while to get right as the glitching was a lot more obvious on this shot.

But I was surprised by how well Shot 38 part 3 came out. There was no glitching and it covers the actor’s body basically entirely. I think this is likely due to the fact I did 4 keyframes even though it is more minimal movement. But it’s good seeing how this one will turn out, as adding more keyframes is most likely the way I’m going to try to improve some of my shots over the course of next week. So knowing the improvements will work is good.

Overall, I’m very happy with my work today. The colour grading in class was a good way to finish most of the visual editing, and I’m particularly happy with how the sunset shots look now. And the animating today went fairly smoothly and produced good results. I’m looking forward to completing the animation tomorrow as then the structure of my visual look will be complete, allowing me to move onto the audio editing which will then complete the whole piece.

Friday 13th

Saturday 14th May

Today was my last day of animating, which meant that I had saved what I felt were the hardest shots. I had chosen to do these shots last as they were ones that included a great deal of movement which I thought would make them a lot harder to animated. But thanks to the experience I’ve gained over the last week, I think I was able to create pretty good results for all of them.

I started with shots 25 and shot 38 part 4. Shot 25 was the easiest of all the shots and simply required several keyframes throughout the whole animation. For all of the shots today I made sure to create more keyframes than I thought necessary as it would give me more to work with.

And this came in particularly useful for shot 38 part 4, which used 6 keyframes. However as this shot was in the bathroom, it meant the actor’s reflection was in the mirror. So I used 3 keyframes to animate the actor’s body and the other 3 keyframes to animate their reflection.

Thanks to the amount of keyframes on these last two shots, it meant they only needed minimal corrections within premiere but the majority of the animation was already fine to use.

This wasn’t the case for the next two shots. The penultimate animation I created was shot 30 part 2 where Cody storms out and creates his animated explosion. I created several keyframes for this but it still needed a decent amount of opacity masking to clean up the glitches within the animation. The masking definitely helped with the animation, although I think it’s likely this will be one of the shots that I’ll come back to and fix up more over the course of next week.

And this left me with my final and hardest shot, shot 26. The difficulty of this shot came from the movement of Cody’s bag. And so I made sure to include keyframes with the most amount of movement so that Ebsynth could understand the movement within the shot. This resulted in a decent animation, although it needed a great deal of opacity masking in order to remove the glitching. However with the masking it does look a lot better, and I would say I’m happy with it, although I think next week I will definitely draw another keyframe for it to help improve it’s smoothness.

Overall, the work today went pretty well and it feels really good to have all of the animation finally completed. With all this work completed, I now only need to complete audio editing and clean-up of the animation. This leaves me still ahead of my production schedule which is good and I think I’m definitely on track to finishing by the deadline next Friday.

Saturday 14th

Monday 16th May

With my visuals completed, I was able to move onto my audio editing today. I began by changing the audio levels of the dialogue that I had already implemented in premiere. This wasn’t too hard as I simply changed the levels of the audio until they were all around 12 on the audio scale, as this is the best average level. So once I’d completed these levels the dialogue within the piece was equally balanced between all recordings, allowing me to move onto the rest of the audio recordings.

I began by downloading my music tracks, as these are easier to download at College than home. Thanks to my pre-production, I already have my music selected, so I was easily able to use my audio script to gather the URL's of the videos in order to download them.

And once downloaded, I hopped into adobe audition and started implementing them. The first two were relatively easy, being for Scenes 1 and 2 of Act 1. All they needed was to be placed in to the correct position, and for their levels to be adapted. The music for scene 2 is at a constant level where the one for Scene 1 becomes quieter when Cody’s voiceover starts and then rises when nothing else is being heard. The dialogue is the top priority so I wanted to make sure the music served to help the dialogue rather than vice versa.

And that’s exactly why I changed my mind on some of the other music. Initially I had music the majority of the time, particularly in the interviews. However, once I added this into my first two interviews, being Cody’s and the Doctor’s, it just felt distracting and out of place. And so I’ve made the decision to remove music from all scenes except the first two and last one for now. I’ve explained the first two, but the last one is Cody’s final interview and the music I’ve placed in helps to further the emotion within that scene. But in all the others, particularly ones with heavy dialogue I found the music just disrupted the piece. So currently, I will not be implementing any more music. Once I’ve added the atmospherics and foley, which I hope to complete by Wednesday, then I will look back and decide on music, but for now I’m holding back.

My job at home today was to clean up some of my Ebsynth shots. There were a couple of different ways I completed this. The first and easiest way was for shot 9 where Cody picks up the cup and drops it. On some of the later frames of this shot you could see the actor’s jumper under the animation as it glitched. To fix this, I simply went into photoshop, made a square the same colour as the animated jumper and in premiere placed it where the glitch was happening. This was an easy and quick solution that solved the problem. And allows the animation to look better and the live action to be less noticeable.

Some other shots simply needed some repositioning, such as Shot 1 and Shot 11. There were just a couple of frames where the actor is noticeable and by going in and adjusting the position keyframes this can easily be covered. I’ve done this for several other shots and it works well and covers the actor better, allowing the animation to stand out more, without having to draw even more keyframes, and so it’s a time saving procedure.

However, not all fixes are that easy. There were 5 particular shots which I wanted to fix up a bit. Being shot 19, 22, 28 part 2, 30 part 2 and 38 part 5. For all of these shots I needed to draw up new keyframes and run them through Ebsynth. This wasn’t too hard as I now have a good amount of experience with Ebsynth, and thanks to my previous work, I can choose specific keyframes within the range of frames where the animation slightly deteriorates. And so for all of these shots, I only needed to create one or two more keyframes and then combine the new animation with the previous one. And it was definitely worth me doing this, as although none of them were terrible to begin with, they have definitely all benefited from this. All of the shots today were the ones I felt were in serious need of touching up, there are a few shots which potentially could, however I’m hesitant in case of ruining them, as well as I need to devote the majority of my time to audio editing. During tomorrow’s lesson I will show my lecturer my work so far and gain their opinion on the animation, then I can decide which action I want to undertake.

Saying this however, I am very happy with all the animation and I think even if I finished animating now, I would still be proud of how it turned out. The work I’ve done today has all helped to lead to the closing of the post production stage. And starting the audio editing has been really good as it’s allowing me to fix some of the minor annoyances I had before. For example some of the scenes felt a bit empty, but with the music, as well as the foley and atmospherics I will be adding over the next couple of days, I’m feeling very confident about my final piece.

Monday 16th

Tuesday 17th May

With my music temporarily finished yesterday, I moved onto further audio editing. And today, I focused on adding in the atmospherics. This was most likely the easiest audio editing as I simply needed to place it into the scene and then adjust its levels. Thanks to the sound I’d recorded on location, I was able to use these recordings as my atmospherics. I added in atmospherics for Act 1 Scene 1, Act 1 Scene 3, parts of Act 2 shots and Act 3 Scene 1. These were the scenes I felt benefited most from the use of atmospherics. In other scenes such as the Doctor’s interview the atmospherics simply felt out of place or distracted from the rest of the scenes, and so I decided to leave the atmospherics out of these scenes. But the atmospherics I did add in provided their purpose and so I’m happy with the work I was able to complete in lesson.

Then, as I discussed yesterday, I got John to view my piece so far. After watching it he said he liked it but felt there could be things that could be improved. Hew said he felt at times glitching of the animation worked in favour but in others it felt a little out of place. This is something, which I can’t really fix as the way I’ve animated with Ebsynth, there will always be the glitch effect. However, I don’t think this is too much of a negative. The main shots he highlighted for this problem were the early shots for Act 1 Scene 1 and so tomorrow I’m going to look at possibly adding some more keyframes to try and fix this problem, hopefully making the animations a little smoother.

However, the second problem was a much larger one, John said during Act 2 he got a little confused with the story. Part of this was due to the voiceover of the bully and student talking. Currently, it’s still a little rough, but I’m still working on it blending more within the scene. But additionally, and I’ve been thinking this to, the scenes all feel a little disconnected from one another. This is a problem I wanted to fix fast and so I made sure to complete that when I returned home.

I felt the best way to fix this was to include small shots where text appeared explaining what was happening. At this point in the process, I couldn’t go back and create more scenes and so I had to work with what I could do. And so, using documentaries as inspiration, I placed in these written cards which explained what was happening. I believe that this doesn’t actually ruin the feel of the piece as at this point the documentary starts to fall apart and so these written cards also help to sell this effect. It’s kind of difficult to explain how the cards work, but in the images below, you’ll understand the reasoning behind them.

Overall, I’ve gotten a little worried about my piece today, but I think as long as I keep pushing forward, I’ll be able to get it completed. I just need to keep working and stay on track.

Tuesday 17th

Wednesday 18th May

I spent the time in lesson today completing my final piece of audio editing, which was the addition of foley. As my piece is based off a documentary, the amount of foley included is a lot more minimal than other projects I’ve completed.

And so much of my foley work was adding sounds to either improve off the original audio, or to include sounds that weren’t originally captured. The vast majority of these include sounds such as doors opening and footsteps.

The other foley work was for sounds which I felt needed to be added in to sell effects, this included sounds such as the camera focusing or zooming out, as well as a crackly microphone to help introduce the Bully’s voiceover.

For the vast majority of the foley work, the hardest part was balancing the levels so it blended in with the rest of the piece’s audio. For most of them, my technique was to place them and adjust their levels, with the rest of the audio turned off. This allowed me to properly time the foley as well as bring it to a good level. Then turning the rest of the audio back on, I’d listen to how the foley blended in and adjust it once again to blend with all the other audio elements. This allowed me to have my foley still in time with the visuals but also with a good blend with the other audio elements.

When I returned home, I made the finishing touches to my visuals, once more. I started by slightly adjusting the font and position of the text cards that I introduced to my Act 2 yesterday. These were simple fixes. But I implemented them in order to make them look a bit more professional, and I think they serve that job.

I then started on the improvements for the animation in Act 1 Scene 1, which John highlighted yesterday. First I looked through and identified all the parts which could be slightly fixed up. I felt shot 5 was already fine as it was, so I’ve only changed the first four shots. For each of them, I chose about 2 or three more frames that were between either keyframes and made new keyframes out of them. Once running these through Ebsynth, I was able to slot in the new animation in place of some of the previous animations. These helped to fill the gap and reduce some of the glitching, while keeping the actor covered more. I think although the animation is still a bit glitchy in places, it definitely does look better, and it’s always going to look glitchy no matter what, but based off the reactions I’ve had to people watching it so far, people seem to like the glitching, so it’s not too bad if there is a small amount within it.

Overall, I’m quite happy with the work I’ve completed today. At this point, I think I’m really close to finishing off the piece. In fact I’m not sure if much else will be done to it. I plan to spend tomorrow’s lesson reviewing my piece so far and fixing any problems I may find. This will allow me to evaluate my work on Friday and have all the pre-production work completed with time to spare before the deadline.

Wednesday 18th

Thursday 19th May

As I discussed in yesterday’s journal entry, My goal for today was to watch through my piece so far, fix up any minor errors and preferably have it completed by the end of the day. And while watching my piece, I identified two things that I wanted to improve slightly.

The first, and more important one, was that some audio recordings still had a slight background buzz. In premiere I had previously used the denoise effect to reduce this. However, I wanted to see if it was possible to reduce it more. And so once again I found a useful video that I made sure to add to my bibliography. This tutorial introduced me to a further denoise tool in Audition which takes a sample of the background buzz in order to help get rid of it. I applied this tool to all of the audio recordings which I felt could benefit from it. With a couple of the audio recordings, they had a slight buzz, but sounded worse and more echoey with the denoise applied. And so for these I left them as they were as they actually sounded better that way. With these final audio adjustments complete, my audio editing was finally complete.

And the second fix I wanted to do was something I’ve done countless times now, and this was simply to adjust some of the animations a bit more to make sure they covered the actor’s body a bit more. And the main animations I focused on were the first couple for shot 38. This task simply involved, adjusting their scale and position in order to cover the real body as much as they can, particularly taking into account the movement of the actor. This was the last adjustment I made.

And with all of these adjustments complete, I exported the piece and finished my post production. Overall, I would say I’m quite happy with the piece, and I’ll do a proper evaluation for my post production stage tomorrow. But just on first thoughts, there have been quite a few challenges I had to overcome and problems that really needed solving, but I believe I was able to handle them well, and my final piece is a result of all of these adaptations. And I can now see all the changes that have happened to the piece from the very beginning to now when the production is complete. I’m looking to evaluate my post production stage tomorrow, which will then allow me to move into the final evaluation as well as finalising my WIX website over the course of the next two weeks.

Thursday 19th

Friday 20th May

Today was the deadline for the post-production stage. And with my piece finalised yesterday, I used today as time to check over all my work, making sure it’s all up to date and evaluate my post-production.

And I started with the evaluation of post-production. I’ve completed an evaluation for all the stages of my project so far, and so I wasn’t too worried about having to create an evaluation for post-production as well. Within my evaluation, I discussed all the problems I ran into throughout my editing process as well as the way I had to overcome these issues. With this evaluation complete, my post production was officially finished. This allows me to move onto the final stage, being the evaluations and reflections. Over the weekend, I plan to look into this stage and update my action plan around this final stage.

But for the rest of the day, I went through my WIX website checking all the work that I had completed so far, making sure it was all presented well and worked in the way it was intended. This included, making sure all the buttons worked correctly, all the images could be clicked on and all the text was easily readable. Going through this I only ran into minor problems, such as a couple images not being able to be clicked on. But these were very simple fixes and once completed I’m now sure my WIX website is at a good stage.

Heading into the final weeks, my WIX website is another important thing that I need to develop. Currently, it’s well laid out and all the information within is good, but aesthetically it is still a little bit plain. When I plan the evaluation stage over the weekend, I will also make sure to look at planning times in which I can improve my WIX website.

Friday 20th

Sunday 22nd May

I used today to start some of the final work as well as planning out my timetable for the remaining weeks.

As I’ve discussed over the past couple of days, one of my final tasks is revamping my WIX website. And so today I created a home page for the project. I had an idea of Cody holding the final video, since he’s the main character, I felt it made most sense for him to be on the home page. I used screenshots from Act 1 Scene 3 to create the drawing, with one of him looking forward and the other with his arm out. I then created the drawing as well as the title and imported them into WIX. Adding text as well as buttons and the video was then the next thing to do. The two features on the homepage, are a button to take you to the FMP Menu as well as a video of the final production. I felt these made the most sense to display on the homepage as they provide access to the rest of the work, as well as allowing people to watch the final piece without having to go through all the other work.

At this point, I had created what my original plan was. However, I felt it felt a bit empty, and adding something in the background would help to improve it. And so I used a shot from Act 1 Scene 1 of Cody walking across the field. Masking around it, and then filling it with a slightly darker shade of the background colour. Then once adding this onto the homepage, it helped to flesh out the background and make it feel a little more finished.

Regarding the rest of my revamping of my website, over the course of next week, we are going to have a one to one going over all of our work so far. I’m hoping mine will be on Tuesday with John as he’s the lecturer I’ve been assigned to. At this point, I plan to ask him about my WIX website and how to properly make it look good. So for now I’ve held off on planning the rest of this work.

The final thing I did today, was plan my final evaluation. I began by going through the notes that Danny provided us, and figuring out the structure of the evaluation and all the work I’d need to complete. This completed, with 5 different parts of the evaluation needing completing, all with sub structures which would comprise that unit as a whole. As well as these 5 parts, I plan to create a survey to provide feedback on the final piece. And this survey also helps to flesh out part 2 of the evaluation.

With the Evaluation I planned out, I then updated my action plan with which pieces of work I’ll have completed on which days. You can see the full plan over on my Action Plan but I have planned to have the evaluation fully written by next Sunday. I am then going to use the first few days of the half term to gather all images and supporting evidence for it, as well as presenting it on my WIX website. This will allow me to have it fully completed with about half a week spare before the final deadline, hopefully allowing me plenty of time to double check I have everything completed and on my website, before June 6th.

Sunday 22nd

Monday 23rd May

Thanks to the planning of my action plan yesterday, I knew what I needed to do today. I started by creating and sending out the survey that acts as evidence for my final evaluation. The survey consists of questions, first gathering the gender and age of the person, and then gathering their opinions on the piece. Including things they liked/disliked, things they would change and what they felt the main message of the piece was. This survey will provide useful feedback for me, to see how people feel about my final production. But it will also help to provide context and information for the second part of my evaluation where I discuss the target audience and how I felt I targeted them within my final production.

With the survey sent out and waiting for the results, I started on the beginning of my evaluation. For today that consisted of the first 3 sections within Part 1. Which discussed my original intentions, the idea and the creative problems I ran into. I feel pretty happy with what I’ve written within them so far, although I feel I could probably discuss the first section of my original intentions a bit more. I’ve sort of linked the first two sections as they both discuss my original thoughts which then lead on to my idea and the reasoning behind it.

The third section about creative problems, ended up being quite extensive, mainly due to the fact that I discussed my Ebsynth problems in great detail. However, I believe it’s good to mention the different challenges I overcame, even though several of them were focused around the same base of Ebsynth.

My plan currently is to complete the first part of my evaluation and then get one of the lecturers to read through it and see if they can give me some guidance. I feel if the way I’ve written the first part turns out well then I’ll be able to complete the rest knowing what sort of things I need to discuss. This will come in useful as next week is half term, meaning by the time I finish my evaluation it will be harder to get lecturer feedback, so getting help while I still can is the best way to go, and will make sure that my final evaluation will turn out the best it can.

Since I finished the first three sections at College, I decided to try and get ahead of my action plan and finish off the last two sections of part 1 when I returned home. This covered the logistical problems I ran into as well as the creative differences that happened throughout my piece.

I’m pretty happy with all of my evaluation that I’ve written today. As I said earlier, I plan to get one of the lecturers to read over this part so that I can feel more confident about writing the rest. As currently, although I feel happy with what I wrote, I don’t 100% know for sure that it’s what I should be writing about.

Monday 23rd

Tuesday 24th May

I started the lesson today with having my review with John. He said that my website and all the content on it looked all in order and so it was quite hard to give me pointers on improving it. There were a couple things he did mention though.

One was the timelapses that I made during post production. He said he really liked them and they are fine how they are for this project. But if my website were to be open to the public in order to show them, then it might be worth making the timelapses faster than they are as the general public are unlikely to watch a 3 minute video of it, whereas if it was 30 seconds they most likely would. But he said at the moment in this project, it’s not worth changing them.

The other thing was a minor change on my homepage which was simply to summarise my writing better. So instead of writing “Click here to go to my FMP Menu”, John said to simplify it to simply “FMP Menu:”. As that’s a lot easier to read and looks nicer on the page. This was a very easy fix and something I easily completed in lesson.

The last pointer was what I discussed in my last couple journal entries, about me improving the look and aesthetic of my website. John said that on all the pages with content such as production and post production, it’s fine to leave it how it is as the main priority is the content and making sure that is all laid out well. And the images and text I include are all enough on the page. However, he did say that if I wanted to improve my Menu pages I could include more things like I have on my Home page, which are drawings of Cody. This helps to show that the work is related to Cody, and I thought that was an excellent idea. When I returned home I implemented these additions, and I think they really work in just brightening up their pages a bit.

As I completed the whole of Part 1 for the evaluation, I was ahead of my action plan. Originally I was going to try to write the whole of part 2 today, but my survey is still not fully completed by all the participants so I will wait till tomorrow still to properly complete that section. Instead I wrote the first paragraphs for both Part 2 and Part 4 of the evaluation. I began with part 2 as this was really an introductory paragraph for the whole of part 2 and so I didn’t need the survey for it. Then since I had spare time I wrote the first paragraph for part 4. This turned out to be quite an extensive section and I discussed all the job roles I undertook. I’m quite happy with everything I wrote today and writing them today, will mean I have slightly less work to complete over the coming days.

Tuesday 24th

Wednesday 25th May

In my action plan I had originally stated to write up the second part of my evaluation today. However, when looking at the results from my survey, I realised not everyone has completed it yet, and so I decided to push back the completion of part 2 until the survey is fully completed.

So instead, I pulled forward the fourth part of the evaluation, which I had started a bit yesterday. And thanks to my initial start on it yesterday, I was able to completed the rest of part four today. This included the sections on; my teamworking; how I feel I worked and my future career aspirations. I feel pretty happy with how I wrote everything today, and I’m fairly confident in saying I’ve finished this part of the evaluation.

Because I completed part 4 today, part 2 is either going to be completed tomorrow or Friday, dependent on when the survey is fully completed. But either way I am still on track to finishing the written evaluation by Sunday, even though I’ve had to slightly alter the structure of this production.

As I had a bit of spare time today, I made good use of it, and planned out the other parts of my evaluation. This simply incorporated writing some brief notes under each of the headings of what I will write. This will save me a bit of time later on as I’ll be able to see the things I need to write about instead of having to think of it immediately before writing.

Wednesday 25th

Thursday 26th May

Luckily, everyone I needed to fill out the evaluation had done it by today, and so I was able to finish writing up the second part of my evaluation. Although this is different from my action plan, where I was supposed to write the third part today, I think it’s important to catch up on the parts I was already supposed to have completed. And thanks to my premature finishing of part four, I have the time tomorrow free to complete the writing of Part 3.

And so I started writing part 2. I had already finished the first section of it, and so the next two sections were focused on whether my production met the needs of my target audience and the reactions I had to my final product. These were the sections I used my survey as evidence for, as I was able to use the responses I gathered from the survey to prove the things I discussed within these sections. I’m quite happy with everything I wrote in these sections, and I believe that they cover all the information I was able to gather within the survey.

And the final section was about what I felt I could improve in order to suit my Target Audience’s needs even more. I found this section a little harder, as the main things I could do to meet the needs further was to just push the things I had already done even further. This mainly included the themes and story as well as spending more time on the animation. But I struggled a little bit on writing about this, as phrasing it into the right words was quite hard. But I am happy with the final product from it, and I believe I was able to figure out the correct phrasing in the end.

Since I had a little extra time at the end of the lesson, I decided to make a start on Part 3, which I’ll be properly completing tomorrow. From my planning, I believe part 3 is going to be quite a large part of the evaluation and so finishing some of it now will allow me more time tomorrow to focus on the rest of it. Today I completed the last section of it on representation. I chose to do this section as it was a relatively small one, and I felt it was best to complete a whole section than to leave one half completed. But I’m very happy with what I wrote and I’m confident in saying my representation section is complete.

Thursday 26th

Friday 27th May

Although I’ve differed from my original action plan, today I wrote up part 3 of my final evaluation. And this turned out to be quite a large section.

But before I began to write this part, Nigel came to me to discuss the first part of my Evaluation, as I was able to send it to him yesterday for review. He said the content in it was good and there wasn’t really anything I needed to adjust about it. This was good to hear as I mainly wanted to make sure the way I was writing was correct and I wasn’t just describing or writing the wrong things. The only thing Nigel said to make sure to change was the layout. But at the moment the evaluation is just written up in a Google document, and I haven’t added the pictures yet, so the layout was already going to change, especially when I lay it out on my Wix Website. Overall, it was good to hear the content I’m writing is accurate and it allows me to finish the evaluation with confidence.

Part 3 covers the application of media theories to your final production. This includes Genre, Narrative and Character, Technical codes, Symbolic codes, Editing, Sound Design and Representation. Thankfully I had already written the section on Representation yesterday and so that allowed me more time today to spend on the other sections.

I completed the first four in the lesson, being Genre, Narrative and Character and Technical/Symbolic codes. I wrote quite a bit for all of them, especially the first two as there was a lot to discuss. Within them I made sure to reference the relevant theories, such as Metz, Todorov, Propp and more. And I was very happy with the final work that I was able to produce. This then left me with the final two of Editing and Sound design to complete at home.

And so when I returned home, I made sure to finish off these last two sections. Both of them covered relatively similar topics being focused on the visual and audio parts of post production. I struggled a little bit more with finding appropriate theories for these sections. For visual editing I found the Show don’t Tell rule, and for audio editing, I used diegetic and non-diegetic sound, although I was unsure whether this properly counts as a theory. However, either way I’m quite happy with what I wrote in these sections and thanks to Nigel’s review of my earlier work, I believe I’ve finished this part of my evaluation.

This leaves me with only part 5 of my evaluation which I will be completing over the weekend. And then by the middle of next week I should have my FMP officially completed.

Friday 27th

Saturday 28th May

I began today by writing the first three sections of Part 5 of my Final Evaluation, as this is what I had planned on my Action Plan. These sections covered the successes and failures of my project, the aspects I was most proud of and the ones I would have liked to develop further. I was quite happy with everything I wrote in these sections, and as Nigel had confirmed the way I was writing my evaluation was correct, I was more confident about what I was writing.

By the time I finished the first three sections of Part 5, I felt like I was on a bit of a roll, and so instead of waiting till tomorrow to finish my evaluation, I decided to finish the last three sections today as well. These sections focused on how I felt I’ve grown as a filmmaker, looking back on my Extended Essay and what impressions I wanted to leave on my audience. These sections were more complex than the first three and so took me longer to complete. But I’m very happy with what I wrote within them, and I’m now quite confident in saying I’ve finished writing my Final Evaluation.

With my Evaluation completely written up, all that's left to do is gather the images for it, upload it all to my WIX and then check my WIX website works. I’m still on track with my Action Plan and so hopefully by the middle of next week I’ll be able to have my FMP officially completed.

Saturday 28th

Monday 30th May

I spent today gathering all the images I needed for my Final Evaluation. To understand which images I needed, I read through my evaluation again and created a list of all the images I needed for each of the sections. Then with this list complete, I went through gathering all the images I needed.

I made sure to separate these images into different folders so that when I upload my Final Evaluation to WIX I can more easily correlate the correct images to the correct sections of my Final Evaluation.

With these images gathered I’m now ready to upload my Final Evaluation onto my WIX website.

Monday 30th

Tuesday 31st May

Today was my final day of official work. And I spent it uploading all of my Final Evaluation onto my WIX website.

This turned out to be quite a long process. The way I structured it was to upload each section with its images individually and make sure they were all laid out correctly before moving onto the next section. This also included making sure that the website was calibrated for a phone correctly, which also increased the time it took.

But even though it took quite a while, I’m very happy with the final product and I feel it’s laid out in a way that is easy to understand, especially with the inclusion of images that display what I talk about in the evaluation. I also decided to add little captions beneath the images to provide even more context into the meaning of each of the images.

With this piece of work officially completed it means my FMP is done. However there is one last thing I plan on doing tomorrow. My plan is to use tomorrow to go through my entire WIX website, checking all the buttons work correctly, all the images can be enlarged and that everything in the website works as required. This is super important as if my website doesn’t work as intended then it’ll ruin all the work that’s gone into this project. But hopefully if all goes well tomorrow then my FMP will be 100% completed.

Tuesday 31st

Music Video

Skills Audit

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Corrections

Demo Work

Demo Work

Demo Work

Contents

Demo Work

Contents

Moving Demo

Journal