DMS1 | A1 | DMS1 Blog

Week 1, Session 1 | 19.07.21

Generating ideas from YouTube videos like "editing in storytelling".

Jotting down ideas for the source material, thinking of changing the genre of "Man: The Incredible Machine".

I chose the source material mentioned above because some of the scenes looked psychedelic and reminded me of a music video. Inspired to do something similar, something wack.

Setup and watched the Linkedin tutorials for the basics of Premiere Pro, have only used the program a few times, still getting the hang of it.

Some inspirations that I'm looking at that's going to help me with the general direction I'm going for is Annihilation (2018) directed by Alex Garland. I'm drawing inspiration more from the soundtrack than the visuals even though that movie looked amazingly wack.

*Note from future me

Early concepts changed a lot over time, brought over some aspects of early concept with the new idea, so really the end piece evolved into an amalgamation of everything from early concept to late concept.

Week 1, Session 2 | 22.07.21

Spliced up a few scenes from Night of the Living Dead in class for an exercise, gave me a little bit more insight of what I want to do for the first assignment

I found it very difficult to come up with any ideas changing up the genre for Night of the Living Dead. It was pretty challenging to do anything on the software, being not very familiar with it.

Downloaded a few sound files to add to sound effects, mostly sci-fi psychedelic sounding effects which is the theme I'm going for with the assignment.

Started to look at sound libraries and gathering wacky and creepy/futuristic sounds

Week 2, Session 1 | 26.07.21

The emotional tone I want to create in the assignment are feelings of confusion, anxiety and paranoia. Almost like a bad LSD trip.

The concept of increasing heart rate will be focused in this assignment. The cuts will get increasing faster as the rhythm picks up just like your heart beat going faster almost to the point of exhaustion. It will feel like your heart will come to a stop but doesn't.

With the concept in mind, the visuals from "Man the Incredible Machine" will hopefully add some depth supported by clips of flowing blood cells and human body imagery. With this in mind, I hope to match the pace of the cuts with the increasing heart rate.

Challenges may arise with the audio source that's been given to us. I've had to switch audio source because I felt like the first one didn't convey feelings of urgency enough. As with the second audio source, it will be a challenge to find dialogue that matches my concept.

*Note from future me
While the previous session's inspirations don't quite match the end result, the faster pace/rhythm and increasing heart rate to create urgency remained in the final cut.

Week 2, Session 2 | 29.07.21

Started looking at storyboarding and how it will relate to our assignment design process.

The storyboarding kind of helped out with the flow of story, but since my concept was very basic, it didn't provide or strengthen my concept. Basically my idea was missing some depth.

Non-diegetic sound will include heart beats at an increasing rate.

We had our videos reviewed and got some feedback from classmates, from first impression I could see that my video was very confusing and didn't make much sense at all and had no flow.

I decided to review all the other source materials again, I took the other parts of the footage of the "Man the Incredible Machine" and tried to make another video out of it, I ended up coming up with a chase sequence and ended up being a minute too short.

*Note from future me

*This is the point where I changed up my concept to a chase scene from the fever dream scene

Week 3, Session 1 | 02.08.21

I was going back and forth between my initial idea and new idea. After some discussion with other classmates, it was clear that I was overthinking it, maybe since it was the first assignment, I wanted it to be a high standard and found myself stuck in a limbo of "should I just flesh out my first idea?" or "okay I kind of like my second chase scene idea."

I ultimately chose the chase scene because watching it through, it felt suspenseful in my eyes as oppose to the initial "fever dream" idea which felt too simple. So the chase sequence is what I chose.

I didn't fully scrap my initial idea, I took parts of when he was dreaming, to what he was imagining instead. So in his mind, he was fixated on this woman in the beginning of the video, then it transitions into the chase scene.

Week 3, Session 2 | 05.08.21

We had a proper peer review session during our last session before Friday submission and we all go to review our videos, provide constructive criticism for our video drafts. I found this extremely helpful, I was basically stumped for a long time with my video concept. It changed a lot during the course of a few days.

I was actually very anxious to see what my classmates were going to think about my very undercooked piece of work, but it turned out to be a lifesaver. I took the suggestions in the comments to consideration and was able to come up with a backstory to my "thriller" as someone described, chase scene.

By the end of the session, we had time to work on our video, ended up creating an introduction and resolve at the end of the video. "Man becomes obsessed with lady" to "chasing her down" to "she got away safely."

Seeing peers' work did help me push for the finish line too, it was refreshing to see what others came up with and got a little inspired to keep going.

Week 3, Final Day | 06.08.21

Definitely should've fleshed this one to its final draft before the feedback session so I could see if there were any issues to work on in the final cut. l guess for next assignment, I would manage my time better but overall not bad, realized the importance of feedback

Final edit notes:

- Added in sound effects for the woman running and heavy footstep thumps for added effect.

- Took out any dialogue as it didn't add or help anything with the story.

Future habits/reflections:

- Don't overthink it

- Get as much feedback as possible

- Get as many draft and iterations done for feedback

- Try to blog and screenshot everything as you go

Things I gained:

- Had little to no knowledge on Premiere Pro, now I have little to some knowledge on Premiere Pro

- Insight on how class work ties into the assignment work, how to slowly apply those skills learnt in class into the assignment.

Early stages of editing and putting files into Premiere Pro for the first time

Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow -- The Alien / The Bear (Above)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOXyLMtx4tM&ab_channel=TWISTEDWIND

I was messing around with cutting, I think my thought process here was that I was trying to find things I could extract out for an isolated 20 second clip.

Early scenes, showing fever dream type scenes

Final storyboarding shown above, obviously did this one a little later during the process just to get into the practice of making boards, but I think for future planning, I will get into storyboarding a bit more and try to use it to my advantage for a more coherent story.

(I couldn't find my old storyboard screenshots, which I will note for future me, to screenshot everything along the process.)

Chase scene stitched in with an intro that evolved from the fever dream idea.

Parts of the initial idea being used for the intro that I came up with with Liam's suggestion in the peer review session mentioned below. "Why is he chasing her?" is basically what is happening in the intro.

"I guess the easiest way to lengthen this is to come up with some kind of resolution that this is all building towards: does he catch the woman? Why is he chasing her? Answer these questions and that will take you to the finish line."

Peer reviews helped a ton, what you thought was bad, ended up being alright, which helped push me through the brick wall, or the procrastination phase.