Phone In HandFor a more fun application, you can look at incorporating an actual phone graphic into the image.To create this, first, source an image of someone holding a smartphone. You could create one yourself, but if you’d prefer, you can always get a picture from Shutterstock. With the phone image I’m using, you could fit the whole phone into the composition.However, the problem here is the actual phone video footage is going to be too small. Therefore you’re going to want to scale the phone layer so the screen touches the top and bottom of the composition.If your phone image has fingers that overlap a portion of your screen, you might want to first remove the screen area in Photoshop, and save the file as a PNG. This will save time masking the image in After Effects, and it will also help sell the effect.If the entire screen is free from obstruction, simply scale the vertical footage onto the screen.To further the effect, we’re also going to add a background layer that somewhat resembles the location of the footage. In this case, we’re going to add a photograph of a bedroom and add a blur set around 50-75.The result will look like this. This is my favorite way to work with vertical footage, but it tends to work best when the clip is relatively short.Background ElementOf course, the simplest approach would be to just drag a loopable background element behind your phone footage. However, you’re going to want to separate the vertical video from the background ever so slightly, and you can easily do this by introducing a drop shadow for the vertical video.Head into the effects panel and drag the drop shadow effect to the smartphone clip. You can keep it as standard, but to avoid the impression of an effect from Microsoft Word, I like to increase the spread, lower the opacity, and duplicate the effect to make the shadow appear on both sides of the vertical video.There we have it. Three ways that you can make better use of the dreaded vertical video.For more filmmaking tips, check out these resources.Should You Make a Feature Film on a Phone?Turning Old iPhones Into Wireless MicsSmartphone Filmmaking: Saving Battery Life and Storage SpaceSmartphone Filmmaking: Pro iPhone Videographer Equipment Vertical phone footage is a cardinal filmmaking sin. However, sooner or later, you’ll probably have to work with it. Here’s how.Cover image via Shutterstock.While filmmakers generally don’t want to work with a phone’s 9:16 aspect ratio, there may come a time when you have to incorporate this footage into a project. Perhaps a documentary calls for a video file from a witness who filmed an incident. Or maybe you’re compiling a set of videos from attendees at a wedding wishing the new bride and groom a happy future. The general public does not always adhere to filmmaking’s best practices, so here are a few ways you can work with vertical video.Background ZoomAn initial idea I had was to duplicate the phone footage, scale the bottom layer so it fills the 1080p composition, and then blur the background. I was almost sure that I had seen this done before in news broadcasts and viral video roundups on the internet. However, it just didn’t look right.It could work in some circumstances, but not most. Instead, let’s look at disproportionately increasing the scale, so we are only scaling the video horizontally.Import your phone footage into your NLE or compositor, duplicate the footage, and name the bottom layer background and the top layer phone clip.Open the scale settings of the lower layer, and unlink the scale proportions. In the photo example, you can see that my scale is already at 29%, that’s simply because I was working with a 4k vertical video that was descaled to fit the composition. With the link broken, scale the background layer vertically until it fills the composition.We then want to add a Gaussian blur to the background layer. Increase the blurriness to 100, and select repeat edge pixels.This may seem fine, but we want to separate the background from the foreground to avoid distracting the viewer from the actual vertical video. Therefore, lower the opacity to 50-75%The final result will be something like this. read more

An alleged mischief has made the Congress replace one of its four women candidates in Arunachal Pradesh with a male leader. This has not gone down well with many in the party, which lost two “bankable” women leaders who were denied tickets.The Congress had on Saturday announced the names of candidates for 53 of the State’s 60 Assembly seats, elections for which are scheduled for April 11. The list had the name of Marina Kenglang for the Changlang North seat apart from Dayum Para (Tali), Yaman Bagra (Along West), and Komoli Mossang (Nampong).But on Monday, the last day of filing of nomination, someone else submitted the papers for the Changlang North seat.Two nominations “Only two candidates filed nomination for the Changlang North seat today. They are Tesam Pongte of BJP and Thinghaap Taiju of Congress,” Changlang district’s Deputy Commissioner R.K. Sharma said.Ms. Kenglang accused State Congress president Takam Sanjoy of manipulation after failing to stop the All India Congress Committee from nominating her for the Changlang North seat. “Since I live very far away, I sent Mahila Congress representatives to Takam Sanjoy to collect forms A and B (required to be submitted by political parties for sponsoring nominated candidates). He refused and instead gave the forms to Mr. Taiju, a former MLA who lost the last election,” Ms. Kenglang told The Hindu.‘Clerical error’She said she had urged Congress president Rahul Gandhi to take action against Mr. Takam for disrespecting the AICC list of candidates and undermining the party’s policy of providing adequate space to women. Mr. Takam, however, said he went by the list he had and the inclusion of Ms. Kenglang’s name could be a case of “clerical error”. “I joined the Congress in 1999 and have been a zila parishad member twice. I fulfilled the criteria to become a candidate but was denied ticket. An individual has kept me out, not the party. I will remain with the Congress because I believe in its ideology,” Ms. Kenglang said. Two other women leaders, however, quit the Congress after being denied tickets. While former Women’s Commission chairperson Jarjum Ete joined the Janata Dal (Secular) to contest from Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat, Toko Yaram left the party after failing to get the ticket for Yachuli Assembly constituency. read more

About the authorAnsser SadiqShare the loveHave your say ​McNeil calls on Burnley to continue momentumby Ansser Sadiq10 months agoSend to a friendShare the loveDwight McNeil was delighted with Burnley’s win against West Ham United on Sunday.It was only their fourth win of the season.While the Clarets are still in the bottom three, it does give them a better chance of survival.And McNeil was happy to make his second start in the league for the team and score a vital goal.Now he wants the team to push on in their next game against Huddersfield.”We’ve just got to kick on now. We’ve got to take what we did (on Sunday) into Wednesday,” said McNeil to the Lancashire Telegraph.”Everyone was saying before the game get to the back post and you will get goals.”When it went in I couldn’t believe it. It was a great moment for me and my family.”At first I didn’t think it had gone in but when I saw it I was really happy.”It’s been a dream since I was a kid and now it’s come true.”When you’re in the playground as a kid you always dream about scoring goals like that and it was amazing to get one.” read more

“We entered the winter time with more challenges,” said Finn. “Our trains are shorter so you need more trains to move the same amount of product. More locomotives and more crews. By the time we realized we’re into January, February we just didn’t deliver at the level we should have been. When its winter time we have set a target that the supply chain should allow us to spot 4,000 cars per week during the tough months of winter – January, February – to grain elevators in Western Canada. Once winter breaks, our target becomes 5,000 cars. We’ve done the last six weeks now almost 5,500 cars per week. When I say we’ve caught up, it is that the volume is moving. There might be issues at the port, there might be issues at the odd grain elevator, but when it comes to cars being spotted at elevators so farmers can deliver their grain and we can move it to market we’re already caught up quite a bit.”Finn added that there have also been several other factors outside of CN’s control that contributed to the shortage of empty freight cars for its customers over the winter.“The problem is, we load the cars but ultimately our customers decide what terminal it goes to. Some terminals are not necessarily as efficient as others and don’t operate seven days a week. You can load grain cars but if you move them to Vancouver and they sit there without being unloaded. CN have done its job to deliver, but we’re still waiting for those cars to cycle back to the elevators. Those cars are sitting one or two days not being unloaded, that takes two days out of their cycle time.”Finn said that CN will working on better communicating with its supply chain partners in order to try and alleviate the possibility of another freight backlog occurring in future years. PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — One of CN Rail’s vice presidents says that his company has nearly cleared the backlog of grain from B.C. after a more severe winter than usual contributed to long service delays for the railway’s customers across the country. CN’s Executive Vice-President of Corporate Services Sean Finn was in Prince George on Wednesday touring his company’s operations in the community, which handles both north-south and east-west traffic. Finn explained that the company had seen 18 months of declining freight volumes, leading the company to lay off staff and park locomotives. In 2017, while the company forecast an average increase of three percent in freight volumes over the year, freight volumes had increased between 10 and 20 percent in the first four months of the year. Finn said that while the company began a hiring spree of 1,000 employees and ordered 200 new locomotives last year, it requires months both to train new conductors and build locomotives.  read more

New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will issue a single document combining the certificate and marksheet for class 10 board exams from this year onwards, officials said Tuesday. A decision in this regard was taken by the board’s examination committee and was approved by the governing body recently. “A single certificate at secondary level examination combining the language of the marksheet and certificate shall be issued for class 10 examination with effect from 2019,” a senior board official said. “The document shall be treated as a certificate and candidates shall have to fulfill requirements as notified by the board for obtaining a duplicate one,” the official added. Class 12 students will, however, continue to get separate documents for marksheet and certificate of examination. If a student has appeared for an improvement examination, he or she shall not be issued a separate pass certificate for that subject but only a separate statement of marks obtained, the official said. The board has also decided that from 2020 academic session, compartment candidates will be given three chances to appear for the examination, while candidates who failed will be allowed to appear for the examination next year and practical marks will be carry forwarded. “The affiliation bye-laws have been amended to incorporate the changes,” the board official said. read more