Animantic's Blog

Photoshop

animantic — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:48:47 +0000

At the office, Al wanted me to work on editing out a stamp mark from a photo of a person. It would be easy except the stamp went across the person’s face. I could just replace the stamp area with a texture sample using the stamp tool. Isn’t that funny? I’m using a stamp to remove a stamp. Yes, yes, moving on. The part where the stamp is on the person’s face proves to be a little difficult. I’ll have to use the healing brush and carefully smooth out the stamp without distorting the face. I showed it to my other co-workers, Francis and Joanne. They agree that I’ve done a good job. I showed it to Al and he seems pleased with it too.

I heard my Holiday Card got picked to represent the college. I’m quite honored but surely they would rather use a different one. There were many factors on my card that I weren’t sure of, such as, the placements and the font to use. I did take a long time figuring out an idea and one came to me when I couldn’t sleep one night. A Christmas checklist but Al told me that check list was based too much on Christmas. I was given a different checklist. It’s not as good as mine but it’ll have to do. I got a message on my phone from Al and he told me he needed the original by 6pm. I found this message on Friday, if he left it on Thursday or Friday, I would still be too late, so I got the one I worked on at home and emailed it to him. To be honest, I wish they didn’t pick mine. All it got me was angry looks from the other staff members. Maybe if I acted more professional, people wouldn’t look down on me.

Video VS Print

animantic — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:31:56 +0000

I’m pretty late on the Holiday Card assignment now. Al told me it was due last week. Some other interns got this assignment also and their works are a lot better than mine. To be honest, I had very little interest in working on print again. Even if it is just a holiday card because I’ve been expecting more video/audio editing. Making a Holiday card just doesn’t feed my interest. Still, I should work hard on any project even if I like it or not. I ended up handing in an idea he wouldn’t accept because too much of it was based on Christmas and not everyone celebrates Christmas during the Holidays. After taking away the Christmas elements, my work lost a bit of its charm. He accepted the work anyway.

Prof. McVictor is right about video editors; we don’t do so well on print ads. He said most the video editors he works with stays away from working on any print advertisement. It’s not because it’s harder or easier. I think it’s because the style of how the advertisements are made in video and print are so different. With video, we use moving pictures to get the main ideas across which usually contain 24 frame a second. Video Editors would think of a print ad to be a single frame that is frozen. It’s like telling a football player to play soccer. They could do it but I’m sure they rather play the sport they are use to.

For the Holidays

animantic — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:00:55 +0000

It looks like the trial version of the editing program has ended. There was one last work I was doing right before it didn’t allow me to save anymore work. Since I can’t work on it anymore, Al wants me to create a holiday card for the school. There were a few cards already created and they look pretty good. I don’t know if I’ll be able to match up with the other ones. I’ll do what I can. Beside that, I also help out in office duties like answering the phone, and helping out the other professors with any assistance they may need.

I’m still deciding what sort of holiday card to make. Al suggests I look through some design materials for inspiration. One of the other professors let me look at his collection of magazine ads. Francis, my co-worker also got the duty of creating a holiday card. She’s taking the same class I am for this internship. Which means she’s not getting paid either. It doesn’t matter. The experience is what counts the most. Hopefully, I’ll get a paid position next year.

My first digital camcorder

animantic — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:35:43 +0000

I was deciding between a camcorder with a digital card memory and one that uses mini DV cassettes. The first thing I looked for was the reviews online. After watching and reading reviews on youtube and message-boards. I knew the one with DV tapes is right for me. The one with digital memory has more space to take more in but most people say the quality isn’t so great. Plus, most the pros use DV cassettes. I ended up getting the Panasonic PV-GS90. The price is great and it has some nice reviews. When I saw that newegg.com was selling it in a bundle for a limited time, it sealed the deal. They sold it to me with a free bag. =) That’s awesome.

The features of the camcorder isn’t bad. Nice sharp pictures, powerful zoom, and it feels good in my hand. The free bag isn’t bad either. =)

The bad news is, I’m having problems getting my footage into my mac. I bought a DV-USB cable and it’s not reading the camcorder. Then, I bought a DV firewire cable and I found out people are saying the mac no longer supports firewire. There’s no port for it on my mac. I’ll be starting a new project this week and I really need to get my footage. This has been very frustrating. Well, it’ll be alright, I’ll figure something out. There is a firewire port in the school’s mac, so for now, I’ll just take out my footage there.

Eventually when I become pro, I’ll need to get a DV tape holder case and I found the perfect site:

http://www.streamlineaudiovideo.com/bryco1.html?gclid=CIrm1dWJ_Z0CFUlo5QodmSEWpA

Future Video Editor

animantic — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:22:31 +0000

On Tuesday (Nov 3), Al wanted me to work on a music file that might be of great importance because he only wants me to focus on this one project today. He told me he wanted to keep the beginning of the song and edit the rest. I didn’t want to crop out most the song like I did last time because it’ll be like murdering that song. (Unless he wants to focus on the footage and less on the audio, than that’s a different story.) I manage to keep the end part also and it plays out smoothly with the middle. Speaking of the middle, I was able to do what he asked, duplicating the instrumental part and stretching the whole song to 2.30 minutes long. I’m pleased with the results and I hope Al likes it also. Hopefully, it’ll be use for one of Al’s school introduction movies. It would be awesome if he lets me edit the movie scenes. I was there when he was taking some of the footage around the college, so I have an idea of what to use. It would be an honor to be working on such an important project.

I’ve done some editing before but I was using Window’s Movie Maker and iMovie. This semester I started using Final Cut Pro but I’m still a beginner. Since I had some experience editing, I was familiar with some of the features like the timeline, storyboard, and video transitions. I’ll be working on another project for my Video Design course so I’ll get to know Final Cut Pro a bit more. They told me that course won’t grant me any credits but I want to take it anyway because I wanted to get into video design since my first semester. This is only the introduction to video design, so is like a taste of what I want to be doing someday and I’m hungry for more.

Editing music is complicated

animantic — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:05:02 +0000

Last Thursday, there were some office duties to take care of. Since I’m still an intern, I didn’t mind helping. They wanted me to cutout cards and fill them into sliders to make badges for college students for an event. They didn’t tell me much about it. Maybe I should’ve asked them but if they wanted me to know about it, I’m sure they would’ve told me. There were two girls helping me and we were very organized, Lauren and Joanne. It didn’t take us long to finish that huge stack.

Afterwards, Al wanted me to make some more corrections to the audio editing I did the other day. One file in particular needed some toning. He wanted it to be smooth, and it wasn’t easy because that song has many different tones and beats through out the song. I ended up taking the last tones and made a repeat of it from the beginning. I’m not sure how he would feel about that because it was almost like I killed that song. There was so much editing that it might not be recognize as that song anymore. Well, he did tell me to remove the lyrics and make it smooth, so I guess I did my part. I tried the other solutions but they didn’t work so well.

Even though the song isn’t the same anymore, I still like the beats of the music. I decided to use it for one of my projects in my Intro to Video Design course. It might be a good idea to let Al know I’ll be using it for a class assignment. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. If he does, I’ll just find a different music for it.

Invitation to Michael Jackson’s movie premiere

animantic — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:57:16 +0000

Yesterday, the president of the college had 3 extra tickets for the premiere of Michael Jackson’s Movie, This is it, and offered it to the interns at the office. The premiere starts at 8pm, so I couldn’t go since I still had a project due the next day for my Intro to Video Design course. As much as I would like to go, I can’t just abandon my work. If only it was on the weekend. I ended up giving my ticket away to Joann, my co-worker. She wanted to bring her boyfriend.

That day, I also worked on editing three more audio files. Al wanted me to remove the lyrics of the three songs, which wasn’t so easy. One of them ends in lyrics, so I had to remove the ending and recreate a different ending with the same sound as the rest of the song. I made repeats of the last beats at the end and made it fade which is how the original song ends like. I spent most the day on these edits, so I hope I did well on them. I handed the files back to Al and got to leave early.

More audio editing

animantic — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:55:47 +0000

I had to come in work late today because I had to take my CPE part 2 exam. It’s all right though because I sent Mr. Al Vargas an email letting him know and he was cool about it. When I finished my exam and got to work, he gave me 3 more files to edit on, which was pretty cool. He first asked me if I’m afraid of heights because he wanted help up on the roof which I wouldn’t mind going up there. It sounds like fun. Most students never went up there, so I wouldn’t mind taking a peak. He decided I should stay in the office and work on those music files. I didn’t mind that either but still, too bad I couldn’t visit the roof.

I was only able to finish one file today because I was stuck trying to figure out a problem I was having. There was a section of the song where I wasn’t sure if it was lyric or not. It was a long humming note. I was able to finish it and begin the next music but then the Mac told me it’s 2pm and I had to get going to the museum, or so I thought. I’m glad I went to visit the 11th floor before I left. It turned out I wasn’t supposed to go to the museum today. It’s next Monday. I didn’t get to bring any of my stuff with me for class. I only had my lunch in my backpack.

First Assignment and a Presentation with Time Inc.

animantic — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:58:05 +0000

Last Thursday, I had my first editing work with audio. Al wanted me to split the lyrics out of a song. I think I could call him Al. Everyone in the office does. Anyway, at first I was having a little trouble because I wasn’t sure which way I was supposed to do it. I’m sure there are many ways to split music and lyric from a song. So far I only knew how to remove background static and evening out the volume. I figure since there were two different sound waves, maybe there is an option for me to digitally pull those streams apart. I don’t even know if that’s possible but I saw Batman do it. Well, surprise, surprise, I’m not Batman.

When Al suggested that I could zoom in on the sound waves, I imagine he wants me to know which part I need to remove. Since that was the case, I starting removing that lyrics word by word and then adjusting the sound levels so it would play smoothly. Once it was done, I place the background music to the flash-drive he gave me and returned it to him. I think he’s impressed by my work and would give me more editing work in the future. I would love to work on the footage he taken in the college departments.

After work, I went to class and I heard Al would be recording in my classroom that day. We were having a presentation with Time Inc. That’s why I was dressed up. Too bad most my classmates have not. Even tho the professor mentioned it a few times. My presentation went well and I’m glad it was taken in film. I just hope it got my good side. I’m usually very nervous in front of a camera. I got a smile and some laughs from the class, so the mood was pretty cheerful. Still, I’ll have to learn to present my work in a more professional manner when I get another opportunity. The best way I could imagine to do that is practice. My camcorder I bought from Newegg.com just arrived, so I’ll just record myself present and fix up any mistakes.

Sound Editing

animantic — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:28:59 +0000

Francis and Joann are my co-workers on Tuesday. There might be another addition who was just being interviewed before I left. We’re all getting along which is great.

Al and I went to some other departments today like the administration, counseling office, student support and two others I’m not too familiar with. We got a lot of footage, so it would be hard to decide which one would be good to use. If there are too many people watching, the person being interview might get nervous, so most of the time I stayed out from the recording area. It’s more relaxing if it’s just one on one. I should know since I’ve been to the counseling office once in a while. When I’m there, I try to get as many jokes out as I can to lighten the mood.

There is a chance I might take part in post-production because he wanted me to check out a sound editing program. That’s one area I barely have any experience in. I’ll have to get to know this program as much as I can. After looking through this program, it made me realize how much sound editing as developed over the years. I used to think of sound as a ruler, I could only edit my footage by placing them on that timeline. The most I ever done with sound was cropping it. We could do so much more to sound now. Removing background sounds, changing the pitch, and even adding special effects. I’ll continue to study this software call Amadeus Pro. You could download this software from hairersoft.com and they got a PDF booklet you could look over for more detail examples of what this software could do.