The programmes that I used were all on a Mac computer which is something that I'm unfamiliar with so I had to learn the basics of using all of these programmes from scratch. These include
- LiveType
- Photoshop
- iMovie HD
- Safari
Photoshop was something that I found challenging to use at the beginning as I had very basic experience with it in the past. I used photoshop to create my logo that would appear at the beginning of my opening sequence, collectively it took me around 3 weeks of lessons to finish creating this logo as I had to teach myself how to use the programme as I went along.
this was the first week where I searched for a picture on google then did my own template and started to fill it in on photoshop, this took me a VERY long time as I kept clicking on the wrong tools to use.
after 3 weeks this was my finished product which i was pleased with as it was the best that I could do as the logo wasn't my main focus and I only worked on it when I had an hour free or a few minutes free, just tweaking and adding in things that I wanted. I later on animated it on LiveType and put it at the beginning of my opening sequence.From using this program I've learnt that It's very hard to use but if you keep practicing then it becomes easier because you become more familiar with the tools and learn which ones aren't suitable for the thing you're doing. For e.g. I learnt that the smudge tool was not something that suited my logo as it made it look messy and I couldn't make the smudge look even on my whole logo.
Live Type was a programme that I spent a majority of my time using as my opening sequence was heavily based on titles. Altogether my titles took me over a month to put together as once again, I had to teach myself how to use livetype and spent countless hours figuring out how to make things last longer on the timeline and also how to apply different effects and how to tweak them etc. But once I had mastered the basics I was able to create a short title within the space of 5 minutes once I had a set font and effect for all my titles so it was consistent throughout my whole opening sequence. Here are the first set of titles that I created on LiveType:
These titles took me a total of two double lessons (around 3 and a half hours) to do as I'd never used the program before and was pretty much thrown into the deep end when it came to creating the titles from scratch. As I became more familiar with Live Type I was able to tweak my titles quickly for e.g. these titles (above) I found were too small when I put it together on iMovie with my shots and other titles:
As you can see the titles looked abnormally small in comparison to the other titles that I had made so in the last few lessons I tweaked these titles to make them bigger.
Later on when I became more familiar with Live Type I placed background clips to vary my titles in appearance which at the beginning was very hard as when it came down to exporting the clip it refused to export the background image but after 3 or 4 attempts I worked out how you also export the background clip so once I had done that it was fine.
From using Live Type I have learnt that it is a VERY long process to create titles that you're happy with and titles that fit with the rest of your overall product. Even though I was able to create titles quickly towards the end of the project it still took a long time at the beginning to choose a set font and familiarize myself with a program that I was completely out of my comfort zone with, although saying this, it was very easy to transfer my titles onto iMovie after exporting them and I didn't encounter any problems in that sense.
These titles took me a total of two double lessons (around 3 and a half hours) to do as I'd never used the program before and was pretty much thrown into the deep end when it came to creating the titles from scratch. As I became more familiar with Live Type I was able to tweak my titles quickly for e.g. these titles (above) I found were too small when I put it together on iMovie with my shots and other titles:
As you can see the titles looked abnormally small in comparison to the other titles that I had made so in the last few lessons I tweaked these titles to make them bigger.
Later on when I became more familiar with Live Type I placed background clips to vary my titles in appearance which at the beginning was very hard as when it came down to exporting the clip it refused to export the background image but after 3 or 4 attempts I worked out how you also export the background clip so once I had done that it was fine.
From using Live Type I have learnt that it is a VERY long process to create titles that you're happy with and titles that fit with the rest of your overall product. Even though I was able to create titles quickly towards the end of the project it still took a long time at the beginning to choose a set font and familiarize myself with a program that I was completely out of my comfort zone with, although saying this, it was very easy to transfer my titles onto iMovie after exporting them and I didn't encounter any problems in that sense.
iMovie HD was the programme that I also spent a majority of my time using as it was the device that i put my opening sequence together on. On iMovie I learnt how to import and export clips to feature on my blog, and also how to import clips from LiveType and my music which is towards the end of my opening sequence.
As you can see iMovie isn't a program that appears to be complicated and it wasn't in the slightest.
I found iMovie the easiest to use out of the other programs as it was very straight forward, you had your timeline at the bottom where you could cut your movie to how you wanted it to be in terms of length, and then you had editing and sound options which were also very easy to use. Exporting was simple as you could then upload it from iMovie straight to Youtube via one export which saved a lot of time and effort. The only problem that I encountered was dragging and dropping clips from the top area into the timeline but for me that wasn't a major issue as it only occurred in the beginning and once I was familiar with iMovie it was easy and I didn't have any problems at all.
As you can see iMovie isn't a program that appears to be complicated and it wasn't in the slightest.I found iMovie the easiest to use out of the other programs as it was very straight forward, you had your timeline at the bottom where you could cut your movie to how you wanted it to be in terms of length, and then you had editing and sound options which were also very easy to use. Exporting was simple as you could then upload it from iMovie straight to Youtube via one export which saved a lot of time and effort. The only problem that I encountered was dragging and dropping clips from the top area into the timeline but for me that wasn't a major issue as it only occurred in the beginning and once I was familiar with iMovie it was easy and I didn't have any problems at all.
Altogether I have learnt that these technologies were very hard to use for the first 2-3 times that I experienced using them, but once I understood the basics I was able to adapt quickly and work at a faster pace and still produce something that was of high quality, I have also learnt that constructing a product that is 2-3 minutes long will take a long time with these technologies no matter how quickly you can work on them as its all about exporting it to one main editing program (such as iMovie) and then tweaking it to make it a quality piece of work.
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