Online class is excellent because you can rewind the techniques at your leisure and Marina Shipova and she is extremely capable of teaching techniques with no book to follow at all…but this time around it had a WORKBOOK to follow along with where you use the files in the lessons.  It is EXTREMELY helpful to have a book that is further clarified by an instructor as you go, alot of books don’t offer online tutors as you go, instead they pretty much leave you on your own, but she encourages you to use your own material after each lesson for the actual grade which DOES ensure you understood it enough to repeat! It is hard for me to come up with a suggestion…however, perhaps for students that are slower learners or have fulltime time constraints outside of school, maybe just OBS recordings of following the lessons to prove you are doing the lessons like a basic class and a challenge path class for going above and beyond with your own image?  The most important thing is to KEEP up with the pace of the class because Adobe had multiple things to learn in each chapter!

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Special effects are where the magic happens as things magically fly that shouldn’t. explosions and natural disasters are suddenly happening that have never happened, and my favorite the 3D ones that you reach out your hand in the dark theatre to make “sure” you can’t actually touch what seems to be floating in front of your seat.

There are special effects that enhance like flying sand in a sandstorm or long takes in a car chase that add rather than overshadow the core message of a shot or film but I would like to take a look at an example where special effects can ONLY enhance and shine! VR (virtual reality) has a lot of special effects that have to be filmed and happen from the first-person perspective to make you believe you are truly right there. I have watched “Hardcore Henry” several times since I ran across it a month ago accidentally and it deserves a place in this blog somewhere…so here it is:

From the rotating foot to the fruit explosion, I was hooked from the beginning. how you hold a detonator and watch the explosion occur a few feet away after the button push, how you seem like you are grabbing onto a speeding motorcycle, how you are riding down the middle of an escalator, it’s free on TUBI and was entirely filmed with a stabilized GoPro on someones face. Literally:

The Moscow cityscape was shot on a soundstage with black walls which were created frame by frame and required manual adjusting. I love the glitch transitions and side to side movement of the camera to simulate shaking your head back and forth when answering questions and other transitions that add to the overall effect as well. The film stars Sharlto Copley, star of “District 9” and “The A-Team” and also has a great soundtrack and humor as well:

Without practice even these worst special effects on you tube are amazing to me.

COMING SOON

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Transformation takes us on a real-life journey of transitions like sunrises and the change from night to day or day to night… or revealing like a moth from cocoon to hatching with wings. Revolutions are seismically huge transitions that can invoke many emotions from starkly different shots of the battlefield and death to celebration shots of the victor and the change that has taken place. Color can transition us from one place to another like in “The Wizard of Oz.”

As far as streaming services go, they have totally disrupted the the distribution, attendance, and access to films and filmmaking.  No longer do we all rush to the movie theater for the big premiere.  Many people are watching short and long videos that were created for free using technology most users have like their own IPHONE in high quality.

CGI has come along and altered all tools are available for filmmakers.  Star Wars went from miniature sets and fishing wire hung starships to newer storylines with even more CGI and Jar Jar Binks. Gamers today might opt for a VR experience that plays out like a movie you are immersed in rather than go to a showing. AI algorithms are also aiding in scriptwriting, editing and more are being hailed as the “new” future of film right now, a MAJOR transformation for the industry, as more students and creators have access to AI. I love how in “The Frost” the snow is blended going across the shot sideways and the title “freezes over” I love the way the camera pans out to the landscape, and uses a fake shaky camera movement on the rock explosions. The panning and the reflections of the computer screen against the glasses in this video down right down to the fadinghandprint at the end hit at more traditional transitions in the futre as AI improves since there are alot of jump cuts as AI scenes generally have to be stitched together.

The entire AI movie of “The Frost can be viewed on the link below: (Be sure to bookmark my site, open a new page for this link, or use the back arrow to be sure and return for more riveting Piratess Friday content..I have also included a link to some IPHONE movies for the curious)

Welcome to the new surreal: how AI-generated video is changing film | MIT Technology Review

10 Awesome Movies You Didn’t Know Were Made on iPhone – Flickside

I have an assignment to make a short flick about transitions one idea of script and images/storyboard that I was going to mix with rock searching videos in streams I threw in powerpoint rather than paper sketch to merge with transitions in-between was…

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The music l chose in one of my previous projects was dramatic on purpose because I wanted to add some excitement to the educational topic highlighted as well as our business installations being linked to progress and advances from earth to outer space.  

Bram Stoker carfully chose the music in Dracula’s Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to span from its opening haunting song- “The Beginning” to the end song “Love Song for a Vampire” video, one of my favorites I chose to include here: 

I always tended to group my songs into themed sets when I would add a recording to a cassette tape in the 80s and divide my CD collection categories in the 90’s and 2000’s in a similar manner.  I would name these tapes or sections things like:

“Playful” and throw songs or CDs in that had childhood games or lyric mentions like “Pop Goes The Weasel” – 3rd Bass (1991), “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by Stevie Ray Vaugn, KORN – “Shoots and Ladders,”  or just fun upbeat songs like “Beautiful People” Marilyn Manson, songs I could skip along to like “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, Sublime’s “Hong Kong Phooey” (or the whole “Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits” album produced by Ralph Sall or upbeat albums in general.

Favorite genres like jazz would have abums from bands like Cherry Poppin Daddies, Harry Connick Jr, and Squirrel Nut Zippers…how do you organize your music?

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“Schindler’s List” by elycefeliz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

To highlight the main character, certain movies will also highlight the main character with certain colors.  In “The Mask” Jim Carry’s Character is always seen in green makeup with a yellow suit making it easy to follow the antics going on, and “Kill Bill” put Uma Thurman in an iconic yellow jumpsuit.  “Mad Max beyond Thunderdome” sticks to mostly machine dark colors on top of the desert sand color behind.

Most interesting of all, “Dick Tracy” stuck to a 7 color-palette scheme in the making of the movie. The director and cinematographer went as far as painting the buildings, choosing the cars, and making the suits based on the scheme of primarily red, green, fuscia, orange, cyan, blue, and yellow.  The saturation brings more drama and the audience is not used to seeing a fixed pallete used in that manner, I highly recommend seeing it as a treat to the eye.

what is wrong with my picture on here…

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Putting PS in the hands of the creators gives people more power to “mislead” the public and needs to be handled carefully especially when advertising. For example, bigger size commparisons of products in proportion to people vs the size actually recieve, altered news images making people questing the validity of the event, weight loss adds with fake aftershots full of muscles or hair loss regrow promises where you can see mismatched skin tones, people advertising in cars or products they have never personally been near, promotions to follow people who are successful by showing themselves in mansions they don’t own, property pictures of perfect rentals that are filthy or damaged in reality, or just people try countless manipulation tactics on others by causing an ex, friend, or family member to think that they are better off without them as now suddenly they have been going on dates with or attending parties with gorgeous people they don’t even know. The liquify tool is commonly used in personal ads and covergirl photos and can lead to insecurities for developing adolescents like wishing for bigger eyes or perfect teeth and bodies giving them anxiety when they compare themselves to these digital paintings instead of authentic images of their role models.

Everyone naturally desires their human image to be a little better or wishes they had been a little more successful at this point, and no one likes to be looked down upon because their place of living is a mess but maybe they are full time workers or parents, and otherwise would not have posted at all. Things like face filters can be all a person needs to boost their confidence and begin a new path they would have shied away from before, but somewhere there needs to be a balance or confession before others start to assume EVERYTHING they post or advertise is a lie. If you want someone to believe you 100% of the time, photoshopping yourself to the extreme is not a good way to start.

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One of the best lessons you can find that spans multiple design programs, will be a tutorial on layers. Adding layers can help save you a lot of “do over” time because each step you lay on top, you can throw away without hurting your original file. I found them confusing at first. There is a game called Fishworld on Facebook that uses 3 very simple ones so that you can create a little “scene” for your fish to swim by. This way, you can place a mountain behind a waterfall and then a tree in front of that for example and the tree won’t disappear if it is on layer one, the waterfall is on layer two, and the Mountain is layer 3 in the back. There are many thousands of objects and backgrounds to play with and it is a lot of fun to see what others create. There are lots of movie and tv themes, something for everyone. See how my fish, lower fog layer, and nymphs are floating in front of a scene I’ve created with layers behind them?

Today in class we began with a pizza, there were toppings to add, and a whole salad bar with toppings to pick from. Adding the layers, painting the sauce (mines pesto), “blur/cooking” the cheese and cutting out a slice were excellent tutorials designed by Professor Brock at Peninsula College. Many of the classes can be taken online from beginner to advanced levels of many design programs and also incorporate website, wordpress, and marketable skills.

A final important nugget for thought is how you choose to export to the web matters. According to Difference Between JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP Image Formats (guidingtech.com) these are the main differences and I have examples at the bottom of this page.

• JPEG is the most common format for photographs and natural scenes, but it loses quality with every save.
• PNG is a lossless format for images with transparency, text, or sharp edges, but it has a large file size.
• GIF is a format for animated images or images with limited colors, but it has a small color palette and does not support transparency.

Check out Peninsula College (pencol.edu) and start cooking your own skills, websites, blogs and portfolios now!

• JPEG is the most common format for photographs and natural scenes, but it loses quality with every save.
• PNG is a lossless format for images with transparency, text, or sharp edges, but it has a large file size.
• GIF is a format for animated images or images with limited colors, but it has a small color palette and does not support transparency.

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