Week 32

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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 May

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 May

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 May

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 May

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 May

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.