Composition Techniques

There are many Composition Techniques to use in your videos, but in my opinion the main four composition techniques are the bet way to go. These four composition techniques are called Rule of Thirds, Framing, Unusual Angles, and Leading Lines. Let's start from the beginning. The composition technique of Rule of Thirds is when in a video if a shot is cut into sixths, the subject's eyes or head is in one of the top corners. In case your wondering, the Framing that I am talking about is not putting a wooden square around a panting. The composition technique of Framing is found when in the shot, there is something that helps you focus on the main subject by blocking other things around the edges of the shot. When Unusual Angles are used it means that this one shot is taken at a shot where most shots would not have been taken at. I like to use unusual angles sometimes just to grab the viewers attention. Last but not least, the fourth composition techniques is Leading Lines. Leading lines is used to draw attention to the main subject. Leading lines is when in a shot there are main lines leading to the main subject.

Some of you might be asking, why do we need to use these in our videos? How are these supposed to make our videos better? Well there are many reasons why composition techniques make our videos better, but here are a few. When we are using these composition techniques in our videos, we are making our videos ten times better. These composition techniques help to make our videos look high quality by making our video look neat and well made. I don't know about you, but I think that using composition techniques really help our videos to look better and give them really eye-catching qualities.

Three Shot Sequences

Me and my team made this video not too long ago, but not recently. When we made this my G.T. class was learning about three shot sequences. We had many choices to choose from and we chose: Girl Picks Up Binder. In these three shot sequences, there is the wide shot, medium shot, and the close up shot. In that order, these sequences are shown in the video. The wide shot is made so that you can see all of the subject. In our wide shot there is the binder that is just sitting in the grass. A medium shot is when, if the subject of the shot is a person, you can only see them from the waist up. In our medium shot, we show a girl walking to the binder. Last but not least, the close up shot is when you are zoomed in on the subject close up. Pretty much explains itself. In our close up, we show the girl picking up the binder. Sure, in this video the camera was shaky but we were only beginners and in my opinion, we did pretty well.

Practice Story Reflection

For the past week or two my G.T. class and I were doing a little project called our Practice Story where we learned about shooting interviews. We learned many things, like interview composition, A- Roll, B- Roll, and even teamwork. To make this video we had to work together to get it done. Although we didn't make the BEST team, we tried our best and got the work done. It actually turned out pretty good.

To start the video me and my three team mates started off by making the B-Roll. Incase you don't know, the B-Roll is little cuts of videos where we show the interviewee doing whatever it is that they are talking about. For example, the interviewee is talking about soccer so it is our job to take little clips of the interviewee kicking around a soccer ball. On the second day of filming, out team had to shoot the interview where we take one long video of our subject talking about this sport or hobby that they do. 

From then on it was all transcription and Final Cut Pro. This is where the real pressure started. Every team had to make a transcription of the questions that the subject answered and what the narrator says. When editing we had to blade the footage. When you blade footage on Final Cut Pro, you are cutting and separating video. In the video, the interviewer's voice had to be cut out because we want to hear the subject talk. We added the narrators voice and the B- Roll and our interview was finished. We may not have finished on time, but it still turned out really good. It may have been a lot of pressure, but I loved doing this project. It taught me a lot about teamwork too.

Polar Panoramas

Right here we have my two Polar Panoramas. The process to make these is similar to the Spherical Panoramas, but not exactly the same.  The process to make these Polar Panoramas stared with us having to take 10-15 pictures in a 360 degree rotation. Each photo had to have an overlap on the photo before. We then had the photos uploaded to our computers. When we were all ready we took the pictures into Adobe Bridge and edited them. We wanted the pictures to look vibrant and eye catching. 

Next, in Photoshop we used to photo merge to put the pictures together and make it look more like a panorama. When the panorama was made we then took it and squished it together into a square shape. After that, we turned the picture 180 degrees so it was upside down. We then used polar coordinates so that the pictures was made into this circular shape. We then used the elliptical marquee tool to make a circle around our masterpiece and used feather and contrast to make the edges look like they were kind of fading away.

In my first Polar Panorama I have a picture of me. To make this picture first I had someone stand on a chair and take a picture of me from above. You do not have to use a chair, as long as it is tall enough for the picture to look like it was taken from above you. When taking these pictures, the person taking the picture had to make sure they got my whole body in the picture so that it wouldn't look weird when I cut my body out of the picture. To cut my body out of the picture, I used the Quick Selection Tool on Photoshop. I was very careful to not make myself look unrealistic. When I was finished cutting my self out, I dragged myself into my Polar Panorama. I then made a copy of the picture of myself and made it all black to make a shadow. My shadow was then edited to make it look realistic. 

     

     

Spherical Panoramas

Here are my two Spherical Panoramas that I made in G.T. class. To make these photos we had to take up to 10-15 photos while rotating 360 degrees and overlapping the photos as we went around. After we took our photos and uploaded them to our computers, we then went to Adobe Bridge to edit these pictures.

Once again, Photoshop has helped us A LOT. In Photoshop we used photo merge to put all the pictures together to look like a panorama. We then made our panorama into a square and turned on the polar coordinates. To make the edges we just used the elliptical marquee tool and feather. Finally, we had a choice to put a black or white back round.

All About Me

   

Hey there. My name is Makena Kahananui and this is my blog. I was born on the 17th of April in the year of 2002, and grew up on the island of Kauai, HI, USA. I am in the 6th grade, and have four other people in my family, my mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother.

Before I came here to Kapa'a Middle School, I went to Kapa'a Elementary School. Throughout elementary school I got good grades and I loved to go to school. Elementary school is actually the place that I learned some of my favorite hobbies, but we'll get to that later. It's even one of my favorite places on the island. Now, I'm in Kapa'a Middle School and it is one of the best experiences of my life.

Outside of school, I love to spend time with my friends and family. My family is a family of music and we love to sing, play instruments, and some of us dance. I love to sing and play the ukulele. I started to sing around the third grade and, I started to play the ukulele in the fourth grade. My grandfather saw that I had talent so he started to teach me the basics of the ukulele, along the way I started to improve. When the school year started, I was officially in fourth grade and it turned out, my teacher loved ukulele too. He taught me how to play even better than before! To this day I am in my school's ukulele band and I still love to sing. My name is Makena Kahananui, and this is all about me.

Final Photomontages

 

Here we have my two photomontages which were inspired by the famous photographer, David Hockney. These are what he calls "joiners". To make these joiners, we used digital cameras to take at least 15 separate pictures of one scene. Before transferring our pictures into our computers, we had to make sure that the pictures that we took are clear and not blurry.

After transferring our pictures into our computer, we edited them in Camera Raw on Adobe Bridge. We made sure that our pictures were vibrant and eye- catching. We then went into Photoshop to start putting our pictures together.

In Photoshop, we put border lines around our pictures and made sure the corners weren't rounded, but at a point. Then, we had to put our pictures together. When we out our pictures together, we had to make sure not to make it look too neat. When David Hockney made his joiners, he made them so that they were abstract. We put our pictures together and turned them so they were not perfectly straight.

Making these were a lot of fun. I actually enjoyed learning about joiners and David Hockney. I hope to maybe more about these one day and maybe even learn more about David Hockney and the type of work that he does.