Video Production with Premier Pro Part 2

Now I had downloaded all my videos I loaded premiere pro and created a new project.
After naming my new project I set the sequence settings. As all of the videos I have downloaded were in 720p HD I chose to have my project as HDV 720p 30 fps so that I could keep the high resolution of the videos.

Importing the videos into my project was as simple as right clicking in the project box and clicking import.

As Halo Reach is an xbox only game, I started by cutting the xbox 360 logo from one of the trailers I imported. I selected the video I wanted and dragged it into video 1 on the timeline and then found the first frame of the xbox 360 logo.

  

To cut the video I used the Razor Tool. This tool lets me split the video at an exact point so I can delete the part of the video I dont need.

I repeated this process with all the videos I wanted to use and placed them in the right order next to each other so I had about 1 minuites worth of clips.

This gave me a a time line that looked like this:

Using multiple video channels made my project look neater and much easier to understand.
I used the official Halo Reach Theme song over my entire video as it made it sound much more dramatic and it cut out all the random sound from the clips I had used.

This was as simple as dragging the song into the Audio 3 channel and using the Razor Tool to cut the audio when the video ended.

Because I wanted to use the original audio from the xbox logo at the start and the audio from the Halo Reach title at the end, I cut the song so that it would fit between them.

Video Production with Premiere Pro Part 1

As most of the footage I wanted was going to be game play from Halo Reach. I opted to get footage from Youtube as many other players had uploaded their best moments from playing for everyone to see. I used a website called www.keephd.com, this website lets users input a Youtube link and then download the video files in a variation of resolutions and file types. I chose 1280 x 720 MP4 as all of the videos I selected were 720p HD resolution. Some of the videos I selected had the option of full 1080p HD but I decided to stay with the lower HD so I could have a good video quality but still keep the file sizes limited.

These are the videos I downloaded for use:



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These videos are a mixture of end user game play, trailers and game cut scenes. This was I could cut out the Pegi and Xbox 360 logo to use and have a mixture of professional and amateur footage.

CD Cover Design

Keeping with the idea of viewing from space, I used an image of the planet Reach from space.
As the planet is a perfect circle I could use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to select around the outside of the planet.

I made the selection slightly bigger than the planet so that it would capture some of the space around the planet.
This also helped for my bleed area because if the printer slightly misaligned my label it would cut into the space around it rather than the actual planet itself. This way it would be much less noticable.

Adding this image caused the inner circle of my CD template to be nearly impossible to see so by filling it with a white colour made things much easier.

For the text I wrote "The Battle of Reach is Coming: 24.07.2552" this is the date that the battle on the planet reach started.

I felt this was a strong statement about the game but I wanted to give it a feel like it was very serious and it shouldn't be bold and in your face because it is a dark time, People are fighting for their lives so I felt the text should be more subtle because it is very emotional.

I decided to use the Texturizer Filter.

The Texturizer Filter gave the text a grainy digital feel to it which is often used films and games that are set in the future. Its like it was written from a computer.

After adding it to my design it still stood out a bit too much so I used a simple Blur Filter which blended the text with the background a bit more.

This gave me my finished CD Label:

Design of DVD Cover part 3

As Master Chiefs outline is entirely straight edges, I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool.

This tool works perfectly for what I wanted to do because it uses straight lines to make selections. Starting at the edge of the image I added points where I wanted to create a corner and then continue with another straight line. This then gave me a perfectly cut out image of Master Chief.

I wanted to use this image as a background image but at the moment it's far too bright, bold and drawing far more attention than anything else.

Dropping the down to 22% took a lot of the colour and brightness away and gave the image a much more subtle effect.

I had already decided on the text I was going to use for my blurb on the back, so it was just a matter of setting it to the right font and text size which were Rockwell with a font size of 9pt. I wont go into too much detail about the text because I have already spoken about font previously.

At the bottom of the page I added basic information about the game such as the amount of players allowed, the maximum resolutions available and what countries this game can be played in (This is called the Region Code).

I used the same font and font size for this text but I decided to make it bold because the information is quite important and it needs to stand out from the other text to be obvious to its users.

This gave me a completed DVD cover design.

Design of DVD Cover part 2

The spine of a DVD cover is a small amount of space and it is usually the first thing people will see when picking it up, So it is best to be used for important facts about the content. For mine I used the three most important things:

• The platform of the game
• The title of the game
• The age rating of the game also known as 'PEGI'

The platform of Halo Reach is Xbox 360 so I started by adding the Xbox 360 logo at the top of the spine.

I found this image online and I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to transfer the image into my project.
As the logo came from an image that had a white background it was very bright, Now that I had put it onto a black background it was far too bright for my project. To counter act this problem I lowered the opacity by 11% this meant that the logo was just dark enough to fit with the black background but not so dark that it looked washed out.

 

The PEGI age rating logo also started off with a white background, But the only visible background was between the age and the website:

The easiest option was to fill the white background with the same black colour as the background of my project. Using the Eye Dropper Tool I selected the colour of the background and applied it to the image using the Paint Bucket Tool.

Now the image was the same colour it was as simple as importing it into my project and placing it in the correct place.

I wanted to use exactly the same colour and font as the title on the front of the cover so I used the Magic Wand Tool to select the word 'Reach' from the same image I used for the title. As it was going onto the spine of the cover it needed to be rotated and resized to fit on. Under Edit/Transform there is a Rotate option, This adds points around the image and gives me the ability to change the angle of the image.

Under the same Transform menu there is a 'Scale' option this gave me the ability to re size the image and place it in the correct place.

This gave me my finished Spine:

Design of DVD Cover

As Halo Reach is based in a futuristic time far out in space, I started with a pure black background to represent the emptiness of space.

Using the Magic Wand tool I selected the Halo Reach Title from a picture I had found online.

I decided this was the best option to select it because all the letters are bold and defined which meant the Magic Wand Tool could select each letter very easily.

For the planet reach image I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool.

This tool finds the most defined edges of an image within the area of the cursor. I decided this was the best tool to use because the edges of the planet are very clear.

Using the guide lines I had created to define the edges of the cover meant I could snap the image to the top of the page very easily. Then I applied a Lens Flare filter starting from where the soldiers are standing.

I chose this image because it works perfectly with the black background which is space. It gives the effect of looking at the planet Reach from afar. This image also gives a sense of teamwork, showing a group of soldiers ready to take on the war on the planet Reach, Using the Lens Flare filter emphasized the light around the group of soldiers giving the feeling that they are the good coming to fight the evil.

I added a small quote about the game on the front of the cover that very briefly introduces the game using the same colour and font as all the other text on the cover but with a slightly smaller font size of 7.07pt.

Now I had a finished front cover.

Images for my design

These are the images that I decided to use for my project:

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http://costumzee.com/view/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/halo-3-master-chief.jpg

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http://www.revolutionmyspace.com/image-code-107/halo_reach

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http://www.bungie.net/images/News/Inline10/082010/Wallpapers/Planet_Reach/iPhone_Planet_Reach.jpg

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/PEGI_16%2B.png

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http://gamingbolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/xbox360logo.jpg

Fonts

All the Halo games have used the same fonts for the Titles, This is called the Halo Font.

To keep with the rest of the games, I have decided to use the same font for the title on my cover design.

 
I attempted using the same font for the blurb on the back of the cover design but I found that the font was very hard to read when it was used in a lot of text.

So I decided to use a simpler font called Rockwell with a font size of 9, which was much easier to read and it still looked modern.

I wanted to keep all the text the same colour so I used the eye dropper tool to take a sample from the Title on the front page.