Post-Production
Wait, before I blog about the post-production that's been going, I would like to raise up this issue. With all due respect, I seriously think this blogging is a waste of time. Or more like, keeping a reflection journal is a waste of time. Not only does it take up precious time, but it is also pointless. For example, all of us have been so busy with our productions and post-productions. When do we get the time to blog? Or to update our entries? For me, I have another module and I have committments to doing assignments for that module as well, so it just adds on to our workload unnecessarily. Besides, why even blog? Honestly, if the purpose isto reflect, or the fact that we'll learn from our mistakes or whatsoever, seriously, the purpose is defeated. Because ti simply does not fit the purpose. I've realised that I've been blogging for the sake of it and writing down my feelings here. But how is that relevant to P1? Moreover, it being graded? I honestly feel that keeping a journal for every module is SERIOUSLLY VERY VERY VERY pointless. I mean come on, who looks back and reads it? I don't think anyone does, at least I don't. I don't even learn anything from it. You see, instead spending precious time blogging or updating our journals, why not spend that same amount of time on IMPROVISING on our final product for P1. As I speak and blog, my precious time, especially now that it's nearing the end of the module, is being wasted because I can't work on my post-production as I'm spending that time writing this entry. Not only for P1 module, but the same goes for the rest of the modules. MMFun expects us to write a reflection journal - I ask why? Especially in hectic times like these when most of the blood, sweat and tears should be spent on polishing up our final assignments. I can't stress how I'm upset over this matter, and I sincerely hope that lecturers do take note of my point and take some actions. Thank you.
Back to P1. Post-production is going. My workflow had been good, and bad at some points in time.
I started out with editing the clips in Premiere. Simple cutting and blocking out the timing. Once that was done, I exported all the audio from the edit and imported them into Audition, where I removed background noise for every single dialogue clip. I wouldn't say that it's difficult to do this, but when it comes to removing noise for over 50 different clips, then not only does it get irritating, but it also gets very frustrating. Anyway, once I was done with that, I exported the audio clips and brought them back into Premiere and lined them up with the rough edit that I had created. Once that was done, I adjusted the audio levels to maintain a constant volume througout the entire piece. Next, I moved on to editing it further with fade-ins and fade-outs and other transitions. My mountains animation was being rendered, but the render time was incrediby expensive - 2-3 days. However, interim was the following day thus I sent the files to Wendy and Jem who helped render the rest of the frames. We hasd managed to set up a mini render farm of 4 computers =) It did feel like industry standard.
Once the animation was done, the two of them sent me their rendered frames. Oh, Greg couldn't be part of this render farm because he owns a MacBook while the rest of us own Windows. Sorry bro =) Anyway, I then fitted in the mountains at the end of the clip. I composited my lamp over the live action footage as well. Once the rough edit with transitions was done, I decided to concentrate on creating and perfecting the opening sequence.
The scroll scene. Being the opening scene, it had to be massive and impactful. Like you know, it should grab the audience's attention. Thus, I decided to spend the rest of the time until interim just designing the opening sequence. This time, my editing style changed. Because previously, especially for the opening and ending titles, I edited to the music, meaning I matched up my visuals to the audio. However, this time it was plain video. No audio. The sound that we had recorded on the set was meant to be discarded because it did not play any role. There were no dialogues also - only Greg's performance. Thus, I wildly did some time-remapping and editing in After Effects and exported out the sequence. I imported this sequence into Audition and decided to work on the audio. I searched my collection of sound effects that I had gotten from the net and used some of them. For this scene, I wanted every movement of Greg's to look and sound important, thus I wanted to emphasize this through the use of sound effects. So during the slow motion scenes, I added specific sounds to heavily emphasize Greg's acting. This was a very tedious and frustrating process because it was quite hard to match up the sounds at exact points in time with the video. Once all the sound effects were lined up, I adujusted their volumes and amplification so that it did not blast and turn out all horrible and noisy. Now, it was time to add in the background score. I searched my iTunes for something suitable and I found it - from Narnia once again. That movie has some really good soundtracks. Awesome! I lined it up with my video and did some cuts and minor editing and voila - it fit. I was happy.
With that being done, I added sequnce in my edit and I was good to go for rendering for interim. The total duration of the clip was 10 min 40 sec. Exceeding way too much. I decided to further edit after the interim.
Wahidah gave us some comments for the interim - adjust the sound, further equalize it. Currently, there was no background score for the entire piece except for the start and end, thus I had to work on that. End of presentation - went pretty okay.
Now, back to some serious hardcore post-production. Been further editing to get the sequence under 10 minutes because transitions and all the extra stuff will take up time. I started out with Jem's photography scene. I found the right music from the movie Troy and put it together with the edit. I then imported the sequence into After Effects for further editing. I did overall and selective colour correction, did some introductory titles for the module, removing grain and a few other effects (blur, shake, etc.) to make the video look interesting. It was horrible to work on my laptop as it was slow. Scrubbing through the timeline was laggy too. Thus, a lot of patience required. Once, the rendering failed on my laptop thus I brought everything down to my desktop pc and rendered it there. It took 45 minutes for a one minute clip to render. While it was being rendered, I worked on my lamp animation for the second shot. This time it was longer and a little bit harder. I was trying out the graph editor in Maya to get the weight and physics right for my lamp. Again, I rendered it with global illumination and composited it my live action shot.
The rendering downstairs was done. Next, I moved on to working on the animation fundamentals sequence where greg, Wendy and I are involved in the sequence. Again, I worked on colour correction, titles effect and this time, I added grain to my lamp animation to match it with the background footage. It's rendering right now.
After that, I would be further editing other clips and doing the final touch ups before tomorrow's consulation with Wahidah.
Hope Greg is doing well with his 2D animation.
Stress stress...so little time..so much to do
(hope that hasn't become my cliche line)
Shall blog once I'm done with everything.
Back to P1. Post-production is going. My workflow had been good, and bad at some points in time.
I started out with editing the clips in Premiere. Simple cutting and blocking out the timing. Once that was done, I exported all the audio from the edit and imported them into Audition, where I removed background noise for every single dialogue clip. I wouldn't say that it's difficult to do this, but when it comes to removing noise for over 50 different clips, then not only does it get irritating, but it also gets very frustrating. Anyway, once I was done with that, I exported the audio clips and brought them back into Premiere and lined them up with the rough edit that I had created. Once that was done, I adjusted the audio levels to maintain a constant volume througout the entire piece. Next, I moved on to editing it further with fade-ins and fade-outs and other transitions. My mountains animation was being rendered, but the render time was incrediby expensive - 2-3 days. However, interim was the following day thus I sent the files to Wendy and Jem who helped render the rest of the frames. We hasd managed to set up a mini render farm of 4 computers =) It did feel like industry standard.
Once the animation was done, the two of them sent me their rendered frames. Oh, Greg couldn't be part of this render farm because he owns a MacBook while the rest of us own Windows. Sorry bro =) Anyway, I then fitted in the mountains at the end of the clip. I composited my lamp over the live action footage as well. Once the rough edit with transitions was done, I decided to concentrate on creating and perfecting the opening sequence.
The scroll scene. Being the opening scene, it had to be massive and impactful. Like you know, it should grab the audience's attention. Thus, I decided to spend the rest of the time until interim just designing the opening sequence. This time, my editing style changed. Because previously, especially for the opening and ending titles, I edited to the music, meaning I matched up my visuals to the audio. However, this time it was plain video. No audio. The sound that we had recorded on the set was meant to be discarded because it did not play any role. There were no dialogues also - only Greg's performance. Thus, I wildly did some time-remapping and editing in After Effects and exported out the sequence. I imported this sequence into Audition and decided to work on the audio. I searched my collection of sound effects that I had gotten from the net and used some of them. For this scene, I wanted every movement of Greg's to look and sound important, thus I wanted to emphasize this through the use of sound effects. So during the slow motion scenes, I added specific sounds to heavily emphasize Greg's acting. This was a very tedious and frustrating process because it was quite hard to match up the sounds at exact points in time with the video. Once all the sound effects were lined up, I adujusted their volumes and amplification so that it did not blast and turn out all horrible and noisy. Now, it was time to add in the background score. I searched my iTunes for something suitable and I found it - from Narnia once again. That movie has some really good soundtracks. Awesome! I lined it up with my video and did some cuts and minor editing and voila - it fit. I was happy.
With that being done, I added sequnce in my edit and I was good to go for rendering for interim. The total duration of the clip was 10 min 40 sec. Exceeding way too much. I decided to further edit after the interim.
Wahidah gave us some comments for the interim - adjust the sound, further equalize it. Currently, there was no background score for the entire piece except for the start and end, thus I had to work on that. End of presentation - went pretty okay.
Now, back to some serious hardcore post-production. Been further editing to get the sequence under 10 minutes because transitions and all the extra stuff will take up time. I started out with Jem's photography scene. I found the right music from the movie Troy and put it together with the edit. I then imported the sequence into After Effects for further editing. I did overall and selective colour correction, did some introductory titles for the module, removing grain and a few other effects (blur, shake, etc.) to make the video look interesting. It was horrible to work on my laptop as it was slow. Scrubbing through the timeline was laggy too. Thus, a lot of patience required. Once, the rendering failed on my laptop thus I brought everything down to my desktop pc and rendered it there. It took 45 minutes for a one minute clip to render. While it was being rendered, I worked on my lamp animation for the second shot. This time it was longer and a little bit harder. I was trying out the graph editor in Maya to get the weight and physics right for my lamp. Again, I rendered it with global illumination and composited it my live action shot.
The rendering downstairs was done. Next, I moved on to working on the animation fundamentals sequence where greg, Wendy and I are involved in the sequence. Again, I worked on colour correction, titles effect and this time, I added grain to my lamp animation to match it with the background footage. It's rendering right now.
After that, I would be further editing other clips and doing the final touch ups before tomorrow's consulation with Wahidah.
Hope Greg is doing well with his 2D animation.
Stress stress...so little time..so much to do
(hope that hasn't become my cliche line)
Shall blog once I'm done with everything.
posted by Neeraj Pattani at
5:01 AM
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