Final Project

For my final project, I've decided to do a menu with a User Interface that would make certain parts of the animated menu clickable, which would open up separate videos that I have edited. The menu is an animated Reno Arch, that is segmented by seasons, winter, spring, fall, summer. The seasonal sections have unique animations (a snowman comes in the winter scene, leaves fall in autumn etc) These are all clickable. Upon being clicked, a new window opens showing a short montage (around 1 minute each) of events taking place in downtown Reno during that season. These videos were compiled and edited by myself using preexisting footage, and acquired footage from the internet.

To put this together, I edited the videos using Final Cut, with the text coming in from fonts I edited in Photoshop. The menu was made in After Effects using segmented transitions (linear wipes) to make each segment different. The UI was created in Adobe Flash Catalyst with selected areas being made buttons, and then those buttons triggering actions on other slates, which upon completion, would transition back to the original state.

My original goal was to make it more about the events surrounding the people, and not simply a video that looks like a promotional piece for the city of Reno. It ended up being a little bit of both. In the end though, my main goal was just to be able to expand my knowledge of new programs (After Effects, Catalyst) and that was my favorite part about it, I got a lot of experience with new editing programs and I really enjoyed putting this together.