#I am impossibly bad at composition and perspective and also I got this done by sheer dumb luck

[breitzbachbea]

Dai vicoli di Atene al centro di Dublino ...

After a disgraceful performance on an oral exam this monday, I tried to keep the shame at bay with self-indulgent treat.

Thusly, I crawled to @modernday-jay's Ko-Fi page and asked him to doodle me some GreSicIre coddling. So here we have Michele being cuddled by Herakles and Harry. Sicilian Sandwich between two slices of tender beef <3.

Which I then immediately took to badly photomanipulate atop a picture I took during my vacation to Palermo. I saw quite a few regional trains zipping around, all with this design that combines the colors of the Sicilian flag (red & yellow) with the European one (blue with yellow stars). #EuropeLovesSicily indeed.

(And please don't come for my shitty editing skills, I know that looks TERRIBLE perspective and composition-wise, my eye for such things has basically never been trained.)

[mdwfmp]

EVALUATION!!!!

OMG LAST PROJECT EVER IN MY THIRD YEAR OF UNI!

I have been really dreading this moment as its my last ever project I will be handing in. I wanted this project to be something I was really proud of, and that I remember as one of my best pieces of work. I wouldn’t say that I was ‘proud’ of the final outcome, but I am definitely proud of some of the effort I put into it considering i didnt like a lot of what I was producing and some of my instant instincts was to change it completely, but i pursued and produced an outcome i am happy with. 

From the beginning: Filming. The filming as stated in my blog didnt go to plan first time, I had to reshoot most of it with added lighting and different angle. But after the reshoot, the shots were good and i was happy to work with them as i knew i could colour grade further to make it look better.  Greenscreen. This didn’t go OK. Every time i incorporate greenscreen into a project it always goes tits up. I did tests and everything which was i created a perfect key from, but as soon as i film the actual thing it didn’t go so well. I had to shoot this twice as the first time it was so over exposed that when I applied ‘Log2Lin’, it turned white and all green had disappeared making it impossible to key, as well as it being noisy. The 2nd time I shot, I got Jack to do it for me. This time was better, but still some areas were very over exposed and was very hard to key due to there being lack of green. It was too late to reshoot however so i had to settle with this version. In the end the key was OK. There was a lot of grain due to a lot of light being taken out from her as her bottom half especially had a lot of bright light which was taken out along with the green. After a lot of effort and versions, i managed to get a good enough key, baring in mind i had to go back and adjust the colour grade in After Effects. 

Motion Graphics. This was something I was surprised I decided to create. I have done minimal motion graphics with in my three uni years, so I don’t know why I decided to do it now for my FMP!! With practice and tests, these went OK. I think I created some good graphs and holograms, however nothing like anything off Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar. I am pleased with some of the outcomes, but a lot of shots i just didn’t really know what to include, and I didn’t want to do a lot of copying from previous shots because then there wouldn't be much variety of skills included with in my motion graphics work.  I also hadn’t used after effects heavily for motion graphics since 1st year probably so it was nice to get back into it. After Effects if definitely my most comfortable software along with Photoshop.

MattePanting. This was the ‘hero’ shot of the sequence which I wanted. I like doing matte paintings and applying my ideas and inspiration to create something new. I had previously created some matte painting, but i had yet to  create one like this’ sci fi, daytime, city. I was quite excited to get into this shot. At first, there was slow progress and i started to doubt that it would look that good. But after a lot of adjustments, i managed to make something which i am rather pleased with. I know if not ‘film’ standards, but for me its al experience and practice with getting the correct perspectives, style, and composition. This is probably up there with one of my best matte paintings. I like the style, and luckily for me ‘Ghost in a Shell’ came out mid production, and that gave me a lot of influence and inspiration! it was exactly what i had in mind. One of the things which let the final matte painting shot down was when i added Hatty. The key isn’t great so i think that i makes the whole shot look a lot less effective and realistic than it could have. If i were to add a perfectly good key in, then this would be a really effective shot I think. 

Colour Grading. After looking at a the same shots for a long time, you forget to notice how bad the lighting is and how much it needs to be adjusted. As shown in my before and after shots of colour grading, it has made a vast different to a lot of the shots, which made the overall shots look a lot better. I don’t think I have had to colour grade anything so much in all my project, so i’m glad i got that experience, and it think it went ok. I know that some of the shots have hard light on them which was hard to remove within the colour grade so some of the shots are still a little bright and contrasty. 

Audio. i was pleased with the audio actually because its something i haven’t really experimented much with throughout uni. The News Report recording i think was a really good idea as its that extra narrative which makes it a little more clear to the audience. In Premier Pro i adjusted the audio, (as seen in my blog), to make the effect seem distant, and from a speaker. Any music expert would do this a lot better, but I think for my FMP it is effective enough, and it works. CONCLUSION. It makes me a little sad that I feel like i haven’t put 110% into al my project. But I think that the reason if that Im not great at all area of visual effects, and i definitely have my strengths and weaknesses. In majority of my projects including this one, I have tried to do everything myself, when in hindsight if i collaborated with people which had strengths which i lacked on, i could produce a way better outcome than what i do. I really wish I collaborated more with my class mates and animation because then i think i would be truly proud with the outcomes. Due to this, with in my FMP my strengths and weaknesses in shots do show, and it isn’t perfect. But i hope that my strengths do show out, and that I don’t get beaten down for the weakness with in it. 

Throughout my three years, I have progressed a lot, mostly during 2nd year, but considering when i first started I had never even touched After Effects, my skills have progressed a lot and i am proud of my current knowledge, and hope that i just get better and better with what i do with experience!