Category Archives: Creativity

Thorns Tribute

Posted on by under Uncategorized, Video Edits

Ptfc – In Tribute

The 13th of November this year marked a rather pivotal plot twist in the in women’s football world; the general consensus reached was shock and devastation as fans woke up to news that the Thorns’ star midfielder Tobin Heath had gotten her rights traded to the new expansion club Racing Louisville in Kentucky. You might think, ‘That’s great! This expansion team is going to go places…’ But in reality, majority of Thorns supporters including myself were upset and in the process of lamenting at the prospect of Heath having to leave her home team in Portland after a memorable 7 years. Tobin was one of the original members of the club from when the Thorns were first deployed in 2013 and her influence was impactful to the extent that the many members of the public often connotated her to being the face of the Portland Thorns Football Club.

She was the reason I started following the NWSL and a big part of why I became a Thorns supporter in the first place. She called Portland her home, gave the team its fearsome reputation and expressed her love for her team countless times in interviews saying that she does not plan on leaving…ever. She expressed that being a Thorn was an honor, expressed her gratitude for her fanbase and made multiple crucial friendships during her time there and despite all that; the Thorns without hesitation left her unprotected during the draft pick; most likely without warning because of her lack of response to the announcements.

I felt that her legacy with the Thorns needed to be remembered in time to come and felt the need to give other Riveters something to remember this era by; so, I decided to make an edit in tribute. I spent a long time scouring the internet for interviews, highlights and audios etc. to use to compile my edit. The next few hours were emotionally exhausting as I slowed, trimmed, cropped, colored and re-colored my clips to fit the audio Lost in the Moment by NF which had a rather major lyrical meaning behind it. This was a rather long process as I had to create new colorings as well as custom aspect ratios – both of which were new skills that I had learned in the weeks prior. Regardless, I was grateful for a good opportunity for me to grow in my preset making and velocity editing skills which has been one of my weaker abilities as an editor and one that I only explored during my last practice edit. (LO1 & LO2) Once I was done I wearily uploaded my edit to the internet late that night. I was proud of my end product since I nearly cried making it.

The next day, I woke up to over 1,000 new notifications! I was a little taken aback to say the least, this was mostly a kind gesture to the Rose City Riveters more than anything else but I opened my socials to an outpouring of actions taken on my post. I had also hit 1.1k followers overnight and gotten 113 comments, 139 saves and made 3,107 impressions. I was honored by the numbers but mostly felt a wave of affection for the Thorns fans who flooded my comment section with their gratitude towards Tobin’s time with the Thorns and vented over how sad they were. I just felt happy that I could help them grieve their loss in whichever way I could. (LO7)

Since the file is too big here’s a link to it, make sure to watch on 1080p for better quality!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ylxdfwc29X26SCZN4RhRto-69mZnJ7VQ/view?usp=sharing

 

 

First Online Guitar Ensemble Session

Posted on by under Guitar Ensemble, Music

Guitar Ensemble on Zoom – The Pink Panther Theme Song

Guitar Ensemble is one of my continued extracurriculars from last year; an activity which I take part in because of my love for music and the guitar which  I have sometime since the second grade. (LO4)

Only last year, I took up learning 3 pieces, the Minuet in G by John Sebastian Bach, Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra and the Hawaii 5-0 theme song by Morton Stevens in fingerstyle to play with the ensemble. This was a challenge to me, personally, since I was used to only playing riffs, basslines and chords but the after school activity required me to step outside of my comfort zone to learn fingerstyle progressions and convert my knowledge of music notation (which I learned from piano lessons when I was younger) onto the frets of a nylon string guitar. (LO1 & 2)

After months of practice we finally made progress as a group; each of of learning our parts individually and then playing them in combination to create a complete medley. Unfortunately for us, just as the performance was coming together for us to perform at the Spring Gala, the school came to a close and the ensemble came to halt.

Thankfully, this year we were more prepared and decided to continue the guitar ensemble sessions on zoom. I had my first meeting this week on Wednesday where a few of our members met to discuss the next piece we will be learning with our teacher, Mr. Marlon. We found out that we would be learning to play the Pink Panther theme song! This was something I was excited for because to me, the song is probably one of the most easily recognizable themes in the world from a show that I loved watching growing up.

It was my turn first to find out what I would be playing; for my first piece I would be assigned to play the chord progression for the song which is both a relief (it is undoubtedly difficult to learn fingerstyle pieces without in person guidance so chords had some sense of familiarity to it) and a challenge since 3 out of the 4 chords I have to learn are new to me. These chords are the b flat 7th, f7th and Am(major 9th).

I took a few minutes during the call to mirror Mr. Marlon’s finger positioning on his guitar and took pictures for me to remember the chord formations for the future. We made it up to the 20th bar and I soon got the hang of things like the strumming pattern, the counting and which strings should be strummed for each respective chord etc.

Naturally, the piece hasn’t come together yet and combined all the individual elements yet, so it doesn’t sound the same but there is familiarity to it. I am beyond excited for what we will be hearing in a couple of lessons when the bass, the chords, the 2 melody guitars and fingerpicking comes together! In the meantime though, I will continue to practice for at least 10 minutes a day.

Taking a look at the notation  >

Velocity + Coloring Practice

Posted on by under Video Edits

Velocity and Coloring Practice + New edit plan

As a part of my endeavors for creativity in my CAS journey, I made a promise to myself to re-start my edit account. I created it a few summers ago hoping to create video edits that empowered females in the sporting industry, but it eventually succumbed to inactivity because of my other commitments during school. (LO6)

However, during quarantine I made an active effort to create and post more frequently, and it has since snowballed into a much larger project that has earned me a lot of positive and rewarding attention on social media, often times from the athletes themselves ! This discovery was hugely motivating to me and I was ecstatic to be able to finally use a proper app that I don’t have to screen record on. I even became a part of a collaboration group where multiple editors choose different days of the week to post every other week.

Naturally, persevering with this goal hasn’t always been easy; edits somedays take hours to finish even days! On top of that I have to deal with complications like editors block (where I can’t find creativity to edit), overwhelming workloads from school and sometimes even experience technical difficulties with certain features such as shakes and transitions are unbearably time consuming and difficult to learn. Needless to say, it does take up a fair share of my free time; but I love it nonetheless! Reading the positive reactions my followers have to my edits always provide a good serotonin boost on a rough day. (LO2 & 4)

Taking this into consideration, I realized that I wanted to balance myself out more; while making sure that I wasn’t overly inactive, I wanted to pace myself so I wouldn’t post 3 edits in a week and be silent for a month. I decided to take a step by step approach; I would make it a point to create at least 1 edit a week (2 if it is my turn to post on the collab. account) and I would use one day out of the week to learn a new skill or feature on the app.

This week I created what is known as an editor’s scrap – essentially what it is, is an edit I wouldn’t qualify as good enough to post but involves me trying out and experimenting with different techniques. For this, week, I decided to focus on 2 skills one called velocity and the other being coloring.

Velocity is essentially the manipulation of real time video content to match an audio. For example editing a clip of a goal or a game to sync with an edit audio beat. I would then use the time manipulation grid on the app that I use (Filmora Pro 9), to slow down and speed up different parts of the sequence and use the beat form bar to guide me in finding beat drops. This was a technique I have been in awe of since I got introduced to editing; instead of having the entire video in slow motion, you can split the clips to go from real time to extra slow; capturing the impact of the moment in a single instance.

As for coloring; it isn’t as simple as it sounds, for one I needed to choose a 3D LUT preset (ready made), I used cool film for mine, and I had to made certain adjustments to contrasts, saturation, brightness and threshold etc. to get the perfect preset for my video (I was actually very happy with the results and saved my custom preset for future use). However, I decided that I wasn’t entirely happy with my edit just yet; I increased the glow effect on the video and used a second editing app VideoPad to enhance the clarity to make the clips more standout.

As for the clips I included, I made a plot twist velocity edit from the 2016 Rio Olympics when the US Women’s National Team lost to Japan; during a critical penalty shoot out to a transition to the team’s unforgettable upward climb to the top during the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.

My intention was to make it both unforgettable and powerful. I did this by using a SoundCloud edit audio titled colors by elvctric and by including subtitles. Overall I was very happy with my productive progress and I even felt proud of my edit despite it being a scrap. Not only that, but best of all, I finally mastered velocity editing!! This has been a major milestone for my learning process after 2 years. (LO3)

Here is a link to my final edit! :))

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1am6cgwM7R8gYSzoXMbZLZvhMT7WRTQCh/view?usp=sharing

(DO NOT ENTER FULL SCREEN)

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