Wednesday, January 18, 2012

4:31 PM

21/09/1924~16/1/2012

Monday, January 9, 2012

11:15 PM

Finally, I have completed the Prom Night video. I believe that this is the video that I have spent the longest time producing it.

For the past few weeks, I kept on redoing this project as I was constantly unsatisfied with my concept. In fact, this video project was started in early December, 2011. During that time, I made many of drafts of the video. However, those drafts look horrible to me. I guess that the main reason for that was due to the design. Initially, I have tried many fancy designs to make the video look more fancy and unique. However, none of them works. Hence, I decided to put the project on hold for the time being.

After crossing over to the New Year, I decided to work on this project again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. In fact, I stared at my computer screen for a long time, wondering how I should continue the work. My ideas are all washed out and I couldn’t think of anymore new ideas to fit into the theme of the video.

At that very moment, a friend showed me a video he made on Facebook. Although the video isn’t related to the video that I’m producing, it somehow gave me a tip: keep things simple. Thus, I decided to abandon all the designs and just go for a video with basic transitions and no background effects. That finally solved the stupid problem that was hindering my progress.

For this video, I have used a few programs which I have never used before. For example, the motion tracking on the laptop was done on Boujou5. This is my first video that includes motion tracking! I didn’t used the motion tracking feature in After Effects because many say that it sucks. Another new program that I have used is called Proshow Producer. It was used to create the slideshow for the Games segment of the video.

For the photographs, we used our own cameras to capture them (Kevin’s Sony HX9V, Alex’s Canon EE0D & Chen Yee’s Nikon D90). On the other hand, the footage was captured by me using a HX9V, except for one of the shots of the guitar performance was captured by Chen Yee on a D90 (because I was eating, wahahhaha :D ).

The reason why the footage looks so stable although I did not mount any dolly or steadicam to my compact camera is because I have applied an effect from After Effects called Warp stabilizer in almost all the shots you see in the video. Initially, I wanted to get a steadicam just for the prom night event. However after looking at the price of one, I decided to look for alternatives. Thank God I managed to find this alternative. Indeed, this warp stabilizer effect has helped me to save lots of bucks!

Overall, I think that this is the video which I have put in the most effort as compared to my other videos. Hope that you will enjoy it! Thank you!And here's the video.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

11:58 PM

Happy new year everyone! It’s a brand new year, a brand new start. It’s awesome since there’s no school for the first 4 months this year. That means that I’m stress-free during the Chinese New Year period! That’s awesome! I have not had such feeling a long time!

What’s on your mind now? For me, I’m wondering how I should make use of my time for the next 4 months of my holiday before poly starts! Currently, I planned to complete the list of Memories of Qtss videos that I have not completed this year.

-          Memories of Qtss Sports Day 2011
-          Memories of Qtss Queens Cup Competition 2011
-          Memories of Qtss Teachers Day Celebration 2011
-          Memories of Qtss Prom Night 2011
-          Memories of Qtss Secondary 5
-          Memories of Qtss 2007 – 2011

Although I don’t have the confident to complete all the videos within 4 months, I will still try and complete it as soon as possible.

Anyway, here's the video poster for Memories of Prom Night 2011! Do support the video when the video is completed! :D Thanks!

Saturday, December 31, 2011

11:14 PM

When the mid-nite bell rings tonight, it will be 2012! How has 2011 been to you? For me, the year went by pretty fast. Time flies indeed. To me, it feels like I have celebrated the arrival of 2011 and Chinese New year not long ago. Hope that that is a good thing.

In the past few days, I helped my church to create a year-in review video for this year’s countdown party celebration. It’s my first time working on a major segment of the countdown party event. Indeed, that made the producing process of that video pretty stressful. But still, it’s an honor to serve God through God’s grace and producing videos.

There were a few problems we faced during the production of the video. First of all, many of the documents and footage were sent in late to me. Therefore, I would have to start producing the video late. However, the due date doesn’t change. Hence, it is a rush against time as I try the best I could to complete this video.

Also, the format of the video doesn’t fit onto the LED screen. That forced me to re-render all the whole video into other format which, unfortunately, took about a day or so. Nevertheless, we still managed to solve the problems on time.

Anyway, check out the video here! And wishing everyone a happy new year!

Monday, December 26, 2011

3:24 PM

The recent trip to parts of Victoria was indeed an eye-opener. That is the first time I have ever been to Australia and a Caucasian country! It’s a pretty good experience for me. But still, I prefer Singapore so much more. In fact, after returning from the trip, I felt so appreciated and fortunate that I’m from Singapore. Till now, I still wondered why Melbourne is listed as one of the top cities to live in.

The sceneries at the country side of Australia are amazing. The sky is beautifully dotted with fluffy white clouds in fancy shapes as they drifted lazy in the sky along with many different kinds of bird soaring gracefully in the sky. The grasslands are so wide spread and huge, with lots of cows and goats strolling around them. These really make the pace of life feel much slower as compared to the city area.

However, that is the only thing I love about Australia. I really can’t think of anything else nice about it. So here are some of the pictures taken during the trip! Check them out!http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2642488376059.2123052.1071060988&type=1&l=48aced36f2

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

2:00 PM

In a few hours time, I will be heading off to Melbourne, a place which I have never been to. Honestly speaking, I’m not looking forward to this trip with my family. The main reason is because I hate traveling. It’s so troublesome. For example, there are many things to prepare for the trip and lots of money has to be spent on it. I believe that all these money could be saved for a much better use. But still, I believe that this trip would bring me special and unforgettable experiences that I would never be able to experience in Singapore. It’s a trade-off after all.

With that, I have to put on hold some of my video projects too such as the prom night video that I have always been redoing. Also, I have other commercial project on hand that needs to be handed up at the end of the year. Hence, I guess that I will only be able to complete the prom night video next year. Hope that the end results of the video would be nice!

Alright! Shall blog again when I’m back from Melbourne!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

8:30 PM

The MRT these days have always been delayed or not working. For that reason, I am avoiding traveling through trains until I have regained the confidence and have faith in the trains again.

Reading the few stories in the newspaper and the internet of the experiences in a trapped cabin is really terrifying. The lights were out while being confined in the cabin. There is nothing much you can do expect from playing games from your phone. Instead of doing something productive, your precious life time is being wasted inside the train. No food, no drinks, be prepared to starve. Worst of all, the ventilation system does not work. Thus you might suffer from a lack of oxygen or brain damages if things get serious.

It’s a pretty scary experience I guess and I would never want to experience it. For now, I will just take the buses and taxis to my destination.

Friday, December 9, 2011

11:33 PM

Most of my videos take a long time to be rendered out. Some videos which contain many motion graphics and effects would take hours or even days to be rendered out. Although the specification of my computer plays a part, I couldn’t afford to get a better computer. Thus, it’s always important to make use of the time while the video is rendering.

Today, I have made a video guitar cover of Run by Hillsong. It has been months since I last produce a guitar cover. My guitar skills aren’t that great as many You Tubers commented so. In fact, they are pretty below average. Despite the fact that some of the comments are hurtful, I still feel like uploading my covers to such sites since I believe that it will be able to help me improve my skills in the future.

Here’s the cover that I made. Feel free to post beneficial and useful comments :)

Monday, December 5, 2011

8:02 PM

A few weeks ago, I think I mentioned about the new awesome feature, warp stabilizer, available in the CS5.5 version of after effects. Today, I decided to do a few test with it. Recently, I have filmed a few footages during my school’s prom night with a camera I bought a few months ago. This would be a great opportunity to test out my camera’s HD quality in a low light situation too.

So less typing, here’s the test video. You have to be my Facebook friend in order to view that video.

As you can see, the video has been greatly stabilized by the warp stabilizer. All the shots were handheld. However, they were not shaky at all. The guys at Adobe are really brilliant to come out with such feature. Now the shots seem to be taken from a dolly or a steadicam. An awesome advantage for poor video producers like me.

The camera that I have bought recently is the Sony HX9V. Although it seems a bit expensive for a compact camera, it has many fancy and useful features that are pretty cool. For example, it is able to capture panorama pictures without the need to stick them together using software. Most importantly for me, it’s able to record true HD videos at 60 frames per second! That’s one of the main reasons why I purchased that camera.

Beside the fancy features available in the camera, it also takes great picture quality. Here are some of the pictures taken by the HX9V. Photo Album

I really love my camera. It’s also the first camera that I ever own. Thank God, it’s a blessing.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

8:28 PM

Prom night, the event that many of my friends anticipated, is finally over. This is the last event whereby my classmates and I would be able to gather together for a short time of fun and laugher. Afterwards, I guess that there would be much less opportunity for us to hang around in such carefree manner when our poly journey starts next year. Indeed, we should treasure this moment we still have together.

This is the first ever prom night I have ever attended. I believe that it’s the first for many of my classmates too. Overall, the event went smoothly with lots of smiles and excitement in everyone’s face. The atmosphere was infectious as many people danced at the end of the party along with the DJ mixes. Indeed, the atmosphere is very wild.

On the other hand, I went around taking pictures and footage that I might be using for a prom night video that I might be producing during December. This video will be a pretty big deal for me since it’s the first video that I will be making that contains live footage from the event – that is something that I have never produce before. It would be definitely exciting for me. Hope that the end results would be fantabulous.

Also, the day before prom night, I was asked to create a short video montage showcasing the moments that the graduating batch had in school, which will be showed at the end of the prom night event. Since I have only about 5hours to complete the video, I literary rushed through the project. Hence, please do not blame me for any mistakes made in the video clip. Here’s the video clip. I really hate doing last minute works.

There were a few things which I didn’t really like during the prom night. First of all, the food is terrible. I strongly believe that even my mum can cook better than those chefs at the hotel hands down. They mainly serve typical Singaporean dishes which my mum specialized in. Paying $65 dollars for such standard of food is really disappointing.

In addition, the attitudes of the waitresses were terrible. You might be thinking that they are foreigners. However, they were local aunties, which seem that they do not want to keep their jobs. For example, I requested for a fork in order to consume my food. Immediately, she gave me an irritated, puffy and sickly looking expression and mumbled softly, but audibly, complaining that I’m so troublesome. That’s not the only bad service I encountered during prom night. I guess that these aunties are just not very happy serving younger generations. Now I feel that that might be one of the reasons why the influxes of foreigners are so high.

Despite those bad experiences, my classmates and I still had lots of fun together, taking lots of pictures as memento.

By the time I reached home, I was totally worn out. That explains why this post was bought forward to the next day.

Hope that in the future, my friends and I would be able to meet up more often together and enjoy ourselves since we will be heading onto different paths of life now. Hope that all of us would be able to reach our goal and be happy as always!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

9:26 PM

For the past few days, I have been working on my class video project as usual. Currently, I’m still at the start of planning how the sequences of the video would be like. A few changes in the footage collection details have been made since there would be a change in workflow. So far, this is the most challenging and tiring class video I have ever made since there would be a few new segments as compared to the past few class videos I made. Nevertheless, it’s a great experience and opportunity to showcase the ideas I had in my mind. I believe that the results of the video will be pretty awesome.

Anyway, look what I’ve found while cleaning my room yesterday! This extremely old piece of Maplestory SEA CD was purchased at 2006, if I’m not wrong. I still remembered that the reason why I purchased it is because the auto-patch of the game doesn’t work, and that forced me to spend $2 for a silly patch. Well, that disc sure brings back lots of old memories!

Monday, November 21, 2011

7:11 PM

Sometimes I feel weird to see that in almost every single religious video where someone expresses their faith, another person from other religious will contradict it, turning into a religious debate. I'm Christian, someone else may be Hindu, and another person may be Satanist. This doesn’t give anyone to have a reason to challenge and insult someone else's belief. I'll respect your belief if you respect what I believe. Pretty simple yea.