B R I E F 4

L O O K I N G A T I N S P I R A T I O N – 8/4/2021

When I think about videos that are informational and very graphic-heavy, Vox comes to mind. I really like how they make the most complex topics easy to understand by using imagery and an easy-to-follow script. I looked at a few Vox videos for inspiration and noticed how they highlight and emphasize certain words to give more of an impact to their point.

After I looked at some inspirations, I started writing my abstract. It wasn’t as complicated as I expected it to be, granted I had to think twice about just how much information I should include as I didn’t want to go over the word count. Looking at some of the previous level 5 student’s work, I could see how they had a 50/50 divide between talking about the research and talking about the work. This helped me summarize some of the points up. I also heavily relied on Grammarly in terms of grammar and sentence structure. Since it’s meant to be academic writing, I didn’t want to make careless mistakes and wanted it to look proper. Once I finished my draft, I had Chris have quick look at it just to make sure I was in the right direction. I was relieved that Chris thought I had summarized my research and project up well. He just told me to clear up why exactly I’m directing my work towards an age group of 8-12 years old. This was something I made note of including when I write about the work as it is quite pertinent to the project as a whole. Another thing he commented on was just some grammar errors that I overlooked (always read through the paragraphs a few times, it really helps!!!).

Once I was confident enough in my abstract, I recorded the voiceover. Something that Chris suggested to me was that I should record my voiceover first before I sit down to do my storyboard. He said I could listen to the recording as I sketch out the scenes. Honestly the best advice. It helped my workflow go smoothly and I was able to put in timestamps at each scene/sentence too, which helped me stay organized. I had to record it in my closet with all the windows and doors, of the room outside, shut to ensure ABSOLUTE CLARITY. I naively thought that clarity would be my biggest issue when it came to recording. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much work speaking would be. I found that I had a habit of eating up my words and it took me at least a couple of takes before I was warmed up and I could properly record without eating or stumbling over my words. After I was happy with the recording, I used After Effects to combine my voice-over along with the background music I found. Looking for the background music was another interesting experience. I found most of the space/sci-fi-y background music were way too dramatic for the type of video I was imagining. I then decided to look for some background music that was similar to the kind Vox use, as they are one of my inspirations. Which lead me to Synthematic C by Derek Moody. It had a very light and floaty feeling to it, almost like there are butterflies in your stomach. I thought it was very apt for an “exciting” video.

I used a mixture of procreate and After Effects to create the video abstract. I really wanted it to have a notebook feel to it, almost like someone is writing down notes, to continue with the education theme. I used procreate to create the animated, jiggly doodles, while the rest of the video was After Effects. I was incredibly grateful for the After Effects workshop we had with Johnny as they really helped in making After Effects feel a lot more familiar. Thanks to the workshop, I had an easier time looking for specific tutorials as I knew the terminology and had a basic sense of what was doable on After Effects. One thing I really wish I looked at before trying to render the video an hour before the review session was how to export the video. My first attempt at exporting the video resulted in a 26 GB file size video that wouldn’t even play in quick time. However, thanks to a quick search online, I learned how to use Media Encoder and was able to render and export the file (the file size was 128 MB, a huge difference!) and upload it on to YouTube within half an hour.

Here is a playlist of all the tutorials that helped me beside Johnny’s workshop:

V I D E O R E V I E W – 15/4/2021

The review session for this video was very casual, which was really nice. We were able to go through all of the videos and storyboard submitted and Paddy, Chris and Nicole commented on each video as we went along. They suggested ways in which we could improve the video further or gave ideas to people who were still at a work in progress stage. For my video, they commented on how it felt exciting, a bit naïve and appropriate for my audience, which I was relieved to hear. Paddy suggested that I could check the frame rate for some of the doodles at the start of the video as they were a bit too slow for the video and felt a bit lag-y. Chris also suggested that I could hold a few seconds on pictures of my outcome, so it doesn’t feel as rushed. I was really glad that all of the changes suggested were easy to work out and I didn’t have to change anything major.

F I N A L R E V I S E D O U T C O M E