I spent all of Yesterday editing, animating, and finalizing my movie intro. It might not be perfect, but I am extremely proud of my results. Honestly, this week has been so much fun, editing is truly my happy place and I hope to do it more often in the future.
Progress Clip:
In lieu of a progress video of the entire thing, this is a clip of the beginning, which was the bulk of Yesterday's focus. I plan on posting the entire intro tomorrow.
Timeline:
Fixing the Title Card:
Old
New
Since previously the animation did not give the viewers enough time to read the title, I simply made it end at the same time as the descent of the music ends, giving the audience a second or two to read the music. This worked wonderfully, although I was unable to fix the t in "the."
Fixing the B-roll:
The b-roll in my first draft of this video had been bugging me. There was something about the shots I had chosen that felt flimsy. I think it may have been too shaky? The second and third clips were just composed weirdly maybe. I had been convinced, at first, that they were the best clips I had, and if that was true then I knew I'd have to re-record. Luckily, this was not the case, I gave all the original clips a second look over and found two clips that were not only composed better and less shaky, but they were also long enough to replace those three clips. I do not know how I did not pick them sooner. The door, however, still felt too shaky to me and I did not know how to fix it at first (more on how I fixed that later).
Creating/animating the Logo:
I knew I wanted to make a logo for a fake production company, but I did not know what to call it yet. I genuinely just love all kinds of flowers, but one of my favorites is Lily of the Valley. These flowers are beautiful and delicate-looking, but they are extremely toxic to humans with no part of their anatomy being safe to eat or even touch (click here for more information). However, they are "A symbol of purity, joy, love, sincerity, happiness and luck" It's like finding hope in something seemingly unredeemable, which reminds me of the themes of hope within the darkness that the movie would have. Due to this realization, I decided to call the production company "Lily of the Valley Productions" and to include one in the logo.
I am not particularly skilled at drawing, so it took me a few hours to come up with this shape in Procreate. I planned on adding the title in After Effects.
At first, I wanted to animate the flower slowly growing into the image I made, but I quickly realized that would take much longer than what I wanted, and decided to make the image start small and spin while growing into what the original picture is. I also wanted to replicate the animation style of the title card, making it look as if the title was being written, but the font was so small it looked choppy, so by deciding not to make it "stroke sequentially" I achieved a similar look. Honestly, it worked out for the best. I decided to make the letters appear once the flower animation was over, and having learned from the title card, knew to make it end a few seconds before the clip would. Finally, the logo was too green and vibrant for the vibes of the intro, so I decided to color-edit it until It matched, by changing the temperature, tint, and saturation of the clip. (you can watch the final title card near the beginning of the blog post).
It's a simple animation, but I think it looks pretty cool.
Audio:
I decided that, although it's hard to hear sometimes, I was quite satisfied with the sound levels of the raw clips, so I did not make any changes there or with the levels of the main song. I found a song in the YouTube Audio Library by Jimena Colmenares Called "Frigtmare" By choosing this song, I did lean into the creepy vibes I had been avoiding, but I knew that the first few seconds of this song were perfect to put over the logo and door in the very beginning. I made this song fade out as "Spellcraft" faded in to give it a more seamless feel. I am most worried about making the audience believe that this movie is meant to be scary when really, it isn't.
Stabilizing:
All hail the "Warp Stabilizer" effect in Premiere Pro, the only thing capable of somewhat reversing the shakiness of the camera caused by my hands. (I had previously alluded to this effect a few blog posts ago) I only found it helpful to use this effect on the b-roll.
This effect was capable of turning...
A small but crucial difference. Yes, you can still kind of tell I walked a bit too harshly, but it almost feels seamless now.
The Credits:
The most fun yet time-consuming part, the reason I stayed up until one in the morning editing. I knew I wanted the text to appear/disappear with the movement of the camera and objects. The "Linear Wipe" effect in Premiere Pro was my lifeline when animating these credits. (to see three examples, look at the clip in the beginning).
I chose a font that was simple, rounded and small to make it look professional and innocent. I chose an off-white color rather than a full white since the full white stood out a bit too much.
Now What?
This has been a long, stressful, and exciting process, and I cannot believe I am this close to the end, but I am proud of what I've done. I could've managed my time better, like I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts, time management is something I know I struggle with, but I managed to end this with enough time to complete my CCR and I consider that a success. I am ecstatic with the results, and I can barely wait to post them tomorrow.
PS. After rereading some of my blog posts, I believe I never specified my audience here as much as I did in my head. The audience is children, which I have mentioned before, but I'd like to clarify that it's specifically, children aged 8-12.
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