FInal Project

Final Project: Self-Evaluation

This project was something I was skeptical about. I was skeptical about the amount of time it would take to plan, shoot, and edit as well as come up with a definitive plan of action for the entirety of the project. Once the initial idea of creating a project on the Greg Grant Program and Trenton Central High School, things slowly worked themselves out. I took the initiative and had mandatory meeting for pre-production purposes as the producer of this project. These meeting were so beneficial to the end product by giving time for ideas to fly, for specific details, and definite shots we wanted to cover during the shoot. If we did not have these pre-shoot meetings there is no way we would have gotten the material, b-roll, and interview material that we ended up with. I am so happy with that aspect of the project, everything we wanted to shoot and display from this program we did. I have been producer of various projects and things within my major here at TCNJ and this project showed me that I have the capability to be a producer of a larger project and I think it turned out better than planned. After collecting all the materials for the interviews, the b-roll ideas, and shot ideas we would be able to go to the location and shoot everything we wrote down and we would do so efficiently without wasting anyone's time. The material that we shot was so inspirational and the interview material that we got from Greg Grant and 3 of his students/athletes was so much better than expected. The questions I came up with were planned in order to get as much material as possible to work with and they went up and beyond our expectations, which was so great. The only problem or slight problem was encompassing everyone's schedules in order to get the shooting schedule down pat. There was on day we went to shoot that didn't work out, but other than that the many times we scheduled to go shoot everything went great and I think the end product show that. This was one of the most exciting experiences filming and creating a product based on such a great program.

Final Project: Production Log

February 13th: Shooting of the Greg Grant Interview
February 17th: Shooting of the school itself and b-roll
February 21st: Shooting of the students interviews and b-roll of the tutoring sessions
March 20th: Shooting of the basketball teams' practice

There was one day we went to shoot at Trenton Central High School where they cancelled the tutoring sessions for that particular day and did not contact us to tell us so, that was the only problem I had with shooting for this project.

On top of these shooting days there were days where I met with my production team. We met:
February 13th
February 21st
March 20th: Before shooting in Trenton
April 3rd
April 10th


During these meeting times,  I wrote out all the questions for the interviews with Greg and with the 3 TCHS students. We also sat down and would throw around ideas and write out what we wanted to shoot b-roll of, ideas for different shots for filming, and ideas while thinking of the end product of this project. By meeting before shooting the actual footage, I was able to come up with storyboards every time we met before going on the actual shoot. This was so beneficial because we were able to come up with numerous ideas beforehand that we probably wouldn't have come up with if we did not plan ahead of time.

I also edited on many separate occasions. I started the editing early on in order to create storylines and various storyboards to end up with my final product. Although I edited along the whole process, what was edited in the beginning meeting times has changed.

I edited on:
March 19th
March 26th
March 30th
April 13th
April 20th
April 28th
April 30th

Final Project: Pre-Production Log

My pre-production of this project included creating 2 separate storyboards. I originally created a storyboard to just portray the basketball section of the Greg Grant Program at TCHS, then I got thinking that I would rather create a smaller version of the bigger documentary I am a part of, with regards to this program. My idea is to create a 2 or 3 minute product of a shorter version of the entire Greg Grant Program in its entirety. This project will contain a small portion of each large part of the program, the tutoring, the schooling, the practice, and the program as a life-changing experience. I also had to plan out shooting schedules and when the kids in the program were available to shoot and were actually having practice. There is a lot of pre-production work for this particular project because there are a lot of conflicting schedules of the teachers, the coaches, the students, and my crew. Although the scheduling was rough, the meeting times outside of the shooting times were so helpful in making the shoots go quickly, smoothly, and very successful. My crew and I would meet at least one a week for a good hour or two and would discuss what we wanted to shoot at our next shoot, so we would be prepared before we went on location and would make the shoot go very successfully. If I did not have these meetings, the end product would not have been as successful as it was. There is some great footage and material to cover so I will do whatever I need to pre-production wise in order to get that full-end result.

Final Project: Storyboard

Some of the items on the storyboard are subject to change. The general idea of this project is to show the journey of the Greg Grant Program at Trenton Central High School and the journey the students in the program go through. Their day entails going to school, going to tutoring, and going to practice so in essence I would like to portray that "day-in-the-life." Some items may or may not get added and or taken out, but this is the typical story line and images I am looking towards. As I started editing some things will be changing, but the general idea of this storyboard is what is going to be shown throughout this piece. It's important for me to keep a structure somewhat like what this storyboard shows but as I edit I know some ideas will just flow into one another and create a better flow for the end product.

Final Cut First Edit

http://youtu.be/0VF5HzNtDrg

I took some footage from a practice of the Trenton Central High School's Basketball team who are involved with the Greg Grant Program. These students wont around the clock with schoolwork, their home-lives, and basketball to become great students and players. This program is hard to become a member or and even harder to get through, but the perks of the program are essential. This is what I will be conducting my Final Project on is doing a short video project on the generalization of the program. This is the first edit of the project.

Self-Evaluation

Self Evaluation:

Throughout this project it was difficult for me to narrow down the photos to choose just six images from my two-week trip to Italy to edit. All of the photos I took had different meanings and also there were little aspects of each picture that I would have changed. While editing and color correcting all of these photos I would make copies of the original photo and go back and forth to the original and restart the edits I had already made. There were various things I wanted to show with my corrected photos and some of the edited versions weren’t coming out as I envisioned them, so I would backtrack to the copy of the original and start over.

            I wish I had a little more experience with some more technical aspects of color corrections and photo editing because there were some things in some of the edited photos that I wish went differently, but I wasn’t able to correct them myself. Whether it was a little bit of over saturation in some parts of the photos, or some hazy pieces of the photos. Overall I am very happy with the outcome of the photos because it doesn’t necessarily put a real-life spin on these photos but a more dramatic color vibrant spin on them. When I was visiting Italy I saw colors that I never saw before and the colors I was seeing weren’t necessarily things I have never seen in person but the way the colors popped within the landscape of the country was incredible and that is exactly what I wanted to show in my project.

            I definitely need some more experience within Photoshop, but I really did try my best to make the pictures look as I envisioned them and spent enough time on each picture that if I wasn’t happy with the outcome I immediately restarted the project. Also I color corrected and edited about 10 photos and then narrowed it down to 10 and choosing which photos to keep was also another hard decision with my vision.

Midterm Pictures (Before & After + Log)

                                  Before         

After

In this photo I decided to wash out the coloring in the sky and the coloring of most of the buildings. What I remember the most from seeing this imagery in person was the reflection in the water was prominent and the colors of the buildings and boats were very vibrant in regards to the water and sky. The edited photo I did is not a realistically visual image, but I loved changing the hues and changed the color balance of the various colors in order to create the end product. It was very interesting to change the hues and saturation of the colors within this photo because as I changed the coloring other parts of the picture became more vibrant. The end image is something that would not be seen by the naked eye, but I think it is a good representation of the intensity of colors that reflected upon each other in this area of Venice. 

Before                                                  

After

 

















  In this photograph I decided to mainly deal with the saturation and contrast of the original image. This photo was taken on a beautiful, sunny, and cloud-less day, which meant the colors were in full force and vibrant in person. After taking the image I noticed that I couldn’t get the photograph to show the vibrancy of the colors within the church through the lens as I saw in real-life. I decided to edit the coloring of the image in order to show the detail or colors within the church itself in regards to the intricate designs and the sky. It took a while to get the coloring just right with this image because I went for a more realistic end product with this photo. The end product that I wanted was more of what I saw in person as opposed to what was seen through the camera lens. I altered the color balances and the graphs with the coloring of the photo as well as modifying the brightness and darkness of some portions of this photo in order to get the edited version of this church.

Before

After

   















With this photo I decided to edit it two separate ways. When re-coloring the photo and dealing with the coloring palette. This specific landscape I remember being so powerful with color that I wanted to emphasize. The way the sun was shining on the building and onto the garden above the fence and near the water was such a piece of artwork that I wanted to create a new piece of art through color correction. With my first version of the photo I decided to go with a darker contrast and saturation with all the objects in the picture besides the leaves and flowers within the landscape. The vibrant colors in the flowers did not look the same between the lens and what it looked like in real-life so I decided to create an even more dramatic version of the colors I experienced. 

Before

After

The day I went to visit the leaning tower of Pisa there were barely any clouds but it the light started to slowly go away earlier on in the day. I definitely needed to brighten up the lighting and changing the contrast and saturation in order to get the coloring viewed correctly. The buildings around the tower were so bright compared to the coloring of the tower itself that changing the coloring through the hues and contrasts was necessary to show the actual difference. Once everything started to change with the color balances and the color graphs the grass got greener, the sky got bluer and the coloring of the actual tower stood out in comparison to looking dull in the original photo.  

Before

After

 

On Murano Island

            When this photo was taken the weather wasn’t so great on Murano Island and the sky and lack of light drained the actual colors out. In person the colors of the grass and accents of color in the light posts were so bright that it was unfortunate that the colors got drained out when taking the actual photo. When I took a look at the original photo I decided I wanted to alter the brightness and the contrast of the photo in order to make it look more like reality as opposed to the drained out look of the original photo. I placed several layers of brightness and saturation in order to make the picture look as if there was sufficient light from the sky and the sun when in reality it was raining and cloudy.

Before

After

 

 











This was one of my favorite pictures I took during my trip, but the original picture barely got any of the details and the landscape that was seen by the human eye. The scenery of this picture and through the overlook of the balcony it was so nice to see the color of the sky while the sun went down and to see the haziness of the city below. I wanted to brighten up the photo in order to see more of the actual scenery that was hidden by the haziness. The coloring of the photo was difficult to work with because it was while the sun was setting, but it was easy to change and alter the hues and the individual color levels in order to get the sky the color it turned out. I wanted it to still look real, but through color balancing and saturation I was able to get the sky to look as if the sun was actually setting and the flash was on during the day, which it wasn’t.  

Abstract for the Midterm

My Abstract:

            My portfolio of photos is a series of images taken during my 2-week vacation in Italy this past August. I visited Rome, Florence, Pisa, and Venice and throughout my trip there were various abstract landscapes and beautiful landscaping that made amazing artwork in person and in photographs. After looking over the photos that I had taken throughout the two weeks of being in Europe I realized that while they were great shots of all the sites we visited, they weren’t the exact quality of the reality of the imagery.  

            When I was given the opportunity to create a portfolio of photoshopped images of a group of pictures, I knew I wanted to create a group of edited photos of pertaining to my trip to Italy. The photographs had a lot of potential just from the start, but they needed some work to either make them more dramatic looking, enhance the beautiful colors of the landscaping, or to give it a more unrealistic tone. Europe is full of wonderful coloring and insanely beautiful scenery that it is hard to show the real-life view of it through a photograph. Through the use of PhotoShop it becomes slightly easier to enhance the images in order to alter the pictures to make them look as if you are viewing them in a different way.

            When looking through all the 300 photos I took on my trip there was certain scenery photos that I remember taking, but I felt as if the actual photograph that I took does not give the actual location justice. The photos I took I feel are nicely shot, but the way the tones and other aspects of the photo came out does not show the extremity of what I saw in person. Through this project I took to editing these photos in various ways to create a new way of looking at the original photos taken.

Color Correction #3

For these pictures of the Vatican at night, I decided to crop out the unnecessary pieces of the photo first. Then I decided to brighter up some of the colors by giving the Vatican building itself some more saturation and played around with the numbers of the hues and colors to bring out a brighter color within the building itself. Through all the color corrections within the original photo I think there is a more realistic coloring of the building than in the original picture.

Color Correction #2

For this color correction, I took the original photo which was taken on the balcony of a restaurant during dinner time and I just changed the hues and took the color balance and made it seem as if the sun was coming up not going down. The color changes were more of a dawn impact instead of a more night time picture.

Color Correction #1

For this photo, it was taken in Italy during the summer and I didn't realize how the contrast was so low until I started messing around with all the contrast and saturations. The after photo doesn't necessarily look like a real-life photo, but I was just trying to become aware of all the types of photo editing and color correction tools that there were. I also added black toning to the sky so that there were more of a darker shadow and there were some color minimizing and maximizing to get to the end result.

Composition #2

For my second composition I decided to use the lasso tool and take a selection of a beach in Mexico and paste it into a picture of my friends.

Composition #1: Lined Realistic

For this particular picture, I chose to use the lasso tool and take 2 gondolas from a separate picture and add them onto the background of the original picture. Then I corrected the coloring of the pasted selected areas in order to try to match the coloring of the foreground and backgrounds. Then I used the Rule of Thirds and used those lines to place my copied images into the background.

Comosite Photo #4-Landscape/Filter

For this extra image, I had taken this picture in Italy and I messed around with various filters and the percentages and scales within the filters. I really loved this landscape picture and how I was able to bring out the wonderful colors and all the pixels through changing the filters and the color editing.

Composite Picture #3-Realistic Image/Filter

For this image I played with the filters gallery and kept making changed until I changed the background and the type of photo. I also used the lasso tool and added in the 2 gondolas in the picture and pasted them through layers onto this image.

Composite Picture #2-Free style

In this composite picture, I decided to take a piece of one picture and insert it into another picture. When I went to Italy over the summer I took a picture of the Spanish steps, which is the background of this image. Next I took a picture of a replica of the famous "David" statue and I used the lasso tool numerous times and very intricate details to paste the David onto the Spanish steps.

Composite Picture #1-Abstract

I decided to create my first Composite picture by combining 2 of my abstract photos I took. I took one of my original abstract photos and created a new layer and cropped my other abstract photo in order to combine the both to create a new and different abstract composite.

Abstract Picture #3

Abstract Picture #2

Absract Picture #1

15 Minute Drawing-Self-Portrait

60 Minute Drawing-Landscape

30 Minute Drawing-Free Draw

About Me

I am a Junior Communication Studies Major with a track of Radio/TV/Film. I am a member of a National Sorority on campus, I am Secretary of Lions Television, A member of the Communication Honor Society, and Secretary of the Panhellenic Society. I've had some production experience, I would just like to gain more skills in order to be a marketable candidate for jobs for after graduation. I would like to work in television after graduation.