Adobe

In our Level 2 and 3 media course we have been consistently learning how to use the Adobe software, including "Premier Pro", "After Effects" and occasionally "Audition." I had no previous experience using adobe, although I may have used Photoshop once or twice many years ago in school, I was completely unfamiliar with how anything worked. I have used similar applications for editing so using Premier Pro has been really fun and not too difficult for me to navigate.

For this task in Paul's lesson, we were asked to use Adobe after effects and animate our logos. We also did this with a Superman logo and another time with a FIFA logo/pitch when we were learning how to add shadows and change the opacity, but I do not have footage of these. The reason we were taught these skills is because we can use them in our how-to video when/if adding a title screen.

First we added the 2 elements, the batman logo and the background of raindrops. I scaled the background to fit the screen and made the Batman logo rounder, as I liked how it looked. Next we were instructed to add animation to our Batman logo, meaning adding movement to it. To do this we pressed effects and under effects "transform" here there were the options to scale, rotate, change opacity, anchor point and scale. An anchor point is where your image will scale or move from. To scale and rotate, you mark the video where you want it to start from and then enter the degrees you want it to rotate or dimensions you want it to scale to. 

My video rotated perfectly from the anchor point but spun around quite slowly, this is because I didn't calculate my measurements entirely and estimated which numbers would work well. Next time I would also like it to only spin once before reaching a stop. I am still learning how to use and understand After Effects and in the future I need to learn how to calculate the measurements and speed instead of roughly estimating.

CUT VIDEO AT COLLEGE

For this task we were told to access our groups footage of the Brooklyn 99 task from the beginning of level 3. I wasn't there when that was filmed, so I had to use another group's footage. During this class we continued to practice un-linking audio from video. We focused on syncing together the separately recorded audio to the video, this is so the lip sync would match up and the sound would be louder. Unfortunately, the group's audio I was using, was inconsistent and at some points very quiet. This made it difficult to create the effect we wanted to achieve. 

Paul taught us how to scale up the volume, but sadly, in our case, the sound was so quiet that increasing the volume whilst editing didn't affect the outcome. As well as this, I tried to edit the clips so the camera was facing the subject as they spoke. I had synced the audio and clips really well by the end of the session, but I pressed undo on something I wanted to change and it moved the audio slightly. I tried to put it back, and press undo again, but it proved too difficult to match it up perfectly again, hence the slight delay in the camera catching up to the audio.

The reason we were taught this, is so that we could continue to practice using Premier Pro to edit, before beginning to edit our final how-to video. Learning how to sync, separate or increase the volume of the audio can help us in the future if we don't manage to achieve our desired audio after recording.