Cropping in Final Cut

Composition - Making Bad Pictures Look Good

Composition is the arrangement of the visual elements in an image. A good composition will lead the viewers eye around the image. 

The rule of thirds, primarily used in landscape, splits the images in thirds vertically and horizontally. The aim was to put key elements on the parts where the lines intersect, so it draws the attention of the eye. In the images below I have cropped them so that six follow the rule of thirds and two don't. 

VFX - Lift Sparks

Sin City Effect - But Blue

Video Codec - Making Big Things, Smaller

A video codecs are used by software to compress audio and video files. Compression is often lossy, meaning reduced quality for reduced size. However people have tried and tested various ways to get smaller files but still have that high quality. 

There are various different codecs that are commonly used today, such as:

AVI, H.264, MPEG, WMV, MP4, AVCHD and MOV 

I tested some of these codecs along with 2 image sequence codecs, PNG and JPEG. Below are the results.

From this information, you can see PNG and JPEG offer excellent quality, however the files sizes are large. MPEG4 has a low file size but the quality suffer extremely, resulting in pixelation. AVI has a smaller file size then PNG and JPEG but the quality is low res. MPEG2 and H.264 have the perfect combination of small file size, rendering time and quality, with H.264 being better for file size at the cost of more rendering time.

Brightening the Scene - Lighting in 3D

In video, photography and animation, the standard method of lighting is the Three-Point Lighting. Using 3 light sources to light up a subject, while controlling shadows, shading and atmosphere directly. The 3 light sources are named: Fill light, Key light and Rim light.

The Key Light

The Key Light, is the main light that directly shines on the subject. This light helps determine the strength and angle of the fill land back light. Additionally the Key light maybe coloured to give a different atmosphere. In the picture above, an apple is the subject and is currently been illuminated by the Key light.

The Fill Light

The Fill Light, is an additional light source that shines on the subject. Its position is determined by the key light, the light is lower then the Key light and often on the opposite side of the camera to the Key light. The fill light is often a soft light to remove contrast across the subject. In the picture above the apple is only been lit by the Fill light, as you can see it is dimmer then Key light but proves a soft light on the left side removing the dark shadows, as can be seen below.

The Rim Light

The Rim light is often facing towards the back of the subject, giving a rim of light around the edges, hence being called Rim light. This is often used to help separate the subject from the background and showing the details around the edge of the subject. In the picture above, the apple is being hit by the Rim light showing the colours and shape of the edges.

Combined

In the picture above, the apple is under the 3 point lighting. The lighting helps show the shape, colour and helps separate it from the background.