Mack's Blog

All about school

Author: mackbain (page 2 of 3)

October 24, 2019 / 0 Comments

Inspiration

I would like to say that the videos I have made in the past are pretty original to me or so it felt. I had of course seen other examples of videography and cinematography but when I started making my  own videos, everything I put into them and every way I edited them just kind of came to me and I didn’t really feel like i was pulling certain ideas from any specific places. That being said, I do have some people that really inspire me to expand my capabilities and creativity when it comes to video making and thats this

The first person I will talk about is John John Florence.

John John Florence is and American surfer born on the North Shore of Hawaii. When he’s not surfing, or even when he’s surfing, he is an avid video maker and photographer. I knew about him before I came out here to the island but once i got here and immersed myself the the west coast surf culture i started following him more and more. Down below is one of my favorite videos by him and definitely one of my favorite videos of all time:

Space from John John Florence on Vimeo.

In this video, the landscape shots are absolutely stunning but the majority of the video is shot underwater which is equally amazing. I would absolutely love to be able to shoot videos under water but frankly that is just not a reality for me right now in terms of money but I will definitely continue to look at it all day.

Another one of John John’s videos, which is his most recent, features a lot more clips shot on land which i think are really really cool. This video (below) is a video i can totally see myself taking some inspiration from:

I really just like the , for lack of better words, “vibes” that John John’s videos exude. They are full of light hearted fun moments mixed together beautifully with intense surfing clips showcasing one the most raw and gnarly things this planet has to offer. All of his videos are presented so clean and crisp that it makes you want to watch them over and over again just so you can appreciate not only the time it took him to make and produce such a beautiful work of art but also to appreciate the feats he had to carry out within the videos themselves.

October 21, 2019 / 0 Comments

Good I Guess

So I have kind of hit a wall. This past week was probably the busiest week I have had this semester and i just had no time to practice. I tried to make time but it just didn’t happen. I did however make time this Sunday to practice for about 2 hours. That 2 hours went very good. I went through the major chords countless times, even until my fingers hurt, and from the time  started that night I definitely improved. My two problem chords (B & E) have become way easier to transition into since I started this project and my fingers are starting to fall more naturally into position for the rest of the chords. Theres not much ill be able to do for my midterm video since I haven’t started on any songs yet but I guess on my growth plan I said that I would only be running through the chords up and down so thats what I’ll do. I’ll use this final blog before the midterm as a little bit of a self reflection:

  1.  It is very hard to find time for this amongst everything else but I will definitely have to be better at this for the remainder of the semester.
  2. I am better at ukulele than thought I would be. Im sure it has a little bit to do with my past experience with guitar.
  3. It’s very fun to play. The times I did get to sit down and practice, I found it very relaxing and enjoyable. I didn’t view it as homework just as something fun to do.
October 15, 2019 / 0 Comments

Turkey Weekend

The name of this blog post is a bit misleading as I didn’t exactly have any turkey this weekend, rather a roasted chicken pizza for my Thanksgiving dinner! Anyways, I brought my ukulele with me to Kelowna this past weekend where I spent my thanksgiving this year. My whole family is musically inclined (especially on my moms side) and even though I wasn’t going to be seeing them this year i thought i would bring a little music of my own to the gathering. There is always a lot of downtime at our family gatherings especially at thanksgiving so i knew that it would be the perfect time to practice my skills! I didn’t have my laptop with me so i didnt bother practicing any of the songs quite yet but i did have a lot of time to practice the major chords. Everything is starting to come together and its quite exciting to witness. When i say everything is coming together, that definitely does not mean its perfect but i can for sure see improvement and promise in what ive done so far and whats to come. I am still having a little trouble transitioning to and from the B and E chords but it is definitely getting easier which is great. I still feel like i could have done more up until this point but im doing the best with the amount of time i have and i still have a week until the midterm check in so i am not freaking out just yet.

October 11, 2019 / 0 Comments

Ukulele is hard!

So this is my first blog post for my music assignment. I honestly have had trouble finding time to practice lately just with everything else going on but that being said i have had a little bit of down time to pick up the uke and practice my chords a little bit. I find it pretty relaxing and really fun i just wish i had more time! I had to narrow down which chords i am going to learn and which songs i want to be able to play by the end and here they are:

Chords:

Major Chords – A B C D E F G

Minor Chords -Am Bm Cm Dm Em Fm Gm

Songs:

I’m with you – Vance Joy(Chords – C, Em, D, G, Am)

K – Mac Demarco(Chords – F, Dm, A, Cm, Am, C7)

I haven’t attempted the songs yet but I find it handy that both songs only have chords that i will be learning (with the exception of C7). I have started to learn the major chords and I’m finding it fairly straight forward except for the chords B and E. Im finding these two chords in particular very tough to play correctly let alone transition into and from what I’ve gathered online, they are a couple of the toughest chords to play. Im not going to let it hold me back though and I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to learn them and transition into them in no time. This upcoming week I’m going to try to do a little bit more especially because I’m going to have to broadcast my talents through a video pretty soon and thats a little nerve racking!

October 7, 2019 / 0 Comments

Jesse Miller

I found todays guest speaker, Jesse Miller, very interesting. Technology is obviously a growing thing in our lives which is exactly what this class is all about and it was cool to get a professionals view on whats going on. Jesse had a lot of cool facts like how Captcha’s help self driving cars develop or how privacy rights are not as private as everyone might think, especially in terms of social media apps.

Jesse spoke about all the growing issues related to consent, privacy, and security and at the end of the day, most resolution comes from being mature. Using common sense to navigate through the internet and social media is what his suggestion was but that seems to be getting harder and harder for people. For me i would say that i have been pretty smart in terms of posting safe content online but of course there are some acceptions. Not to call anyone out but i know of people who post pictures of their students on instagram and who knows, maybe they didnt get consent and even though its a harmless, cute picture, that students identity has just been compromised.

Learning through using the internet and technology is ever evolving and while it is interesting to see, it is something as teachers that we always have to be aware of. We will see the evolution first hand whether its technology the students are using on their own or its technology we can use to aid our teaching. I really hope to incorporate technology into my teaching because i truly think that it can be beneficial to learning but at the same time i will have to be very adamant on keeping up with safety and privacy guidelines.

I hope to learn more on this topic throughout this class and i know that i will.

 

October 7, 2019 / 0 Comments

First Test

So I went to Langley over the weekend and I decided that it would be the perfect chance to test out some of the new settings I found. Ive mentioned in my last posts that ive had trouble with overexposure but I have had trouble with underexposure too and I hardly ever try to film things in the dark just because I know it wont even work. Since we took the 7:00am ferry it was still fairly dark on the way over so I used the new settings I found to set the exposure really low and this is what I got. I was pretty impressed honestly. I dont think anything would have been visible if i didnt find this setting change so im pretty happy.

Ferry

 

September 28, 2019 / 0 Comments

My Camera

I own a Nikon D3100 DSLR camera and it is what I have been Using to shoot videos. It works fairly well honestly. The sound I get from it is good, the picture is clean for the most part and its really easy use. A couple downsides I have noticed while using it is that it does not work very well on bright days or with bright things, it just looks washed out and overexposed and it doesnt focus very well sometimes. I have never played around with the settings for the video on the camera and frankly I have never even looked at the manual before this. I don’t have the physical manual but I found one online here: https://cdn-10.nikon-cdn.com/pdf/manuals/kie88335f7869dfuejdl=-cww2/D3100_EN.pdf

This is what i found:

  • The first thing I found is that you can change the focus mode for taking video. I have had it on Single Servo AF which is used for stationary objects and people only which would make sense of that fact that I had been having focussing issues. Theres 3 focus modes available on this model:

Single Servo AF – Auto Focus for stationary objects and people

Full-time Servo AF – Auto focus for moving objects and people

Manual – Manual focus

  • The second thing I found that could help me with my overexposure problem is using the AE-L/AF-L button to lock the exposure to stop it from fluctuating
  • But the third thing I found is the most exciting and honestly it’s kind of embarrassing that I haven’t found this before but there is a way to change the exposure compensation (+-5.0) which completely fixes my overexposure problem

I am very very excited to try out the new features I’ve found and i hope that my findings will clear up all the problems Iv’e had in the past. I am also  currently questioning myself as to why Iv’e never thought to look at the manual before.

 

 

 

September 23, 2019 / 0 Comments

Im trying!

In todays class I had a quick conversation with Val about my free inquiry and I am feeling much better about the whole project. I mentioned my general idea for it and we both started brainstorming more specific directions I could take it. A couple we discussed were based around, cameras used, editing tools, pros/what they use, and maybe even friends that I can talk to about videography as a whole. Anyways, I’m feeling way more confident in how this project is going to go and excited to get started.

September 16, 2019 / 0 Comments

Free Inquiry: Videography

Videography really interests me and so that is why i think i am going to dig deeper into the medium for my free inquiry project. I have a (pretty basic) DSLR camera but it takes  decent video and prior to this class i have made three, one minute videos consisting of a mashup of clips set to music. The videos are from surf trips, camping trips, and just fun times with friends and i honestly find them so much fun and so rewarding to make. Not only does it give me satisfaction to create something that i think is cool, it also makes me so happy to see the reaction of my friends when they see a video featuring themselves. These videos that i have made are fairly easy to shoot and really easy to edit but with this free inquiry project i thought it would be the perfect chance to maybe start doing some tougher things. With the camera i have i am going try to start making some more complex and technically demanding videos. I haven’t really explored my camera too much in terms of its video capabilities so for the first week i think thats a fitting place to start. This week i will explore the user manual of my camera and see what exactly i am working with. Later this week, i will post more information on my camera and its capabilities.

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