DVD Interface version 2

Mid-project update

So far we have finished haft of our project. The pre-production and production are completed. Now to the last part: Edit video and delivery.

Finished part:
Video shooting day 1: November 21st 2007
Video shooting day 2: November 25th 2007
Video shooting day 3: November 26th 2007 - this will surely be finished tomorrow

Future:
Edit draft - including sounds: 7 days November 27th 2007 - December 2nd 2007
If it's ok - we deliver it to the customer.
If it's not - re-edit in 4 days and then deliver

Everything is going fine - we expect to complete this project before Christmas or even in mid December.

Song Background for the Movie

In this blog, i would like to introduce some of the song that i have found for our film project. All of them come from website www.freeplaymusic.com . This website is a free instrument song with many categories from feeling to type of music. Below this is the song's list; unfortunately, i can not make the song be online so please download it and enjoy:

1. Adagio, Composed by: Mark Cally and Time Davies, Mood: heartfeel, inspiration and smooth. Download form http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?t=s&i=2 (the song number 2)

2. If i have a baby, Composed by: Mark Cally and Time Davies, Mood: heartfeel, thoughful and reflective. Download form http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?t=s&i=2 (the song number 5)

3. The second snail, Composed by: Jean-Michel Cazoria, Mood: warming, inspired and reflective. Download form http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=21&i=2&t=s (the song number 28)

4. Sleep with my child, Composed by: Jean-Pascal Vielfaure, Mood: relaxed, gentle and happy. Download from http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=31&i=2&t=s (the song number 33)

5. Wishing you fare well, Composed by: Patrick Smith, Mood: romantic, fun and flowing. Download from http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=31&i=2&t=s (the song number 38)

This song are free for downloading. Some of them are short so don't be surprise. Please enjoy them.

DVD interface first draft

This is our first draft for the DVD interface. As our plan, there should be a kid sitting on the stair. However, there was no kid staying still for us to took photo. Therefore, we had to take photo without any child. Of course, this is draft only and we are on the way to get the final work ;)

DVD Information Structure

It's a little trouble to design the structure for this DVD. We only have 2 option for the main menu: the play button and the scene selection. We do not have subtitle or any audio option or extras, just the movie. Because the movie has too many tiny part, we have to divide it into 6-8 parts: the main movie has about 4 parts, the instruction 2 parts and the big projects 2 parts. So that I feel an unbalanced between the menu option, the play button is to simple, click and play while the scene selection have to has more than 2 sub-menu with 8 options. Therefore I came up with an ideal to divide the Scene selection into 2 part and make the main menu option also. In the end, this is our structure for the video - this give me a feel of balance:
1. Play
2. Main movie about Govap Orphanage (the name will come up later) - 1 sub menu with 4 options
3. Extras - 1 submenu with 4 options
3.1 - Instruction Video
3.2 - Painting project.
4. Photo Gallery (Optional)
I hope this is the final structure of the DVD. The interface will be update later next week.

Sound Mixing Software

Sound is an important part not only for film but also for motion picture such as flash or animation. In this blog, i want to introduce two famous sound mixing software for two operating systems Mac OS and Windows.

The first software is Pro Tools ( you can find the more information from here). This software is only available for Mac (may be will available for PC in the next version - current version is 7) and go with the mixer. If you don't have the mixer, you cannot use Pro Tools (i don't like this). Another software is Adobe Audition. Some body say that Adobe Audition is Pro Tools for PC.

There are some main features of these softwares. Both of them support multiple track record and mixing (editing) sound. They also have most of the main effect for sound such as: delay, echo or reverb. However, they have some problems that you make you not like it. In this case, Pro Tools has more problems than Audition. Because Pro Tools is designed for MAC, it does not support importing wmv ( a sound format). In the exporting, it only uses AIFF and WAV (two raw sound format) so that the file capacity is very large. It can not convert between many file format. All of these problems are fixed in Audition but if you are not familiar with sound software, you will get trouble when using Audition. It is somehow very complex in the user interface. One more thing, Audition require a quite strong computer to install and run it.

Using which software depends on many factors such as the computer and the operating system. If you are the first time in sound mixing, i think you may try Pro Tools and then the Audtion.

DVD Authoring Software

After days of suffering from choosing a DVD authoring software (to make dvd with menus) I found an excellent one, Adobe Encore. The problem with our team is our time in school is limited to only 9:00pm, I have to find a solution to edit video and export them to DVD on the same machine for better efficiency. The software must be easy to use and can be use on PC to install it on my PC at home(We can only edit video in RMIT using Macintosh computer). Using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Encore is a perfect solution for me work at maximum efficiency.

Adobe Encore CS3 is a powerful DVD authoring software. It is capable of building DVD menu, submenu and various other application with DVD. Integrated with two other powerful software from Adobe, Premiere Pro CS3 and Photoshop CS3, Encore can make the DVD beautiful and it give users extreme flexibility when building it. Personally, I was very impressed when I used Encore for the first time. It is quite expensive to buy, but are you Vietnamese >:)?

A documentary film about orphan children in Keinya

I found this film when i was searching for some example from youtube. These children may be in the different location in the world but they still have the same situation with the children of our project (but they are younger than the children in the film). Through this film, you can see some how our children are. Moreover, the way that the director of this film edited is can be a good example for how we will record our video.

Wednesday morning !!!

After the quick breakfast at "Bánh Mì Tươi" in Vo Van Tan street, our group including Phong, Thuy and Phuong (from the left) arrived ILA at 9AM and saw our lecturer - Ms.Tuyet here. This's her pic :D (she's young and beautiful, isn't she??? ^_^ it's hard to believe that she's a University lecturer :D)

Waiting for a few minutes, then our client - Ms.Tran came and took us to Go Vap Orphanage. Ms.Tran is an English teacher of ILA and she's also in charge of the charity work of ILA for Go Vap Orphanage. In the way to Go Vap, I'd got a chance to listen to the story of Ms.Tran who got stuck to this job, it was really interesting. I could find the love of abandoned children in the eyes of this young woman.
About 10AM, we were in the Go Vap Orphanage. At first, I was quite afraid of those children though I used to go to a lot of Orphanages. Most of the children here seemed to be sick or have some malformation. However, after a few second I could easily make friends with these kids and played with them, they were so lovely. This is one of them ^_^ (amazingly lovely)


After playing with kids and feeding them, we got back to ILA and started the real conversation about our project with Ms.Tran. She gave us the story board for the informational movie clip and our job is simply to shoot the movie and edit it. However, there was one more challenge, she gave us an extra work as well - an album to store more than 2000 pictures, which can be shared through the internet for only people that she invite, and Ms.Tran also want to add more picture on it ... This's really a big challenge for us.
In my opinion, the time for shooting and editing movie is not even enough. Because I really want to make something valuable, not for fun. So it must take time. Moreover, we also have to wait for some of their project which will be carry out in December then we can finish the whole clip. And the most important thing is ... Ms.Tran will go abroad from the middle of December to the beginning of January. It means that within that time we can't see her; of course we can use email but I still feel not very good about this.
Besides, I don't have much experience about shooting movie but Phong and Phuong. Therefore, I'm the visual designer :D and they will take care of technique parts. I'll got a chance to learn more about this major. Interesting!!! ^_^ I'm waiting for it.