Anyway, we have our presentation for our Superhero assignment, Julian comment that I should have more effects in it. Hmm.. After Guan Jie and Felicia presented (our stories are linked by the way). He commented that Guan Jie and I are lazy hahahaha compare to Felicia. With due respect to Felicia and her work, she just need to do simple editing to achieve the effect. But I need to do keying, particles etc etc. And from after the presentation, it seems to be that Julian have this perception that “We are from SoC, we are better technically, we should do much more to our video effect”.  And by the way, there is no clear objective (same for other assignments) for this assignment that indicates how technically demanding our effect shld be, or how many effects should we have, or what are we suppose to learn from the assignment. And I think he should set out a clear marking scheme for all assignments, to let us roughly knows what he expect us to achieve and what is the learning objectives of the assignment. For example, the marking scheme for one of my module in SoC below:

Novelty 10%
Artistic Creativity 10%
Visual Realism 15%
Technical Achievement 15%

From the marking scheme, clearly I understands my lecturer wants stuffs that are technically demanding and it had to looks real and he emphasis on the technical side over the creative side.

I thought that will be a good way to help us doing our assignments.

Finally, I want to thanks my groupmates for their efforts in the project. We had fun fliming videos and I really enjoy it (that is the silver lining i get from this course so far). Good Luck Guys!!

Cheers,
Mei Yuan

“Serious~~~

, Serious~~~~” – Duffy

Cheers,
Mei Yuan

“What did you learn today~~? (I learned nothing~~)
What did you do today~~? (I did nothing~~)
What did you learn at school~~? (I didn’t go~~)
Why didn’t you go to school~~? (I don’t know~~)” – Kaiser Chiefs

Anyway, I’m done with the shooting of the heroes video, doing post-production now, hopefully can be done by next week. In the process of doing our post production for the CNM ad as well. The NUS ad is almost completed, we still need to find a suitable background music.

Cheers,
Mei Yuan

“Supermassive black hole
Supermassive black hole
Supermassive black hole”

- Hero went to a foodcourt to have his meal
- An irritating salesman approaching him and start selling his products
- Hero got really piss by the salesman, and created a blackhole and suck the salesman into the blackhole
- Hero (he is not really a hero, just someone with abilities) continue enjoying his meal

So the main effect of the video will be creating the blackhole, I already have some concept on how to create it. Basically, i will use particle world in After Effects to create the effect. I may need to do some keying for the part where the salesman got sucked in. I will say the overall technical difficulty of this assignment is ok only. Anyway, Felicia and Guan Jie story will be linked to mine, their story will have other characters with different perspective of the blackhole incident. I did not receive any feedback, so i think i will go ahead with my planning.

Anyway we finished filming for our NUS vid, we change the business major  (with the student as a modern Karang Guni) to the student attending a e-commerce lecture in Secondlife. The bulk of the filming was done over a few days, many thanks to canisius, chuyao, jiahwa, felicia’s sister, wilson and raynor. Special thanks to NM2202 secondlife tutorial teaching staff for allowing us to attend the secondlife class and take some on screen video footage.

Cheers,
Mei Yuan

“~its all… GONNA BREAKKKKKK!!~!”

- Maths major gambling
- Computing major playing consoles game
- Theatre major feinting injuries in football game
- Engineering major playing with Air Rocket and etc

You can get the idea roughly that this video is about the “interesting” side of taking “boring traditional” degrees.

We uses photographs to present our storyboard simply because we can’t draw haha.  One of the comment given about our idea, is the part on the Business Major portraying as a modern Karang Guni. Personally, I not really convince by that idea too, but somehow somewhere we need to stop brainstorming and conceptualize our ideas. Hopefully in the coming weeks we can have a better idea.

This week lectures cover topics on animation, the techniques used in animation that will make it more lively. Personally, i thought it is an interesting lecture, interesting that principles like Anticipation, Squash-and-stretch, Exaggerating etc, though seems subtle, when applied, will actually bring life to the animation. But unfortunately ( or fortunately, i’m not sure), the assignment for Animation was cancelled. Anyway, new assignment given out today, its on Superhero, we have to present the storyboard next week. I kinda like this assignment, some of us already talking about linking up our stories ala X-men or Heroes like ahhahaha. I thought this shld be the final proj rather that the NUS/CNM advert.

cheers,
Mei Yuan

“~I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.”

lectures cover topics on camera movement and positions. Luckily, most of the stuff that was covered in the lecture were taught to me in other modules (thats why i can take a little nap here aand there ahahaha), still some are new to me, in the sense that it wasn’t formally taught to me before but i’ve actually seen it implemented in hollywood movies. But i wonder how many of the technique taught in class can really apply in our project, given that most of it required special equipment (crane) and time planning  (long take) which makes it next to impossible for us to implement it in our project, but nonetheless it is still useful to know this techniques and stuffs.

But I feel some of the stuff do not have to be covered in this module, the stuff is more suitable if taught in a Film Studies module.

cheers,
Mei Yuan

“~Everything’s in order in the blackhole”

Basically the flow of the video is this:

1. make an introduction of myself
2. shown a attention grabbing pic
3. show pic of myself
4. a series of pic with quotes
5. NUS logo

the following are the pictures with the quotes and the treatment:

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
- Malcolm Forbes, in Forbes Magazine

For this picture, I will start out by zooming into “me” in the picture and slowly zoom out so as too accentuate the phrase in the quote “an open on” by showing the wide open space of the picture

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.”

- Richard Bach

For this picture i will start at the bottom of the staircase and slowly pan upwards. This is to emphasize the segment of the quote “whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.”

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”
- Anna Freud

For this picture, I will start out zooming in at me and the scenery outside, then slowly zooms out to show the interior of the room. Signifying the what the quotes said that “…it comes from within. It is there all the time.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
- Bertrand Russell

For this picture i will just pan from right to left, the meaning of this picture is to show that “I” am in doubt( i.e. I am the wise man).

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your source.”
- Albert Einstein

For this picture, I will just pan from the top to bottom slow revealing me hiding under the table, so as to signify the “hide your source” from the quotes. This is just a literal presentation of the quote, as the true meaning of the word “hide” in the quote mean it in a different way.

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”
- Ben Stein

For this picture, “I” will be fully zoom in, and then slowly zoom out to reveal the remainder of the picture, sort of to signify “I had made a decision to be successful like those behind me”.

Since it is a promotional video, I will end it with the slogan

“Have you decided?” – which is linked to the last quote

and then finally flashing the NUS logo.

For the second idea, I decided to have a video that shows the work that I did in NUS (thus the title “WORK”),  the main purpose of the video is to showcase the exciting things “I” did. But I do not have access to pictures of the impressive project work that are done by NUS students, so I have to replace it with the mediocre work that I did in NUS.

The flow will be like this:

1. A picture of NUS – “this is my university”
2. A picture of Kent Ridge Campus – “this is my campus”
3. A picture of SoC – “this is my school”
4. A picture of Me – “this is me”
5. A showcase works that I did – “this is what I do”
6. Making decision quote from the other video
7. “I have decided. Have you?”
8. NUS logo

The treatment of most of the picture here will be just zooming in and out since there isn’t any significant with regards to any text or narration.

Here is the link:

Idea 1

Idea 2

During the presentation of our finalized ideas, Julian said to save time we will just present one, so I decided to present idea 1. The comments given was:

-  the music matches the meaningful quote and the picture except the bikini pic and the one in the toilet
- some of the quotes are too long, end up covering the picture and before one can finish reading it, it already transit to another picture.
- the quotes might be meaningful but ultimately did not manage to “sell” NUS

I will accept the first 2 comments and proceeds to make the necessary changes. But the final comments is tricky, probably have to brainstorm again.

I will have to wait for comments from the youtube for the other video at the end of the week, will update again by then.

cheers,

mei yuan

“And its wrong wrong wrong,
But well do it anyway cause we love a bit of trouble”

this week assignment is to use still images and create videos that promotes NUS..

we are to present our idea in the form of storyboard in the class and then the presentation of the finished product after term break.

Brainstorming for this assignment is really a pain… and since I am a SoC student i have to come up with 2 NUS video. When i started out for the brainstorming, i tried to think of something “NUS”, something unique, something that identify NUS. But sadly, the only thing I can identify with NUS is the color orange and blue. I begin to reflect on why?  Where’s our identity? What is truly NUS? Is it me (i don’t really have a sense of belonging to NUS)? Or is there really a problem with us? I’m not sure if I am going to get any answer. So I head to NUS website to look for ideas, to look for the “NUS”. NUS VISION, MISSION, STRATEGY – hmm.. probably going to find some useful stuff here.. but turn out (unsurprisingly, its all corporate BS), i did not found what I was looking for. In the end, I gave up.

So, are we having a “identity crisis”? Actually, I thought Singapore on the whole is having a “identity crisis” but i better not dwell into that ahhahhaha since this blog suppose to talk about our designs.

So I decided to use the similar approach i used for assignment 2, the take-picture-first-think-story-later-approach since I am running out of time (designing actually takes time, but too bad i dun have the luxury of that). This time round i decided to have a theme when i take my random pictures, I want to have pictures of me reading a book at different corners of NUS. So off i go to NUS Museum and Conservatory of Music to take pictures, the main reason i chose there is because i want pictures of places that are not common to everyone. I particularly like the Conservatory of Music, the lighting there is really great. So I proceeds to take pictures of me reading at different corner (or rather Canisius and GuoSen taking. By the way, thanks guys).

Still, after taking i dun have any idea how build a story around it, i roughly have a concept that each picture will have a caption or some famous quotes to tag along. Anyway, i just choose 10 pictures and form a storyboard, hoping that someone in the class can enlighten me.One down, one more to go. I’m getting desperate, so i decided to reuse last week idea.

I’m the first to present, as expected, its not good enough as there isn’t any story and meaning to these pictures, Julian suggested I should probably have some caption to bring some meaning to it. Julian suggest we try to have some story or meaning to our ideas. Julian also suggest to the class, we can think of ideas that is more personal rather than the usual “places of interest”. Hmm I guess more brainstorming next week.

Generally, I thought FASS students have better ideas (sorry SoC guys), not sure why though haha.

cheers
meiyuan

“Be a C.Y.N.I.C!!

Be a C.Y.N.I.C!!”

check it out here:

http://web3208.visualcomms.com/u0605284/A1/new/

For assignment 2, i started out by just taking random pictures without a clear idea or story in mind, I just wanna take lots of picture. I feel that the idea and story will come when i review the pictures i taken later. Indeed, i managed to form something out of the pictures i took. Well it is not something wonderful in terms or photography, or dramatic in terms of storyline. Basically, i just made up a story of my daily activity.

In my story, I like image #4, haha the one about the cute girl absent from class, i don’t why but i like the “feel” of that picture. During the critique session, I presented the technique i used to format the photo using CSS and the various CSS stuff i used for my page. So much so that I can’t remember any feedback from the class, hahaha I probably bored them out with my CSS technicality. Either that or I was so engross in discussing CSS and forgot about the main purpose of the whole session.

check it out here:

http://web3208.visualcomms.com/u0605284/A2/

The CSS technique i used was actually have a big image that made up of 12 separate images. By using CSS background-postion properties, I can display my desired portion of the picture, in this case, the 12 images in it. From what I know, this might be faster as it send one request to the server rather than 12 request, but this technique was originally used for smaller sized image, so it might not be very efficient here. Furthermore, Julian also said that it depend on the browser, some browser might request a few images at a time, so requesting 12 images might not be that slow after all.

After the presentation, it’s time for the lesson proper, I was expecting Julian will go through basic cinematography stuff  and editing stuffs that i had learnt in a film studies module. But instead Julian touched on the XYZ-axis thingy, something new to me. Then he released the assignment 3 specs, honestly, i am damn tired by then, can’t really process the assignment requirement, so right now im still not very sure what is expected from us. I think i better go and read the requirement now hahaha

cheers

“Y-control, Y-control
you walk, walk, walk, walk, walk my winners
out of control, out of control”

The second week, we have a recap lecture on some visual principle. I must admit i have forgotten 80% of the stuff, this so lecture is quite useful. But half of the lecture is on CSS, something I already picked up in my free time. I am no CSS master, but I think i’ve known enough to do the project.

The project is to revamp the MDL website, but the limitation is that we must retain the header and footer. The original MDL website is pretty horrible, the menubar is due for some touch up, the wayward formatting and display of the web content prove to be an eyesore.

The first thing our team did for the project is to discuss what’s to be revamped, mainly

- the menubar

- the formatting of contents

Our theme is pretty much lines and strokes, with a minimalistic approach (please don’t read it as lazy).

I am in charge of revamping the menu, GuoSen and GuanJie are in charge of formatting those online tutorial into a single page and place it in <div> and <table> with suitable class/id for easy formatting with CSS in the later stage. Similarly, Felicia will do similar stuff for the rest of the page. After that we just integrate our stuff and create a few image/graphic for the website. Finally, we just decide on the typography, color and stuffs like that in the CSS stylesheet.

Now during the presentation, there isn’t much feedback from the class, but Julian did mention a few, mainly:

- the script of the menubar seems to be cranky

- darken one of the graphic that we placed at the foot of the page

Personally, after the class I realise there is a few things to improve beside those above:

- i thought there is too much whitespace between the header and the main content

- the menubar seems to be dangling at the left and do not look cohesive to the page, probably a clear border that separate the content and the menu might help

- there is room for improvement for the homepage

Not sure if we got time to remedy all of the above, but hopefully we can fix at least one or two before wednesday.

Just got the specs for assignment 2, 180kb for 7 pic… hmm..

INTO THE MOUTH OF HELL WE MARCHES ON!!