SONY HDR - Panning - zoom - Focus.

We went out with the video camera and performed some of the basic techniques used in filming and media

which are Panning, Zoom and Focus.

Panning - Panning while filming is a term used for horizontal shifting of the shot, we performed this technique in the first 10 or 15 seconds of the video shifting from the left of our view to the right.

Zoom - Zooming in a film is to close in on your object or surrounding, simply described as a close up, but this can always disrupt the focus, we see a zoom in our video when the goose goes to the toilet, which will be subtlety evident.

Focus - Focus is the main point of attraction in a film or image that the light becomes clear and the rest of the image around the main point of focus blurs. 

Me and my group went down to the Andresey river bank in Burton because we felt that it had the best scenery in Burton town center, when we got there we found ourselves with a lot of wildlife to work with, mainly geese, unfortunately our footage never really stretched any further than that area itself but we explored all the relevant techniques.

CISCO flip Ultra HD

The Flip camera is a nice handy little piece of equipment and is ideal for family filming and capturing memories, but I wouldn't use it for professional purposes as it is quite difficult to keep steady, but negatives aside for such a small gadget it does a big expensive gadgets job in an affordable and working class fashion, I personally have tried one of these out of my brothers as it appears to have been a very big hit for a christmas present at only 100 pounds, it's the new generation of video cameras for families and very ideal for catching memories and watching your kids grow etc. It also looks ideal for a crowded place of quick capturing for a journalist or paparazzi, rather than sound recording. After looking at footage, the still picture looks rather sharp and in focus but like I say it looks very hard to keep steady which seems to unfocus and make the HD picture look a bit shabby.

SONY HDR-FX1

The SONY HDR FX1 is a beautiful piece of kit, and by the looks of thing it's very easy to handle, we will get a chance to go out with one of these next week, so the blog will be updated with my thoughts and the picture and ease of use, and maybe then followed by some edited filming we may have done, but looking at some footage on youtube, so quality looks beautiful.. like television standard quality even so it's not the biggest of cameras by any stretch of the imagination, to give time for the camera to pan, we were told that it's always a good idea to keep the camera still for 10 seconds before moving it, doing the same left and right. I found a video on youtube that demonstrates this really well so I shall post this below.

The HDR-FX1 includes a 3.5 inch. 16:9 aspect ratio diagonal high resolution LCD screen, featuring 250,000 pixels. The LCD features Sony's technology for best viewing in bright light. The LCD on the HDR-FX1 has been positioned towards the front of the handle, a unique position that breaks away from the typical left-side positioning. The LCD screen unfolds to reveal the HDR-FX1's VCR controls. The HDR-FX1 also includes a high resolution color viewfinder, also featuring 250,000 pixels. As a camcorder the HDR-FX1's main audience will almost certainly be very high-end consumers and professionals who seek the highest levels of manual control. The HDR-FX1 includes more manual control and "real button" control than any other Sony consumer camcorder in recent history, including the DCR-VX2100. 

Studio Shoots part 2

This is the first picture with the grungey background.

So I took away some of the pictures we did from the studio and tuned them into what turned out to be a mad photoshop experiment, which in my favour I think turned out pretty well. I started by adding some floral and abstract style brushes around my body and changed the colours around a bit, At this point it was looking very Microsoft Paint esque so I changed the layer styles of the brushes and added a few light asterix to my body. I then proceeded to have a colour tint background to my body so I created a gradient layer in red and blue and changed the layer style of the gradient to 'Linear Dodge (add)' all of a sudden it was all coming together, so after a bit of patching up and retouching with the photo and the effects I had a thought on what I could do next with the work so I added a stained paper texture which was really nice and grungy to add some depth and look to the background, lowering the opacity of the stains and giving it a red and blue gradient tint it all fit in quite nicely. I saved that as one version and then proceeded to create a second version without the grunge just to give it a more a veer towards the photography side rather than Graphic design. I then intended to use the design to see if I could make some CD covers out of it, after a second thought I then resized the photo to create a flyer for some sort of Party or Gig for example. I thought it would be good if I went with an American college theme after I found a nice old school font on the internet, after fiddling with the layer styles I got a really nice look.

This is the second of the pictures without the grunge.

I think that this picture is the smarter of the two without the grunge because it looks tidy and more complex than the other, with the others you could argue the image is too busy but I think this one has a nice volume to it.



This is the flyer I made from the picture, the word 'Waterloo Sunset' is a song by The Kinks and I think the word and the look of the word really fits in with the design. After a second look at it I would certainly use it as a CD cover or a promotion advertisement on a website or in a magazine e.g.

Studio shoots

For the Band identity project we had to do a studio shoot, so we got ourselves together in the studio and worked with the little props we had and this is what we came up with after a bit of retouching and editing on Photoshop, and I think this looks really good in a variety of types especially as a poster.

CD cover research

The album cover at the top was one of the first Joy Division albums 'Substance' designed by Peter Saville, the design is now a well renowned t-shirt design but at the same time is very strange. I can only presume it is either a take on a mountain skyline or a pile of heartbeat monitor control. But with Peter Saville, Joy Division and the rest of there designs, you will never know.

The second of the two above is Maximo Park's 'A Certain Trigger' This is one of my favourite designs and a CD cover that has caught my eye in the past, Maximo Park are a very good band, and this design shows that with the photo representing movement and life, and the block red text which very largely emphasises Maximo Park's red and black theme. 

Flyer Design.

As an add on to the poster, we were asked to also take a picture for a flyer, I mostly used the same sort of effects as the poster, but with a blue and red gradient and the same fonts used, I also again used the high pass/hard light effect to give the image a contrast.