Written Statement
For my introduction video, I went for an up-beat and fun approach as suggested by the colour pa
For my introduction video, I aimed for an up-beat and fun approach as suggested by the colour palette and music used in the video. By showing myself in 4 different characters, I aimed to reveal the contents I am aiming to make in my channel starting from Racer Kent, Musician Kent, Videographer Kent, and Just Kent, which suggest that the channel is aiming to create content regarding motorsport, in this case Formula One, music, cinematics, and personal updates.
I started by recording some B-rolls for my project as I know what I want to do, just not sure how to deliver it, therefore, rather than wasting my time searching for ideas for the script, I went on to shoot some B-rolls. After having the script done. During shooting, I asked my housemate to help me with focusing the lens since the camera I’m using (a Nikon D5500) has a ‘terrible’ auto focus, hence why I always utilize manual focus in all my projects with the help of a follow focus unit. For this video, I positioned myself the center of the frame to be more direct as I speak to the viewers, except Racer Kent since I have to show the gaming rig in which case is impossible to frame myself at the center. I tried to employ the rule of thirds in all my static B-roll shots so that my shots would look nice as it follows the industry standards. Moreover, I used a mixture of medium shot and medium close up to hide the cuts I made in the project; therefore, it would look seamless in the final product. By using 2 LED lights as a key light and a back light I also aimed to create a sense of depth in the shots to illustrate a 3D form. I employed a Rode Videomic NTG Shotgun microphone to help me isolate ambient sound to get a clear sound of my voice, by also keeping a safe distance between the microphone and the sound source by using an external recorder.
Throughout pre-production, production, and post-production, I encountered countless obstacles including hardware and software, however, as a media creator, it is fundamentally important for us to find a creative way to get through these obstacles. Let’s start with pre-production, it is hard for me to find out which style of video I am aiming for, to compensate this I watched other Youtuber’s video to find the style I like and found several of them, in which I put some ideas on the script of the video.
During production, I wanted to isolate the key light I’m using so it doesn’t illuminate the whole room, however, the lights I bought didn’t come with barn doors, so I had to use a paper bag I got as a barn door which works surprisingly well. Initially I wanted to put my mic on a boom pole to get better audio, however, since I don’t have one, I used a stick in my room and used a c-clamp to attach the mic to the stick, but it didn’t give me the results I wanted, so I went back to the idea of clamping it to the light stand which is pretty close to where I’m standing. I also found it hard to maintain eye contact with the lens so you could probably see my eyes running around in some of the shots. Moreover, I had to make several takes for some shots as I found it difficult to say some sentences clearly, sometimes I speak to fast, so I had to lower down the pace to compensate.
In the post-production process, my laptop constantly broke down in the early stage of editing which made me lost over 8 hours of editing time just to fix the issue, the hardest part is probably where I have to rotoscope myself frame by frame since I don’t own a greenscreen in the shot where there are 2 Kents.
I learned that making a vlog like this is not a simple task and require practice and preparation in order to achieve good results, I enjoyed the whole process (even though I had a mental breakdown because of my laptop) and I’m looking forward to make more contents on this unit and even after I’m finished with this unit.
Kumichi58 