What I Learned in 160

This semester was pretty fun. I didn't like the switch to the new portfolio though... It's too boxy now! Anyway, it felt like we did less this semester compared to 150, but then again the movie project was a lot bigger and had multiple parts to it. I definitely learned more hands-on stuff this semester. I found out I'm pretty freaking good at this stuff! Haha, well, I don't really know about that. It was just a coincidence that during this same semester I was taking Portable Video Production and Intro to Animation (Kelly and Marty suggested it!), and the two big projects of this semester were a video and an animation :).

I remember my first day in 160 lab I said I wanted to do something in production. I kind of just said it because I felt I needed an answer, but now I definitely know I don't want to be in production. Maybe pre or post production. Production is such a pain!

"Take 2 3 4 500 600 700"

"Why aren't you following the storyboard?"

"What was my line again?"

"Stop ad-libbing"

"Wait that guy wasn't there before"

"Was that always there?"

"What was that sound?"

"Out of memory??"

"Hold on I gotta take this"

"They're looking at us weird"

"Sorry you can't have that camera on in this area" Yes, we ffffffffffing can, SIR.

"How long have we been here?

"I'm hungry"

I figured I'm more of a behind the scenes or computer-using guy. Coming up with ideas is always fun, and having someone laugh, nod and agree to your ideas is even better. There's also the frustration from the disagreeing of ideas.

Oh, and I remember I said I'd like to work for NBC on the first day of lab. I realize they always joke about how nobody watches NBC. I also guessed they must not have been doing very well to have Comcast buy 51% of the network... but a lot of my favorite shows are still on NBC and I'd still like to join their team. Maybe and hopefully as a writer for The Tonight Show with Conan O'brien, Saturday Night Live, or Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I wrote that in order of likeness by the way. If not a writer then I'd just like to assist in their digital sketches.

So anyway, this semester I also learned how useful storyboarding is. I remember in 150 all we did was a shot list for our in-camera edit. I mean that was pretty useful, too, but not as detailed and not as easy to look at. It's nice that even after getting the shots, the storyboard was still useful for editing. Our shots were allll over the place; mainly because we had one person help, so we had to get all the shots where we needed him first. We were able to go back to the storyboard to put the shots in order in our bin in Final Cut.

Final Cut is such a useful program. I first learned the importance of organization, with the folders and the bins and the labeling, which really came in handle with so many shots. Then all we had to do next was to set the in and out points then place them into the timeline. Learning how to unlink audio from video was very useful too, for voiceovers and music.

The animation project was fun. This time it was all me; all my idea and in my own pace. There was no rush, and I was free to change any ideas whenever I wanted to. I take the train for an hour to Hunter and another hour back home everyday I have class, so that's a lot of daydreaming. Whenever ideas for the project drifted into my mind, I wrote it down. Whenever I was bored or had some extra time, I was able to work on the animation a little. It didn't even feel like an assignment for a class.

What helped me the most was learning how to swap symbols. When you swap a symbol with another, it retains the transformations and placement. I was working on another project in my Intro to Animation class where the characters had a lot of lines, which meant tons of different mouth movements. Our Animation professor left out teaching us about swapping (To be honest, it was probably most likely in the reading) so I would have had to drag each mouth symbol in and resize it if I didn't learn how to swap from the Chapter 19 tutorial.

I started working on this class' animation before I got started on the tutorials, which was a bad idea. I set the eyes of my character as separate symbols, since they change so often. I was resizing and zooming in to try to match the original eye symbol precisely, but it never came out perfectly. After I went through the tutorial with swapping, things became a lot quicker and easier.

Well, thank-you, Ghen - assuming knowing that you're the only one who is reading this - for helping me this semester, and thanks for showing Kelly and Marty my work and having them show it in lecture. Because of that, I am confident in sticking to Media as my major :). I should go declare it tomorrow, huh...

By the way, in case you didn't notice, my extra credit blog is under this one!