Day 62 - Sony Vegas - English Project (29) - The Final Countdown

What I did:

Today, I finished the project. I added the last bit of audio and added a little more to the animation. I also fixed up the sound effects. It turns out the whole video is about 15 minutes long and I am talking for literally all of it. I also added the adagio the the background music and it sounds so nice. I also summarized pretty much the story and I hope I get a good mark in it since I put so much effort into it.
Here is the credit to every single backdrop I used:
https://wallpapersafari.com/destroyed-city-background/
http://metallized.deviantart.com/art/Destroyed-City-221502350

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/156500155770943231/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/432486370437914357/

What I learned:

Today, I learned that the music that is played by the cellist is the Adagio in G Minor (Albinoni). This is the music that is played by the cellist throughout the story but it is never mentioned which version he played so I had to do a little research and I learned that it was this one. That is pretty much all I learned today because I was just finishing some things up. However, there is a mini thing that I learned. I don't know why this happened but whenever I tried to insert something I between things in the same layer, it would push the stuff behind it further back

What I plan to learn tomorrow:

My goal for tomorrow's class is to continue working on my montage. I did one day of the montage back in April but I haven't touched it since and that is my goal for tomorrow's class. I am not sure what I will be learning but I got a pretty cool idea for how I'm going to make it now. It's going to be nostalgic for me :D

Time: 4 hours (including rendering)

Day 61 - Sony Vegas - English Project (28) - Commentary

What I did: 
Today, I added some commentary to the composition. I am about half done but I worked really hard today to do it. I added commentary to a lot of scenes and whenever I mumbled or messed something up, I restarted the whole thing. That is pretty much all I did today. There's not much to it but I am finishing up the project tomorrow.

What I learned:
Today, I learned a new thing in audio section and that is that when I started to add more commentary to the composition, it makes a new layer even though I have the commentary layer selected. It also adds the layer into a "non-solo" mode, So basically, I have the commentary in two different parts and since I haven't made a video in weeks now, I don't know if it's just for this composition or if it's for every composition but I will try to get it fixed.

What I plan to learn tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to finish this entire project. I have add the rest of the commentary and quickly say goodbye to the people watching and then I need to start refining some things. My goal for tomorrow is just to finish up but I will also try to learn something. Not sure what that is though yet.

Time: 1 hour 1/2 hours

Day 60 - Sony Vegas - English Project (27) - Finishing some things up

What I did:

Today, I finished the animations and went back to add sound effects to a few things. This was a really big task but it was worth it because I got a lot of stuff done. I made the rest of the story in Sony Vegas and I added the explosion and gunshot sound effects. Other than that, there wasn't much to do but I wrapped up the story and I tried to get in as many of the things I could. Now, the only things I have left to do are audio and refining. 

What I learned:

Today, I learned about the audio track. I tried to place gunshot sounds and explosion sounds in them but it turns out i had the "solo" option off which makes it not sound anything and the audio track turns black. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong but I messed around with the layer settings and finally figured it out. So if you're not in "solo" mode, the audio track will be silent. I have no idea how I got there but it really was a new thing that I learned that will be helpful in the future. 

What I plan to learn tomorrow:

Tomorrow, I plan to add the rest of the commentary. I am a perfectionist so hopefully, it won't take that long to add commentary but I know I'm going to be tempted after every screw-up. My goal for tomorrow's class is to learn something new about audio, hopefully how to distort it and everything because I could use that in the future for videos and make them funny. That is my goal for tomorrow's class.

Time: 3 1/2 hours 

Day 59 - May Analysis and June Plans

What I learned this month:
This month, I got a lot of stuff done. I only focused on one thing this month and that is my English Project for "The Cellist of Sarajevo." I got to do anything I wanted for this project but I chose to mix and match with my courses and decided to get double credit. I chose to combine it with my Info-tech class because I wanted to learn new things in Sony Vegas because that's what my Independent Studies course is on.

I learned a lot this month, especially about keyframes! I animated so much this month that it's become second nature to me to go to the "Event Pan/Crop" section and start animating away. This is something that will definitely come in handy when I make Youtube videos. I never used this feature because I was too lazy to learn it while making videos so I decided to do it for the Cellist assignment and oh boy did I learn a lot.

I learned how to keyframing works and what you need to do to make it move. I learned that if you want something to move later on in its lifetime, you need to make it stand still first and then move on to it later. I also learned how to resize, how to inverse and all that fun stuff. Learning about maintaining aspect ratio really helped as well. It taught things about pictures and how they need to be checked off in the settings to fit the video.

The most important thing I learned this month, in my opinion, was a life lesson about managing time. I was very condensed for time in that I had AP calculus earlier this month and I had to manage my time for all my classes. I believe that I did a decent job in managing time for this class even though I really couldn't get to it in the first half of the month due to wanting a break from all the school. However, I counted out the days and I knew that I needed to hurry it up so I definitely managed my time well in that aspect. You can look at my blog and I got the exact number of days I needed which is 19.

I do believe that I learned a lot this month not just for IT but also learning life lessons. This course is also tough when trying to go for a perfect mark and it's even harder when you're not doing it in a class but doing it outside of one. I have to do it alone and I believe this has taught me how to manage my time and not to procrastinate.I've worked very hard on these posts and I hope it shows.
What I plan to learn next month:
Next month I plan to be on top of things. I have graduation ceremonies, prom, etc. in the next few days so I plan to not do anything for the next days but I will definitely make up for it on the weekend. This next month, I plan to finish up "The Cellist of Sarajevo" assignment in probably 4-5 posts. Then, I want to make a montage and have that be my final project for this class. I haven't waited all this time for nothing and I believe having two final projects is a good thing on this blog. I plan to learn how to make a montage in general. I am not going for a specific tutorial because I do not have a whole lot of time but I plan to make it good and interesting. This is going to be  my first montage that I am creating so hopefully in the future, I will have a lot more experience with it. I want this to be good and I will most likely upload it to my youtube channel because that's what this blog started out as and that's how it's going to end. This may be my last monthly post but I'm not 100% sure it is. I will definitely end this blog summarizing everything I've done on this blog. It's going to be a fun ride. See ya soon. :D
- Jimmy

Day 58 - Sony Vegas - English Project (26) - Dragan's Motivation

What I did:
Today, I finished Dragan's next chapter which also involved a car. This time it pauses and picks up Emina and goes on forward. I made Dragan move back and forward to show that he's thinking. This is a major chapter for Dragan in that he learns a lot about himself and what he wants to do next. This chapter leads him to make the decision that he needs to pull the man in the hat off the streets in the few chapters. It shows how much this war is affecting him and that's the reason I wanted to do this.

What I learned:
Today, I didn't learn much but it's coming toward the end of the month and I've already done this a thousand times so I hope this won't make me lose marks and I know it probably won't. What I did learn was that the maintaining aspect ratio also affects the tops and bottoms of the image. It happened with the car but when I put it in the composition and tried to move it down, it started to disappear because I didn't check "maintain aspect ratio." That's what I learned today.

What I plan to learn tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to make the May analysis post. I plan to talk about what I've learned and what I plan to learn in the future. That is my goal for tomorrow's class. I will go into detail about what my plans are.

Time: 50 minutes

Day 57 - Sony Vegas - English Project (25) - Kenan's 3 types of people of the round table

What I did:
Today, I made the last biggest chapter in the book or at least what I would say is the biggest chapter. I created Kenan at a broken building trying to get water and I also had a few people there that died from the explosion. I also added something new to this and that was a car. I had the car drive into the screen, have a guy get out, then get in and leave again. I also had made the screen shake when the explosions were happening to show the effect of them.

What I learned:
Today, I learned about the tinting and adding it to a flash. After you go to flash transition second, click yellow flash and you have the ability to change the flash to a different colour through the tint option. You can make it black for a fade effect or blue for an airplane going into the sky effect but I stuck with yellow because that's the colour of the explosion. I also learned that you have to keep in the margins of the "Event Pan/Crop" section if you are making something go up and down because if your thing isn't in the margins, then it will show black instead.

What I plan to learn in the future:
Tomorrow, I plan to do the next chapter in the book. We are finally done chapter two of the book and we can move onto the rest of it. I plan to do most of Chapter 3 over the weekend and not really document all of it since it's not as important as the first 2 chapters. I will highlight the rest of it though. Tomorrow, I plan to do the next chapter and hopefully learn one last thing which I do not know about before the monthly post I make. 

Time: 1 1/2 hours

Day 56 - Sony Vegas - English Project (24) - Arrow's Job is done

What I did:
So, I actually didn't realize that Arrow's big chapter is right before  Kenan's so right that's what I created today instead of doing Kenan's. He will be next day. Today, I created the epic scene of the Arrow taking down the enemy sniper. This involved me switching backdrops 3 different times. It starts with the Cellist. Then goes to Nermin. Then finally back to the Cellist. This was just time-consuming but it's one of the 3 biggest chapters in the book so it's expected. I also created another death so that was fun. 

What I learned:
Today, I learned something that I've been really curious about for a long time. I've always wondered how many YouTubers add the zoom in effect for one second and immediately zoom out for the rest of the video. It's used for comedic effect and I've always wondered how to do it. Today, I learned that they use keyframes. Basically what you do is split the clip where you want it zoomed in and then split it again where you want it to go back to normal. Then, you take the split part and you go to the keyframe section and zoom it into where you want it zoomed. Then you have your zoom in effect!

What I plan to learn tomorrow:
Tomorrow is the day I plan to do Kenan's thing. I know I said this yesterday but tomorrow is actually the day where I do Kenan's story. It will involve a new explosion that I plan to learn so that's my goal for tomorrow. I will also learn how to add sound effects and etc. I want this to be done perfectly. This is the last biggest chapter of the story and after this, everything should be shorter. I should be cruising in the next few days. 

Time: 1 1/4 hours