Final Animation For this Year: Inferno's Retribution

Inferno's Retribution

          This will be my last blog post about animation for this year, but do not worry because I will return once school starts back up. For my animation final we had to film and edit a video that contained a 3d object, special effects, and use of a green screen. 

        At first, my group and I did not know what kind of story we were going to do. Eventually we decided on this story about a hero and his fight against the evil Inferno. After we had our story made we had Jake make this beautiful storyboard. And as soon as we were able we started filming. I don't quite remember how long filming took but trust me, it took a long time. after we finally finished filming we got to work on editing. I was assigned to make all the special effects, but I did get help from Jake. Jake made the title and end credits scenes along with the final green screen shot. Madison finished all of the editing that Jake and I might have forgotten to do, and then she gathered all the scenes and put them together into the final product. My team and I came in after school multiple times to finish editing and attempting to make it a quality video. Along the way I learned that time management is very VERY important. Also I learned how to make somewhat realistic effects using color corrections and masks. 

If I could do anything differently next time it would be being more prepared and not having such a complicated story. It is essential to keep things simple when working with video and animation. A thing that I would do the same would be to put as much time and effort as I put into this into all of my other projects. I will remember the techniques I used in editing to enhanced any of  my future projects. 

I feel like I could have done a better job on this project, but I am still proud of what my team and I accomplished.

Final Video for the Year

            This has been a great year and I'm rapping it up for now with this great short film. This video is my semester 2 final and I feel like I improved greatly since the beginning of the year. This short film is about  a young detective named Jenkins who must save his rookie partner Reynolds from a great threat. We did have some requirements however. The video had to include: the spoken phrase "lights out", a hat, a water bottle, and an obvious and intentional source of light.

  

         First my group got together and decided on what the story would be. We finally decided on an LA Noir style detective theme, but before that we had many different ideas some of which included a school over run by mafia members, and a boy who is followed by an angel and a demon. Once we decided on our story we wrote a script and made a storyboard. 

         After we finished with pre-production we jumped straight into filming. We recorded our shots simpler shots first and then recorded the bigger scenes such as the climax and exposition. There were many days when we could not film because one of us was sick or had school work to do. But we did finish eventually and started to editing.  

    During post-production I had to cut out a lot of the original footage in order to make the motion continue. Another hard part was finding music that fitted with the theme of the film. I eventually settled on "Black and Blue" by the late great Louis Armstrong.

      Along the way I learned how camera movement can be good but not if it is overused. I also improved my skills on making quick edits. If I could do anything different then I would go and film more transition shots so I could make the final film smoother. I would continue to follow the come in early and leave late rule. In the future I will remember to always get multiple angles of the same scene and to make it as smooth as possible. I feel like this is a fitting conclusion to this year of video making and i hope to continue making videos and animations in the future.