[Guest post] Computer-Age Teens

2 new guest writers on yashvinblogs.com 🙂
Shuaib, form 4 student and Veekshay, form 2 student are really crazy and diehearts of video editing !
Despite being younger than most of us here, both have already a few videos with loads of special effects. Amazing, I feel so small since I never tried anything like that!
So, take out your camera, set up your home studio, today we gonna do some video editing 😉

The story

Have you ever heard of Avatar? Have you ever heard of Transformers? What about other Titanic or Jurassic Park? Well, of course you have. These are some of the most famous movies on our planet.

After watching Avatar, everyone was like: Hmmm. Effets Speciaux Chocs. But have you ever wondered how these were made? Nearly everyone says that these kinds of things are reserved to pros. They all think that realistic special effects require a lot of money to achieve.

Well my friends, let me tell you our story…

Mine started like 2 years ago when I stumbled over a Japanese anime series called Naruto with which I became addicted like after the 1st episode. Back then I was about 13 years old. It was then that my story began.

Addicted and immature as I was, I wanted to give the feeling that I was also one of them. So I started learning Photoshop and made some amateur pictures of me doing some sort of superpowers. One day I was surfing, goggling on how to improve my Rasengan( a Naruto superpower) when I came across a tutorial on YouTube by teun3sixty depicting how to make a video of a Rasengan using a program called Adobe After Effects. [Wikipedia]

Discovering Adobe After Effects

In other words, it is a video editing program which is used for many movies made till now. And I was like, Nisa nett!!! Bizin Sey sa! And that’s when I started learning After Effects. Of course before I managed to create a rasengan I had to start learning after effects from the start. I used VideoCopilot tutorials. They are actually excellent and have helped me a lot.

Well at first, some people were like: “Hey n00b net sa ta! Arete perdi to letemps
So I stopped making videos for a while but still kept improving the other effects I had already created.

Well let’s fast-forward to this year. By the way, I am currently in Form 4 and studying at College du Saint Esprit located in Quatres-Bornes. Near the end the second semester, my friend kind of forced me to set up a YouTube channel for my videos. So that’s when I’ve started “youtubing”. Frankly I was quite sad at the little amount of views I was getting. So that’s when I had decided to do something cool.

The home-made Green Screen Studio

I first asked my parents’ permission, and then transformed our TV room into a Green Screen Studio. Well using a green screen forms part of a technique called chroma keying.

Below are some pictures of how I installed everything in my TV room:

And below is a diagram that I made to demonstrate how it basically works:

Well together with the help of Veekshay and Rufaida(my cousin who is in Form 3 at Gaetan Raynal), I managed to make a more lengthy video. Actually the pictures from the diagram are from my video.

Do check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUaAcE5aVQk

So what now?

Amazed at what can be done for under Rs.3000(price of HD webcam + greenscreen) and 1 week of work? Of course my video is not perfect and there is still room for improvement, especially on the acting side (I know I look kind of like a zombie J). By the way the intro was designed by Veekshay and colorized by me.

More about the 13yrs old self-made producer…

Veekshay also studies at College du Saint-Esprit and is in Form 2. When he was young, he used to watch fiction films like X-men etc¦ He felt as if he was living in another world just by watching these movies. This had inspired him so much that he wanted to start his own fiction films.

Then one day, his luck shone. When he asked his cousin to lend him his Photoshop DVD, the latter gave her ADOBE MASTER COLLECTION. This DVD contained all adobe products and that is how Veekshay discovered After Effects. At first, the program seemed far too complex and he had some difficulties using it. But then he realized that effects could be added to videos with this software and thus began making his first clip. He made it all by himself and had really enjoyed it. This had become a passion for him and he began to make more and more videos and published them on YouTube and managed to get an increasing number of subscribers for his videos.

His increasing amount of subscribers encouraged him so much that he began to create some videos for fun. Well all of his videos can be found on his YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/psp1045).
Quoting Veekshay,
I am very young for those videos according to some friends but there are others like Shuaib (TheRippingGhost) who make videos with special effects too

There’s more than Facebook quizzes!

My point is that I want to show that Mauritians youngsters like me all have the potential to do more than participating to Facebook quizzes or stupid surveys… A few of the youngsters out there have ventured themselves into web designing, including the creation of flash web sites and animations. Good initiative!

However, they can do more exciting things and I believe this is a way which will contribute to convert Mauritius into a true Cyber Island. Because being a Cyber Island requires the population to be literate in all sectors of the IT industry.

By Shuaib Jewon (TRG) and Veekshay Ramsurrun ( MaGeek)

Their respective youtube channels : http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRippingGhost and http://www.youtube.com/psp1045

All they need is your encouragement! Good luck to both of them!

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