And so the randomness begins......

This is what happens when I don't have a big project to work on. Was kinda fun...



Should I make more like it I wonder?

If anyone wants to, say if I should make more of these kinds of videos or focus on more serious stuff like I have with other videos. In a bit of a conundrum here, so HELP ME WITH THIS INCREDIBLE TASK! (I mean, if you want....)

:-)

Finding a Niche

So with two projects now documented on this blog, I have realised something. I don't really have an end goal for my Youtube channel.

Its a bit weird but I have only been uploading things that I have made purely out of enjoyment or for a competition. Now this may be a good thing for my Youtube channel if video making was merely to be a hobby, but I don't really think thats what I need to aim for.

If you look at the big channels (for example some of the more well known ones like Tomska, Smosh and Freddiew), you can see that they all have a sort of pattern with their videos. That they are all aimed at a particular target audience and all have a regular update schedule.
In other words, they have all found their:

Niche

Channel's Niche

By Niche I mean they have found their audience and are creating most of their content towards that target audience. Because on Youtube you are broadcasting directly to them rather than to a wide audience like you would on television. 

Lets have a look at the example of the channel freddiew.

Example: Freddiew

Freddiew is a channel on Youtube run by two guys: Freddie Wong and Brandon Latch. They do collaborate with their work mates from channels such as CorridorDigital and Pwnisher, but thats beside the point.

Now I want you to have a look at one of their more successful videos called "Future First Person Shooter"

The one thing that screams from this video is action and video games. And this is what freddiew's audience is mainly here for action videos and plenty of video game parodies. 

Freddiew has found their target audience and essentially their "Niche" with this target audience and are able to keep gaining subscribers because their channel content dosen't vary like a lot of channels do.

Now there are areas where some popular Youtubers would break out of their niches and create popular content, but the majority of what i have seen is that they were already popular in the first place, so they already have an audience interested in what they were going to do. 

An example of this is charlieissocoollike

Breaking out of the Niche: Charlieissocoollike

Charlieissocoollike is a british vlogger on Youtube. A majority of his videos consist of him talking about things that interest him, things he has been doing and challenges that have been sent to him. 

However Charlie McDonnel (the vloggers real name) recently came out of that area with the release of a short film called "The Tea Chronicles".

I won't put the full film here but I will put the trailer: 

In any case, we see here that Charlieissocoollike created quite a good short film up on his channel and because he already had a large audience, quite a few people watched the film. This kinda relates to TV as you know you will have the audience, but the point I'm making here is that the reason that some people breaking out of or having different niches for one channel is the most affective if you already have an audience.

What is My Niche?

I'll be honest here,
.
.
.
 I don't know.

 If I wanted to find a niche and stick with it, it would mean I would have to stick with one type or genre of video.
I guess if I wanted to get the most enjoyment out of it, I would stick with the horror and drama genre.
However this dosen't mean that I'm going to stick with those genre of videos.
I'll say that the purpose of my Youtube channel at the moment is a hobby, or at least thats the level that it is at. As I do want to become more serious about video making in the future by creating short films and such, I think I will stay with small projects for the time being.
I don't know about whether or not I have found my audience yet, but all I know is that I have to keep making videos not just for my enjoyment, but for my future.

Now that this little useless point is over with....

RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!

Pieces - AMV, Making Of!

For anyone who hasn't watched Pieces - AMV, then please watch it otherwise pretty much everything here will not really make that much sense.

Now let us discuss the main topic of the progress of how this video was made.

LET IT BEGIN!!

How it began....

OK, so from since I had finished the 666 short cuts to hell competition, I began going over what things I  could produce next. I was stuck in a sort of rut of no ideas after being flooded with paperwork from college thanks to some error? I don't know...

Anyway, one of my fellow classmates who cosplays a lot happen to slip about how he was going as Lavi from D.Grey Man to an Anime and games convention called "Q-con". I had heard about this place before as being an event where the masses of nerds gather to express their love for games and anime in the weirdest way possible.... JUST MY KINDA PLACE!

Nah, honestly I was a tiny bit sceptical, but upon a friends insistant request to visit the website, I did so. 

Now the website itself presented many events which included cosplay, skit performances, Q&A panels from famous figures within the industry, Art competitions video gaming competitions  card and board game tournaments.... The list goes on.

I was cycling through this thing, bored and not really that interested. I mean I am a fan of Anime, but not that big a fan to cosplay. 

I was about to get out of the website when I saw a section called the AMV contest. It was all like:

Being curious about this I had a look. I had known what an AMV was, so I went ahead and had a look. 

For anyone who doesn't know what an AMV (Anime Music Video) is, its basically a music video comprised mainly of either video game or Anime footage mixed somewhat together to a song. 

And with that, I had found me new project :-).

YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!

The Planning

So once I had skimmed through the rules, I began thinking about what anime and song I should choose. 

This here is something that you should always do before entering a contest, especially when it comes to short films and other video competition. Do some RESEARCH!

Research

Looking up examples

First off, I began to research up different AMVs to see how the more liked ones are done. If you are interested, here is a small list of a few of the AMVs that I had a looked at and admired:

Safety Dance - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Z9PKIOEwI  

Nightmare - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5BiTDw9zac 

Random Road Trip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoubheYhMKc 

Radiation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpqejWeT_yQ 

Till the World Ends - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrBu-9Ya4I

Medicine - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvnB9Nv4Fs 

As you may have noticed, a common trend in these videos is that they either have complicated effects and typography, or the editing is in time with the music. Like you can see the video being edited to the beat or tempo of the song.

Now, even though I love editing, I could never replicate the effects, typography and editing that where shown in a lot of the good quality AMVs in such a short amount of time (1 and a half weeks). So I had to decide on a song that had a good and easy tempo that I would be able to edit to. Also another note I made was that I could choose an anime that had a lot of effects already in it that I could dump in to make it more impressive. 

Something that I did notice is that all these AMVs that I had looked up and admired where all just trying to look as awesome as possible. None of them tried to really portray a story. Now there were some that had tried to inject emotion into their AMVs (especially if they used an emotional song), but there wasn't really any emotion that you could feel, or at least mixed in with an epic feel.

You know, you could say at this moment in time, I'm doing market research. Damn, I'm doing school work....

After taking a look at these examples, I needed to look at music that I could use.

CHOOSING THE MUSIC

 Now I myself have a pretty large and diverse music library. I have rap and Dubstep at one end and pop and classical at the other. But I didn't want to take something directly out of my collection. I wanted to get a song that had a good oomph, but was completely new to me. 

That way I could completely meld a new message to the song with the video. To me anyway, I wanted to not have any biased views when it came to editing. 

I needed to be completely separate from it. If a part I liked was wasting time, I would have no feelings against removing it as it is a new song........ (God I'm making this out to be weirder than it really was)

Anyway, I began looking up music I didn't know via music promotional channels, for example: Proximity

Using this channel, among others, I was able to locate a few tracks I liked. Now I didn't know what kind of video I wanted to make (one with a slow tempo, fast tempo, electronic, classical), but after looking at how techno and remixes with AMVs seemed to get some of the best responses, a lot of what I picked out was techno and Dubstep.

In order to get the list of songs, I made a list of songs in according to how much I liked them and what I thought I could do with them. It kind of fits in with what I like about songs. The kind of songs I like are the ones I can imagine things happening to. Almost like the songs I know you could create a good video with.

Anyway, after a long while of trying to pick out a couple songs, I came down to a list of 6 songs that I liked the most and thought I could create a video out of:

Ivan Torrent - Remember me: http://youtu.be/ATz72ozX3Yk

Nero - Fugue State: http://youtu.be/FtpNAxldqzw

P.O.D - Boom: http://youtu.be/ufb6T-av-rU

Hans Zimmer - Time (We Plants are Happy Plants): http://youtu.be/KNEBwNH6SxY

Mako - Beam ft. Angel Taylor: http://youtu.be/Unu5YR3WL94

Pieces - Red: http://youtu.be/x3U6BCUQqG8

Now all of these songs I believe that I could make a video out of, but none of them I think could make have that feeling that you so commonly get from all the other AMVs (which is just awesomeness). That's when it hit me. 

The Unforeseen Brainstorm

Throughout the whole process I was looking for epic tracks that would just be able to mix together well with an Anime, but I thought what if I was able to tell a story with it.

You see I was just watching through some more AMVs on a multi-upload and I got through to a channel called MJHoL97. On this channel was one of the best AMVs I had seen, out of every video I had watched so far. Here it is:

This AMV sparked off my imagination. Every single AMV I had seen as far had only ever used music and not the sound clips from Animes or movies. It was then I thought I wanted to convey a story through the video rather than making it as awesome as possible. I then had found out what I wanted to do.

Choosing The Anime

Now that I had this idea, I needed to choose an anime that had an inspirational or emotional monologue (or at least some lines I can mix together). Truth be told, I had already ordered some English dubbed Animes from Amazon that I believed would have made good AMVs. These included:

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood

Highschool Of The Dead

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Because of the fact I had to choose an Anime I could create an inspirational monologue, or at least be able to tell a story I had to look at these series in detail. And that took a while....

Finally however I came to a conclusion.

PLANNING CONCLUSION!

I decided to pick -

Anime: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Song: Pieces - Red.

The reason I picked these was because of my sudden brainstorm. I wanted to tell a story with this AMV, or at least portray a feeling of emotion rather than just awesomeness. At the beginning of the song Pieces, there is around a 1 minute piano section. During this section, I believe it would be a perfect place for the monologue I want to put it.

It is also the case the Anime I have chosen has a lot of quiet monologues in which the main character Kyon thinks about the things that is happening, more specifically about a female character called Nagato. I knew I would be able to mix some of these parts to be able to create a story around it, and then be able to bring it together with the mixing of the rest of the story to the rest of the music.

Now I had to be aware that the song pieces was too long for the video. The song Pieces itself is 5 minutes 58 seconds and the AMV time limit is 5 mins, so I began to mark out areas of the song I could chop out while also marking out which parts within the movie I could use while my editing software downloaded.

Oh by the way, did I mention that I downloaded a trail of Final Cut Pro X? 

Truth be told, I just did it for the effects, but it actually seems like a reasonable editing software. However, it is not worth me spending £200 on it (at least, not while I'm broke).

EDITING!

(Beware, no pictures here!)

Okay, so after ripping the anime "The Dissapearence of Haruhi Suzumiya, I went ahead and began taking out parts of the monologue of which I liked to try and form a beginning story out of it. 

After a bit of thinking, I wanted to make a small back and forth between Kyon and Yuki describing the end plot of the movie at the start. But before that I was going to have Kyon getting stabbed, to reel the audience into the video.

00:22 - 01:45

In order to create the monologue, I needed to isolate the audio from each of the scenes I was taking from and then bring it together in the time line. I did that by using the section highlighting feature in the event library of Final Cut Pro X. After that, I chose to only drag the audio and create multiple layers for each part of the monologue. After creating it, I then began to overlay the footage from the start scene all the way till the intro scene was done.

In some of the scenes, you see the characters talking. This was actually taken from the movie itself to cut down editing time as the voices from those scenes were already in sync. The only actual editing that was done to match the mouths with the voices was when Nagato says "it was preferred".

I basically brought together a frame of when Nagato had her mouth closed and then some frames of when she was opening her mouth. 

I then overlaid the opening mouth frames when Nagato began to say something and PRESTO! You have got a mouth sync.

01:53 - 01:55

After the final fade from Nagato from the end of the monologue (which was just a fade transition) there was the door fading in effect.

This was not that tricky. What I did was I dragged the initial layer of Kyon opening the door into the time line. I then copied that layer (Copied = 2nd layer) and put it on top of the original (original = 1st layer). I then masked out the door in the 2nd layer and cut the 1st layer to appear when the door opens. I then threw on a fade transition to the both when I wanted them and BOOM! You have got an effect... thing. 

I also did this effect later on in the video during a part where is Kyon is contemplating the "scattered pieces of who I am". 

02:10 - 02:14

It was pretty much the same except I re sized and positioned the pieces of footage on certain places on the screen. I adjusted the opacity to 60% and then added some fade in/out effects where I needed them.

Another thing that I did during the edit multiple times was the camera movement effect. This is seen at 01:55 - 01:59,  03:13 - 03:17 and 04:52 - 04:56. 

Now both these things had a similar component in them. 

For the both of them, I readjusted the size of the clip to be bigger by about 40%. I then positioned them higher in the final edit view, key framed it and then moved the clip lower in a later clip and key framed again.  

the one thing that was different between the three is in the second one. Now as I did make the clip slightly bigger and key framed it to go higher than the previous clip, I made the clip go too far and the screen then went into black as there was nothing beyond the footage. 

We were seeing the edge of the footage. So what I did was I went into Microsoft Paint and saved a completely white PNG file. I then placed that a layer below the first layer. 

Because the sky was white in the footage, it looked like the camera was just panning up to the sky rather than revealing white behind the footage!

Probably the most difficult effects to do where the sudden flashes of Nagato in the background at 02:40 and 02:43 and the effect where we went into her glasses at 02:36.

The first effect of going into Nagato's glasses where slightly more difficult than I had expected.

I first took a single frame of Nagato standing, copied it a bunch of times until it reached 30 seconds and exported it as a video file in a separate sequence. I did the same for the footage we see in her glasses.

I then took a enlarged and repositioned the frame of Nagato a bunch of times while key framing each edit in the particular frame until we got a very extreme close up of her glasses. 

Upon that I then added a vignette effect too two layers of the footage of Kyon standing and repositioned and re sized them in the glasses of Nagato as the start of the frame. I then went and edited their size and position for each frame of the movement into her glasses to be stationed in the glorious spectacles.

This did take a while as going through each frame to make sure the movements matched was quite a chore, but worth it. It probably would have been easier in after effects with its movement tracking tool, but you sew with the seeds you've got.

The other effect that was difficult was the flashes in the background at 02:40 and 02:43. Now these were difficult because of masking. First off I started with 1 layer for the background flash. I masked out the area of the footage I wanted to show and then repositioned it to where I wanted it to appear. Now because I wanted the flashes to appear behind Kyon, I had to create a layer mask around him and overlay it over the flashing footage . 

Now here came the tricky part. In FCPX (Final Cut Pro X), you can only have 4 masking points. So in order to make a smooth mask that didn't have chunks in it that made it look unnatural. I ended up having to create 10 layers of Kyon masks to get a smooth mask. And even with that, there was still a noticeable chunk in the second flash at 02:43! And with that I then had to add a fading colour correction to all those layers to get the flashing colour effect! 

I probably could have downloaded a plugin but by the time I had reached these points, I only had 1 day left until the deadline.

I had to go through the same process at 02:52 but instead of making the footage flash, I just had to adjust the opacity to fade with the background footage instead of adding a fade like I did with the rest. for some reason it crashed every time I tried to add a fade effect to that layer (looks like I found FCPX's limit with transitions. Only 10 can be done in one second).

The one final piece of editing I can really talk about is the fact every cut was with the rhythm of the beat, be it the drums as 03:27, or the lyrics and piano at 02:48- -2:58. It added momentum to the piece and I believe made it look more professionally edited than just clips playing alongside music.

At the last point of exporting, I simply overlaid some colour correction and glowing effect for certain scenes to make it look more dramatic and TOUCHDOWN! You gotta music video!

Q-CON AMV - PIECES!

THE VIDEO HAS BEEN SUBMITTED!

Okay so yeah, it took 2-3 days to edit this. I'm tired right now, so I will write about this video later. But I would like to cancel the second AMV. 

I unfortunately won't be able to make the AMV for my second idea for the "Q-AMV" competition. This does not mean I won't make this one day in the future, however it means I won't be making it in such a limited amount of time.

I think that the amount of time I spent on this AMV brought it up to a standard I was proud of. And as much as I would love to bulldoze through an edit for my second idea, it would not get the time it deserves. Therefore it wouldn't be to the quality I would like it to be.

.

.

.

God I'm making this out worse that it needs to be.

HOPE YOU LIKED IT!

MAKING OF LATER ON!

STAY TUNED!

Or reading...

or

.

.

Whatever

:-)

THE PROFESSOR RETURNS!!

Hello friends and welcome back, bet you are surprised to see me huh? Thought this was just a one time thing? Well.....

(Superman Returns [2006])

I HAVE RETURNED!!

And I'll tell ya, I've been working my arse off!

For anyone who lives in the UK, you might have heard of this Anime and Gaming convention called Q-CON. Its an event that takes place every year somewhere in the city and has a variety of events, Q&As, tournaments and competitions. And it so happens one of these events is an editing contest!

Well to be more specific its an AMV contest, or more "originally" titled by the staff at Q-con:

Q-AMV

"AMV" stands for "Anime Music Video". Its a common practise for a lot of fans of anime. People can take their favourite anime, or a group of anime and mix it together to a song. Some people are extremely talented at it and come off with videos that are so well put together you are just sitting there drooling because of how awesome it is! 

(Homer of "The Simpsons")

Okay maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration  but the point still stands. But then there is a counterpoint. And that counterpoint is that the quality can vary. For every well crafted AMV, there is a poorly thrown together fuzzy mess on the other end.

But in any case! I initially started editing 2 days ago and I am in the middle of uploading the video as I am writing this. 

Now you may think that if I'm uploading the video now, then that is the end of this adventure. It was over before it began..... 

WRONG AGAIN!!!

In the rule section of this year's Q-AMV contest you can make multiple entries. And I intend to use this too my advantage.

I have come up with 2 ideas. One of which is still uploading.... And its taking a while too, its been like 7 HOURS!!

Anyway, I have finished the first AMV. I put a fair bit of effort into it, but its up to the judges and the audience to decide (which may be you if you want to watch it) on its level of quality.

Here is the problem though. It took me 2-3 days to put together the 5 min AMV that I am uploading now. Am I going to be able to submit the second one by midnight on the 14th? PROBABLY NOT!

But its a challenge I'm willing to accept.

The rules for the AMV contest are below if anyone is interested: 

http://www.q-con.org.uk/q-amv

It basically states you have to create a 1-5 minute music video where its main source material have to be on either anime or gaming. You also cannot allow swearing, excessive violence or indecent exposure be anywhere on the submitted videos.

With the target soon approaching, I must take my leave in order to adventure onto my goal. Will I make it in time? Who knows.... Find out next time on:

DIARY OF A FILM-MAKER!! 

(or blog of a film-maker or..... whatever)

RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!

Had to be something at least a bit relevant.

The Aftermath

I feel........ empty.

I'll tell you something, straight after I uploaded that video to the competition and sent off the legal forms, I went out and partied with a bunch of my mates. Not only was it just a great night, but it was also a celebration. Everyone who worked on it (except 1 or 2) was there and after I had released that video, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. But straight after that party and life returned to normal again..... it was just too normal.

For anyone who has worked on a project they have really enjoyed, you might understand the kind of void that you feel after its all done.

I am really pleased with ho it turned out, the shoot was probably the most professional one I have organised to date and the best quality at that. Sure it may not have been to everyones taste, but I loved making that film and I'm proud of it :-). But there is that point where you put so much effort and time into it that when its gone, you just feel weird.

I don't like it.

Not. One. Bit.

I love feeling busy, or at least busy with the stuff I like working on, e.g videos. So I need to come up with something fast.

I'm going to watch some movies, listen to music, play video games and look for local events I can work towards.

For any one who likes reading this blog, thank you and I hope you liked reading the few things I have put up. glad you enjoyed it. And you know what, I hope that you stay here and join me for my next adventure. Maybe the deadline will be even tighter? I don't know but I'm beginning to feel the buzz of excitement already. So whatever challenge life (or more in particular video making) will throw at me....

COME AT ME BRO!

N.B. David Tennant is absolutely, positively beyond awesome.

6 SECONDS TO LIVE VIDEO RELEASE!

After a lot of hard work, I have finally been able to get the video finished and uploaded. It was uploaded before the actual deadline with all the paperwork, so no need to worry about that.

BUT HEY HERE'S THE VIDEO!

Diary 4: HO HO HO MOVIE MAGIC!

HEY HEY HEY, FREE PROMOTION FOR PILOT!

So yeah, its kinda almost the deadline. I was going to upload a blo post about editing earlier, but i was working hard to try and get the final edit perfect. But alas, let us move onto another very important part of film-making.

EDITING!

So yeah for those who don't know what editing is (which I doubt anyone who is reading this blog doesn't) its basically the bread to the cheese toasty. You've got your delicious footage in the middle and you just need that bread to bring it all together so it's not a blob of melted cheese. 

Editing is the thing that can ruin your film, or save your film. It is honestly one of the hardest things for a lot of people but for me, its like weaving together a story with different materials being the shots taken for the film. 

Now usually I would use Adobe Premiere because it is a very flexible and excellent editing suite. I does take a while to get used too but it has a lot of features that really help the edit. However, because I don't have it at home and uTorrent doesn't work (not like I would use it anyway :-p), I went with a slightly older editing software: Final Cut Express. 

Final Cut Express has been discontinued because of Final Cut Pro X, which really does suck cause it is an excellent editing tool for beginners, but I'm not here to review products.

(Final Cut Express Logo)

First thing we always do when we open up the editing suite is create a new project and then import our footage. 

Now there is multiple ways to import your footage. There is capturing the footage from the camera which puts it all into one video file and converts it into an easy format for the editor to read. 

Because we used a Canon 600d for the filming, the camera separates all the takes so all we need to do is log it so we know which take is which.

A good habit to get into is logging your footage before beginning to edit. This means seperating the footage into what scene, shot and take it is in. Something that makes this easier for the editor to do is the clapperboard where you mark all these things so the whole process isn't time consuming and confusing. 

LOOKY! ITS A CLAPPERBOARD:

Anyway, an example of this is seen here: 

You can see that I have labelled each clip a shot and then a take. The first clip in the list is S1, T1 (Shot 1, Take 1). now usually if there was multiple scenes in the movie, the label "Sc" with the scene number would be put before the shot and take label. 

This essentially makes it easier if you need to find a specific take or if your editing suite takes a dump and disconnects all the footage. It just makes it much easier to keep a track of.

Anyway, we import that into the editing suite and begin forming the scene.

Something that is quite useful and can be found a majority of editing suites is the ability to cut down the footage you want to drag into the timeline to only what you want. 

You can see on the top middle screen is blank, but if I double click of footage either in the browser on the left or the timeline, this window will show what goes on in this footage.

Now in the piece of footage already in the timeline, there is at least 10 seconds of footage of just a blank plate I don't want for the video opening. So what I'll do is crop down that footage from where I want the beginning and end of the shot.

As you can see, there are 2 lines with arrows pointing inwards on the bar above the play button. This represents the in and out points of where the footage will play on the timeline. 

Now I simple click and hold on the picture of the preview screen and then drag that picture to the timeline and voila.

PROGRESS!

So yeah, I pretty much do that for all the footage I want to put into the video. However, they don't all go on the same level. In order to make sure the footage and audio and fluid, you need to cut in the right place and sometime even do whats called "L and J cuts". 

Basically what this is is where you take two pieces of footage and overlay either the video or audio to create either a quicker or smother cut. 

J cut

L cut

Overlay

Anyway lets leave behind these basics and keep going. A bit of advice on green screen, make sure there are NO SHADOWS on the green screen and that it is evenly lit. If not, it makes it a real bother to key it properly without losing any of your subject.

Keying, by the way, is the method of which you take out all of the green from a green screen to replace the background with whatever you want. For example:

Before Keying

After Keying

After Keying with Background

Final Product

PLUS EXTRA PICTURE!

Anyway, I didn't need to green screen our actor anywhere, I just needed to get his outline, saturate him and make him look like some sort of creepy monster. You'll see what I mean in the final product.

In any case  the rest of the stuff is colour correcting/ grading. If you want to learn about that, then I advise you check out Corridor Digital's color correction tutorial!

Finally came the soundtrack. Now, because of time restraints I wasn't able to compose one myself, so what I did is I went to Kevin Macleod's Incomptech. he puts up music that is under the Creative Commons Act. This means, as long as you give him credit for the music, you can use it for free. So after some digging, I found a track that suited my piece, whammed it on and voila!

I'll post an embedded link in another post, but just to mention I might go into editing again at another date.

RANDOM VIDEO TIME!