Cinematography - experimenting and time lapse

I got out a P2 camcorder from the media desk on Friday to have a good play with it over the weekend..



One of the first things I wanted to try out was time lapse so I positioned it to point out of my window:



Apologies for the funny grey start - they all start like this, it must be the way I exported them out of premiere.

I took the camera down by the beach and filmed my girlfriend Nina walking along the rocks; I know that Pete Langford may have mentioned something about typical student film methods but I couldn't resist..(mmmmm zoooooooom)



Heres a random one I took as it was getting dark. My friend Carl pretending to sit on a bench. Comic genius :D



On Sunday I still had to quench my desire for more time lapse footage so I rushed over to Falmouth Docks before the sunset.



It got pretty cold but it was totally worth it. I learned that: if filming a time lapse over a period when the lighting alters dramatically - its best to work without the filters clicked on. When I turned them off whilst it was getting darker it altered the brightness a bit too suddenly. Next time I will just adjust the iris/aperture gradually.

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Life Drawing

It was fun to get back into painting and other art materials for this session - It's been ages since I last used paint. I also liked using white chalk on a black background; I think it works well due to the variety of different marks you can get out of chalk but also because of the contrast of white on black.

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Crew Assignment - Barista

I have joined Alex's team to help produce his animated film featuring a character called Tim who works in a coffee shop. You can check out his full design bible below..

Barista Bible

You can also check out his blog here.

My main job on the project will be animating..but like Simon's project I'm happy to work across other areas if required.

I really like the look of it - combining real textures with animated characters and backgrounds. The story sounds like it will fit in the 'rom com' genre with some fun surreal moments and interesting Wes Anderson style camera moves...

So far I have started doing some work in Animate Pro which is like Flash only many times better for Animation. Alex has asked me to do some rough Animation of a couple of stick men characters for the first scene of the film. The 2 characters both receive a cup of coffee - one is good, the other is bad. Here is what I have produced (using Alex's rough rough version as a reference layer within Animate Pro.)



Not bad for a first attempt I think - now I will wait for some feedback/constructive criticism from Alex..

26/1/2011 - Update

Today I spent from 10am til 6.30pm working on improving my previous attempt on this bit of animation. It was very helpful to receive some tuition yesterday from Alex on how to draw stickmen! He also clarified that I should work on trying to make the animation as final as possible. We are currently having technical issues trying to get compatibility between all our software so I'm a bit unsure at this stage of how we're going to transfer our files between us.

Here is my updated animation:



And in context:



Obviously we'll loose all those rough markings in the final one! Anyways.. I think what I need to do next on this is make the arms a bit longer so they will definitely extend behind the counter and out of sight. I also need to make it more obvious on the stickman to the right - what is his body and which bits are his arms. I will sit back a bit for now and wait for further feedback from Alex.

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Life Drawing

Here are some of my life drawings over the last few sessions. In one of the sessions just before the Xmas holidays we had to draw one another as no model showed up. See if you can guess the teacher and student featured in 2 of the drawings!

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Crew Assignment - Projected History

I'm going to be working for two third years projects this term (and next I expect.)
One of which is 'Projected History' directed by Simon Carter.

The aim is to do a 3d mapping projection onto Tremough house (The old building situated in between Darington and Tremough campus.) We will be visually portraying the history of the building alongside references to the ages its been through (ie. the Industrial age.) It's quite an exciting project to work on and interesting to be behind the scenes.

My job so far has involved being part of the pre production team, but has also extended into modelling. Below, I have designed some of the shots for the Animatic.
Tremough house used to be a Nunnery..











Here is a boat I designed which I made an Animatic out of quite simply in Flash. The seagulls are a nice little addition :)



I have now started modelling the boat using the 2d image in the animatic above as reference, along with a couple of photos from the internet to show the front/top viewpoints of the boat. This all helps with the 3d modelling.





For these I have used NURBS as you get nice curves with it and also it is easier to texture then polygons. After speaking with Georg I've realised its now best to convert the NURBS to Polygons in order to join the side with the front. Texturing should still be easier as it transfers the NURBS UVs across. So the model is still in an early stage at the moment.

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Post-Production

This term we've had a choice of 2 different projects to focus on: pre-production and post-production. I've decided to settle on post-production as I've reached the conclusion that I will learn more. Also the videos that George showed us were pretty mind-blowing. I will never watch a film in the same way again! Here is an example of VFX work.



Here are some notes taken from Georges lecture:



So for this project Ryan, Insa and I will be working together. Today we met up and 'mind-mapped' some ideas out between us. The aim is to produce a 20-45 second vfx shot that involves combining Live Action with Animation/effects. It can be 2D or 3D. Other then that the brief is limitless - as long as you do something fairly simple and achievable. Before we met up I uploaded the following photos to show them as I have always thought that these bins look like characters. They could possibly fly into the sky?







I showed them the photos above, which was a good starting point for discussing over possible ideas. Here is our mind-map from earlier today:





Some of the key ideas we got from the mind-mapping are the following:

-Having a real life toy/object come to life (ie. a wooden elephant)This could be built on with some nice arty 2d visuals.

-Drawing a door/lift/window on a wall, then opening/entering or looking through it.
This could also lead to teleporting and coming out of another door.

-A child builds a sand castle, then little real life - but reduced in size - people come and inhabit it. Expanding on this idea we could have a battle between two sandcastles using 3D cannons etc.

-Animation interacting with live-action surroundings.

-Moving through photos in a 3d environment or photos coming to life.

We're going to mull over some of the ideas we came up with and meet up on Monday to discuss our thoughts and hopefully confirm what we are going to do.

Update:

Here are some further ideas I came up with the help of my girlfriend - Nina when we went on a walk on Saturday morning around the docks and castle. We came up with quite a few...

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Face Sculpt and Environment project from last year.

Another 2 posts I accidently deleted last night, but now I have re-uploaded the images here. I think its a bad idea working on the computer when you're really tired..

Here is my Face sculpt from earlier last term. Never quite got round to completing it. Still it was a worthwhile pursuit that I enjoyed (at times) and learned from. It did get a bit tedious occasionally - I remember it taking a surprisingly long amount of time to do.







And going back even further in time to the beginning half of last year, here is the 3D environments project which I also quite enjoyed doing and learned a lot from.





The feedback I got was that I should have put shadows in there as it looks like the objects/elements are floating. Also that I could get a much more interesting composition with my viewpoint and I should think about what I'm trying to tell the viewer.

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Harry the Crab -- Maya practice

Here's some work I actually did in April last year, but accidently deleted the post whilst adding labels. oops! Anyway, this could be cool to use on the post production project. I quite enjoyed making this crab and thought it would be cool to have it look real with one twist. It's doing Tai Chi. I've never rigged anything so it would require a lot of work so its definitely a maybe for using this idea in the post production project.

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Inspiration over Xmas/New Year

Motion blur 2 by Onedotzero

I got out this very cool book from the Woodlane library.



I recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary and experimental animation/live action/motion graphics. It comes with a DVD showing work from every artist featured in the book as well as an interview with each Artist. The Artists work spans across audio visual/music videos/short films/commercials etc..

A few of my favourite artists in the book include Run Wrake, Jonas Odell, D-Fuse, Tronic, Florio Sigismondi, Pfadfinderei and +cruz / w + k tokyo lab.

I love Run Wrakes style. The way he combines cool 2d animation loops and composits them over live action. Whilst using quite surreal imagery, it also seems to have a lot of meaning. The video below is probably what first introduced me to Run Wrakes work as I am a big Manu Chao fan..

Mr Bobby by Manu Chao. Video by Run Wrake.



Jonas Odell is masterful at mixing live action with animation smoothly and has done a lot of music video work. His work featured in the book above is a great little short film entitled "never like the first time" which describes peoples first time experiences in the bedroom department. Below is an example of one of Jonas Odells music videos, he seems to get to do a lot of the catchy pop tunes.

Strict Machine by Goldfrapp. Video by Jonas Odell.



D-Fuse are big in the VJ scene but also do gallery installations that look at the big issues today -i.e. Mass consumption - charting the rise of McDonalds against the Destruction of the rainforest using motion graphics. Their work on the DVD that comes with the book above, invokes a feeling of warmth towards nature and resonates perfectly with the music. They have worked a lot with Beck, creating a DVD with him. They have also written a book on VJ culture.

Visuals by D-Fuse.



Image from their Small Global installation.



Tronic combine architecture, graphic design, film and animation. Check out their film below which features lush colourful visual animations interacting with humans.

Eternal double happiness by Tronic.



+cruz / W + k tokyo lab have a very cool commercial on the DVD that accompanies the book above. Its for Nike (a nice big friendly corporation - hmmm ) which makes me hesitant to give it a mention but hey.. the work itself is awesome. A flawless groove of street culture live action and animation. My favourite bits are where they have the animation interacting with the live action layer - i.e. An animation of someone scratching vinyl that directly links to the timing of live action city backdrop.

Urban Canvas for Nike Presto by +cruz / W + k tokyo lab.



There's a great section at the back of the book which shows you each Artists studio view, how many people are in the team and what they eat for lunch! Unnecessary? Nooo not at all - it brings a nice element of humanity to the whole thing.

Each artist is given the same questions to answer at the back of the book - one of them is: Who are the next generation of talent to watch out for? Where will they come from in the next decade? Here are some of their answers:

"Its about who has something to say & who wants to say it bad enough" Jonas Odell

"Most big talents are just people with something to say in a new way, with passion to do their work & get it in front of people" Bob Sabiston

"Anyone who doesn't take life to seriously" Plates Animation

"Not sure, for good or bad the world is changing at a rapid rate, with lots of interesting things happening in China and former Eastern-Bloc countries" D-Fuse

"Young students experimenting with new technologies - a rapid do it yourself approach - will be the breeding ground for the new anti-establishment generation of workers. Down with the corporations + give way to the young and their voices" Florio Sigismondi

"Many will come from a fine arts background, those who would have otherwise been printmakers, painters, video artists & sculptors will find their voice in motion design." Mk12

Other quotes from the book:

"Our greatest and darkest moments are defined and recorded by our artists." Intro

"Creativity and the idea are the most important things. Then the flow is next." Florio Sigismondi

Spike Jonze

I have been reading up a bit about Spike Jonze - I borrowed a little book from the Tremough library that featured a long interview with him. The main thing I remember from the book was that it took him a while to find the people he found it easy to work with - every so often he would work with someone new that he would click/'hit it off' with and so they would become part of his crew. Before this, he'd be working with different art directors/editors/producers for each project which he found really hard. He sounds like quite a gregarious guy whose passion drove his reputation as a talented director. Below is one of the coolest rap videos I've ever seen..

Drop by Pharcyde. Video by Spike Jonze.



Animated feature films

On the other side of the broad spectrum of Animation I have been inspired by 2 feature films lately.. The first one is 'Surfs Up' by Sony Pictures Animation.
Apart from the appeal of the subject matter (surfing) I thought this was a very well put together film.



When I first saw this I found it pretty hilarious and surprisingly engaging compared to a lot of the predictable animated features you get. I was trying to figure out - what made it so good ? I put it down to great animation in the characters and left it at that - not to mention its stunning visuals and unusual genre (mockumentary.) It was illuminating to watch the extras when I got the DVD.

Firstly, one of the things that made it work so well as a documentary parody was their innovative use of technology. They managed to directly link up a real camera to the camera within the software. This allowed for real life hand held camera movements which operated within the CG world. When they looked through the cameras viewfinder they were looking at the CG scenery and Animated characters. I think this did volumes for the authenticity of the film genre. The camera was another character interacting with everything that was happening in the film and providing a direct link through to the audience.



The next thing goes with what I clocked onto the first time I watched it - the high level of animation in and between the characters. The extras on the DVD revealed a behind the scenes look at the voice actors and how the directors went about creating the script. They would get in all the actors needed for a scene into the same room together and switch on the mics/recording equipment. The actors were given rough guidelines on what needed to be said and the left was all down to their improvisation. They would record the actors acting out their characters for several hours just to get 10 minutes of good actual dialogue for the film. This allowed for a lot of freedom and immersed the actors into the characters they were playing. Quite often the actions performed by the actors would later be replicated in the animation.



This free form approach to recording the dialogue and the technology allowing for real life camera moves led to the creation of this highly creative and entertaining film.

The other film I watched recently was "Mary and Max" by Melodrama Pictures which showed at the Poly in Falmouth. This is Australia's first feature length Animated claymation film.



It tells a story of 2 characters and their pen pal relationship. A lonely little Australian girl with an Alcoholic mother and Father whose main hobby consists of stuffing dead birds and a man with Aspergers syndrome and weight issues who lives in New York. It offers a great insight into the condition of Aspergers Syndrome, but also very interesting and truthful viewpoints on people and the society in which we live.

I thought it was a great film. You could tell that a lot of thought and care had been put into it. There are a lot of details such as little bugs occupying letter boxes which add a lot of charisma/charm to the film. The story and characters keep you very involved and at times it seems all very bleak, but you soon find yourself laughing at something.

So that just about sums up everything that has inspired me this Xmas/New year holiday. They say the way to work is 10% inspiration and 90% application soooo I best get working. I'm looking forward to getting my teeth stuck in the various assignments over the next term along with helping 3rd years on their projects.

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