Sent - Global Encounter 2012 [Projects]

The Video

I had 2 videos to create for Global Encounter this summer.  The first was a goofy intro video to get the students (hopefully) laughing and in a good mood for the opening service of the week (you can check it out here).  The second was a more serious video conveying the overal theme of the week, which is what I'm going to talk about here.




The Plan


Brad Russell (College Pastor at FBCA and one of planners for Global Encounter) wrote up a script for the video.  My job was to give it some motion and energy.  He showed me a Dan Stevers video to give me an idea of what he was looking for.

The way I went about building this video was basically this:

1. Find and cut down audio
2. Determine length of each "slide" or set of words
3. Throw it in after effects and come up with a transition for each "slide"

This actually worked pretty well, but the end result doesn't really have a lot of continuity.

The effect I used for all of the flying particles is called CC Particle World.  I'm relatively new to the effect, but after researching a whole lot about it I've found it to be really powerful for an effect built right into After Effects.

Audio


For this video I actually went through a couple different songs before I landed on a song called Divine Knowledge I found on SoundCloud.  The original song is almost two minutes long, so I ended up cutting it down to just over 1 minute.

Closing Notes


I still found it very difficult to work with music and After Effects.  I tried to use some strategies from one of Dan Stevers' tutorials but I still found it to be difficult to get that tight audio video connection that I'm used to in Final Cut Pro.

My wife actually came up with the idea of stubbing the whole video out in Final Cut Pro beforehand with just simple text and then using that video as a template in After Effects.  I'm excited about trying this one out on my next video, and I might try to make a tutorial on it if it really works for me.

Nehemiah: The Build [Projects]

I know it's been a while since I posted here, but that's because I've been really busy this summer.  I've worked on a bunch of video's that I'd like to write about here, but I just haven't had the time.  I'm currently waiting for a wedding video to render, and figured now would be a good time to get started.

My goal is to build up some reference material for myself if I ever want to look back at how I did something, and also for anybody else out there trying to teach yourself how to create videos.

The Video

One of the things I've been trying to learn better lately is After Effects.  Fortunately I've been able to help build a couple sermon series intro video's for my pastor that are pretty much done entirely in AE.

The latest series is called Nehemiah: The Build.  It follows the story of Nehemiah as he leads the Jews in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem.  The main goal with this video was to portray bricks, and building material and what not.  Here's the finished product.





The Plan


Because of a couple other videos on my plate, I only had about 3 days (after work) to create this video. Due to that restraint, I ended up scrapping my original (and more complicated) plan and decided to just go with dynamic moving text.  To keep with the theme, I found a bunch of royalty free stock photographs of different types of bricks and went to work.

Audio


I found the music here on Soundcloud.  I would recommend checking out Soundcloud for all your video music needs.  In the advanced search options, you can check off that you want music using the creative commons license so that you can use it royalty free.  This song endup up being the perfect length, so I didn't even have to cut it down at all.

Closing Notes


Working with music ended up being a much more difficult task than I thought it would be in After Effects.  I was pretty rushed and you can tell there are a few transitions that don't go with the music very well.

My other mistake on this video is the animated outlines on the text.  I didn't set them correctly on the last two sets of words, so they don't really animate while on screen at all.

Toler Wedding Video [Projects]

I finally finished the Toler Wedding DVD.  This is the highlight video of the reception.  I'm going to try to get into the habit of writing up a post of projects I finish, mostly just so I remember what I did in certain situations for future reference.

Gear:

Sony HDV 1080i (Borrowed from church)
+ Shotgun mic (also borrowed from church)
+ Fluid Head tripod (borrowed from church)

Canon T2i (Borrowed from Matt Peterein)
+ Canon 50mm 1.4 lens
+ Sigma 28-75mm 2.8 lens (I think)
+ Ball head tripod (Borrowed from Matt)







Setup:

During the wedding ceremony, I was set up with the Sony on the Fluid Head tripod in the second row on the left side of the auditorium.  This way I could pick up everyone walking down the aisle, and then turn to get the everyone on stage.  Matt Peterein captured a consistant wide angle shot from the balcony with his Canon T2i.

From the Sony the angle wasn't the best so I could really only see the Groom and the Pastor's face.  The auditorium was way to dark for this camera, so I had to gain up a lot (which introduced a LOT of noise).  It was even darker down the aisle, so the noise level in those shots were really bad.

Notice how bad the noise is in the black suit.

The Canon was a different story.  Matt was using the Sigma 28-75mm 2.8, but because the light was so low he switched to the Canon 50mm 1.8.  This ended up being a life saver, and as you can see, produced a much higher quality shot.

It wasn't as wide as I would have liked, but it was worth it to get the low light.

The reception (video at the top) was shot entirely with the Sony HDV camera.  I need the ability to quickly zoom in and out, and I had to mount the shotgun mic to pick up the guest speeches.  The shotgun mic performed much better than I expected.  While shooting, I couldn't hear the person talking myself sometimes, and I was afraid none of it would be usable.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the audio was actually pretty good considering the loud room it was shot in.

Editing:

All of the video was shot in 1080i and 1080p, so the file sizes were huge.  All in all my project files are about 30Gb.  I worked off of an external hard drive formatted with fat32 which means I have a 4Gb single file size limit.  The wedding video when rendered out at its highest resolution is well over 4 gigs, so I had to render it out in standard definition (which ended up being 3.48Gb).  This isn't a problem right now, since it's getting put onto a DVD anyway, but I'll have to re-render the video from the Final Cut Pro project whenever I eventually burn it to Blu Ray.

Closing Notes:

This was my third wedding filming and editing, and so far all three have been completely different (that's what happens when you borrow all of your gear).  I learned a lot, and I think this will really help me out for future weddings.  Based on what I learned here, I think I'll definitely use a DSLR for the reception, but I for sure need a shotgun mic to capture people's voices.

Now that I have my own DSLR, I should have a little more consistency and flexibility with wedding videos.  Low light is definitely key, but I also need some flexibility in zoom for certain angles.  Hopefully I can eventually get to a 3 camera setup so I can capture both the bride and groom, and keep a wide shot to help with editing.

Hopefully, I'll have one or two more opportunities to get some practice this wedding season... and maybe help pay for some gear to increase the quality as well.