FRESHMAN YEAR
(2020-2021)
Movie Poster Redesign
For our first project of the year, we had to choose a movie and redesign the posters for that movie. We had to come up with four thumbnail sketches, then two rough layouts, one comprehensive design, and then use all of those to create the final poster. I chose to do Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker, as shown in the pictures.
I was pretty happy with how this project came out, but if we ever did it again I would definitely take more time planning out the colors for the final design. I think some of the colors came out sloppy looking and if I had spent more time thinking it through it could have looked better.
Personal Logo
Our second project of the year was to brainstorm and fully design a logo to use as our personal watermark and callsign. This logo will be put on all of our work in the future and was meant to be instantly recognizable. We used paper and pencil to sketch out our initial thoughts and then I used Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro to finish designing.
I am very happy with how my logo came out. For my design, I used a big letter "A" and then look the letter "S" and wrapped it around the "A." Using masking I created the design and then put my name underneath. The full logo would have the name under, the reduced logo would just be the "A" and the "S." I then also animated the logo using Premiere Pro, where I made the "S" wrap around the "A" and then fully reveal the name underneath the logo. I think my logo design came out very well.
Animated Flipbooks
Our third project of the year was to create an animated flipbook that told a story of our choice. The first thing that came to mind was some sort of race car, and I pursued this idea. I began drafting ideas and decided the most efficient way to go about animating this project was to cut out paper cars to reuse, as opposed to drawing the same car over and over again for each frame. I then started constructing my first sets of pages, some of which are depicted on the left. After the first few were complete, the rest came easy until I had over 130 completed frames. The next step in the process was to scan each page, which consisted of 10 frames per page, onto the school computer. I then cut out each frame individually in photoshop and was ready to begin the editing stage.
For editing, I used Adobe Premiere Pro, as I usually would. This was different than normal editing, however, because I had various still images to work with, as opposed to various video clips. I worked through this and began familiar with working with the still images, and played around with different frame rates. After the basis of my film was complete, I used the game Forza Motorsport 7 to sample sound files for the Lamborghini my film centered around. After the sound was added, I added the title scene and the credits scene and my animated flipbook was completed. Overall, I am happy with how my project came out and I think I worked through the confusion that was present when first starting this assignment.
Music Video
To begin the 3rd marking period, Mr. Grillo assigned us a music video project. This project was simple, and we had to use a song of our choice and make a video to that song. I decided to use 'Till I Collapse by Eminem. This song is very intense and automatically brings sports to my mind, so I wanted to make a basketball video. As I brainstormed my video, I came up with the idea of getting my dad to star in it, but I would use darker lighting so you wouldn't easily be able to tell who was in the video. I soon was ready to start filming.
I made use of a large spotlight I had, making a very cinematic and distinct feeling in the film. The light areas against the dark backyard created a very moody setting. After filming was complete, I brought all of my footage into Premiere Pro to start editing. I added a very cinematic intro with text tracking from After Effects and tried my best to make each cut match the music in the background. After many days of editing, I exported the final project and uploaded it to Google Classroom for Mr. Grillo to grade. I am very happy with how my music video came out.
COVID-19 PSA
Our next project was a much bigger one. This assignment contained two separate portions, one of which will be touched on in the next section. For this project, we would need to come up with 3 things to do to prevent the spread of COVID-19, as well as 3 things not to do to help control the virus. I started by designing the storyboard for my film. I used storyboardthat.com, just like in my last music video project, and then got to filming after I had a planned out film.
I then started filming my voiceovers, which were done on tripods with my Rode Videomicro microphone. Next, I got b-roll footage, like workout equipment, google meets, and some cinematics of face masks. I realized it would be hard to get footage of large crowds, which I needed for my film, so I used stock footage from the New Yorker to fill gaps in my timeline. After my footage was collected, I put all of it into Adobe Premiere Pro, trimmed clips, and fixed audio. My PSA was complete and ready to be turned in to Mr. Grillo.
Informational Video
Virtual Locker
Our last project of marking period 3 was a different one. Because many of us IM students don't have access to good video editing software and cinematic tools, we were assigned to create a behind the scenes video highlighting our experience with creating the COVID-19 PSA. I got right to work and started documenting my filming process during the filming stage of my PSA. I also screen recorded my editing process in chunks, and even captured how speedy my Google Classroom upload time was. All I had to do was put these clips together in Premiere Pro and this, slightly short, project was complete.
Jump-Out Photoshop
For our first photoshop project, we had to create a "Jump-Out" image. For this project, we followed a set of directions uploaded by Mr. Grillo in order to take a basic image and make it appear as if the subject is "jumping out" of it.
I used an image of a cheetah and an image of a Lakers basketball player, Kyle Kuzma. I made the cheetah running out of the frame and I made Kuzma coming out of the top of the image, in his jump shot.
Vacation Photoshop
Our second photoshop project involved us taking a picture of ourselves, and then inserting our face or body into a vacation. We had the choice to put ourselves into any vacation, and we had to make one picture with just our head inserted and one picture with our full body inserted.
For my project, I inserted just my face into an image of a man skydiving, and then included my name blended behind myself to make it more interesting. For my full body image, I put myself into a picture of a bunch of people on an arctic cruise. I then put one of their hats on myself and made my picture blend in as best as possible.
Beyond the Album
For the Beyond the Album Cover project, we had to take a well known album cover and imagine what is going on "beyond" the borders of what is shown in the original.
I used the cover of "Eternal Atake" by Lil Uzi Vert, a very well known modern album and then expanded keeping in mind the outer space theme. I created a whole scene from the album and then surrounded it by a space ship window and an astronaught looking out of the window.
Blended Covers
For the Blended Covers project, we had to find a song and then look for various different covers of that song. After we found these covers, we would have to blend the video and audio together to create one seamless music video.
I used "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey for my song, and then found various different covers of the song, and combined them in Premiere Pro. To combine them, I had to look at the different audio tracks and figure out when the transitions worked best.
Lip Sync
Intros
The Lip Sync project was very similar to the Blended Covers project, except the Lip Sync project only required the videos to be matched up.
I used the song "Dream On" by Aerosmith for my project and simply cut the videos at the right times in order to make the lips of the singers in various different covers match up with the words of the original cover.
For our final project of the year, we had to design intros that would highlight the people in our class and what goes on in Interactive Media. These intros had to be inspired by a TV show or movie intro that is well known. I chose to model mine after Wayne's World, because there are only two main characters, which would work well with me and my classmate Ray.
I started filming by getting shots of us setting up for the show, then got the interview portion, footage of us watching our own show, some b-roll, and finally some footage of us roaming the halls to use to introduce ourselves. I then put all of my footage together in Premiere Pro, along with the well known Wayne's World theme and had my completed intro to IM1.