Premiere Progression Blog Post 2

Now I have all my source clips uploaded and created the first few seconds of my trailer for parental awareness I am now going to be creating the actual footage for the trailer itself. To start I am going to be creating the first part of my story board, which is going to be based on the main character doing a short monologue with clips of landscapes and castles which will fit within the idea of the story.

[image of story board part]

Monologue

To start this off I am going to be taking the monologue from the Tombraider Walkthrough. I dragged the video to the viewing panel and began to watch the video and wait for the monologue which I wanted. This was based at the start of the video. I choose this piece for the monologue because I felt it had a connection between the main character and story plot line.

Tombraider Walkthrough in Panel View

As as young girl she read lots of books, which the quote 'A famous explorer once said...' part was perfect to fit with this part of her personality. It makes it look like she is quoting her life against books she has read.

Then with the part where she states about her trying to set her mark and find adventure, fitted perfect again to the story line where she would be leaving the orphanage she had lived in since she was a child; and set out to make her mark in the world. I also like the part of monologue where its says 'but adventure found me' really fitted in because it was the adventure that would have found her because of the book she was reading that night, she would have been dragged into the book.

With this in mind I then selected this piece with the In & Out Tool. I selected the clip between 1.25 seconds and 21.15 seconds. I then dragged it to the Project Clips bin and renamed it 'Monologue'.

Monologue Clip in the Project Clips Bin

I then dragged it onto the time line on the video one section. I kept the video on the video one section because it is all the main video of the trailer. Seeing that I only want the audio from this clip, I need to seperate the video and the audio. To do this I right clicked on the clip and clicked Unlink. 

Unlinking the video and the audio of the Monologue Clip

This then separates both the video and the audio from each other. I then selected the video part of the clip and deleted it. This is because I only want the audio for this part and I will be adding my own clips in later.

Audio left once video was removed

Castle Clip

Now I have the monologue I will now add some clips of landscapes from the Snow White and the Huntsman Movie. I had to explore quite of a few of the videos before I found the parts of the clips I wanted. The first clip which I used was from video VTS_08_4_x264. 

VTS_08_4_x264 video in view

The clip I choose is where the camera goes round the structure of the castle. I decided to use this clip as a starting point because I thought it would make the video look quite effective and make it look like it is in the movies the run up to the good parts. So I selected the clip between 16:23:20 seconds and 16:30:04. I then dragged it into the Project Clips bin and re named it as 'Castle'.

Castle Clip in the Project Bin Folder

I then placed it on the time line at the end of the monologue audio. I then seperated them by right clicking on the clip and going to Unlink. I then selected the audio for the Castle clip and deleted it.I then selected the Track Select Tool and moved the remaining video clip to the end of the Parental Awareness clip for now.

Tracking Select Tool used to drag the clip to the end of the Parental Awareness Clip

I played back the video and realized that the video clip is a lot smaller than I hoped for. So I then decided to re-size the video clip. To do this I went to the second panel view on the right hand side of the screen and double clicked on the clip. It will then display lines around the clip and little squares which will allow me to re-size the image.

Clip in re-size mode

I resized the image so that so that the side edges of the clip touch the fit of the overall size of the trailer. Here is what it looks like.

Video Clip Re-sized

I then noticed that most of the clip has writing on it, I don't really want this in the trailer because one it looks tacky but also it is not necessary. So I will now remove it by using Crop. To get to crop I went to Effects Panel which is on the same part as the clips and then went to Video Effects > Transform > Crop. 

The effect controls will open for the for the for the crop menu. Here I am able to adjust the crop size of the image. I then cropped the bottom of the clip only. I only cropped the bottom because I did not want the writing to be shown and I was not loosing a lot of detail from the bottom of the clip either. But also if I were to crop the top of the clip as well to make it match the bottom then I will loose quite a bit of detail I want from the clip itself. Such as the top of the buildings as well as the sunlight which I really wanted to keep. So I set the bottom percentage crop to 21% which was enough that it got rid of the writing at the bottom.

Transform Effect: Crop used to remove text.

I then used the re-size form them to re-position the clip so that it sits in the middle and there is an even gap of black. Here is what the clip will look like now.

What the Clip now look like cropped and repoistioned

I did not change anything from the clip, because I think it worked really well already. I like how the sun shines and it shows almost a silhouette of the castle shape, but you can still see quite a bit of the details which is on the structure. But also, I feel it a little eerie look which I quite like and I feel will fit well with the trailer and storyline.

I watched the clip back and though of an idea which I did not have when creating the storyboard. I thought about making each of the landscape clips last the same amount of time as the monologue sentences. I feel this will give it a bit more drama then just having several different clips playing one after another with different transitions.

So I started the timeline at the start of the monologue and played it till the first sentence was finished and stopped the trailer clip. I then selected the Razor Tool and clicked on the line where the trailer was stopped. It now has split the castle clip into two. 

Razor Tool used to cut the clip into two

I used the Razor Tool for this because I wanted to keep the other part of the castle clip to see if I could use it for another part of the trailer. I would have used the In & Out tool, but because I have only just thought of the idea it would have been a lot of messing about trying to find the clip again and then just take that little section off.

I moved the second half of the clip away from the first and played it again. Here is where I found out that I needed more of the clip. This is because between the first sentence and the second sentence there is a big break. So I will need a longer clip to make between the gap of the break, but also before the second clip comes into play. So I undid the clip till it was back together by clicking Ctrl + Z and tried again till I found where I can cut the clip at the perfect point.

I went back to the first clip and made a transformation to the clip. I was having a little play with some of the other transformation effects and found Horizontal Flip. This flips the clip so it does what it does in the clip but the opposite side. I really like this effect. I feel it really brings out the castle camera view, and it makes it look like that you can see more of the castle structure even though it is the same clip. So I decided to keep this effect in place. 

[image]

Tools I have used in this blog post:

• In & Out Tool
• Unlink
• Track Selection Tool
• Re-size Tool (On the view)
• Crop
• Horizontal Flip