Cinematography

Hi, here are the slides for this week’s (week 10) session.

Week 10: Cinematography

SV Sessions in PDFs & PPTs

Hi, for those of you who missed some SV sessions (esp. the week 3 & 4 sessions), you may have a look at what we have covered.  You can also keep these as reference and have an overview of what you have learned thus far.

Week 3: Introduction to SV

Week 4: Writer’s Journey

Week 5 & 6: HC2G Overdrive

Week 7:

Embarking on SV Projects

PreProduction

Week 8: Photography

Photos taken on Week 8.

HCI Orientation Video 2008 – “Jumpstart”

© HCI Sensorium Vale 2008

Btw, it’s the “uncensored” version, with some bonus stuff after the credits. Enjoy!

Alvin

Shooting the Orientation

Hi everyone, after today’s experience in shooting the orientation (singing & OG games), I decided to make an urgent post to remind everyone of some things to keep in mind with shooting:

Quality, not quantity. We have very limited time for editing. Try to shoot as little as possible (to help the editor), and focus on taking good shots. Shoot sufficiently to provide decent coverage over all the activities.

Have a variety of angles. Don’t just shoot everything from eye level. Be creative! Do close-ups on their faces, crawl along with them on the ground. You want to put the audience inside the action, where the fun is. (and you would have more fun too!)

Try to capture facial expressions. Actors are paid for their faces! This may be difficult to do because your camera does not have a magnet to suck people’s faces to you. But make the effort to run around them to get their faces!

Interviews. Some students may be camera shy and will hate you if you point the camera at them. But many students are really enthusiastic and supportive. Get them to shout things like, “I love Hwa Chong”, “This is the best day of my life”, “Mr Ang is great!” or even “Join Sensorium Vale!”.

Please capture the footage and charge the batteries after you finish shooting. This is extremely important to ensure that the next session can be conducted successfully.

Record a footage log when capturing. Record the clip names and time of the interesting shots that you want to see in the final video. Without this records, the editor would go crazy browsing through 20 hrs of footage. If you do not know what is a footage log, refer to the papers on the left of our SV computer, and you will find a good model done by Tianyu this afternoon.

Label your tapes and files meaningfully. Something simple but useful for organization, and to avoid confusion. After shooting, label your tapes’ covers, like “OG Games 1″. Before capturing, be sure to select the output settings to a drive with sufficient hard disk space, and name it properly, instead of “Untitled Clip 01″.

Today’s shooting sessions done by Ji Nan, Wu Dan, Wang Ye and me was fruitful (except that some of the footage have not been captured!). I hope that my above suggestions would help all of you obtain better footage over the next week, have a lot more fun, and allow this project to progress smoothly.

Jia you!

Leon

SV: Living your life to the fullest

In the year 2028, you would look back at your college days in Hwa Chong and remember the “good old days” when you were involved in the Orientation ‘08 video production.

Today (14th Dec ‘07) marks the beginning of our filming season for the Orientation video, which will stretch all the way till the last day of Orientation – 11th January ‘08. The concept of the video would be based on a talk show, “The Nightly Show”, since this video will be screened at night during campfire. The host of the talk show (Leon Sooi) would discuss the theme of the Orientation and bring the J1s for a trip revisiting their fun and energetic orientation activities.

So what’s in store for SV members? Apart from a windfall of CIP hours, be prepared for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, fruitful learning journeys and a gigadose of fun.

During today’s filming of the Nightly Show, Miss Kee unveiled a $1000+ set of chroma keying equipment. Last year, our seniors attempted to do chroma keying (of a puppet) in the green screen room. This time round, our new chroma keying technology will open up endless possibilities that we haven’t even imagined. In the picture below, we see Zhu Chuan fascinated by the glowing glass beads Miss Kee is holding.

And below is a glowing screen that doesn’t really glow, but it turns really solid green when you export it to Premiere.

In the above photo, Zhu Chuan tries out the equipment. The glass beads (arranged in a circle) glows like Christmas tree decorations.

To play the role of the host, I tried out several outfits, which included my mum’s undersized suit (below).

Resembles some Michael Jackson’s costume.

Finally, we settled on a more formal attire.

We obtained the potted plant from the Art Gallery. We had a hard time deciding whether to use green screen or blue screen because we had both colors in the scene! (blue shirt, green plants.) We eventually chose green because the host is obviously more important than a pot of plastic.

If you look carefully at the photo above, the screen did not actually turn green. In fact, it is mostly greyish-greenish, which is rather insightly. But look at the small LCD screen of the camera, the background is totally green! Amazing?

After the filming for the Nightly Show, we went out scouting for creative places to shoot something cool for the orientation video. Year after year, the orientation video begins with time-lapse videos of students streaming in through the gates. Why must we only enter the school through the gate? Why can’t our juniors (who have been taught less and learned more) think of more creative strategies to enter HCI?

One possibility was to emerge from a drain:

It could also be possible to descent from the sky, appear in a portal from the future, or cross the road (from NYGH to HCI) via the canal:

So how do we go about shooting a group of students crossing the canal? We found out today during our exploration.

I found a way into the canal, (without getting hit by cars on the main road). I entered a drain outside Hwa Chong Institution, and crawled under the road. When I reached the end of the drain, I emerged in the canal. This was relatively easy as the drain was quite big and surprisingly clean.

Meanwhile, Zhu Chuan was standing on the overhead bridge helping me to take these photos.

We decided that we could have a shot of a group of juniors climbing up the canal like this:

Later, Zhu Chuan gave me a challenge to jump over the little river in the middle (which doesn’t seem very long). Unfortunately, I failed and ended up in a big splash with small wounds. Zhu Chuan attempted to take a video of my jump, but the camera failed (too).

After I was rescued from the valley of death, we called it a day. We would probably get a group of actors to come here again next week (or week after) to act in this shot. (Only the climbing up part, no more jumping!!!)
Envious of our experiences already? No worries, this is only the beginning of the SV Dream, and all of you should be part of this Dream.

Leon

Learn 3D Animation at the top 3d production and training facility in Singapore

If you would like to participate in the above workshop, let me know asap. (fees can be subsidized by school)

Leon Sooi

Watch Mr. Tan S.Y.’s first stopmotion trial “Duckie’s Adventure”

Hi SV Members,

Our talented and dedicated teacher Mr. Tan Siang Yu has recently released his short film “Duckie’s Adventure” on Youtube. Check it out! Spread the word around and get the whole world to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR1hMpp4LbY

Cheers

Leon

Wanna learn somethin Italian? (Not recommended)

There will be a TAB workshop held on the 5 & 6 of September (during your holidays). TAB is a 2D Digital animation software, used by many top studios in the world. It is a good idea to attend some workshops to upgrade your skills.

Tab workshop at Radin Mas Primary School-Entreprenuer Lab.

Date: 5 & 6 Sept 2007
Time : 9am- 5.00pm
Cost : $70/- for course + meals (Halal) (School should be able to subsidize some of the costs.)

If you would like to attend this workshop, please inform Mr. Tan and I asap.

Leon Sooi

SV Formal Handover 2007

Ok here are some photos from the Formal Handover 2007. I have many more photos with me but cannot upload due to sizes, so do ask me if you want the others. Photos courtesy of Zhu Chuan.

Irvin with a weird facial expression. LOL

The Imperial Seal. Hehe

Closeup

The Holy SV File filled with ancient documents.

O.o

Secretary Treasurer. The Return of Shiyan

Resource Manager. Irvin as himself.

Public Relations! Shiyan Again.

Creative Director! Irvin Returns…

Teachers handing over!

Wu Dan/Wang Ye/Ji Nan ’s owning Promote SV project.

Can be made into the new SV website already!

School of the Future

Hora

Exco photo.

And yeah, we have a new member!!! Rejoice! He is Yang Hongbin from 07S63! Let’s welcome him and make him feel at home in SV! =)

Alvin

Holy Grail for Animators

This is probably the largest scale animation competition that exist locally: Nemation 2008.

If you want to visit PIXAR Animation Studios, or if you have a great story about  自强不息， or if you are free, do consider participating in this incredible event.