vfx.002

Somewhere between the first post and this I became really overwhelmed by what I wanted to do. I didn't know if I wanted to make something incredibly complex or simple but effective. The first tests I did were inspired by the A24 ident - my favourite. I wasn't sure what I was doing it for so I just used the word 'Juno'.

I had to create the letters as separate layers in Illustrator, then import them and craft their paths from one position to another. This individual comp was then imported into the following RGB comp where I set the individual channels, adjusted the size of each comp by 0.5 (as well as keyframe their length) and delayed each one by 1 frame to have the following effects.

So here's how that ended up looking:

And that's where the struggle started because I couldn't think of a way to get this to work with a credits sequence. I've always been a fan of simple, minimalist credits... so I sort of just went with what I personally wanted to do & knew would make nice opening credits.

I went through a bunch of films, looked at the atmosphere they established and ended up settling on Lady Bird. What followed was an hour of cutting out vintage lady birds from old postcards and books in Photoshop.

And then a lot of text alignment, optics, some blur, some noise, a bit of masking for an effect of glow with the use of decreasing exposure. At one point I used Motion Tile to add Wiggle effect to the text, and then ended up doing that to everyone single one of the lady birds as well. They all got keyframed to crawl across the screen.

So here's all that:

And then eventually, when everything seemed good to go, I decided to cut the credits with some scenes from Lady Bird ft. a lovely song by Junodream that I felt captured the feeling of the film really well.

avid.001

After the long break away from AVID, I felt rather unfamiliar with the software. Surprisingly, as soon as we all got our workspaces and passwords, it all started coming back naturally. 

On the very first day, I looked through the 'Meat Bag' footage, sorted it into bins, made a basic rough cut and left it at that. I felt very conflicted about the footage as there were large jumps in the flow of the story and it made me feel anxious when viewing it. I thought, if I have to edit together a film and I'm already feeling stressed just reviewing the rough cut, I won't be able to make it to my usual standard, or enjoy the process. 

I left it at that and the following week, after a chat with Kathryn, I decided to import the footage from 'Basement' (which I re-titled Rouge) and start from scratch. Perhaps due to the fact I hadn't seen this footage before, I felt excited and intrigued, and within one day I had made a rough cut, a second rough cut and a diegetic soundtrack. 

Following that, I saw that the weather forecast was suggesting there might be snow, so I went decided to spend my free Thursday afternoon editing until the closing time at 8pm. By this time, I had a cut I was pleased with, audio was 90% synced and I was able to do some colour retouching. 

As predicted, campus was shut on Friday due to snowfall.

The week after that, I made use of the AVID rooms after 4pm which was when the MAs left.

I added a crop because I felt it gave a more TV-like feeling, and I thought it would be interesting to add sound to the TV. I used that of an old, short trailer and it matched perfectly with the feel I was going for. During the edit, I decided I wanted it to imply that the lives of the characters were also almost TV-like. I also got some ambient and atmospheric soundtracks, to increase the feeling of suspense and oddness, with some strange noises increasing when the Boyfriend enters the basement. 

Most of my time was spent keyframing audio and retouching the highlights (as in some shots the settings looked completely different!) so that on its own took about a day and a half. Other than that, I found it very easy to keep everything tidy within each Bin, all the AVID tools felt easy and understandable to use by the end of the editing process, and I handed in my final edit on February 7th.

Here's what that almost Final Cut looked like, with all the keyframes, titles, audio, cuts and the coloured overlay at the end to make it look like a light-leak (although the implied message was it starts again!)

vfx.001

I've become so used to Illustrator that I no longer remember how different After Effects is, as you can probably tell by the text I used to experiment today...

 Anyhow, I spent today just familiarising myself with all the bits and bobs again, and made this little title sequence using Motion Blur, Wave Warp, Colour Keyframes & a quick Wiggle through Motion Tile.

I really want to make use of either Super Retro M54 or Benguiat fonts as pictured below.

Other than that, I'm not too sure of what I want to do quite yet - but I did find the Title Sequence below to be really interesting.

chapter 3 - all done

Both Brodie and Emily did a really amazing job at editing their parts. Brodie's audio piece was really enjoyable, and Emily's editing saw our footage finally joined together to create the story we wanted to tell. It was amazing to see how our piece shaped itself when put together. I'm glad I got to work in such a lovely, kind group because we supported each other through all the stressful times.

I was present for the post-production process as well, and together with Emily we did some colour-grading on the final footage & added some of the text and times we based off the footage. The text was in relation to small details about the location or the object that one wouldn't necessarily consider when walking past. The time was in relation to the time of the day we would use the particular object, starting at the morning and proceeding onwards into the day.

Overall, I'm so happy with how our piece looks. With a little bit more time and better understanding of our equipment, it would've definitely reached its full potential, but I feel like what it is now is a really great Beta that could be built upon some other time. I can definitely imagine this piece being an immersive installation when it comes to the exhibition in Hockey gallery, so I hope to pursue the design of the space we want, no matter how much time it takes, and I really do hope it all works out.

My journey from point A to point B is somewhat cleared in my Learning Agreement and my Evaluation, which I've printed out, ready to submit along the final piece and Production Pack.

part two of studio shoot: first evaluation

Previous post on Studio Shoot - research of my role as Production Designer

Leading up to the shoot, I made multiple different layouts as the plans kept changing due to small issues of communication between the groups. At one point we had an angled back wall, then windows on both sides, then a few different locations for the door.

In the end, we went to the first day of studio build with this layout:

However, when we took the Film set down, we realised there was only one window panel of the size we wanted. As we had already placed it on the side that Group A wanted, Group B sadly agreed to have the one window on the right side. Also we decided to go for 4 x 4 panels as we didn't necessarily want a big space, and were going for the atmosphere of cosy, smaller room.

After the build came the sanding, painting etc. The weekend before our studio build, Pip, myself, Brodie and Jen went to Homebase to get all the things we needed: paint, rolls, tape, brushes, etc, so as soon as the walls went up, we were able to start painting! Here is a wonderful photo taken at about 6pm on Tuesday, 20th.

And here's the prop list we went shopping with:

It was very impressive how quickly the set came alive. Even though there were some issues of communication, most of the crew followed art direction and on the first day we left with most of the walls having had the first coat of paint. The following day we focused mainly on re-painting the walls, window and door. We wanted the door brown, so we sanded it before spray-painting it brown. Within a day and a half, our set was up and ready to be dressed, which was very impressive and unexpected. With the door and window in place, we decided to focus on putting up the curtain pole / curtains and the flooring. When doing this, the first issue I came across was that there weren't enough wooden floor boards, but with Alex and Jen's help we put together a rather interesting flooring consisting of two rugs, floorboards, and other wooden panels we found in the studio. Despite how strange it sounds, it actually looked lovely.

Then came the actual dressing and with the help of my group we placed the furniture where we wanted it and I added little bits and bobs, such as a plant outside our window so it would be visible when the light shined inside against the back wall, and used fake blood to fake wine stains inside the wine glasses as we didn't want any liquid on set.

Surprisingly enough, everything was perfect so surely enough something was gonna go wrong. Pre-light went fine, although Pip, Anike and I had to go out shopping for one of the actor's wardrobe as the clothes Grace had brought in couldn't be made dirty using fake blood. This took some unplanned money out of our budget as we had expected to use clothing we already had. 

When we came back after the weekend, as I was inflating the balloon in the morning I realised that something was wrong with our helium canister. With 30 minutes before the shoot, Pip, Emily and I jumped into a car and drove to Aldershot to find a party shop with helium canisters that we could buy. 

Despite our rush, we held the scheduled time back by approximately an hour and that's my biggest regret of the studio shoot as I feel like it was my only job to ensure everything was okay for the shooting to begin and I failed. I'm very thankful for my group being supportive, and for Emily and Pip being quick thinkers and getting more helium.

After that, everything actually went quite smoothly.

In terms of my role, I felt like I achieved what I set out to do. I learned a thing or two, and worked very closely with our Producer and my Set Designer to establish a visual look from quite early on in the pre-production. I'd like to think I achieved the look we were going for and to see it come alive was an amazing experience - it actually looked like a cosy little room once it was lit up.

I don't think there's anything I would change at all because I feel like we did everything the way we planned to. I'm definitely thankful I had the support of my team & Anike did a wonderful job at creating the fake meat we used on set. 10 out of 10.

chaper 0 - infinite zooms & antisocialism

i decided to dive into the experiments for maps & networks even before i've quite sorted out the 'whats' and 'ifs'. earlier in the summer i found this video in the staff picks on vimeo and it blew my mind. it was gorgeous, rhythmic and to me looked like a cave into someone's mind. the director was inspired by one of the musicians and artists in the band, jan anderzén. the colours and patterns create a lovely flow that feels almost mesmerizing. 

''Once I zoomed infinitely into a single pixel and felt a path open, leading to the source of an unnamed nutriment.''

so then, obsessed as i was with the colours and the 'cutouts', i decided to make a test project using some photographs (macro photographs of oil/milk/ink and pressed flowers on tracing paper against natural light + quick shots of sunflowers), photoshop and after effects. this involved cutting out a lot of flowers on photoshop and using the camera tool in after effects, which might at first seem obvious and easy but is actually one of the most difficult tools because if you divert your attention for a second, you're most likely going to mess something up.. which i did multiple times.

i love after effects and i think this kind of a zooming in effect is actually brilliant. it creates a path of a sort, metaphorically, and allows one to look inside by pulling them deeper and deeper.

it's fascinating, and whilst i didn't really resonate with most of orlan's work, the one idea that i did enjoy was that the human body and mind should be explored before we get stuck in the bigger picture of online sites and maps of the world. throughout history we've only learnt the tiniest bit of what makes us human, and isn't that crazy? on that note, this following video is also exceptional:

What do we say we’re interested in? What are we actually interested in? In the intimacy of our smartphone or computer, we secretly tell Google what we’d like to know about.
By fetching most looked up words from Google search and Google news in real time, and by bringing them to the public space through visual and sonic signals, visual artist Romain Tardy proposes to the visitors an involuntary self-portrait of our contemporary networked society.

and last but not least, i'm aware music videos are usually frowned upon as they are made for the mainstream/general audience but i found the particular style and ideas of this imagery to be really good at portraying with only the slightest indication the atmosphere of anti-social behaviour. i thought it was wonderful how much attention went into building up this strange character who observed faceless others - their necks, their skin, their legs - and was also alone whilst in crowded spaces.

fingerprints.

With my plan ready, all I had to do was create the fingerprints. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to get them but I thought light might play a part, so I decided to dip my fingers in some acrylic and press them on tracing paper. I did a few black ones before using charcoal on a new piece of paper and dipping my fingers in white acrylic to create a contrast. I also did one that was golden because I thought it could go well with my idea of black/white/gold colour-scheme.

Then some sunlight decided to make me aware of it and I had the idea to put the tracing paper against the window to get a natural-looking lightbox. To my surprise, through the macro-lens it looked absolutely stunning. At first I tried to use a tripod, but the angle my window was at proved to be difficult to reach without tilting the tripod in some weird angles, so I decided to just film it hand-held. I did use the tripod to stabalize it a little.

I also decided to try and shoot a little ending - I wrote some text on two new pieces of tracing paper, and filmed myself putting them in front of the lens.

This went so smoothly there's not much I can say about it except that I'm excited to work on the footage and see where it takes me!

today i will write a poem for us.

 My main focuses for sounds were: 

• wind (such as whistling, blowing into an empty bottle,

blowing into my palm, breathing)

• train (metal against glass for the train track vibration,

dropping announcement, train woosh)

• birds (a mix of both seaguls and chickens)

(because Jack lives in Norfolk and everyone has to have chickens there)

• paper (opening a notebook, running fingers over a piece of paper,

scrunching up paper, throwing paper into the air, paper falling)

• writing (opening and closing a pen, writing in different paces)

I also had to improvise because I didn't have a dead cat

or any other microphone cover..

After that, I created a timeline for all that was happening within the piece.

Birds in the sky. Light wind. Train station.
People kicking stones in front of the station.

Metallic sound/vibration of the train tracks where a train is approaching.

The train goes past. There is a person standing at the station.

Announcement rings through the small station, wind flows through the gaps.
The person opens the little folder in their hands and pops off the pen lid with their mouth.
They scribble something whilst looking up at the view instead of the paper.
They look down and tear the paper into two, scrunching it up and throwing it away.
They write something again, this time paying attention. As they write, the wind picks up.
It whistles and gets noisy. The paper flies up and is taken away by the gust.

I ended up with eleven tracks overall. Right before the export I came across a problem in the playback after unplugging my headphones. Detected dropped samples. There would be a very short jump in the audio but when exported, it would disappear. I tried to find the solution within Audition but couldn't, so that's something I have to look into because it really confused me.

This is the final outcome.

m.

As the title suggests, I find it very hard to explain what I did in this little video. I had a whole vision of a strange video I wanted to shoot but I've now decided to keep it for later as last week didn't really go as well as I hoped it would. Nevertheless, I filmed some shots and went crazy on Premiere Pro. This includes using warp and twirl distortions, color keying colours that really should've remained untouched, using multiple layers, timelapse and RGB curves on top of two still images and five shots of clouds, Jack under a huge blanket and a close-up of a guitar amp.

A week and a half ago I also decided to go a bit crazy with the live music footage we recorded. Although it started as me just playing with editing tools, I soon realised that I actually quite liked the low, grainy quality of bad color keying and multiple, colourful layers. I might come back to that again.

The video beneath is one I did a very long time ago for a poem that I wrote, however the shots following the one minute fourty four second mark are some of my favourites as they are more abstract and unusual than the rest of the milk/honey/ink visuals. I like textures, both of the subject filmed and the actual digital outcome after editing, so I might bring that into some of the other experimental shorts to follow.

layers of dream