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Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
Weekly Reflection
How's it going?
This page will be for my weekly reflections on my progress of the final major project, here I'll be documenting my week by week experience as well as any problems and challenges I have been facing, I'll talk about how I will move forward and go about resolving these issues.
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I as well as that I will reflect on if I've kept to schedule with my GANT chart and what I will do to change if I haven't, this will offer an insight to where and what I struggled with, this will show me where I can make improvements throughout as well as give me talking point on my final evaluation of my performance.
Week-22.02.21
Project Concept feedback
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On Friday the class had a feedback session where we showed each other our project concepts as well as what we had completed in terms of the PowerPoint. I, having not stated the PowerPoint put forth my project concept paragraph and basically paraphrased it, as this wasn’t an official pitch I didn't mind over much about the rough presentation.
After I finished explaining the rest of the class had time to write down thoughts and questions about the project: I'm not going to write about all of them individually but some I will cover:
#1 - The plan is to stick to what is recorded in any historical documents, so no i will not have creative freedom at all in terms of the content presented at least. However seeing as most history is heavily embellished no one can be certain if it is the truth.
#2 - After the feedback session concluded I immediately added this to the research part of the gantt chart, I think this is an absolutely great idea and quite frankly I'm surprised I didn't come up with it myself.
#3 - this could be a good way of saving some time as I would only have to worry about the animation of the documentary, but I'm not exactly sure if I could afford a professional voice actor, however it is certainly something to consider as I'm not exactly a great narrator myself.
#4 - as I don't want to put myself under too much pressure i think the whole documentary will be a relatively simple one in terms of the depth of information so I'm hoping it will be an excellent starting point/gateway for someone interested in far-east history
#5 & #6 - you’ve basically just described what I already planned to do for a title screen. A shot flying over the Asian mainland until you get to the sea of Japan with a red line being the invasion fleet of the Mongols, the clip from Indiana Jones may be a good thing to reference when doing research.
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overall I think the feedback session was a pretty good idea as it has shown me some areas that my proposal isn't really clear about, it gives me some important things to work on next week.
What did you do this week?
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As this was the first week of our FMP I spent much of it in contemplation of what project I was going to settle on, the initial concept ended up being An animated mini documentary about either the mogal invasions of japan or the siege of vienna. After I had the idea I immediately started developing it until I had a rough paragraph explaining the project concept. (See FMP plan google doc)
I didn't however just write about the project concept, in the google doc I basically wrote a first draft for the Project Proposal document, Including: a summary of the resources required, a research proposal, skills assessment and an initial reference list that can be found under the ‘reference list’ tab in context. This document also doubles as a first plan for my pitch powerpoint however unrefined it may be.
I didn't manage to make a full start on the powerpoint because I was more focused on planning out both my website and the overall GANT chart that can be found under the ‘action plan’ tab I took a template we were given and changed it to suit my needs for this project, I first fully planned out the pitch timetable after that I got almost all of the pre-prediction and a solid bit of the production planned out as well as a small bit of the research. After all that had been completed I moved on to creating my website. I used the standard template from my other course websites but at my tutors prompting changed some of the fonts. I also changed the graphics and theme to better suit the project subject
Week-01.03.21
What did I do this week?
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This week I mainly focused on improving my pitch PowerPoint from the vague draft into something I actually thought was passable, I took sections of the pitch proposal document and rewrote them to make them short and succinct so it's easy to pitch. I am however planning on having the PPD open so if I need to expand on any of the notes I can do so pretty easily.
I tried to make the PowerPoint mostly a visual thing; a lot of pictures to help explain the point as I'm worried even with my reworded explanation some people might not fully grasp the concept because why would anyone know what kriegsspeil is.
To this end I decided to add video content to the Inspirations and influences slide, this helped to visualize what my project will hopefully look like. The content was from two videos by the shogunate and kings and generals. They each covered one of the three main parts of my project: the interlude with narration and pictures, the maps and overarching animation and finally the battles and effects I'll use.
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I was quite pleased that I managed to refine the power point a good deal, making it more aesthetically pleasing in design as I copped the colour pallet and art from my website, I thought this would make them mesh quite nicely together, I blurred the background in most of the slides to not distract from the content I felt this had a nice effect on the look in terms of presentation.
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However throughout last week I definitely would have liked to do a bit more in terms of research as I want to get to creating the project as soon as I can, but the pitch took president over that because I wanted to make it as clear and concise as possible. I moved the proposed research to next week and spaced them across a few days as to not burn myself out whilst making sure I get enough done.
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Week-08.03.21
What did I do this week?
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This week we started out with our pitches, after last week's additions to the PowerPoint I felt it went really smoothly. The full evaluation of my performance can be found along with the pitch video on the context tab but I will summarize it here.
The video and audio content I added to supplement my explanations were definitely a massive help to properly explain the style of content I want to produce, I think towards the end I definitely started to talk more purposefully about my plans for research and how I was going to achieve certain goals.
That however wasn’t the only thing I did this week, I also wrote a large amount to do with my contextual thinking, In this i decided to mainly focus on the actual deep historical context surrounding the Mongol invitations of Japan, or at least the stuff that was way too detailed to add to my research tab. So far I have written about the first invasion as well as background to do with the Yuan and Japanese governments and the state of the countries at the time. I plan on expanding towards the second invasion as well as writing more deeply about my inspirations and why I originally chose the invitations over the siege of Vienna.
I also started and completed to a decent degree my PPD, I had to rearrange my sources in Harvard referencing into alphabetical order both on the PPD and my main site, I resolved to keep the list in alphabetical order in a google docs page and organise it as I add more sources from research.
This week however I did start my research and I did a good bit but I still wanted to focus on beginning to fill out my contextual thinking tab as well as getting the pitch reflection and evaluation done, but with these out of the way I've now finished with my context tab.
In terms of the research I've actually done I started my Primary with some cursory research on fivver about potentially obtaining a voice actor and what kind of voice I would be looking for, I also made my target audience survey which I plan to send to multiple people, my classmates and one of the youtubers I will contact, Finally this week I wrote and researched about the sea wall and the battle at Hakata bay, the final place the Mongols landed and the sight of there defeat.
The only thing I planned to complete this week that I didn't is contacting a Historian as I haven't found one I wish to contact as the majority of well known Japanese historians don't exactly focus on the Mongol invasions.
What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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It didn't actually occur to me that up until this week I hadn't been been Including this section in the weekly evaluations, I will make sure to do it from now on, this week the changes were literally one thing, I moved the contact of the historian to next Friday as the other days were relatively full.
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Week-15.03.21
What did I do this week?
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This week I continued with my research on all three tabs of my website, I started out by writing up an email to two youtubers, the shogunate and Kings and generals both are pretty big inspirations for this project, I wrote up a small paragraph for each outlining what I hope to accomplish by emailing them. Luckily one did in fact respond the next day witch I honestly wasn't expecting, I won’t go through everything we talked about here but his response was greatly appreciated, as you can see later in the week I wrote up everything in the emails as well as about how Kings and generals had not responded, I do plan however to look into some of the people who helped make the videos.
I continued to add content to my secondary research page finishing and toning up some of the stuff to do with Hakata bay, I added a map of hakata from Stephan Turnbulls book on the invasions as I thought this looked better than the map I used previously, this is also the map I plan to reference in my experimental research on the locations of the battles.
Another bit of secondary research I did that heavily pulled from Stephan Turnbulls book was the first two battles of the invasion, the assaults on Tsushima and Iki, I related in my own words what happened on both the islands and the final stands that saw them both fall into mongol hands, Turnbulls book helped a lot in finding out specifics as to what happened as well as certain names like that of the castle Taira no Kagetaka fell back to: hinotsume, as well as translated quotes from a text about the battle.
Overall i'm happy with how everything is going so far in terms of the quality and type of research im getting done, however this week I didn't get around to doing any of the experimental stuff I planned to, i.e. the map design witch I think i'm going to move all the way back to the first week of the easter holiday, as If I do it nearer to the time I'm going to actually putting that research into practice i'll hopefully do it to a higher standard. And as for contacting a historian I'm still not sure exactly who i'm going to choose but Stephan Turnbull is definitely an option.
What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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Now that I'm adding this to my weekly review I've decided to start actually adding screen captures of the chart to the website as well.
This week I moved both the contacting historian to next week as well as moving the map design to the Easter holidays although you cant see that on the screen captures.
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Week-22.03.21
What did I do this week?
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This week is the first week before the easter holidays and with that In mind I started preparations for continuing the development of my research into the break period. I had, at the start of my project added the dates between the two weeks we have off onto my GANTT chart i was planning then to start my Pre-production with the conclusion of my research at the end of this week, however as I got closer and closer to the end I realised i'm not going to be able finish my research fully within this boundary.
But before that i’d like to detail what I did manage to complete within this week, I successfully concluded my first actual piece of experimental research in the form of my sound placement and audio test, I explained how music is going to be a majorly important part of my project and gave an example of how I will implement my chosen songs and audio samples so they fit with the voiceover, witch is very important for the success of my project.
The spot on the GANTT chart that says ‘Target audience write up’ refers to my google survey that I’ve used to generate evidence about who watches and enjoys content similar to what I want to produce and how I can make mine better.
Other than that I started my work on the analysis of elements from some of the creators I draw inspiration from. I got a good bit into the development of this research but didn't quite finish it, I plan to complete it next week.
Overall im still happy with the amount and the quality of the work being done, the research it progressing smoothly but I will need to move my schedule up by one or maybe two week depending on how the next week goes, this isn't a problem however because I was planning a week ahead of the proposed time frame anyway so it really just brings it back into line.
What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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I Kept it the same from last week but with a few changes to the first week of the Easter holidays, It was just some simple planning what I'm going to do when as I hadn't allocated days for those tasks yet.
Just as planned
Easter holidays
What happened in the holiday?
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These two week have been a bit of a interesting time for me as I managed to just keep to my proposed schedule outlined on my gannt chart whilst tidying up and doing a bunch of other research as well as expanding on certain topics I felt needed it, as you can see I've decided to do a review of both weeks instead two separate ones.
Originally I was under the impression I was going to be finished with my research by the end of the first week but after completing most of the objectives I set myself and reaching the weekend I realised this defiantly wasn't going to be the case, I still had a ton of experimental research to do, at this point I'd finished and documented the making of my test troop blocks as well as doing all the practical for my map but I hadn't had time to document it, This is when I initially had the idea of keeping my production where it was in the second week of the holiday but doing it simultaneously with the rest of my research as I was under the impression that I didn't have much to do and that it would be manageable over all.
I was wrong, honestly this makes it sound infinitely worse than it was but I did end up putting a lot more time into the second weeks research than I initially wanted to, but in the end I really think it was worth it, I made some short videos documenting the creation of the troop blocks added a voice over and sped them up as the videos were quite long on there own, I think this will really help show the assessors my creative prosses in addition to being an easy way to explain things.
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I wanted to do this for all of the videos on the experimental page as I felt this would up the quality of the presentation significantly, I still have all the video files so that's defiantly something I can do next week, another thing I didn't get around to doing was adding visuals and rain effects to the audio portion but that's something I can actually try in my production so I'm not overly worried. A bigger bit of experimental I didn't do was actually animating the troop blocks onto the map, as this is the entire reason I made a separate Mongol block but again this can probably just be relocated to the actual production.
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I did also do a number of other improvements to the site in terms of layout, mainly in the experimental and primary sections.
genuinely I'm happy with the progress I achieved in the holiday as motivation was defiantly going to be a big obstacle for me to overcome, but I'm happy i pulled through and can get straight back to beginning the production on Monday!
What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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All in all, over the holiday I as I got closer to the second week I pretty much disregarded the GANTT chart in favour of just tidying up bits and continuing with assorted experimental research, In my opinion this worked fine and overall and I decided to leave the second week blank as I couldn't really remember what I did when.
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However I did start to plan out my Production schedule as I wanted this go as smoothly as possible, I assumed I needed about a week to get a good script done as 1500 words is a pretty high output, especially when it took me over a week to do the same with my essay for the last project witch was the same amount, However I think this time will be a lot different as I am really dedicated and motivated to see this project through.
Week-12.04.21
What did I do this week?
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Overall this week was entirely dedicated to the planning and writing of my script, this is all documented on a separate tab of my website from planning as I thought it would make it a little too cluttered, as you’d have to scroll past the whole thing to get to the rest of the actual planning.
I managed to get a pretty detailed progression of the development of my script with multiple drafts of my plan and a first full draft of my script. I do plan to go back and read it out loud to get a feel for the length of the whole thing and to make sure it flows well enough. After I’ll make sure to edit it and upload that to the site, as from a cursory look I can spot a few places that need stuff changed, from grammar to punctuation, all in all I'm happy with the result and happy I can move on to pre-production next week.
I did spend about a day to re-read and re-write sections of the script improving the quality quite a bit in my opinion its all documented in the separate tab so I won't go into detail.
This is probably one of my shortest weekly reflections, but it does make sense as I was basically just doing one thing for the entire week.
What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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I didn't really have to change anything from the Easter holidays on the scripting side, however I did have a chance to plan out the remainder of my pre-production I simply allocated the amount of time I thought I needed to create/document whatever the task is. I also added a slot for commissioning the Japaneses voice actor.
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Week-19.04.21
What did I do this week?
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This week the pre production began with me making a final list of the music tracks for my project, I collected them all into a playlist on YouTube for easy access, I explained my a few of my picks but didn’t write too much as I’ve already been into what I look for in both my primary and experimental research.
As explained on my GANTT chart I moved through the pre-production rather quickly and smoothly staying to the timetables as I went.
The map creation section actually took me the longest out of all of the sections, I had to do a few revisions of each map to make sure I got it right, Even though I had done this before it still took a long time to get them all done.
Apart from that I’m good to start production next week.
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What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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Nothing form this week however I did begin to plan the production, This was spread over a three week period spanning the 26th of April to the 16th of may I set it out in blocks of three days for each 'section' of the project.
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Week-26.04.21
What did I do this week?
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This marks the end of the first week of production, It's been an alright week but there are a few things to note, First my expectation was that this week was going to be relatively slow when it comes to actual content output witch it was. As this was the first time I'm actually putting all the sperate elements of the project together into After Effects and Premier figuring out a lot of stuff to do with 3d options and advanced rendering techniques.
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But I made a huge error by not factoring in the recoding and editing of the audio, I really should of done this with the preproduction, This cost me the first two days of production and with the deadline getting ever closer I hope I can pick up the pace quickly.
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As of now I have most of the elements and techniques down and a good idea of how I'm going to proceed but my after effects has become very slow, taking upwards of half an hour to export 30 to 40seconds worth of animation, and I cannot scroll through the project timeline in AE without letting it render first.
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This is obviously a huge problem as I work in small chunks of content at a time, animating them and exporting them to put into a overall timeline in Premier Pro.
I may need to rely on the college computers as they appear to be higher spec than mine., Its not that I can't do the work, its just that I can't do it with anything approaching max efficiency.
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What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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I've defiantly gone straight off the rails with the time table, I'm basically not following it at all as the limitations with after effects and my pc are causing time table I've set out to become untenable. For now I'm going to just carry on throughout the editing doing as much as I can, I don't see much point changing the GANNT chart as I'm not going to be able to follow it to the letter.
Week-03.05.21
What did I do this week?
For most of this week I was trying to convert all my files to the 2018 versions of after effects and premier pro respectively, this along with gathering assets needed for production whilst at college when it has no internet connection, This took a number of days to do as I wasn't entirely sure how to go about it, I was directed to a website for downgrading Premier files by one of my tutors so that was easy, but I couldn't find anyway to downgrade my after effects files.
After searching around for a good while I found the ability to downgrade all the files by one version this however won't help me as I'm on 2020 and they are on 2018.
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I may have to recreate some of the already created footage from After Effect in the 2018 version at college as I want a lot of the stuff to be uniform to keep the visual cohesion throughout the project, This would take at least a day if not more and I'm not sure its worth the time I could just edit at home.
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Apart from tying to figure that out I continued with the editing and documenting all over the site.
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What did I change about the GANTT chart?
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Nothing, From this point forward I won't be using the Gannt chart
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Week-10.05.21
What did I do this week?
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This week I came to the realisation that Instead of wasting time re-creating footage at college It would be a much better Idea to simply cut down the video into a two part series as at this point with all the technical difficulties I'm having I don't see me completing the entire project with 11 days left. This however left me the chance to finish with all of the techniques I wanted to showcase presented as well as letting use my commissioned voice assets.
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This was at the start of the week.
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By the end I couldn't see myself even finishing one half, well not with time to spare to finish up my website review and documentation, now the project happened to be around a part where there could be a great end point, so I decided why not have a three part series and submit the first as my FMP, I fully plan to complete this project in my spare time because I've enjoyed it so much.
The more I think of it the more it seems to make sense, Youtubers who make these types of videos tend to do them in series and most of them have small teams backing them up i.e. kings and generals, and they don't have to document whilst doing it.
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Its at a point where I think I probably could of done everything but not on this time scale, I probably gave myself a little bit too much work.
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With all that said I'm planning to finish up the edit some time early next week, this means getting the quotes form some of my family who said they would help, doing the credits, finishing up some transitions, making the thumbnail with the art my aunt gave me and finishing up the website.
so, not to much.
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