A.Concept & Story
The video is mainly talking about chasing dreams. In the beginning, the girl is among the audience and gives a bunch of flowers to the dancer she appreciates. However, she is torn because she wants to be a dancer too instead of one of the anonymous audience, so she chooses a different path to becoming a dancer. Eventually, she receives a bunch of flowers from others, which implies that she has succeeded.
We are inspired by The Road Not Taken, a poem written by Robert Frost. The poem is about life choices. The main character is walking in the forest and there are two paths in front of him/her. Both of the roads are equally beautiful but he has to choose one to continue his journey. He/she is torn between the two options. In the end, he/she chooses the one less traveled by and moves on.
At first, we want to be literal and convey the poem directly. We took some shots like the elevators and noodles to imply the two roads. However, we found it too obvious and boring so we changed our mind and created a new plot that could both echo the poem and show something more novel.
The reason why we want to explore the topic is that all of us face hundreds and thousands of life choices during our entire lives but we can only experience one path in life. Every path you choose will lead to a different ending and there is no way back. We want to use this story to tell the audience that if you choose the path less traveled, something unexpected may appear and give you a nice surprise. So don’t be afraid to be the minority and be brave to chase your dream!
B. Creation Process & Execution
i. shooting process
We want to be literal and convey the poem directly at first. We took some shots like the elevators and noodles to imply the two roads. However, we changed our mind and just as Cicci mentioned, we created a new plot that can both echo the poem and show something more interesting. For the new plot, all the shootings mainly took place in two places: the campus and the park near our school. At the campus, since our main plot is about dancing, we took advantage of the final performance of the dance class and took some shots there with the special lighting. At the park near our school, we mainly focused on establishing shots. We spent some time looking for the perfect background and took some shots from different angles and even at different distances. Additionally, flowers are used in many shots, serving as a clue in the whole story. During the first part of the shoot in the park, we used two pieces of organza covering the camera to create the vagueness of imagination.
ii. techniques used
In terms of the technical achievements, there were six main adjustments we made to diversify our scenes.
First, for the title, we used the fast blur effect and adjusted the speed so that it played backwards and produced an effect of appearing.
Then, by creating a “mask” in the premiere, we can cover anything we want. And by adding “mask path”, we can make the mask move as we want. Therefore, the title disappears as the character walks.
Second, you may notice that we created the transition from black and white to color twice in the film. To make this happen, we applied the calculations effect. Next, change the input channel to gray and click on the timer button to create the first keyframe. Then, position the time head to the time when the transition is completed and change the second layer opacity value to 100% to create the second keyframe. As a result, the transition is completed.
The last scene where the colors appear slowly as the main character moves along. The techniques involved are basically the same. The only difference is that an extra “mask” is needed to have such an effect.
We also adjusted the color of our scenes to make them fit the concept better by opening Lumetri color from the window and adjusting the saturation, color temperature, exposure, contrast, etc.
Finally, for the credits part, we used the scrolling text by double clicking the text and click on “Roll” in the Essential Graphics column.
These are the main technical achievements we made.
C.Aesthetics & Results
Our project turned out to be good.
As for our camera language, we use the movie effect in iPhone and a stabilizer to shot all the scene. We also tried many angles apart from extreme close shot which are familiar to us most, like establishing shot and medium shot. We captured these shot mainly in Houtan Park as our metaphor part in the video, which seems dreamlike.
As for color correct, the main idea is to make the color of the flower more distinct and the metaphor shots more dreamlike. As for the flower part, saturation is about +150 and the contrast is about +70, which makes the color more eye-catchy.
For metaphor part, we applied organza to cover the phone camera like a filter. But the effect is not fully achieved, as organza will make the lights in the scene to be star-shaped but unfortunately the day we went shooting is a cloudy day. However, the organza makes the scene seem dreamlike and the color when gold organza is used is really fancy.
D.Collaboration
This is the first group final I accomplished in college and I felt really happy to collaborate with Lizzie , who is a good and responsible partner to work with. I still remembered the night I had dessert with her, sitting on the floor and in the dark after finish editing the project.
In our group work, Lizzie set the shooting plan and worked hard to carry out the plan, which I thing is worthing learning for me. Carrying out things according to the plan is an equality I appreciated.
We went to many places outside campus to shot and we both felt happy to work hard together to complete something.We shared that feeling and that’s what makes me think working with Lizzie is really happy.
Lizzie is willing to learn things. The concept and idea of visual part is mainly designed by me and Lizzie is responsible for shooting and solving technical problems while shooting.
Her idea on composition is really good, which enables us to capture beautiful shots for our metaphor part.Moreover, she solved technique problems really quick, which is helpful.
Moreover, we are of high efficiency when we work together and I really like the feeling working with my partner.
That’s it.
Communications lab brought me so much joy this semester. I learned many skills in this course and I will definitely miss it.
