Video & Sound Production | Final Project
- 21/4/2026 ~ 26/7/2026 (Week 1 - Week 14)
- Video & Sound Production
- Takeguchi Shunta/0386416/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
WEEK 1
Final Project Week 1 Task
- Shortlist 3 videos from Zach King and explain why I chose them.
1.
2.
3.
I chose this video last because I felt this might be done even by myself. I guessed the trick of the video is taking the real body and the shadow separately.
First, I'd film footage using a ladder or something similar to climb over a wall, then I'd film a video of the shadow's movement. After that, I'd edit the video to make the body black look like a shadow, and that would complete the video. There may be some problem occur when put into action, but I imagined the idea-generating process is important.
FINAL PROJECT
The final project began in Week 10. The planning slide: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lkxtyXxeUbl8W5VixTYakAQ3JMVSnO70xicSm3V0d_E/edit?usp=sharing
I first searched for tutorial videos that would be helpful for VFX. I tried to find videos based on the story at first, but that didn't work. I couldn't find as many videos as I'd hoped that provide detailed instructions on how to edit in After Effects. Since I needed to apply three VFX effects, I felt it would be too difficult if I chose all complicated ones, so I decided to start with a simple clothing transition VFX and then added a clothing color change VFX that could be used in conjunction with it. For the final VFX, I chose the mirror one that looked a bit tricky.
Combined the VFXs and came up with a story. The story is about a man who is about to go to a party but is indecisive about what to wear, and the man in the mirror, losing patience, yells at him. Regarding the story, the lecturer told me that it could be more creative, so I made the man leave the room but come back to change his clothes, repeating it twice. This made his indecisiveness and the reason why the reflection in the mirror was frustrating for him clearer.
Story board:
For the shot size, since I have little experience with shooting, I was unsure which shot size is appropriate for each. However, following the lecturer's advice to use a middle shot as the basic setting, I decided to keep it simple and then see what it looks like when shooting.
Behind the scene photo 1
Behind the scene photo 2
The filming process was very challenging. Because the room was small, I had to move various objects to avoid getting in the way (especially the mattress, as in the picture above), and I had to think carefully about how to film and how to decide on actions, even considering the editing process. I did about 3 to 10 takes for each scene. After finishing filming and preparing to move on to editing, I would often find unwanted objects in the shot or issues that would cause problems with the VFX editing, forcing me to reshoot many times. For example, in the mirror VFX shot, the hand making the gesture overlapped with the mirror, which prevented the VFX from working properly, so I had to reshoot with the hand movement kept to a minimum.
The VFX editing work was a bit complex, but overall it went well. The VFX for the color change of the clothing was done by masking the T-shirt, then applying the Hue/Saturation effect and adjusting the settings. Masking was often difficult, especially around the edges of the T-shirt, but I could create a sufficient look for the entire video to make sure that the original T-shirt wasn't sticking out unnaturally.
After Effects VFX screenshot 1
After Effects VFX screenshot 2
The mirror VFX was simply masked along the edge of the mirror. However, as mentioned earlier, my hand overlapped with the mirror at first, and I couldn't edit my video like in the tutorial since my mirror is vertically long, so I had to reshoot several times and check in After Effects.
The most challenging part was the VFX for the clothing changes. As shown in part of the tutorial, it was simply a matter of cutting and rearranging the original video, but in Weeks 13 and 14, the lecturer instructed me to add more movement when changing clothes and to keep the camera steady, so I had to reshoot each scene. For the movement, I made the action more dynamic by shifting the center of gravity backward when changing clothes, and for the camera, I prevented camera movement by shooting the clothing change in one shot instead of two separate shots.
Once the VFX were complete and the video clips were arranged according to the story, I moved on to adding sound effects. The sound in the videos had noises, so I muted them and searched for all the sounds I could think of online and added them, from the sound of doors opening and clothes rustling to the tones of the room. I also calculated the distance from the viewpoint and adjusted the volume of the sounds. As for the background music, I originally planned to make it comedic for the whole video, but I felt it didn't quite fit the visuals, so I didn't add it until Act 3. For the mirror scene, I used a heavy rock BGM to represent the anger of the man in the mirror, and for the final scene where the man changes his mind and heads to the party, I added a comical BGM (At the end of this BGM, you may hear a sound that sounds like a notification, but this sound is included in the original song, so it's not an editing error on my part. https://youtu.be/3Yt5yXrBsx4).
As the final step, I performed color correction/grading in Premiere Pro. During filming, I closed the curtains and used only lighting, but there were still differences in lighting from shot to shot, so I had to spend time adjusting it. Unfortunately, my smartphone has a feature that automatically changes settings depending on the object being filmed, making it difficult to achieve uniform color correction throughout the video. In particular, the second and third switching clothes VFX had different settings than others; although I tried to adjust them to match the overall image using HSL secondary and other techniques, the colors ended up looking a little unnatural. I kept the Color Grading adjustment layer setting to a minimum to avoid making it look any more unnatural.
Premiere Pro Color Correction Screenshot
The final video is below. After filming, I often found problems with the footage during the editing stage, which ended up taking up a lot of time to repeat the process, so I feel that I could have improved it more if I had more time. Through this project, I was able to experience the effort involved in the whole filming process.
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