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CTS - ASSIGNMENT 2
Jonathan Hiew - 0333787
PERSONAL STATEMENT VIDEO
- A Procrastinator's Mind -
*Click here to scroll to the bottom of the page and watch the full video!
Assignment Brief
For this individual assignment, I was tasked with creating a unique personal statement video - be it a personal statement, concept statement or mission statement. It can be of any topic that I can choose as long as the video delivers a clear message. I can use any medium to create my video footage and any editing app I can find to edit it as long as those apps don't use large watermarks which blocks the entire video.
The style of my video depends on how I want to shoot it. It could be:
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Video poetry style
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Music video
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Advertisement
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Documentary
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Animation
...and many more!
Some of the mandatories that my lecturers gave me are as below:
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Use ONLY royalty free music! You may explore and select from www.jamendo.com or use presets from Youtube video creator.
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No draggy scenes and yes, subtitles is a must especially if not in English!
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All videos must be from 1 – 3.5 minutes in length with clear image and good quality audio! Try to obtain a good number of views on YouTube!
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Use a catchy and attractive title. Do not include ‘personal statement’ as part of video title. Instead have it written at the description.
The recommended timeline I was given is to have completed and uploaded the video to Youtube on the 5th of March, and have the official completion of reviews done on the 9th of March.
Week 5 - Week 6
Assignment 1 had just ended, and at the end of Week 5 I had decided to fly back to my hometown in Sabah for Chinese New Year to visit my friends and family. I can't remember which week was it but I had already gotten the brief for assignment 2 during this time! I was so pressured because I had an online assignment to do for my English module called MOOC and this just adds up the pressure to meet the deadline.
During the entire week, I didn't use the time to brainstorm about CTS at all but spent the limited time I have going out with my friends and family (who wouldn't, right. Sorry Ms. Fu!). I got kind of worried because the deadline is actually due the week after CNY. It was due on Week 7, can't remember which day of the week. I had only started thinking, not even working, on the idea of what to do for my video on the beginning of Week 7, so I was really stressed and my mind kept going on and on about CTS.
Week 7
As soon as I landed back to Kuala Lumpur and reached my hostel at U-Residence, I literally could not stop thinking about CTS Assignment 2 for the entire night because I not only have to prepare a video, upload it and obtain views, I have to make an Idea Journal too. Whatever I did, whether I'm on my chair using my laptop, in the shower, having a snack or brushing my teeth, I was constantly thinking about CTS and what to do. I had a few ideas mapped out in 1 night though. However, Mr. Charles was so forgiving that he extended the deadline to Week 8 (9th March!). I could finally breathe from all the suffocating pressure.
I had given a lot of thought about what I should do for my video and how to make it unique, coming from my own perspective. I tried to make it as personal as possible, so I thought of doing perhaps some monologue thing where I narrate myself on what I do. I'd have to split into 2 screens, where 1 of them shows the activity and the other shows me talking directly to the camera. I have also thought thoroughly on other video styles such as a 'silent film', a modern day Charlie Chaplin. It would be really awesome if I could portray what I want to say by using mere gestures, facial expressions and body language to the viewers. I also thought of doing an ordinary first-person video shooting kind of style. Stop motion intrigued me at first but I knew I didn't have the patience at the time to take multiple shots one by one.
And finally....
I remembered about Blender! I thought that I could finally put some use into my basic animating skills for my CTS Assignment.
"Blender is a professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games." - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
At first, I thought that this was a crazy idea because animating would take a huge load of time - but I had some... experiences with it in the past. I like to do animation and tell stories through it. This is one of the reasons why I aim to be an animator in the near future. Although I had already forgotten like 95% of what I had learned, re-watching a few tutorial videos on the basics of Blender refreshed my mind completely about how to use it.
Week 8
So How Did I Do It?
I spent some time generating new ideas on what I can do with animation. I knew that I couldn't have made a story that had humans in it because that would take loads of time to design the character and all that. So, I thought of doing something cartoon-ish. Animals is a big no no for me because I already have a hard time drawing animals. Then, I immediately thought of something really plain and simple - Emojis! They're just round objects with faces drawn on them. I also thought that perhaps I could give them colour codes that represent different emotions, but I knew that wouldn't do because there was already the Disney movie called "Inside Out".
I thought of an idea where my imagination comes to life while I go to sleep. Basically, dreaming. It isn't just any random, surreal dream but it has to have meaning into it. I thought that perhaps I could tell a story from my past which seems really cool. Below is a short clip of my first idea.
CTS 2 - Trial
Play Video
It was a pretty nice idea, but the idea didn't seam to appeal as much to me, so I thought of other plans. I showed this video to my lecturer too but when she asked me what the emoji is about, I actually didn't have a plan laid out yet. That's when "Procrastination" was born, along with "Rational" (changed to "Thinker"), "Wisdom" and "Responsibilities". Out of nowhere, these 4 emojis came up. My lecturer understood the idea and she was fine with it, but now I needed to deliver a statement. I thought a little harder on how to refine this idea. Then, I came up with the thought of showing what goes on in my head and how it affects to me in real life. That would be amazing! Somewhere along the week, the assignment deadline got extended another time until 23rd of March! Everyone was so relieved and grateful.
Week 9
1st Picture/Frame
2048th Picture/Frame
4027th Picture/Frame
The title of my video is called A Procrastinator's Mind.
Synopsis:
Everybody procrastinates. Even though it's looked on as a negative thing, we still do it anyway because we want a time-out from tasks and relax after a tiring day. In this video, I will show what goes on in my head when I start to procrastinate. Emojis that will be the embodiment of 'Thinking', 'Procrastinating', 'Wisdom', and 'Responsibilities' will play out their own roles in different scenes. Thinker is enraged that I chose Procrastination instead of Responsibilities. Will Thinker get rid of Procrastination before it gets out of hand?
Some facts about my work:
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9 Days to finish up video taping, animating, sound recording, rendering, designing, and all the behind the scenes work (ironically I procrastinated doing this, so the total time I spent doing actual work would be lesser)
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4027 pictures (or in this case would be called frames) in PNG Format were rendered.
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Depending on the position of the objects or the camera viewpoint in the animation, one picture/frame takes approximately between 11 seconds - 33 seconds of rendering.
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A couple hours before the deadline of the submission, there was a fault in a part of the animation (which I did days before) that I didn't notice. I needed to re-render about 300 pictures all over again.
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Taking into account that each frame needed 11 seconds - 33 seconds of rendering, it would take 12 hours - 37 hours of rendering, but I know that it took me at least 24 hours to render everything, so it would be between 24 hours - 37 hours of total rendering time only just to make a 3-minute animation video. I didn't include the other rendering times that I had trashed out.
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About 7 - 8 GB of space was taken up by a 3-minute animation video.
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Blender crashed about 1 - 2 times while I was working on it (thank goodness for auto save). I think I overworked my laptop :(
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This isn't even the highest quality of rendering. I had to lower the quality to save the amount of time I render. If I had chosen a higher quality, one frame could take 1 - 2 minutes of rendering. My laptop isn't very powerful.
Do note that I'm just a beginner in animating, so there could have been better ways to do this simple animation and save time/space but I didn't have the leisure to figure them out. This was already optimal for me.
So, there you have it! That's the "Behind the Scenes" of my work. I didn't find it at all frustrating to do this animation because it really satisfies me and I like doing it. Although at some points I felt lazy only because it's time consuming, I tell myself that the result would be amazing and worth it.
Check out my behind the scenes footage below! (Sorry that I moved around a lot, so it could be a little hard to see what's going on)
CTS 2 - Behind The Scenes
Play Video
All in all, this assignment proved to be enjoyable. I didn't do a lot of heavy thinking in this assignment as I did in assignment 1 but like any other assignment, it's tiring. Another reason why I chose this topic to convey a message is because procrastination itself is something that everyone can relate to. The way I delivered this message is in a comedic way because when I socialize with people I tend to use humour to start/continue a conversation. Anyway, I hope you will like the video and thank you for reading up till the end!
My Idea Journal (IDJ)
You can find my Idea Journal here. It contains all the thought process and ideation that I have done. Click the button below for a PDF version file of my IDJ:
Making an IDJ is really exhausting (for me) because it squeezes your brain juice out to literally think and write down whatever you have - and if you think that's all you have, you're wrong!
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