While in Africa we had awesome opportunities to produce unique videos. My first video project was to show the diverse wildlife the Hairy Lemon had to offer. This proved to be a challenging first project due to the fact we had very limited power. So with my 200 minutes of laptop battery and my 70 minute camera battery i was ready to rock. My opening shots were ready to go and in the Final Cut Timeline. In our videos we have requirements of interviews, time lapses, and text animation. The text animation can be anything from a name passing through the shot or you can make the text animation a part of your shot. This is what I choose to do. I decided to do a focus pull and blend in text animation to make it look like the text was a part of the shot. You can see this on the canoe shot at the beginning of the video.
Another large aspect of conveying our messages in videos are interviews. Mr. Tino Specht makes it clear to us that we need to use proper rules to make all our shots appealing to the eye, especially interviews. There are a few rules to making an interview professional. First is a tripod so the shot is not shaky. The second is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is positioning your subject in one of the four corners of the screen. You can imagine drawing a tic tac toe grid over a screen. To obey the rule of thirds the subject needs to be where one of the lines is crossed. When this is done the interviews look way better.
The third requirement in our videos are my favourite. Time lapses. Time lapses are anything that is sped up from its normal speed. Most commonly shown with clouds racing past a horizon. My time lapse in the African Animals Video was a colony of ants eating a gecko. I thought this was a unique way to show the amount of ants in Africa. To do a time-lapse you need a tripod and as much battery you can get if you plan on a long shot. If you are making a video text animation, proper interviews, and time-lapses will give them that touch that is not found on many videos.
Until Next Time
Jacob
