Day 35

Before i start with today's events, i've got an announcement to make...this post is going to be the last one in this blog!!! Ahah yea you won't have to see anymore of my boring posts. :b

In the morning when we wanted to transfer our video to tape and CD (the video couldn't be burnt into CD in Jen's laptop either when she took it home to try yesterday), it took us over and hour just to get it transferred! We tried to transfer with 2 different video cameras, 5 fire wires, burn it to a CD again (but we later heard that we cannot burn videos to CDs in the lab's computers :O) and at least 3 different computers but it still wouldn't work! But finally after using another video camera (i think it's Yi Chuin's one), we were able to transfer the video to tape. :] We were all pretty damn worried as the deadline was at 12 and we've overshot the time. luckily, the lecturers extended the time to 1pm and so we were able to submit our tape a few minutes after 1pm.

Anyway, after that we went to the lecturer theater, and most of the groups were there already. There was a screening of all the videos done by the different groups in MOI. i must say that I'm super impressed with some of the videos!! i could see that there were alot of effort put into every group's video but the two that stood out the most to me has to be Tri's and Raj's group videos! i just never got bored watching hose two videos and the animations for both videos are absolutely wonderful! i love how raj's video flow...the transitions were really good and man...the 3D animation for that video was stunning. Literally stunned me. Some of the videos are really funny and entertaining as well. I thought Apple's group video is very lighthearted and funny and i enjoyed that video alot. :]

During the screening of our video, I felt pretty nervous...I was worried that the content might bore some people. Hopefully everyone somewhat enjoyed the video! But after it was screened, I felt kinda relieved and happy because finally our P1 is over!! Since the production package is done, all we've left to do is to complete our blogs and print out our entries for submission. :]

From this module, I've learn that its very important to plan!! so that the work load will be spread out over the duration of the project, instead of it being concentrated at the end. That pretty much happened to us. We did plan out our schedule but we didn't anticipate certain things that might crop up...like not being able to transfer our video etcetc. So i've learn that i should at least leave a couple of days empty, so that in case such things do pop up, we will be ahead of schedule. ;] i also have to pay more attention to details like the lighting and all.

Once again, huge huge THANKS to those who have helped out with the video! Alvin, Germaine, those who have helped in someway or another (lecturers and classmates) when we were faced with any sort of difficulties and of course, last but not least, Alfie! :] And how can i ever forget...MY GROUP MEMBERS!!! It's been fun working with you guys. :] Even though we may face some problems along the way, we were able to overcome them together and come up with a completed video which i can safely say that i'm satisfied with. Soo...thank you SHUSHU, JENNYFULOPEZ, ADEBRUDDER and KALA!! :] We can finally all enjoy the upcoming hols. :]

And now...i bid you farewell!!

Day 34

Today we all met in the 3D lab and we were able to finish doing our video!!!! :D:D WOOT WOOOOOT!!! Yaya! Thank you many many to all my group mates...we're finally done with our video! Time to relax!! :D

We did a hell lot of things today!

We finally got all the footages we needed and so we can complile everything together. :] After that, we did a lot of editing work. We added the audio i did yesterday to the video. We also used audio transitions like fade in fade out etcetc. We also soften the audio when the people are speaking to minimise distraction from speech.

We had quite a number of jump cuts during the interview as we took out certain parts of the interview to shorten the time. But we solved the problem by putting the module processes over those areas. We also used video transtions to make the video flow better. Did some more colour corrections and stuff to the videos but for some, we couldn't get what we wanted and so the video lighting and colour are not that consistent throughout the video. Shu shu also added the subtitles for the 3D fundamentals module.

Couldn't burn the video to the cd in the school and so jen is going to bring home the footage to burn it! hopefully it works...if not we'll have to do the transferring tomorrow. But well at least we've done our video finish!! :D Now all that's left is to compile our blog enteries and print them for submission! And...Adeline is done with the production package too! :]

tomorrow, there's going to be a screening of all the P1 videos. Can't wait to see what the others have produced. Overall, i'm pretty happy with how the video have turned out. ..could be better but i'm satisfied. :]

Day 33

aha talk about a lack in sense of urgency. i'm feeling the strain now.

a large part of today was spent on transferring the videos and all from jen's laptop to a computer in the 3D lab. a few problems cropped up, such as jen's com not being able to put any data into shu's hard disk (we tried on about another 3 more hard disks and it all turn out the same). apparently it was because the hard disk is in the wrong format...or not mac compatible or something. aha just a few days ago i was writing about hoping that no problems like having the "wrong format" or something pops up...but man it did. -.-

Luckily when we tried apple/sarah's hard disk (they could use it with their mac), it could work!! :D but it took us over 2 hours just to transfer everything to the computer. i felt really bad that apple had to wait for us to transfer the videos (we only finished transferring at 7.30pm!) before she could go off. so really...thank you many many apple and jing yuan for waiting!!

while transferring, the whole group picked out 3 songs from our list of song selections. one for opening, one for the content (i'm removing the singing part to minimise distraction from our speech), and lastly one for the ending. we also picked out the footages we wanted (the earlier footage which we shot back in pre-production stage) so that we won't waste time...which we already are wasting with all these stupid transferrings. :[ shu had a problem with the animated words on the fast-motion boards but she managed to get it done by today and so i got that and the credits from her. jen's "still-picture video" (aha contradicting much) had pictures in the wrong size, and it was only noticed after it was exported. so she has to resize all the pictures! :O kala left at around 8 or 9pm and then shu left after that. jen stayed till pretty late at around 10plus but adebrudder and me stayed till 11plus to try and piece whatever we have at the moment together. there are still several footages left out of the video but we have no choice but to leave it for tomorrow.

another problem we had was the length of the video...all our footage are not even included yet but we realised that it was over 13 minutes already!! so we had to cut several parts of the interview out...and we probably have to fast forward several parts as well.

Afer that, i brought home the audio (speech) from the videos. We cannot use the separated audio which we recorded using the compressor mic after all! :[ there's almost an hour's worth of audio clips to go through and i dunno which part of the audio track goes with the selected video footage!
we currently don't have enough time to check which audio portion would be in sync with the video! so in the end, i had to take audio from the video. :[ it has more buzzing noise and this high pitched humming...i don't know how to get rid of the hummmm unfortunately...ahh well...

there's a lot to be accomplished tomorrow. hopefully we can get it done in time for the transferring...which i somehow doubt we would be able to. rendering would already take up a huge amount of time...ahh man i guess we'll just have to "make it work"!! *suddenly thinks of project runway* oorigh i gotta go sleep man...damn tired. aha man this have got to be my longest post to date! *is amazed with self*

Day 32

today, my group mates (except kala) came to my house!!most of us aren't done with our work yet and so we all continued to work on what we have to do. shu continued to work on her animated words for the boards, jen did after effects (she didn't get all the pictures especially for photography), ade's not done with the "hard-copy booklet" and i went to export the flash into avi format for the animated words i did yesterday. did quite alot of transferring here and there. i installed premier pro 2.0 on my computer but when we wanted to transfer the footages we took to my com, it couldn't work!! :[ booo...so we've to leave all the piecing together and final editing for tomorrow...hopefully we can get everything done by tomorrow! cos on tuesday we have to transfer our video to tape and dvd already!! ahhh....don't know why but we kinda lack this sense of urgency? ahah we tend to digress a lot. :b

ordered KFC for lunch and really half the time we really weren't doing anything that constructive. Xb camwhore, played guitar etcetc...well, it was fun. aha but we are now lacking in time IMO. quite afraid we can't finish for the transferring by tuesday...

Day 31

Today kala came in the morning to pass us the animated words for the fast-motion video which she worked on yesterday. she had something on in the afternoon and till sunday and so she had to leave.

We split up the jobs to maximise our time. jen worked on the after effects for the edited pictures, shu shu edited the font for the "holding board" video which kala just passed us, as the font was wrong...shu had to do quite alot of changes as when the font is different, the placement and size of it is a little different. Ade and i did selection of the clip we wanted from all the footages we've got. there were a lot to pick from. luckily, kala already did some of the editing a few days ago and so we don't have to do that much. we just had to sit through quite alot of footage to pick the best take. i looked through it first and took out all the takes that we're definitely not going to use. then i sliced up the clips into individual takes so that jen and ade can pick which one they wanted. :] but we haven't got to edit the footage we shot back during the pre-production stage. :S anyway, we pieced whatever we had then and ten we found that we could actually adjust the brightness of the video in premier! aha didn't know that...too bad we didn't really get to do that much cos a large part of the time, we were trying to backup all the footage into jen's laptop and shu's hard disk...

the group (except kala) is going to meet up this sunday at my house! so we later planned out what each of us have to accomplish by sunday. adeline is going to typed out our new ideas (to be included for submission with the blog entries) , jen is going to continue working on the after effects, shu is going to finish editing the animated words which kala gave us and i'm going to animate the words for the parts that introduces the different modules. and everyone is going to update our blogs (so glad we can just change the date of when we post to give the impression like we've updated almost everyday. lol.) so that the workload won't be that great next week...i predict that it's going to be pretty hectic...especially if anything goes wrong during the rendering and all...or wrong format...or something. :S hope none of that shit pops up...and hopefully we can get all that we've planned done by sunday...

Day 30

All the pictures we took have been edited in Photoshop, and so we passed all the edited pictures to jen so that she can put them together the way we want it in after effects. but she haven't got hold of the program yet and so we'll have to leave that to tomorrow...kala continued to work on the animated words for the boards...unfortunately she cannot be with us tomorrow and over the weekends as she has a family function on and so she's going to take it back and work on it overnight and hopefully pass it to us tomorrow.

can't really remember what we did...but if i'm not wrong, shu and jen worked on the credits! its a very simple ending but i like it. :D and ad and me picked out some more music i think! ahhh we haven't really done anything for audio yet!! :S i know it's important and all but we can't started on it yet when the video isn't even complete yet...and i don't really know what i can do about the audio...i mean what can we do besides selecting music for the background? and maybe cleaning up the noise and buzz in the speech audio a little here and there but what else? i'm interested in audio engineering but i'm unsure about how and what needs to be done. aha. man.

we went for the diploma show at around four plus. i like some of the works! especially this animation called "the bad nut" or something like that. :] didn't get to see everything but i don't know why, but instead of feeling motivated to do better, i actually felt a tad discouraged. :S and i really felt like we should have put in more effort for our video...cause really after seeing the difference in standard...ahh well...hopefully we can pull it off and present something that i am happy with. and hopefully by year 3, i can be as good or even better.

Day 29

we had our presentation today...or rather should i say it was like another interim assessment. we showed alfie our animation and he told us to make the "stickman production" words a little more exciting...and so we decided to add colour to the words. most of our videos and stuff were in the 3d lab and so he later went there to view one of our videos (the holding board one) and hopefully he likes it. :b turns out we don't even need to submit any scripts/schedule/storyboards and so since we've already done it, we don't have to do them later! :D butbutbut...we aren't too happy with the quality of the storyboard and so we're probably going to redo that one.

after he left, we all continued with editing the stickman works and adding animated words to the boards. we also selected some more songs which we thought would go well with our video!

we didn't finish adding colours to the works in each frame (it's really a pain to have to make changes to the animation especially since there were so many friggin keyframes...luckily they have the "convert to symbol" option...phew.), shu shu brought back the animation to work on the colouring and kala brought back the fast motion boards one home.

Day 28

The group didn't meet up today...but we all have stuff to do for the presentation tomorrow. all the footage and all are saved in shu's hard disk and we've got a another back up in jen's new laptop. :] lucky arse...got a new macbook pro. Xb

Day 27

Last friday, germ and me went to watch the concert!! damn it was FREAKING AWESOME!!! especially incubus!! i'm a bigger fan of saosin actually but really, both bands are in different leagues from each other...incubus's music playing is better than saosin (esp the singing, could hardly hear cove), though saosin's energy is really good and their crowd interaction was better. then again, the sound could be due to where we stood. for saosin we were front row!! thanks to our friends. :] but during incubus's set, the pushing and squeezing were so bad (to the extent that my shirt can even rub off rust from the barricades) we had to be pulled out by the security guys in front. but it was still really really rad though!! wanna go again. :]

anyway, today we went to the 3d lab and transferred the other footages as well as the one from the 2D lab to a computer in the 3D lab. Shu continued to improve on her flash, i typed out the schedule for presentation tomorrow, kala uploaded the video to the com and the rest are going to redraw the storyboard to make it more presentable. ;] so yea thats what we did!! i took back the stickman animation so that i could work on the dragging part. man it's pretty tedious...shu's gonna finish editing the pictures of our work in photoshop! gonna take a break tomorrow...so the group's not meeting up!

Day 26

today we finally shot all our "interview" parts. couldn't wait for alfie anymore and so we decided to just go ahead and film it...if not we'll be behind schedule. edited the scripts on our own and i was the first to go, cause i had to leave earlier for the SAOSIN & INCUBUS CONCERT!!! :D our friends are waiting first in line! they went to the venue at like 8am to queue...nutters. i'll feel bad if we turn up too late...

soooo, i took me about 3-4 tries and i was done! :] i sometimes i tend to forget my lines and so we flashed the words on the screen behind using the visualiser and paste my script so i can peep when i can't remember. :b hopefully i was convincing enough...it's hard not to look like your reading from a script. XD we used the condenser microphone again and the same system we used the other time. after that, kala and me left first while the rest continued to film!! yea!!

Day 25

today i brought my camera to school and jen, kala and i went to take pics of our 2D works and all...can't remember what we did...urgh i'm having a headache now. feel like i'm in this daze...must have stared at the com for way too long. writing several posts in one day is no joke...especially if you have short-term memory loss, which i unfortunately seem to have acquired. :X

ohoh i think i remembered now! hmm...we uploaded all the pictures we took and we edited it in photoshop. some of my groups mates managed to upload some videos to a computer in the 2D lab. :] but then we saved everything in shu shu's hard disk as a backup. don't wanna waste another few hours trying to upload the videos again.

Day 24

still couldn't use the computers in the 2d and 3d labs and so we tried out the macs on the sixth floor. but it doesn't have premier. shu brought her laptop but unfortunately, we couldn't upload the video because of the cable...sooo we ended up not doing anything today! :S plus we haven't even got our scripts back yet so we couldn't do any filming...

Day 23

We changed our fixed meeting time to 11am and everyone was more or less punctual after shu and i talked to the group about our punctuality yesterday. :] i ended up being the latest actually. *shifty eyes* anyway, we could only film the "interview" part for kala since she's the only one who got her script.

i brought my home's condenser microphone so that the audio for the speech would sound clearer, but we're still going to to record the audio in the video camera though, in case we can't get the audio to be in sync. Then someone controlled the recording for the audio and another one for the video. overtime, we sort of developed a "system" so that we can know which audio goes with which part of the video. we might not even use the audio though...it took us quite a number of takes before we were happy with the take and by then, when we wanted to get a computer to upload the footage, all the computers in the 2d lab were occupied and the 3d lab was closed...so we just ended early. actually we mostly end early. :b

still waiting for the scripts...hopefully it'll be edited soon...

Day 22

As usual, we were all suppose meet at 10.30am (it's our fixed meeting time)...but kala could only come at 1pm cause she had some meeting...

anyways, i finished my part of the animating over the weekends!! took me a couple of hours...it's oorigh to me i guess but i haven't add the shadows...but i'll let the rest do that. :] passed shu shu the animation for her to continue to work on it and since the rest haven't come yet, we went to the library and had the time to type our blogs and edit and publish the rest of the posts.

then at 1.30pm, after everyone has arrived, we went to the classroom and looked for Alfie cause we needed the edited scripts. But so far he has only finished kala's part. But kala haven't memorised her script yet, so we ended up staying in the class while Alfie talked to us about some stuff.

after that, we filmed the animation and 2d art fun process. and yea thats today!