Practice Profile Story

The purpose of this practice story is to tell about Leleaka Anakalea's passion for singing. We wanted for Leleaka to be able to show off her singing skills. We also wanted to hear her story of how she got into singing and why she loves it most. We chose this as our practice story because it was very interesting and had a good story. We also chose this topic as our practice story because of how great her passion for singing was, and still is. I'm happy that we chose this topic because it also had some good inspirational words. I hope that people watch this video and become more passionate towards something they love and enjoy to do.

A couple of struggles that we had while making this video was finding b-roll that matched our voiceovers. We had to film our b-roll first because there wasn't enough lavalier microphones for the amount of groups. So because we filmed our b-roll first, we weren't that ready so we didn't film enough b-roll as the amount of voiceover that we had. We also struggled on the voiceover because we did not practice a lot so you could hear some mistakes. Overall our video came out good.

It was our first time as a group working in final cut pro to create a video, so we did stumble a couple of times but our group worked very well even through a little stress. After turning our practice video, we got critiqued and used those helpful comments to make our final video great.

Profile Project Progress

For our project we decided that Dave Stewart, Leleaka Anakalea's grandpa had a great story to tell, so we chose him to tell his story. We chose him because not only was his story very interesting, but it also had some great words of wisdom for viewers watching. His story was based on how he got to Kaua'i and the struggles he went through, and even after all the hardships he has had great success. To show some of his successes, we took some video footage if his kayak business and interviewed him. His kayak business is located in Hanalei, so we figured that would be the best place to interview him. So we interviewed him right outside of his business and it was also great because his story brought out Hanalei a lot.

In order to show footage of Dave Stewarts company, we shot some B-roll. B-roll is video footage that adds interest to the story. It also shows whats happening instead of telling. Some people also use B-roll to patch up edited voiceovers. When interviewing someone, its best to have B-roll over the interview because it helps the viewers understand more. You should always remember that there is never too much B-roll.

Leleaka Anakalea, Hershel Weiner and Loren Weiner are the members in my group. Overall our group is good when it comes to working together. We could do better though. Some parts we could work on, is communicating. Instead of letting each other know how everything goes we usually just chat a little here and there.

My group and I turned in our rough cut of our video and got critiqued. Not only we got graded but we also got some suggestions on how to make our video better. Some suggestions we got was to film a lot more b-roll to cover up more of the interview. Another suggestion we got was getting more interesting shots on our b-roll. I'm glad I got critiqued and graded because it helps me know what people wants to see. On the grading part, we did not do very well, but that is why we have got to shoot more b-roll to make our video go from okay to great!

Composition Techniques

Composition techniques are used to add interest to your different shots. There are a variety of different composition techniques. The four main ones are rule of thirds, framing, unusual angles and leading lines. Rule of thirds is when you divide your image into three parts, and place your image either to the left or to the right. Framing is when when you create an image using things in the background or foreground to create a frame around your subject.

Three Shot Sequences

In excellent videos, sequencing is a variety of shot types in order with interesting angles that show what is happening. Sequencing keeps the viewer watching. To have good sequencing you need a variety of different shot types. Those shot types include wide, medium, close, and extreme. To add more great sequencing, you can use different composition techniques like rule of thirds and unusual shots. For a great video, you need to first start planning your shots so that way you can film exactly what you need.

While making our three shot sequencing video, we ran into some problems. One problem was that we weren't ready. We made a plan but we didn't exactly follow it.

Spherical Panoramas

 Here are my two finished spherical panoramas that I made during G.T. class. The images for the spherical panorama on the left was taken at maui during my trip. Then the images for the spherical panorama on the right was taken on Kaua'i at the beautiful beach Aliomanu. To make these spherical panoramas, I had to first take overlapping images that started and ended around the same place. Then after importing them onto the computer we edited them on adobe bridge. Then we compiled them into a panorama image using PhotoShop's PhotoMerge plugin.

Next, I resized my rectangular 360 degree panorama to be squared and filtered using polar coordinates. Lastly we used the elliptical marquee tool to select the final spherical panorama's and feathered it by refining the edges. Then finally I applied a black or white background before saving the final composite image.

Practice Story Reflection

Our practice story was based on Lele's passion for singing. We chose this topic as our practice story because of her beautiful voice. We also chose this as our topic because her love and passion for singing. We interviewed her and asked her some questions about her singing. Then we caught some videos of her singing and writing songs. Then finally after editing everything we made it into our practice story.

Some positive things about our story was the amount of information we had from Lele's interview. Another positive thing we had in our story was our shot of the interview. The lighting of our shot was perfect and we were also available to have a microphone in our shot. The microphone was a great add in because it added to the topic. Although we had a lot of positives, we also ran into some problems. One of our problems was that our transcript was created after we filmed, so when it was time to film we weren't as prepared on what we were filming. Another problem we had, was that we didn't have enough B-roll to keep the story interesting.

Overall, I think we did good for our first video making in a short period of time. Next time we are making another video, we will just make sure we know what we are filming before just filming random things that we may not use. But to my team members, Hershel Weiner, Loren Weiner, and Leleaka Anakalea, good job team. I hope that I will be able to do more projects with this team.

Polar Panoramas

 These are my two polar panoramas that I created in Photoshop. First I used the internet to see how to create a Polar Panorama. Then I chose a good location to take my images. After finding my location I took 10-15 images from left to right with a 10-15% overlap. Then I took my images and resized them in photoshop to a square, and rotated them 180 degrees.Then finally I applied the Polar coordinates filter. 

To make my Polar Panorama a little more interesting, I used the quick selection tool to cut myself out of a photo and drop myself onto the world. Then I resized the layer to make myself fit  my polar panorama nicely. The last step I did was copying and pasting my portrait layer, decreasing the exposure to black and turning down the opacity by around 50% to create a shadow.