Motion Graphics Artist Statement!

I spent a lot of time trying to make this assignment look how I wanted it to. Like I mentioned in my previous blog, I had a major set-back when my original idea didn’t work properly. So I changed my idea from a stop motion project for 16 and Pregnant to a video trailer for Paranormal Activity 2. I had a few ideas for how I wanted to film this, but in the end I think I chose the most effective way to show the most information in 5 seconds.

When I imported my video to After Effects, I decided that I wanted the video to have a very home-made feel to add to the “real” essence of the movie. The movie is filmed in such a way to make it look like it is all home-made footage so it appears as though it’s all real. So I used a normal camera and had my friend shake the camera while looking around the hallway to show a sense of fear and nervousness. The original video was plain so I decided to add some effects to it. I added an old movie effect that gave my video lines across the screen, once again adding to the home-made feel. I also added a night vision effect, but turned down the opacity to 20% so that the green wasn’t too over powering. When editing the clip, I accidently put a marker at the beginning of the video and it went bright green, and when I showed people, they really liked this about the clip. I then added a bend effect which bent the video and added to the chaos that I was trying to create. The last thing I did was add the hand drawn typography. I wanted to write in red to add to the spooky theme of the clip. I also wanted to write very messily so it looks like someone just scribbled it. This could then be interpreted as someone who was writing in blood, and had to write a fast note. I used the paintbrush tool and instead of creating a text layer, I wrote it right on top of the clip. I really liked the way this ended up looking because you can still see the static of the video in the background.

When it came to the sound for the video I decided that I wouldn’t add any music, just sound effects. In the original video, my friend was breathing heavily so I kept that it for most of the clip and cut it when he was breathing in so it sounded like he was suddenly shocked and out of breath. It sounded fairly plain with just the breathing, so I decided last minute that I would add a heartbeat constantly going throughout the clip. When I get scared, I can clearly hear my heart so I thought by adding this sound that it would make the viewer feel as though they were standing there witnessing this themselves.

If I had extra time to work on this assignment, something that I would change would be the way that I filmed it. I had my friend film it while breathing heavily and shaking the camera to represent how scared he felt about the situation, but when I took the video into After Effects I realized I could have shaken it myself. If I had of done that I would have had more control over how much it shook, and in what direction. In addition, I filmed it with a regular-not the best quality- camera. I originally did this purposely to add to that home-made and jittery feel which I liked. But once again, once I had the video in After Effects, I realized that I could have filmed it with a better quality camera and make it fuzzy myself so I had more control over how fuzzy it was.

I’m very glad that I got the chance to explore this program. There are so many things that you can do with video and text that I thought I would never be able to do myself. Though this is my first making a piece of motion graphics, and it may not be the greatest, I am looking forward to using this program in the future and creating amazing things.