My Opening Eye Effect – What I have learnt.

Preamble

Half the time I have not idea what I am doing! I spend a lot of time watching other people’s videos and thinking, maybe that is my niche only to find that I don’t really have the skills to achieve!

That’s when I have made myself stop and state that I don’t have the skills at the moment. No-one can expect to create something new and, the first time you do this, achieve perfection. I’m a very reflective person. So, instead of having a go and giving up, I have decided to have a go, reflect and improve!

And that includes my blog and fiction writing! 

Reels and Reality

I am always trying to find my niche within the creative world. I have made some progress with this. When it comes to images, I really like the idea of creating compositions with stock or my own images. The idea of this has always intrigued me and the idea of making something new really appeals!

As with videos – I am really focusing on YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels at the moment. I’m still creating all my other content on YouTube, but I enjoy creating these short videos that also reflect my available time. As well as sharing some Twitch Snippets via reels I am also working on creating some filmed reels that reflect my learning via a course on Skillshare.

So, after a lesson on masking I had this idea! Me facing camera, smiling, pretending to take one of my eyes out with my hand, then opening the closed hand to reveal an eye opening in the middle of my hand. It might sounds a bit confusing but here is the finished product.

What I have learnt!

Well, it was a definite learning curve to get this far! I spent ages trying to attach the camera to the tripod and getting it in the vertical position! Yep, that is where my starting point is.

This is what I have learnt from this process;

Fail to plan, plan to fail!

I’ve never seen the point of storyboarding or planning in the past. I have just got an idea and then ran with it! But these shots need to be planned! When filming my eyeshot, I moved that is causing the eye on the hand to move. Also, I should have made sure that my hand was closed better and that the opening was better timed. I am going to look into storyboarding, although I am not going to trawl the internet to look at best practice. I’m going to try and devise something for myself.

Improve my masking!

I’m not sure what I did wrong here. But I really need to improve my masking technique. I tried to feather the blend, but I think there is something to do with keyframing the mask so that it follows the eye better. I also wanted the hand, when closed, to be covering the eye. As the hand opens, I wanted the eye to be revealed from below the fingers! Absolutely no idea how to do this!

Get those colours correct!

Yes, I need to blend better but also need to work on the colour correction. I got a bit of my eyebrow in the first opening eye shot that was causing some issues with the colours, but the blend is not very good at all. I did try and find a video of an opening eye, but nothing I could find really replicated the effect I wanted. There were paid versions that were good but I am not that rich! Plus I’m just an amateur! I need to learn more about colour correction within videos.

Have you read…
My Opening Eye Effect – What I have learnt.
The Gibbering GM: Consequences
I have a fixation on pets!
Back in 2018!

Outro

I’ve found a very good class on Skillshare on both Premiere Pro and After Effects so I am working through these. The person who created these classes – Jordy Vandeput – also has a YouTube channel called Cinecom.net that has some great tutorial videos! Many of these are way above my skill level. There was one that they started off by saying how easy it was and I was lost at the first instruction!

I realise that I have got a long way to go, but I like creating the videos so I think this will encourage me to practice and learn more and more. I will, of course, share my progress across my social media platforms and you are most welcome to come along for the journey!


Facebook


Twitter


Youtube


Instagram


Twitch


Patreon


Pinterest

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *