Friday 8 July 2016

Week 14

It was the 3rd of June. EduTechnovation Day was held at Dewan Budiman from 8.30 am to 12.00 pm. The screening of the video that everyone had been working so hard on was held. My group (Group 6) was supposed to handle the food but we were informed that Dr. Rosseni would be in charge of the food. I was then asked to be the time-keeper with Alia. I agreed because we get to sit at the very front. It's the screening time and I felt quite nervous at that time. Everyone did a wonderful job with their video, props to them for their hard work and determination. My group's video is titled Problems in Public Transport which was quite a humorous one as the audience laughed to some f the scenes. I was happy that it managed to grab the audience's attention but I do not know about the lecturers. We asked for some feedback but apparently they had nothing to say at that moment. Anyway, I am happy to have finally finished the video after days of recording and editing. I am sorry to have submitted this entry at the very last moment. I hope lecturers are reading this and won't think ill of me due to this late submission. Thank you so much to Dr. Fariza, Dr. Rosseni and Dr. Khalid for your guidance and advice. I had learnt so much from you. May Allah bless.




Our final product. Enjoy! Hehe



Week 13

There was no class but my friends and I went to the computer lab to finish the video-editing. We were there for about 4 hours. We stopped and resumed our work at the faculty of Education.We also recorded the narration part with Alia and Nuha and copied the recordings into my laptop. We proceeded with the editing once we arrived to college. I was glad that our lecturers gave us a week without class for the video completion process along with the pitching. The night before the EduTechnovation Day, Halimatun and I wrote the script for the pitching. We stayed a 7-hour long of editing at Burhanuddin Helmi College's cafe to combine the audio and video together. The day before was a bit of a hassle because we encountered a problem with Movie Maker. It could not detect the video and audio that we had inserted few days before which was upsetting. Everything was arranged nicely then the issue came up. The video was finally done alhamdulillah. We had learnt so much from this experience especially of patience and endurance.

Tuesday 5 July 2016

Photography Trip to Putrajaya

It was the day everyone had been waiting for, the photography trip! I admit being excited myself. Although the idea of going to Penang was cancelled, going to Putrajaya with friends and lecturers was still nice. Dr. Khalid and Dr. Rosseni had worked really hard to get us the bus so I was grateful for that. The trip took place on the Saturday, the 14th of May. I was lucky not to have missed the bus. I made a collection of photos on Flickr. They are not amazing per se but seeing how I am an amateur in photography, they were the best shots I could get. Click the link for my Flickr account :)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144912218@N08/

Week 12

Our lecturers wanted to see the updated/revised version of our storyboard. My group looked in depth on the feedback given during last week's class. We added a few scenes like a person falling in the bus and pick-pocket. I had to say that I really admired Natasha's storyboard. Her group used a storyboard-making program called Storyboardthat.com. I would be using the same program if we were to have these kind of assignments again. Lecturers were making sure that we were on the right track which was a good thing since I was quite at lost sometimes about how we should navigate the story-line. Thank you for your sincere comments, dear lecturers.

Sunday 3 July 2016

Week 11

This week's activity was to show the progress of our video. We had not done much as we were still busy with other tasks. Yesterday, we did a recording on UKM's Nadi Putra bus. Thankfully, we received the help from our friends who were kind enough to be actresses for the video. A bunch of thanks to Fatihah, Akhma, Fionna, Akmar, Aishah and others for being supportive until the end. We could never have done it without you.

So, this is the teaser for the video. 

We only included some of the parts, like the part where ignorance when it comes to helping people in a public transport, taking advantage of one's misfortune i.e. the pickpocket scene and our travel to Terminal Bersepadu Selatan to get a realistic scenery with buses. Unfortunately we were not equipped with fancy gadgets like a DSLR camera or anything of the sort. The scenes were recorded using our phones. Nonetheless, it was a pretty fun experience. We used the tools that were available at the moment and the results although not top-notch in any way was satisfying so far. Weaknesses on our part were the lack of appropriate tools. We shall learn from the mistakes. Thank you.

Week 10

Hello. This week was the one where we needed to present the progress of our storyboard, which was basically an improved version from tlast one. There was not much chang in storyline, except that we added a few scenes. When it was our turn to present, Dr. Rosseni and Dr. Khalid commented on the delivery of the storyboard. We told them that we will be doing the narration using 'puppets' or paper drawings since our target audience are mainly children and younger folks. We learned that we should be using more mature ways of delivering the video. I really liked other groups' storyboard presentation but at the same time admired ours too. Thank you ^^

Week 9

The topic of the week is Graphic and Photography. Dr. Fariza was our lecturer for the topic.

Although I was not that fond of photography, it was nice to have new knowledge in the field. Dr. Fariza explained in a detailed manner about different components of a camera, something that used to be unknown to me as the closest thing that I have, that resembles a camera is my phone's. Anyway, I had heard about these terms quite a lot of times but never knew what they actually meant.

Lens
An optical lens that is used in conjunction with the camera body, controlling the image projected onto the imaging sensor.

Focal length
Focal length is expressed in mm and a higher number means a bigger zoom, while a lower number mean the lens can be used for wider shots.




Aperture
Also known as the opening of a lens diaphragm. It affects the amount of light that enters the lens. In short, it is the opening of the lens. The lower the f/stops, the larger the opening, thus more light will enter. When you press press the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your camera's image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you want to capture.


Shutter
The shutter is the part that blocks all light from exposing the image sensor. When you press the shutter, it quickly opens and closes, exposing the image sensor with a flash of light.

Well, I sure learned a lot in this week's class. The class was not only informative, but also casual and not stressful despite the 3-hour period. About learning photography, count me interested.



References:
http://www.farizakhalid.com/ge3403-photography
http://www.gizmag.com/camera-lens-buying-guide/29141/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lens#Aperture_and_focal_length

Saturday 2 July 2016

Week 8

Hey. Mid-semester break had ended and you guessed it, back to classes and assignments. Dr. Khalid was in charge of today's class and he taught us about a software called Movie Maker. It's a program widely used by teachers, V-loggers, artists and internet-users to record a video using either your computer's camera or compile multiple videos and audio altogether. I had seen a lot of YouTube artists who create videos using this program. For a person who prefer not to spend money to make videos, given I could find unpaid ones on the internet, this program is a huge plus for me. Dr. Khalid telling us about the benefits of it is like giving acknowledgement that particularly for students and teachers to use it. The task handed by Dr. was to combine two or three videos using Movie Maker based on the objectives. I love animation so much that I had to make a video about one. The title of my video is 'The Beauty of Japanese Animation'. It is a combination of 3 anime, Garden of Words, My Neighbour Totoro and Arrietty. These 3 hold a special place in my heart.


Although it is free, let's face it. It does have decent functions, is easy to learn and user-friendly. You can add visual effects, fade in or out your background audio, stabilize your recording and the most common of all editing, cut unnecessary parts and add new ones. There is plenty of online-tutorials explaining in detail how to make good use of the program. The only comments I have about Movie Maker is the inability to add certain images without them being part of the 'frames'. Meaning, I can't add an image to an existing video. I had tried adding images a few times but to no avail. Also, it is a major drawback that it tended to crash, so I would like to give a reminder to myself and readers of this post to always SAVE your Movie Maker progress if you don't want to lose anything important. Movie Maker is not the only video-editing software out there. The internet has loads to offer. Wax, Filmora and Avidemux are the names you will find on the internet available for download.

Week 7

Mid-semester Break

Week 6

Hello everyone. This week's activity is about arranging different multimedia elements in a video. It was Dr. Khalid's turn to give the lecture. He showed us two videos. We were asked to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the two by making comparisons. The first is a video with happy and upbeat music while the second is a travel video of Dr. Khalid and his family. Both were really nice videos, the second video despite slow-paced and the music not as exciting as the first is still great. It has a lasting memory of a person's vacation with his family. I would love to go on a trip to such place with my family someday.  



To make things more interesting, each group was to edit sounds by combining and tweaking them using a program called Audacity. I had used it for a different course but only to examine sound waves and pitch, thus did not explore much of the functions yet. So, everyone worked together to find the right audio. We thought the audio should be related to the topic of choice, 'Problems in Public Transport'. Halimatun, the group's sound editor was the most knowledgeable in the area. I observed a bit of her editing and learnt a good deal of editing skills. Each group presented the audio to the whole class. Everyone was really good at mixing audio. I especially like the one made by Wirda's group. I think I should try doing it again on my own sometime.


Here is what audio editing in Audacity looks like. It might look complex at first but once you get your hands on it, you will be surprised how much you'll like it. It would certainly be useful for preparing teaching activities. Thanks so much for introducing this to us.