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Moving onto video
Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, March 27, 2014 Under: Teaching and prayer
Heya everyone!
Today I get to share a recent project. Now, I'm not new to video, yet I still feel like a total amateur, haha. Evenso, I'm rather thankful with how this turned out:
While I know GOD helped me make most of what you see, I'm not the only one who put the final together, that was Sterling. I only made the pieces, he stuck them together. Be sure to check out his SCF Mobile for his programming work and Cross Allegiance.org and Djsterf.Net for his ministry work.
> Sound is a lot harder than it seems
I'm a huge fan of music and I really want to learn how to write properly and so far, I've only written three successful pieces. One was when I still had piano lessons. I was playing around one Saturday on the keyboard and it just came out there, very simple, no real direction; just pretty. Another one was a piece I had to write as an assignment for piano lessons and that one was the most successful one for the time.
Of course, then there was the sound assignment for a subject at university for which I got a reasonable mark, but the tune didn't quite fit, so my mark felt like it didn't quite fit, hahaha.
And finally, we have today's piece; the most successful by far. I do think it can be taken a lot further than just these few seconds, but gotta start somewhere!
Sound is more than music though; you have sound effects. In order to be able to record the sounds for the coins, I got some really old R1 coins from my dad's collection (with permission) and recorded the effects using my phone. I only found out after recording that it actually has a stereo mic! I was really surprised by it! Didn't make a difference though as the sounds had to be panned and matched as close as I could get them.
So, recording started with every single piece separately like:
- Coins scraping off each other
- Coins crashing into one another
- Coins hitting wooden surface
- Coin hits coin on wooden surface
- etc.
Then, you put them into a very basic video editor with multiple tracks and panning and you can quickly stitch together a proper set. But do note, you have to make your sounds unique, which means, you have to record more than one sample per item and you need to adjust their pitch and length on the PC to make even more of a sample pool.
> Video was different
I'm not used to making "final" video, if you will. This project forced me to try and make something more of the usual test sequences I usually do (for which I also try to make "final" videos). Getting out of that kind of habit isn't always an easy thing and for the most part, I think I may still be stuck in it, hahaha. However, it worked well for this one and I really tried to make the camera feel like the viewer's eye focus, only smoother.
On the light, I really felt lead to use the volumetric or halo lamp, because it gives those spot-light beams and I really really like that extra bit of dimension, even though it did seem to wash out the Bible a bit... In any case, I'm happy with the final.
What I did have some problems with was the length. At first it all seemed fine and then it seemed like the coins were falling too slow, which I do think they do, but faster is a bit of a waste for the video, so I left it as-is. The reading time at the end was a different story.
At the end, there was maybe a second or so to read the full piece of scripture and I was like shocked at how short I had made it. I had to add almost 100% the original length of the entire animation sequence to give enough reading time and thankfully, only had to render the extra frames, not redo the whole thing.
> Modelling a new lesson
Haha, another funny part is the coins' surface. I didn't know what to put on there, as the minting companies have a problem with reproducing currency in a digital form (possibly even for animations), which I can understand, but that did not help my situation, but then GOD reminded me that I have old renders and that they would make fantastic currency faces and so, ta-da, problem solved and HE had me share it as well (click here to see).
All-in-all this was a great project and a lot of fun to make. Looking forward to making more and better ones :D!
Hope you liked it!
Thank YOU JESUS!!!
Today I get to share a recent project. Now, I'm not new to video, yet I still feel like a total amateur, haha. Evenso, I'm rather thankful with how this turned out:
While I know GOD helped me make most of what you see, I'm not the only one who put the final together, that was Sterling. I only made the pieces, he stuck them together. Be sure to check out his SCF Mobile for his programming work and Cross Allegiance.org and Djsterf.Net for his ministry work.
> Sound is a lot harder than it seems
I'm a huge fan of music and I really want to learn how to write properly and so far, I've only written three successful pieces. One was when I still had piano lessons. I was playing around one Saturday on the keyboard and it just came out there, very simple, no real direction; just pretty. Another one was a piece I had to write as an assignment for piano lessons and that one was the most successful one for the time.
Of course, then there was the sound assignment for a subject at university for which I got a reasonable mark, but the tune didn't quite fit, so my mark felt like it didn't quite fit, hahaha.
And finally, we have today's piece; the most successful by far. I do think it can be taken a lot further than just these few seconds, but gotta start somewhere!
Sound is more than music though; you have sound effects. In order to be able to record the sounds for the coins, I got some really old R1 coins from my dad's collection (with permission) and recorded the effects using my phone. I only found out after recording that it actually has a stereo mic! I was really surprised by it! Didn't make a difference though as the sounds had to be panned and matched as close as I could get them.
So, recording started with every single piece separately like:
- Coins scraping off each other
- Coins crashing into one another
- Coins hitting wooden surface
- Coin hits coin on wooden surface
- etc.
Then, you put them into a very basic video editor with multiple tracks and panning and you can quickly stitch together a proper set. But do note, you have to make your sounds unique, which means, you have to record more than one sample per item and you need to adjust their pitch and length on the PC to make even more of a sample pool.
> Video was different
I'm not used to making "final" video, if you will. This project forced me to try and make something more of the usual test sequences I usually do (for which I also try to make "final" videos). Getting out of that kind of habit isn't always an easy thing and for the most part, I think I may still be stuck in it, hahaha. However, it worked well for this one and I really tried to make the camera feel like the viewer's eye focus, only smoother.
On the light, I really felt lead to use the volumetric or halo lamp, because it gives those spot-light beams and I really really like that extra bit of dimension, even though it did seem to wash out the Bible a bit... In any case, I'm happy with the final.
What I did have some problems with was the length. At first it all seemed fine and then it seemed like the coins were falling too slow, which I do think they do, but faster is a bit of a waste for the video, so I left it as-is. The reading time at the end was a different story.
At the end, there was maybe a second or so to read the full piece of scripture and I was like shocked at how short I had made it. I had to add almost 100% the original length of the entire animation sequence to give enough reading time and thankfully, only had to render the extra frames, not redo the whole thing.
> Modelling a new lesson
Haha, another funny part is the coins' surface. I didn't know what to put on there, as the minting companies have a problem with reproducing currency in a digital form (possibly even for animations), which I can understand, but that did not help my situation, but then GOD reminded me that I have old renders and that they would make fantastic currency faces and so, ta-da, problem solved and HE had me share it as well (click here to see).
All-in-all this was a great project and a lot of fun to make. Looking forward to making more and better ones :D!
Hope you liked it!
Thank YOU JESUS!!!
In : Teaching and prayer
Tags: jesus god blender video new audio music original hard amateur film more
