Category: JH Moon

Interactive Video: The Alternate Story-Snow White

Link: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ys3041/videoproject/index1.html  

Overview: In this video project, I will be working with Anica and Susie to accomplish an interactive video web page. We followed Susie’s proposal to take on a twist and alternative story of the original Snow White storyline. We thought of several different scenarios and each function either as a trigger to another plot or just the ending. After we settled on this proposal, we immediately went into recording on the 15th floor. 

Process: While I’m the video editor for this project, Susie and Anica will be in charge of the creation of the web, its interface, and interaction. We first recorded most of our scene on the 15th floor. Each of our group members will take a role in the acting. Susie as the evil Queen, Anica as the princess and I’m the Huntsman. The whole recording part was rather quick and only took us two afternoons to finish. Since the plot was proposed mainly by Susie, I will be following a script that Susie wrote about the various visual effects and music that I will need to add. In this project, I will be using Sony Vegas Pro for the editing because that’s what I’m most comfortable with. Also, I added my own taste to the video by adding different templates of popular Youtube videos and memes like the Illuminati and Minecraft death screen. Some templates are on green screen so I added them by using Chroma Keyer. To move images around, I used the crop to move the position as well as changing its size. Moreover, the masking of the face with another image can be done with both the crop and mask, like it is shown below.

  

Crop and masking is a main component to the video because there are lots of involvement of moving particle and images like the Miley Cyrus with the wrecking ball appearing in the mirror. To make the audio louder, I simply change the volume (dB) option higher. Here’s some photo of the video editing process on Vegas Pro.

Reflection: Overall, this project didn’t meet my expectation and I was a little unfortunate that the team was unable to put everything together well. I hope that each member can work on all task and equally so that the project is cohesive. The user testing was important and it is what we missed out of. The interface of the project was not cohesive with the video and I wish that the video was more integrated into the video. We could of make the video full screen and as the interface where the buttons will appear in the video. The background was an indecisive choice that did not fit well into our project. The video, however, needed some improvement too like the synchronization of the video and the audio. That is a problem mainly due to that we recorded a separate soundtrack for some video which they are not synced together in the first place. 

LINK: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~vsw227/videoProject/start.html

Our project idea was inspired by moments when you are in a situation, and think one thing but choose to say or do something different. Therefore, we had the sayings “imagination” and “IRL (In real life)” in our options.

I focused mainly on editing and did some filming in scenes, and my partners also did more editing/story development/ coding for the website. In the end, I think we worked really well together! Making this project was really fun, and I’m really happy and proud with the result 🙂

Below are some pictures from my editing POV and the final site (where you can choose what scenario you want to see)

Link to the project:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~vsw227/videoProject/start.html

Project title:  A Perfect Day — Imagination vs IRL

Partners: Vincent & Oona

Project Concept

Our initial idea is to make a funny comparison between the words that people are truly thinking about and what they say in reality. But in the end, we expand this idea to what you are imaging about versus what you do in the end.  We make this story into a situation comedy with a full circle of a series of stories that happens in the small universe we have set. Each scene has some connection to the others, for the characters and location is consistent and related.  This project is set in a relaxing and funny atmosphere with dramatic expressions and interacts with the viewers through different choices of imagination or IRL.

 
Process

During the brainstorming discussion, I suggested the idea that making the comparison between “true words” and “words you said”. Vincent and Oona then come up with the broader improvement. We then settled down our topic as “true thoughts/imagination versus reality”. 

As for the labor division, we have done most of the work together for the first half while doing the latter half separately. It’s an amazing and delightful experience of teamwork.  Story writing and video shooting are down together by us: Onna comes up with the storylines and then we discussed and improved together; each of us took part in both the acting and shooting. After that, Oona is mainly responsible for the first round of rough cut and time management, while I’m in charge of the after effects, light, and sound adjustment. Vincent is working on the website and coding.

In the shared google drive, we kept the working process and different versions of editing

We tried to film the scenes from different angles, which would make the video to be more expressive. However, the biggest problem for us is sound. We tried to hide the mic while shooting, but the result was not good. And for some scenes containing big movements, the mic just failed to record. Thus, it was really tough work when I was editing the sound. Besides, I also tried to make the scene more focused on our characters and have some film-like sense, therefore I played a little with the shadows. It’s my first time to try the light editing, though far from perfect, it’s still a meaningful lesson for me.

 

Before

After

I have done most of my work in after effects. With the tool of masks, keyframe and time remapping, some preset effect assets and so on, I tried my best to add more interesting elements to this project. Though Oona had already prepared the quite well-edited video before I was going to work on my part, it still took me such a long time to finish this task since I was learning many new things at the same time. But after all, I really enjoyed this process and learned a lot.

Light part:

Mask with a solid layer – general shadow

Mask light focus on the main character 

“Annoying Friend”- cannot stand the voice effect:

 Change RGB channel with multiple layers (my favorite scene hhh)

“Cute Big Head”- slow down repetition:

Mask track a character

 

Scale and adjust the edge to make “bigger  head”

 

AfterEffect Files

Reflection

As for this project, we have devoted a lot of effort to the video shooting and editing part, however, lack in work of the website. Thus, next time we may need to balance these two part. Besides, I also get the feedbacks like is the scene could be lighter while the shadows existing to make viewers still focused on the main characters. I’ll try to practice video editing more in the future. And due to my personal reason, I have got bad flu which caused me almost one and half a week away from school. Many thanks to my teammates and professor Moon’s help. We finally made it and finished this project!

https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~cc5581/week09/video-project/welcome.html

Partners: Laura, Chloe

Concept:

In our project we wanted to convey the complex and multifaceted nature of freedom by hearing from a variety of students on their personal beliefs and experiences. To do this, we came up with an interactive platform that would begin with an introductory photo/video montage followed by an interface from which to choose from numerous interviews. After viewing a limited number of interviews (7) the user is presented with a final closing montage that weaves together additional present-day issues of freedom. The closing montage is entwined with Gabi Branche dancing, which is to her an expression of her freedom. We chose to make the interviews randomly scattered on the screen with a limited number of views so that each viewer would have an organic and unique interaction, to scripted by our presentation of each interview. 

Process:

In brainstorming our project we initially planned on have the interviews appear as floating balloons that escape as they reach the edge of the screen. The idea was for the viewer to only be able to view a random handful of the interviews and therefore each have a unique experience with our project. After getting feedback in class, we decided to make the videos appear at random but not as balloons, as this would potentially appear arbitrary to the user. To film the interviews we used two cameras, tripods, and a Tascam to improve sound quality and allows us to capture different angles simultaneously. I challenge we encountered in shooting and consequently in editing is that interviews cannot be “started over” or scripted. Because of this, there are instances where the interviewee pauses for a few seconds or might be momentarily distracted. We chose not to edit out pauses because we wanted the viewer to be assured of the authenticity and “rawness” of our interviews. We wanted to capture people’s beliefs the way that they naturally expressed them.

Reflection:

In hindsight there are a few things we could have done differently, such as giving our interviewees the questions beforehand so they wouldn’t have to think on the spot, or asking them to come to a quieter place to avoid background noise. This, however, would have given the interviewee a more formal or rigid impression of us and might have compromised how freely they speak. One thing I wish I had done from the start would have been to get an external hard drive because i spent a lot of time in the first half of the project trying to upload every file to google drive. We also did not clap at the beginning of the interview so as not to disturb people nearby, but this made it slightly harder to align the audio later. Having interviewees write down their names would also have made it easier later to make sure we spelled them correctly during the edition process. Other than minor things like that, we felt that the project went very well and that it generated interesting dialogue in the process of making it as well as in viewing it. 

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jh5231/VideoProject/

This project was definitely one of the most fun and exciting projects that I got to work on ever. I already had experience with photography which is something that I’m very passionate about but I never had experience around filming and video making before so finally being able to implement my own video skills in the project was definitely really exciting for me.

In the beginning, we had many ideas but we weren’t too sure on which to pick. Initially, we thought that we were going to make an ice cream making machine for our project and film each steps of it so it would kind of be like a build-a-bear workshop but for ice cream instead which would be video based and interactive. After digging into this idea for too long, we felt that it wasn’t a project that we were passionate enough to plan out. After scrapping the ice cream idea, we considered doing a day to day life comparison of the Chinese national students compared to the international students at NYU Shanghai. However, we also felt like this idea was already played out a lot in comm lab and it also wasn’t very originally. When brainstorming new ideas, I thought of the “expectation vs reality” scene in the film “500 Days of Summer” and proposed we make an “expectation vs reality” that students had of NYU Shanghai. Jon and Allie liked the idea a lot so we went along with this.

When planning the clips for what we would do, we first thought of our own expectations and experience of living in China. For me personally, I was on a gap year in Wuhan (China) prior to coming to NYU Shanghai where I was in a very traditional Chinese environment unlike NYU Shanghai so I had a different experience with China and Jon used his own experience as being a Junior and NYU Shanghai and Allie who was living in China for the first time ever.

During the filming parts, I decided to use my own DSLR camera instead of the one that the school provided because although the school cameras were better than mine, I was a lot more familiar with my own camera and I’ve always believed that technique and skill were more important that the quality of your gear and equipment. I also borrowed my friends tripod and we were able to film around the school.

For one instance of our project, we wanted to do a traveling scene that shows an expectation people have when coming to NYU Shanghai. So for this, I decided to book a ticket to Tokyo on 4/19-22 because I truly believed that taking the extra step to travel somewhere would of helped our project greatly.

Jon and I were directors and actors for the project and Jon was in-charge of the coding while Allie was in charge of video editing since she had prior experience with video editing while I didn’t. I felt like our group dynamic worked very well together since each of our own strengths fit perfectly with each other for this assignment.

This project was definitely my favorite project and one of my favorite assignments that I’ve ever done for school and I would love to film again if the opportunity arrived to me again.