I really can't draw. I used to draw a lot when I was a child. In fact, I would even say I was pretty good at it. But. Somewhere along the way I lost the skill to draw.

I'm okay with it. Not so okay when I am forced to draw in some way. For example, our design teacher at school made us draw initial designs. She somehow believed that forcing us to draw a little would make those who couldn't draw suddenly talented at it.

I found. In no uncertain terms. That I didn't wake up one morning with the sudden ability to draw. The days of my childhood where I was comfortable with a pencil in hand are gone forever. Truly gone. But. Like I said, I am okay with that. What I don't like about being forced to draw for a project is that I know my drawings don't look good. And. I see that, pure and simple, as presenting something that does not reflect how it looks in my head. Something that doesn't look professional.

That's the essence of it for me. People who can draw can capture what they see, out in the world, or, whatever is inside their head. I see what is inside of my head. But. Drawing it. Showing it to others. Awful idea. Utterly and totally awful.

So, now that I am planning a video for one of redWEB's clients … Wuh! Yes. I skipped that little nugget of news didn't I? Yes. I am now going to be making a video that will feature on a client's website. Meaning, I have to come up with ideas. Present those ideas to colleagues and the clients.

I need to make a storyboard.

But. I don't need to draw. Neither do we have the budget to employ a storyboard artist. Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away …. Or, at least, on a hard drive that has been sitting in my desk drawer since my used-to-be-a-film-dude days … I remembered I had a copy of Storyboard Artist from Power Productions.

So, an-upgrade-to-the-latest-version-later, and I am making storyboards using this very nifty piece of software.

The idea of Storyboard Artists is simple. You have a timeline. You add to that timeline a series of shots. And. Each shot is composed of 2D or even 3D characters pre-drawn for you inside the software. Each character is customisable. So, you can really give each character an individual look. You can also choose from a range of backgrounds and props to add to each shot. You can pan and zoom. You can animate. Basically, you can make a storyboard-come-animatic of a scene to see how it looks.

You can also add music. Sound effects. You can pre-realise your ideas in as much detail as you need. Without having to draw anything.

I spent most of the day today (yesterday by the time you read this) using Storyboard Artist. The sequence I made was short. But. What I saw in my head was pretty much what I captured in the software. There are limitations of course. However. You can write as many notes as needed next to each frame, so, the resulting storyboard really reflected my imagination.

I felt free. To create. Not hindered by the fact that … I CAN'T DRAW!

The best part is that what I have to present to colleagues at redWEB, and, eventually the clients, will look presentable. I won't be standing there feeling embarrassed by my clumsy drawings. Storyboard Artist really makes it all about the ideas; which is what needs the attention when presenting and discussing storyboards in meetings with others.

I didn't quite finish my sequence today. I got to the point where I was about to try adding some sound effects. However. I had scheduled to re-shoot the interview I did with Christian some weeks ago. So, I had to set up the lights, etc, and film.

It didn't take me long to set things up. I have used these lights and the camera a few times now.  I know how it all fits together. This probably shows in some way. In fact, it totally shows because I took more than an extra 5 minutes to adjust the lights once Christian was in front of the camera; I felt comfortable doing that. I was determined to get it right. And. I did. The lighting looked perfect …. A little colour grading needed (as always), but, no harsh shadows from glasses. The lighting looked just right.

Compare this to what I got the last time:

I showed a few people part of the first interview I did. None of them thought the lighting looked odd. But then I pointed it out:

The thing with the window not being properly in frame is purely an esthetic thing. I had planned to have it in frame. I just didn't take the time adjust lights and frame up properly.

The shadow from Christian's glasses on the left side of his face might not seem big. But. Over a period of time. Watching the interview. Watching Christian move his head. That shadow really becomes a bother. The same goes for the spot reflections in the right lens of his glasses. They don't look so bad in a still shot (a photo). But. On video they get in the way. More importantly. They interfere with his eyes. They stop the audience from seeing his eyes fully, and, in an interview where the subject needs to convey his thoughts and feelings in an honestly … Those light spots just partly destroy that feeling.

When you compare it to the shot I had planned:

Then you can really see that what I filmed in the first interview really wasn't what I wanted to capture.

So, a rethink. A new part of the office. And. Now we have an interview that looks great, and, to be honest is a better interview. I have interviewed a few people from redWEB now. Each time I feel I am getting better at it. Becoming more focused on the things I need to cover with each person. In the first interview with Christian I felt that I had to try and cover everything. When. What I needed to do is just cover the things that are relevant to him.

The interview yesterday lasted 15 minutes. I will edit it down to 3 minutes and post it to redWEB's new YouTube channel in the coming weeks.

What I love about throwing videos out on Social Media is the immediacy of it. Making a film used to be about finishing it and finding an audience. With sites like YouTube and Vimeo, well, your audience can find the video and decide within a few seconds whether it is something they want to watch. And, the best thing is that once the video is live, unless you delete it, it is there for people to find months and even years after you've uploaded it.

Video has a life of its own thanks to Social Media.

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So, we're into week 3 of my internship @ redWEB.

I spent most of monday writing notes about how we can "package" video for redWeb's clients. It was a tough task, one that comes down to estimating how long it takes to do all the little jobs involved with making a film. For example, research … How long do you schedule for good old fashioned research? Storyboarding … How long might it take to storyboard a 3 minute video?

I think the estimates I made are actually quite accurate. But, of course, there are always things that take longer than expected, so, it will be interesting to compare these estimates with how long it really takes to do all these film-producing jobs.

Tomorrow I start filming on the mini-documenatary about redWEB. This will be part of my final thesis, which, I have decided will be about how to use video for marketing and communication. Their will also be a healthy dose of Social Media thrown into the mix, too.

In preparation for filming tomorrow I spent today testing my set up. I have a small Panasonic HD video camera, a H2 Zoom digital audio recorder, and, a set of lights that I borrowed from Aarhus Film Workshop. In fact, I am very grateful to Aarhus Film Workshop. It has been quite some time since I have been there doing filmy stuff, so, it was very generous of them to agree to loan me a few lights for my degree project.

The lights I have are known as "Red Heads". They're small, not particularly lightweight, but, they are perfect for small video projects like this one.

The lights worked perfectly. The small HD camera isn't "professional" by any stretch of the imagination. But. It shoots 1080p at 30 frames a second, or, 1080i at 60 frames. I chose 1080p at 30 frames. The "p" stands for "progressive," which, also means that the video has more of a fluid look, as opposed to the dryer "video" look of 1080i -- the "i" stands for "interlaced," which, means you're shooting video with two fields, upper and lower, and that's what gives it the dry video look.

I used to shoot a lot of stuff on DV. I remember spending a lot rendering time de-interlacing DV to give it more of a fluid, or, film-like, look. Most HD cameras have the ability to shoot progressively, which looks great and saves all that rendering time later on trying to achieve the film look.

If video becomes a regular thing for me down at redWEB, then, long term it will be a good idea to invest in a Canon EOS 600D, or, something similar. Why? Well …. http://vimeo.com/24000798

With the small camera I have at the moment we can produce good quality video with a little fiddling in post production. But. With a Canon EOS, well, you get the quality of HD video combined with exceptional optics, and, the results look amazing.

The best thing is that the Canon cameras aren't hugely expensive. So. If video continues down at redWEB after my internship, meaning, if I continue making videos for them, then, I'll go out and buy one with my first pay cheque if necessary -- we'll really be able to start producing videos that look way beyond good quality. But. Good quality is where we'll start for now.

So, today's aim was to test the Panasonic HD camera and see what we can do.

I started out with setting up the camera and shooting a shot of myself sitting in a chair, as though being interviewed, no lights, no jiggery-pokery of any kind:

The next thing I did was set up the lights. Nothing fancy. I used two lights. A key light at a 45 degree(ish) angle off to my right, and, a fill light off to my left. The fill light was low, about a meter off the floor, and, actually pointing away from me. The fill was pointed at a large white reflector, which diffuses and reflects the light back onto me:

One of the nice effects of placing a large reflector board in front of a subject is that it gives a nice highlight to their eyes. The reflector is actually reflected in their eyes. You see this effect all the time, and, perhaps never really think about it. You can use light directly to give a subject highlights in their eyes. But. For this situation I felt using the reflector board to do it gives a much more subtle and natural looking effect.

I filmed myself for a minute or so. I also had my H2 Zoom audio recorder set up just off to my left. It's a really good quality recorder, and, I know it gives much better results than the onboard microphone on the little HD camera. On top of that, I can place the H2 Zoom much closer to the subject, where as the camera, in this situation, is actually about 4 meters away.

Having filmed myself, it was then time to transfer the results onto the computer and perform some more jiggery-pokery:

I opened up Premiere and literally started editing right away. With FCPX I spent the first few hours trying to figure out where things were. And, even when I started editing, Apple (in their infinite-loopy wisdom) decided to change the workflow as well, so, choosing clips and getting them onto the timeline -- which actually isn't a timeline at all in the new FCP -- was just plain awkward.

So, I have switched to Premiere for the time being. I am also interested in checking out Avid Media Composer. But. Premiere works, so, Premiere it is for now.

Having loaded in my test footage the first thing todo was take the audio I'd record in the H2 Zoom and sync it up. This took me about five minutes. It's just a case of dropping the audio onto the timeline and moving it until the sound from the camera and the sound you have added are aligned. You can really hear it when it isn't aligned, even if it is off by a single frame, you can hear a slight echo. Once the external sound was synced, I switched off the sound from the camera footage, and, suddenly I had much fuller and clearer sound.

I should say at this point that I did spend some time in Bias Peak Studio cleaning up the sound from the H2 before dropping it in Premiere.

Now it was time to perform the extra jiggery-pokery. I wanted to add an effect that works really well for further highlighting a subject. I wanted to blur the background slightly. This involves layering two lots of video on top of each other. The bottom layer is your footage with a slight gaussian blur. The top layer is your footage with a garbage or shape matte applied to it. A garbage or shape matte cuts out your subject and removes most of the background. But. Because you have the background, etc, in your first layer of video, the effect makes your subject sharp, with the background slightly blurred. Feather the edges of the garbage or shape matte and the two layers blend together seamlessly.

It's an effect that works really well, and, I have to say that I like it so much that I will have to make sure I don't over use it from now on.

The next step was to do a little colour grading. I adjusted the contrast and brightness a little, and, the saturation. I had manually set the white balance on the camera when I filmed to adjust it to the lighting conditions, so, no real colour correction was needed.

The final result, I feel, is actually a much richer looking picture. The subject is highlighted in a very subtle and natural looking way. All in all, good results from a camera that, as I said earlier, is a long way from the more professional cameras available.

The test, however, had two down sides. The first, the room was very echoey. While I managed to tweak the sound from the H2 zoom, I couldn't get rid of what the echoey room did to my voice completely -- it sounded a little hollow. To combat this tomorrow -- I am interviewing my boss Christian in the same room -- I went out to a hardware store and bought a bunch of thick moving blankets. I will hang them in suitable places in the room which should help deaden the echo.

The second down side, which, isn't really a downside … rendering! Having performed all the jiggery-pokery I wanted to do on my test footage I went to render the results. The compute came up with an estimate of three hours! So, I left the rendering until it was time for me to go home. I then set it to render and will see the full results of today's test first thing tomorrow morning.

I did take the still images I posted here, so, from those I have a pretty good idea of what the final results will look like.

I can't wait to film the interview tomorrow. I have been talking about filming and doing videos down at redWEB since I arrived, and. tomorrow I will finally be able to start doing more than just talk.

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DevilsRun.mov Watch on Posterous

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Well, it's the end of week two of my internship @ redWEB.dk.

This week I have mostly been working on sound effects for a flash game. We spent a whole morning last Tuesday recording as many different sounds as we could using, well, anything we could find. I actually took all of my daughter's musical instruments and rattly things to the office just for the occasion.

I also took in a USB stick with a library of sound effects that I happen to own. I mean, you can't be a used-to-be-filmmaker-come-filmaker-again without having things like sound effects kicking around on a hard drive somewhere.

I also spent some time searching for sound effects online. There are plenty of websites around (soundjay.com, for example), however, the game that we're making is for commercial purposes, so, I really had to make sure that whatever we downloaded was free for such use.

It's a whole different level, in a way, than producing projects at school. I mean, we borrowed all sorts of media for school projects because we knew they'd not really go beyond the realms of the school. But. Out in the commercial world of website and multimedia production you really have to make sure you have the rights to use the media you find online; it'll be the company you're working for and you who'll get into trouble if you don't check the rights.

We made many of the sound effects we're using for the flash game. Supplementing any gaps from the library I already have the rights to use, and, some sounds from soundjay.com -- a useful site, as most of the sounds there are free for personal and commercial use.

Having recorded our own sounds for an entire morning, it was then my job to process them. This involved running the sounds through Bias Peak Pro 7, using Sound Soap Pro to clean away any unwanted background noise, etc. I then had to clip each piece of sound as tightly as possible, and, export each one as an mp3.

(Photo by @CBennike)

We ended up with about 150 sound effects, which, took me 12.5 hours to process.

Why am I being so exact about the time spent? Well, now that I am out in the big wide world of commercial web and media production, I have to account properly for my time. The same will hold for anything I do in future at redWEB. For example, I am starting to film the mini-documentary about the company next week, so, as soon as I start a particular part of the process -- like editing, for example -- I need to track how long it takes me.

This isn't because my boss at redWEB is breathing down my neck. It's because if redWEB is going to keep making videos for their clients in future, we need to know how long it takes to do certain things. We'll then know, for example, that editing a 3 minute video takes 16 hours. That way, we know how to budget projects for clients, and, give accurate estimates on how long the process takes.

This is a whole new way of thinking for me. I have never been one to track my time. I mean, as a student (especially one with a family), I just worked as long as I needed to work to get a project done. The same went for writing, and, making the films I have made previously; we had a schedule, but, we were young and reckless and thought nothing of pulling a string of all-nighters just to get things done.

All-nighters are a thing of the past for me. I have a family. A daughter who wakes up early, even at the weekend. Also, I am forty! When I was twenty, I could pull an all-nighter and not think twice. These days, well, it takes days to recover from missing a night of sleep.

So. Learning to be older and wiser. I realise it's time to track my time. Figure out how long it takes to edit a three minute video or process 150 sound effects for a flash game. That way, I (and redWEB) know how long it will take the next time we do it, so, we can schedule the correct amount of time during sensible working hours to get the job done right.

It takes 12.5 hours to process 150 sound effects. It might take a little less time the next time as we'll find ways to do things quicker. But. For now. It takes 12.5 hours. Not a minute more. And certainly not a minute less.

Sounds like this:

Bewaaargh-MP3 128.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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See the full gallery on Posterous

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Here's links to:

UP THERE

GOOD FUCKING DESIGN ADVICE

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