Photo Video Project

Kick Off

The Photo Video Project was introduced to us while working on the Exam Project. I personally think it was nice to prioritise something other than the exam project for once. We were first shown examples from other third semesters for inspiration, one notable one was a DnD video that was very well made. A presentation was also given to us with the guidelines for this project which was minimum 10 photos (within the categories of portraits, landscape, product, and long exposure, A video either as an advert/presentation, and a VFX video. On top of that we were also given a small extra lesson on everything video-photo related that helped refreshed my limited knowledge I had on the topic.

***Disclaimer for the EXIF thing some will have the wrong dates and it is not because I took them many years ago and made it easy for myself…no…I was an idiot and set the wrong date on the camera and only realised after and did not know how to change it. So bear with me!

The Photo Aspect

Right from the get go I knew the types of photos I wanted to take. For Products I wanted to take some photos of icons, mini statues, crucifixes, rosaries, and a veil.

My vision for the product photos was not to make it look too commercial. My target audience is fellow Catholics looking to expand or start a prayer corner and purchase items that will help them deepen their faith as I felt it was important to make these photos look homey and not too medicinal and commercial.

***Again there I chose the wrong date and it kept bugging and it shows dates all over the place!!! it is because I am an idiot!

This is also the hypothetical ad I made also for Pastoral.dk

As for Landscape I made them into urban landscape instead, just because the weather has been so bad here and I was not motivated at all. I thought urban landscape would be more fitting as Odense has the old section, industrial section, and the harbour section. Within this urban landscape I also took Long Exposure pictures of the surroundings. 2 of the photos were taken at night as I was heading to church anyway and wanted to capture some night photos. The rest were taken on the 4th of November right after renewing the rent of the Camera. I walked around the harbour area as I think its quite nice, especially the big illustration of the Fish. I wanted to capture Odense’s raw moments.

Portraits I left for last as I don’t like taking portraits and I knew I wasn’t going to be around people a lot so I opted just to take photos of my dear Boyfriend. I accidentally saved them as jpg as you can see. I took the same approach to portraits as I did with product photos. A more homey and in the moment feel rather than a commercial too restricted atmosphere. I took the camera spontaneously to take photos as my boyfriend was looking at the window and get a more natural portrait.

I took most of the photos on the camera I loaned from the school. However I wish I had more time to actually figure out how it worked. I have used a camera before but I struggled with this one and for example taking video I hated the outcome.

I played a lot with the iso especially in the day time and night time. Sometime the photos would be blinding and the others as dark as night. But by plating around I was able to find a balance in the photos.

The Video Aspect

In my mind I wanted to make a very ambitious video but seeing how my first video turned out I was extremely demotivated. I was relying on the weather a lot to give me the sunlight and glow I needed but instead it just turned sad.

I made an ‘advert’ theoretically for a Danish Catholic Website called Pastoral.dk. I wanted to showcase the different items and things they had available for Catholics in Denmark as I thought they lacked recognition and awareness. You would not know about them only if you have really researched for a Catholic store in Denmark or word of mouth.

I also think its sad the Catholicism in general is a minority here and I see nothing about it, and wanted to make a video to reach out to the community saying ‘Hey theres a shop for you to help you deepen you faith by building a prayer corner, purchasing books, and etc.’

I wanted to do this in a way that was personal to practising Catholics and this was by saying a prayer in the video, The Lord’s Prayer (Our Father). I made a storyboard and everything but didn’t end up using it because I just hated how it turned out on the camera and phone.

I also recorded the prayer out loud myself which was super embarrassing because of the fuzzy background noise. I put a filter on top called ‘muffled’, as if you were listening to me over the phone. ‘Symbolising’ the call and prayer out to God, but I can see how it doesn’t really uplift the video and makes it not as high quality.

The VFX Video

This scared me most out of the whole project. Mainly due to my fear that my laptop would become hot enough to cook steak on. I scrolled on TikTok and youtube to find inspiration but nothing really spoke to me.

However I used the basics we learned in class one day for VFX, masking and timing to make a fun video. My initial idea was to have a portal come out on the snap of my fingers show casing Tokyo, but I could not find a free motion graphic of a portal and did not have the energy to make one from scratch. I thought it would be even funnier to have a dinosaur fall from the sky into the backyard.

To do this I ran into trouble using rotoscope. It was just I needed to match the frames. I also feel like I did it in a way that was complicated. I took a background image the was going to be over the dino but under my mask to give it the illusion that it is in the backyard with photoshop. The rotoscoping error had me really confused and took a long time to process so I though this was easier. But now when I look back at it if there was no error of rotoscope this was really fun and quite easy. Now I know how to fix the error but i really enjoyed making this short vfx video.

Overall Reflection

I really under estimated how hard it is to work with a camera, or just cameras in general… especially with the model you have not worked with at all before (but the last time I touched a camera was 3 years ago). It definitely makes me appreciate photography more because its really hard to capture the true essence at any time of day but also control the amount of light the comes and goes.

I still prefer my phone for the majority of things due to its connivence and quality, however of course cameras can capture quality better in general especially when zooming in. It was fun to play around with all the different setting and buttons, maybe thats why my video turned out bad or I am a bad videographer. But it really comes down how you use the camera and not so much how good the camera is.

I think at times it was stresfull. We never got a in depth lesson last semester or the semester before because Jesper was sick so I felt that it was over whelming at times, but again by playing and experimenting through the settings I was able to overcome it.

I really want to work with after effects more in the future. I think making animations and special effects is so much fun and I want to receive more guidance on as I wan to make fun videos in my free time, but thats all up to how my computer will handle the tasks if it blows up or not.