Video and Sound Production - Exercises

Week 1

Video Editing Exercise

This was an exercise we did in class, basically in order to familiarise ourselves in using Premiere Pro. We were shown what we had to do. We were given clips in the order from a video and then we had to arrange the timeline accordingly.

Figure 1.0 - Exercise 1

In part 2 of the exercise it was the same concept except the clips given weren't in order. We had to watch the clips and then arrange them in order to make the full video.

Figure 1.1 - Exercise 2

Week 2

 Exercise 1- Framing and Story Board Exercise

During the lecture, we were taught about the different kinds of shots and framing. From this we were given an exercise to make a video of the different kinds of shots.

The types of shots given in this exercise were

• Low angle Wide shot

• Frontal MCU (soft  background)

• Frontal MS (soft  background)

• Extreme Close-Up shot

• Profile MS (soft  background)

• ¾ angling MCU shot (with blurry/soft  foreground)

• Close-Up shot   

• Eye-Level Medium-Wide shot 

The one thing I was unable to achieve during the exercise is getting the background blur effect, as my phone did not support this.

Below is the final result of the exercise.

Figure 1.2 - Framing Exercise

Exercise 2 - Editing Exercise

In this exercise we were asked to watch a video and then given small video clips along with the story board. By following the story board we had to make proper cuts from each video clip and combine them seamlessly on Premiere Pro. 

The main things we had to concentrate on are 

- Trimming videos by creating IN and OUT points

- Using transition for a seamless effect

Figure 1.3 - Editing Process

Final Outcome

Figure 1.3 - Final Outcome

Feedback:

Week 2 

Shooting exercise: I made a few mistakes on the first video that I submitted. Mr Martin noted that the framing for extreme close up and fontal MCU shots weren't tight enough. The angling of 3/4 MCU shot was wrong. I corrected my mistakes after this and resubmitted the exercise.

Week 3

This weeks lecture was about story telling in film.  It explained about narrative which are the chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. We make sense of narrative by identifying its events and linking them by causality (cause and effect), time , and space. Next he talked about the story and plot. A story is basically about the the who and the why. It is the set of all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly presented and those the viewer infers, constitutes the story. Whereas, the plot is about what happened, how it happened, when and where. In the plot, everything visibly and audibly present in the film, and material that is extraneous to the story world.

Exercise 1

Our exercise was on plot segmentation. It is the best method for understanding a film’s narrative system is to create a plot segmentation, a scene-by-scene outline of the entire film. Each scene should be described briefly in a separate line.We had to watch the short movie Burrow and make a plot segmentation for it.

Figure 1.4 - Burrow - Plot Segmentation

Exercise 2

Our second exercise for the week was a group work. We had to do a shooting exercise based on all of the shots we learned the past 2 weeks. We had to make a 30 second video of us dancing to any songs. The list of shots given to us were:

• -Wide Shot - high angle (You, Solo)
• -3 single full body shots - eye level (You at the middle)
• -Medium Shot - Eye level (You)
• -Medium Close-up Shot - Eye level (You)
• -Close-up Shot - Eye level (You)
• -Extreme Close-up Shot - Eye level (You)
• -Wide Shot - Low angle (You, Solo)

Final result