After lots of time in front of after effects, the final animation goes up!
Animation Storyboards
So we decided not to hand draw these story boards.. why? Well, we figured that we could use the cut outs from the storyboards in the actual animation, if we made sure they were high res enough. So we chipped away at some of our project while planning it out simultaneously.
two birds with one stone. for the second time this semester.
(also, i changed the layout of my blog. I hated the one i made up, so i just went for the minimal look. Maybe ill change it again someday.)
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two birds. one stone.
So the process was long. The edit was hard. But its done.
We had some difficulty with the audio – our levels werent that great and the actors sometimes talked really softly. The lines weren’t memorized which caused a lot of problems for the edit. Things didnt always match up, continuity of the movements didnt always work great, and the lines didnt work all the time in context. The lighting in the room didnt always match up from shot to shot because we had giant windows that changed their light over time (obviously from the sun). We also had some shots that we forgot to put in the video completely. some serious disappointment.
All and all though, we were pretty happy with the final project. It has a conversation that works for continuity, some awkwardly funny parts, and a nice strange ending.
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Video Shoot!
We shot our video on saturday. We had a good time and things went relatively smoothly. We got lots of coverage, we had cupcakes at our “craft service” table ,and we spent about 5 hours getting 1 hour of footage for a 2 min. video.
Its difficult to direct actors. You kinda have to trick em into acting. Especially if they arent actors.
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No one is an illustrator
So we sat down for a while and hashed out a story and some storyboards. We decided to adapt a short script that had already been written. We made it a bit more current and changed some of the actions to make it a little easier on us.
The story is about a character who speaks in constant cliches. He is getting interviewed all the while someone is running to a particular location (which we are unsure of). The story is very dialogue heavy and requires two actors plus one more for a quick scene at the end.
I think the difficult part of all this will be shoot this interestingly enough to make the medium of video come through on a script that is pretty dialogue heavy and not visual (it would almost be better as a sound recording then a short video).
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Sound Recording
Sound is tough. I video edit from time to time and the sound is always the worst part. It’s easy to tell if a shot is no looking good and even if your lights are really bright or really dim. Sound is always this murky area where you can’t really trust anything – the recorder, the headphones, your ears – anything.
For our project, we decided to do a little halloween themed madlib of sorts. We struggled with an idea for a bit, then decided to get out and record peoples answers on the street. We had a loose script from a pre-fab Madlib and started collecting sounds. It was sort of an experiment in both live collection in an uncontrollable environment as well as a social experiment in shoving a mic in someones face.
We ended up with some really good audio clips and some really bad ones. The sound was tough to get loud (especially when people only wanted to say things once). Also, people have a tough time with the difference between and adjective, adverb, pronoun and gerund. ”Descriptive words” and “verbs ending in ‘ly’” was a better way to describe things.
We got a load of weird responses, some good, some boring, most original, and a few we wanted to prompt people to say. Of course, things werent perfect so we had to use our own voices.
Soundtrack is a great program to chop things up and move it around. I was a little annoyed that the magnifying glass shortcut wouldnt work on the main audio project but would work on smaller audio clips – perhaps everyone likes to use the zoom scrub thing in the left corner to move around, I dont know.
So here is our madlib, a bit confusing because a collage of audio from other people trying to complete one sentence unknowingly is always a bit difficult.
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Thats some hot media
So this is one of the most laborious books we have read yet. I thought that Ong and his linguistic exploration was wordy and long, but boy, was I wrong.
Anyway, I think he had some interesting concepts with the hot and cold media, despite his definitions being a bit confusing. Bases on his definitions, I get that hot media is a medium which leaves open a lot of options for different interpretation based on the concept that the media has more information coming from it to be absorbed. Consequently, cold media is the opposite; a medium with less “definition” thus being particular about message and leaving no interpretation. I think this is all a bit strange because one could obviously make a hot media cold and vice virca based on the content, right? I could take the relatively cold medium of a telephone conversation and turn it hot by manipulating it’s content, right?
I’m just going to assume that I don’t understand him well, but even if I could manipulate the temperature of a medium by manipulating it’s content, wouldn’t that imply that the message is nether in the medium or the content but in the artists intentions?
His examples are very confusing too. At one point, he discusses the cool medium of television but then discusses a potentially hot content of sports between Russia and the west. Obviously, this sporting event would defintely show on the cool medium of television, but he still implies this would be inflammatory for the cultures. Does this mean that the cool medium of tv is irrelevant?
I’m confused.
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A sad story about a lonely book
the process:
Coming up with a story is always the most difficult part. However, whenever Ania and I work together, we have this knack for picking a story, elaborating quickly, getting excited and then just starting. This is a good thing, especially with this type of work since its both learning the craft and experimenting. Jumping in is always the best way to figure out how to swim, in my opinion.
With the animation, the process is pretty simplistic, but I was actually excited to do camera movements – zooms, pans, etc - with the stop motion to see how those panned out. I really like the movement that comes out of that process. It sort of injects the people who are making it into the animation, in a weird way. Instead of just the animation moving around, the camera does to, bringing the audience into the world a bit more. I like it.
If I did this over, I would change the pace of the book and add more frames.. I like the smoothness of some of the animation (the tear and the camera movements) and those were ones we moved in smaller increments. There is a limit though, too small and the movement is just too fluid, for me at least.
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Understanding Comics
I never knew.
There is this incredible simplistic storytelling in this book despite the material being quite complicated. Which, obviously, is the subtext of the comic in general. His history of the “comic” and its types of incarnations is fascinating, but I really love the time constructs of the frames. The concept to me was so natural but simultaneously foreign. I remember, when I was in my first film studies class, there was this moment that I realized that all these movies had this hidden language that was staring me in the face. I had been a passive viewer for so long, that recognizing frames in shots, lighting, and editing transformed the way I would ever see movies again. This book did this for me with comics. I’ve always been fascinated by physical constructs (like the width of the frame) enforcing and implanting an emotion in our brain (like a drawn out time or “waiting” based on the comic frame size). This sort of psychology is amazing.
Most other art forms deal with time on very basic levels, except of course sound/music and video/film whose entire art is based around keeping the audience involved for longer periods of time. A book might be considered to control time as the reader opens it, reads for a time, stays in sequence of the words, then ends when they choose. However, in reality, the audience only reads at their pace of words, one by one, however fast they choose. McCloud basically insinuates a comic stands to control the pace, visually, with the frames, length, borders, and placement as well as text boxes. They control the readers sense of time as well as the stories literal time. This is really fascinating to me. I’m rambling a bit on this, but space “between the panels” has a whole new meaning for me.
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Final Project Blues….
So i cant figure out what to do for my final project.
I really am sort of stuck on trying to clean up humpty dumpty. I know there is a lot i could clean up about it, but it doesnt really seem that interesting to me and im not motivated to do that, which means I’m not really feeling it.
I thought I might use this music video that I’m working on outside of school for a friend of mine. I shot the footage already, but it needs to be animated and edited, but I think that is a way bigger project than what I would like to do in a week. It just requires more time and focus and I shouldnt rush that.
I thought I would make a stop motion animation for the project, making the humpty dumpty animation, except in real stop motion – printed animalson cardboard, moving around, mouths moving, everything frame by frame. But i realized I dont really have the money (or time) for that. I’d have to print out all the images, figure out how to build the stage, rig the movements and it just seemed like another project too big.
I thought I might make an after effects animation based on the very first assignment – make a documentary about current project – except I would make it recap about every project I’ve done in commlab. I think i may be leaning towards this now.
Im having quite the creative road block.