Time Art Practice

So after trying and failing to film my Time Art piece over the weekend (Note to self: Never assume anything, you will pick up the only cameras that don't shoot video) I felt like I should be doing something somewhat productive in regards to my twin screen projects. Now I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do and a very badly drawn storyboard to back it up but I've never actually use the effects I'm planning to use. They seem pretty simple and I'm competent enough in After Effects now to work out problems when they arise and try new things that tutorials may not cover.

I took my own DSLR and set up the worlds worst studio in my bedroom (equipment consisting of a desk lamp, tripod and camera against a cream wall) and started filming a vague idea of what I storyboarded. I then imported into AE and just got to work, playing around with what I can do and basically doing what I wanted, my ultimate dream in life, I gave myself magical powers.

The tutorial I was following was useful for getting the idea but the guy was using stock footage that I didn't have access too so I had to play around with what I had already learnt in AE and see what happened. I ended up using partial world and a new generator I hasn't used before to create lighting effects, this added with a bit of colour correcting and a 'mystical atmosphere' called quad-toning I made it appear as if I was deflecting magic.

Whilst it sped up a lot when exporting (I still need to figure out why) I'm pretty pleased with it for a first attempt.

I then took a magic orb I created a while ago and decided to make it hover on my hand as if I was the one creating it. Here I was focusing more on making the orb look as if it belonged in the shot than the accuracy of the tracking hence why the exit is a bit dodgy but again I'm pretty proud of the result, now I only need to figure out how to add a hovering shadow beneath it and I think it'll fit into my twin screen nicely.

I'm going to keep playing around in AE with different tutorials I've found in the hopes that I can use everything in my final edit, I have the Panasonic until Friday and after speaking with Simon I think I've came up with a way of filming using just 1 camera instead of 2 - hopefully this will work. We'll see!