Production and Completion

Now that all the pre-production stages have been developed, the next step of course is production. The most crucial programmes to use for this video are Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro and (for audio purposes) Soundbooth, without which I can't do very well.

This image shows a layout of the audio piece I picked in waveform mode. In order to increase the accuracy of synchronising the audio, I attempted to add markers to certain points of the patterned audio file, as can be seen on the right hand side of the picture. As I cut the original audio file down to size, the end needed to fade out when the last note was played. In order to achieve this, I applied a fade out mode and then applied a reverb setting in order to add echo. I then saved the file seperately from the original one, ready to imported into Premiere Pro.

Since the video I intended to make relies heavily on a certain form of CGI, (computer generated imagery) I used After Effects to compose all shots neccessary for the desired version. If there's one knack I have with After Effects, it's producing combinations and presets of different visual effects. Of course, one of the shots I thought up was a shot of Earth with a huge shower of comets that fly past, each synchronised in time with the music. And the way I went about doing that was to use use the Particle Systems II mode and a series of glow modes. With a few modifications, I created a simulation of a bright comet that leaves behind a trail of dust that I could position anywhere on screen. Duplicating several layers of this effect, I managed to create a kind of spectacular comet shower that flies past the Earth, leaving behind a trail of dust as it does so. As my laptop uses a lot of RAM and CPU usage, (doesn't all computers?) it took slow processing for the scene to render as more files are used and more layers are created in the composition. So I decided to split this particular shot into two compositions in order to speed up the process.

  

One method I used to create a simulation of the planet Earth in the star occupied vastness of space, was when I imported an JPEG file of the the world atlas and an image of space that I created a while ago. I used the CC sphere mode to transform the atlas into a spherical form. Then by, adjusting the lighting, ambient and diffusion, I created a convincing version of the Earth. To make the scene more three-dimensional, I converted both files into 3-D layers. Next is to create a camera mode, so I would be able to make the shot stand out more instead of looking like a two dimensional image. But adding postion and rotation keyframes, I made the camera move slightly away from the planet, as well as make it tilt slightly to make the shot a little more interesting.

In order to create the sun for certain shots, I used an animation preset which I had already produced using a combination of fractal noise, glows and colour tone. In order to give more sunlight, I used a lens flare on a seperate layer set to screen mode so it blended more with its surroundings and gave the sun more brightness. Once again, I used 3D layers and camera mode to make the scene more realistic.

As seen in the image above, I used Premiere Pro to edit all the pieces together. By importing all clips and the audio file, I moved everything into position in the timeline. I understood that I was supposed to have 10 seconds before the actual clip so I decided to add a kind of universal counting leader clip that counted down the last five seconds before the main movie clip began. I decided to create sort of beginning because I wanted to give it more of an old projector kind of feel. Once I had everything in place, I rendered all the files in the workspace and then exported it into a Quicktime movie.

Here is now a completed version of my movie clip, exported in Quicktime format complete with audio! Enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment.