Day One
The new project involving time-based media began officially today, but we have all had a chance to think about the task over the half-term break. By this morning I had brainstormed initial responses to all four images, but I have settled on the fourth image, depicting human legs confronting an origami unicorn, bizarrely.
My response so far has mostly involved the size difference between the human figure and the paper animal. I went off on a tangent thinking about really small things (cells and atoms) and really big things (dinosaurs and space)... I also thought about the unicorn and other mythical creatures. How this will all come together as a film is not yet clear, but I know that I will animate some sections of the piece using stop-motion techniques, so anything is possible.
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Friday, 16 November 2007
brachiosaurus boogie
This module is blowing my mind in its sheer absence of guidelines; I know I should find this liberating but it only feeds my self-doubt.
That aside, it has been a rather hands-on couple of days. On Tuesday we shot some raw footage in groups, which was put to good use today as fodder for our first Final Cut tutorial. I already have some experience using this fine piece of software, howeve I did pick up some useful new tips for slick editing.
In terms of the ideas side of my project, my imagination was sparked by a piece at the "Pause" exhibition at the Phoenix gallery. Tony Gammidge's "The Baba Yaga Chronicles" tells a Russian fairy tale through a kind of video collage, and I found his use of shadow puppets particularly inspiring. I had been thinking about filming hand shadow puppets, but now I'm considering making my own out of black cardboard. I am imagining shadow stegosauruses, black brontosauruses, dark diplodocuses, etc., all dancing about. Continuing the paper-based theme (sparked by the original image of the origami beast) I also thought about fashioning a "night sky" of my own by punching small holes in a big piece of black card and shining a torch from behind. I will experiment with these possibilities over the weekend!
Saturday 24th November
This week we had practice planning and drawing theoretical storyboards on Tuesday AND Friday, so the final storyboard I draw for my film this weekend had better be good! I handed in my treatment this week, and although I'm not sure the end result will adhere exactly to this plan, it was useful to get my ideas so far down in black and white. I have been experimenting with shadows on walls and also with a shadow screen I constructed using black card and baking paper, so I may not have to use any direct filming of human figures.
We have had plenty of practice using the DV camcorders in the last 3 lessons, whether filming something spontaneous or setting up and shooting conventional shots. I feel ready to start getting my personal project down on film soon.
Tuesday 27th November
Today I handed in our storyboards, which I feel marks the point where I should seriously start thinking about beginning filming.
In the lesson today we talked about the concepts of accessibility and usability. We thought about the problems of making time-based media which could be understood/enjoyed by blind, deaf, or otherwise disabled people, and appreciated by anyone regardless of age, race, nationality or social situation. At first I thought the second part of these issues couldn't possibly apply to my film, but in fact any visual or aural data could, at a stretch, be interpreted as offensive by some percentage of the population, however small. As petty as it may sound, I realise that the suggestions of the origin of the universe (evolution - dinosaurs and life from cellular life) could potentially be seen as offensive to people of certain religious beliefs, for example Christian Creationists. I can't say I will alter my work to accommodate this issue as the film is intended to have a light-hearted tone, not one of preachy confrontation. As regards accessibility, I like to think that my film will be visually arresting enough to work well without sound (for the blind), and that the soundtrack, accompanied by a braille narrative or poem, would provide entertainment to someone with visual impairment.
Also today I drew some cells on paper and I intend to experiment with basic animation techniques tonight at home. I have been making dinosaur cutout mockups with black paper and thread joints. I am hoping that the crudeness of these techniques will be at least partly improved with intelligent editing on Final Cut.
Sunday 2nd December
Yesterday I went to the Lighthouse centre in Brighton to see a retrospective of the short films of Maya Deren. Deren made films in the 1940s/50s and is often credited with starting the Feminist Experimental Cinema movement. Her work deals with dream imagery, Freudian psychology, and all kinds of weirdness. I was previously only familiar with one of her films, "Meshes of the Afternoon" - I loved it the first time I saw it and have found it really inspirational ever since. I found her other films equally mind-blowing, especially the last one at the retrospective, entitled "The Very Eye of Night". In this film, Deren superimposes footage of dancers which have been treated with a solarised effect, over a starry night scene. The dancers are supposed to represent the various constellations and their mythologies. This process and aesthetic really resonated with what I'm working on now, which is based around stop-motion silhouettes in the night sky, forming constellations. I found Deren's use of silhouettes, light and shadow in general very interesting and relevant to this project.
Sunday 2nd December (end of the day)
Due to frustrating technical reasons (i.e. being unable to get my hands on a firewire lead, having to wait until it's dark outside to maintain uniformity of lighting during the animation process, etc.), I finally managed to start shooting my film this afternoon. Today I was animating the microbe sequence of the film; it went fairly well after much confusion at the start. I was using iStopMotion software, and I wanted to produce the effect of looking through a telescope (having a black circle overlay). I tried to make an overlay in Photoshop but my version of the software wouldn't accept it, so I improvised and just used a piece of card with a circle cut into it, stuck onto the camera lens! Primitive, but it worked. I realise I could probably make an overlay in post-production in Final Cut, but I wouldn't have been able to take this into account while animating (and potentially get a lot of wasted footage).
At this stage in time, with only 10 working days to go till the deadline, I think it's just a question of getting the animation down as quickly as possible whilst remaining as true as possible to my initial vision. Lucky I'm aiming for a non-slick, home-made style then, isn't it...
Tuesday 4th December
I'm progressing slowly but surely. Today I managed to animate the fourth shot of the film, where the dinosaurs emerge and disappear; all except for the Tyrannosaurus Rex that is. This was the first time I used my home-made screen with light shining behind, and it worked fairly well after initial problems with the exposure levels.
I am hoping to get down the last animated sequence (the close-up on the t-rex) either tonight or tomorrow, and film the live-action sections on Wednesday night. From there I will have just enough time to produce a very rough cut in time for the deadline on Friday. I plan to refine my piece and create the soundtrack over the weekend and into next week.
Looking back on what I animated on Sunday, it occurred to me that the moving microbes resemble the Pangaea era of prehistoric earth, when the continents were shifting. Although this is an unintentional detail, it fits in very well with the main concepts of my piece (size and prehistory).
Last night I completed the final animated sequence of my film, the one in which a close-up of the Tyrannosaurus Rex spits out stars, only to turn into a constellation himself. I think this is the most successful part of my film so far, possibly because by this point I'd had so much practice using the paper cutouts, but also because it is quite visually striking.
Tonight I hope to complete filming and get a rough cut ready by midday on Friday.
Last night I pretty much completed filming the raw footage for my film. I set up a lamp behind the camera aimed at a white wall, and strategically positioned my actor so that he would cast a silhouette shadow yet also not appear in the shot himself. This section took longer than expected to film because of issues with angles, focus, exposure, speed (I used the "time lapse" function to record this) etc., particularly when the telescope prop was brought in. I made a cardboard cutout of a telescope and I think it worked fairly convincingly. Last night I also filmed the "twinkling stars" sequence, which left me a little unsure. I think the footage looks acceptable but I'm not sure whether it will work well in the context of the rest of the film. Tonight I plan to put my rough cut together and assess this issue.
Last night I put together a "Rough Cut" of my film. I think it looks ok - I am fairly satisfied with the timings and overall feel - but there are definitely a couple of things I need to look at over the next few days.
1. The first stars sequence doesn't fit very well with the rest of the film. Perhaps re-shoot in the style of the Dinosaur constellation?
2. The difference in tone and brightness between the small dinosaur and large dinosaur sequence. I have been playing with the RGB balance in Final Cut, but it has been difficult to get it perfect as each time I render the sequence it seems to slightly alter the edit.
3. Titles and credits. I want to do something in keeping with the style of my film, so I'm thinking paper cutout text...?
4. Music. Now that I have an idea of the length and timings of the film I can get working on the soundtrack.
Not much longer to go now, but I think I'm on top of things.
Saturday 8th December
Yesterday I did two things:
1. Titles.
I was inspired by the old-fashioned yet striking handwritten titles and credits I saw in Maya Deren's films. I thought about how I could do something similar in keeping with the overall feel of my own film. Using the Text function on Final Cut just didn't seem to work. In the end, I made black paper cutouts of the Title and of my own name, and by shining a light behind them, I created Shadow Titles! I am pleased with this effect and I think it contributes well to the film.
2. Improvements
I re-shot the first "stars" sequence, keeping the star cutouts static and the movement of the light minimal. I am still in two minds regarding the suitability of this section but it is certainly an improvement on what came before.
I have also been playing around with ideas for the soundtrack, which will hopefully be complete early next week.
Sunday 9th December
Today was music day. I had a lot of difficulty getting the computer to pick up and record the synthesiser I plugged into it, but once I sorted that out, the process was relatively straightforward. I was aiming to keep the sound quite simple yet evocative, so I chose an otherworldly, relatively unintrusive sound and played a simple melody whilst watching a Quicktime of my film so far in order to get the timing right. Over this I layered some "outer space" ripple sounds to coincide with certain points in the film (such as the bacteria dance). I exported the tracks as WAV files, then imported them into Final Cut, where it was easy to apply "fade in/out" effects etc. When I played the film through, however, I realised I was unhappy with the lack of special sounds at the very end of the film, so I got the synth out again and recorded one more sound to accompany the sequence where stars exit the t-rex and he becomes a constellation. After some tweaking I was much more satisfied with the overall feel of the soundtrack and I think it contributes positively to the film in general.
I have finally finished my film! Last night I came home from work, watched "Primordial Sky" with fresh eyes, and realised the ending just wasn't satisfactory. It needed some kind of closure and I didn't want to include pointless credits using the text feature on Final Cut (seeing as I am responsible for 99% of it!). So I made a paper cutout of the word "End", got the camera out one more time, and filmed its shadow, in the same style as the intro title. Once I'd imported this section, I was much happier with my film and decided it is ready.
Now it is just a case of exporting it from Final Cut in the correct format and producing a self-evaluation.
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