Video Production Improvements

BREAKING POINT has been a serious step forward in my video production skills. Overall, the video doesn't look like it was filmed by a 15 year old and a 12 year old. It looks, in some parts, like a professional video (I might be a bit biased but whatever).

A lot of the angles in the video were inspired by Slumdog Millionaire. That movie had so many amazing angles and action shots, that I just had to implement some of them. The frame was sometimes not level with the ground, but that adds to the edginess of the shot. Also, a lot of zoomed closeups were used, and it created a better sense of suspense. Overall, the zooming and crooked frame effects definitely worked toward a better video.

Editing was different this time around. Unlike UNDERFIRE Deathmatch, I added the muzzle flashes before I placed them into the timeline. This gave me a better sense of what I was working with, and ultimately gave me more control over where the sounds go and how fast I was supposedly shooting.

I finally figured out a shortcut to color correcting a billion scenes at once also. Saved me an hour of work :D

The muzzle flashes from my "assault rifle" were custom made in Photoshop. I created these after I completed UNDERFIRE Deathmatch because I was unhappy with how the flashes looked in the end. They were about the best I could do manually, but I think they looked pretty decent. Ryan's rifle flashes were from the internet. I gave him different ones to make more of a contrast between the 2 different shots, but you probably didn't realize it :D

Workflow was definitely slow on this particular video because of all the file rendering I had to do. But, on the contrary, I did learn many things about HD video. HD is definitely nice, and makes the videos look very clean, but to go through all that work isn't quite worth it in my opinion. I'm not a professional, so I don't have all the equipment or the right computer. Standard definition would work just as well with me.

BREAKING POINT was a big learning video, and definitely helped me step up my video production skills. Hopefully my next video will implement these new skills. I'll have to show my friends first though.