Perfect Timing

On Monday last week I once again went into W104 to work on the animation for my piece, as mentioned in my other post I has started playing around to see how I could best make the waves appear in the video. And whilst I actually rather like the way this looks it does take a while to get it up to a point it looks like an actual wave. It takes a lot of key framing and watching it over to make sure the lines work well together. However it takes a lot of patience, so I tend to work on it for a certain period of time and then go off and do something else before I loose my mind. I also had a meeting with my actress on this day meaning I had



On the Tuesday I sat down after speaking with my actress and tried to figure out timing, now I had overestimated how long this particular monologue would take to actually perform. So I started trying to figure out timing so when my actress came with me to record my voice over the following day I could slow/speed her up. I did this by matching each line to a section of the storyboard and saying each line in my head, I ended up assigning each section around 10 seconds of screen time. To get a better idea of this I made a 3 minute long composition in After Effects and re-wrote my subtitles with the timings included. Now some of it dragged,  I am very aware of that however I can't decide whether it will still drag when all the elements are put together and it's something I'm going to have to make a decision on fast. It did, however, give me a better idea of what I was working towards.

Also after speaking with Rosie and Tom I found that the rear projection screen in the University is actually in 4:3 ratio as apposed to 16:8 which I had been working in so I've simply transferred my exiting footage into a new composition that's in the correct ration. However I haven't adjusted the existing pre-comps so it still looks a bit odd until I go back into fix it.

Here is a preview of what I've been working on, it's nowhere near finished but it's what I had at the end of adding the correctly timed subtitles.

I also added the dots to represent those still on the island and a moving icon to represent the boat, I added multiple effects on the boat icon as well a tracking path and key-framing the scale to try and make it look like it's out of place and the only thing affected in this very still, controlled world that I've created.



On Thursday I also filmed my actress in front of a green screen - I will make a more detailed blog about that in the future - however just to make sure it worked I quickly put into After Effects and ran a quick test with Keylight. I still need to do a bit more research on the effect I want to create before I can say it's ready to be put into the composition but it's getting there.

The only thing that's worrying me right now is that I believe the work looks like student work - which is never a good thing to think when looking at work I'm proposing for a Gallery Exhibition. However what I'm trying to create is so obscure I need to keep powering through the amateur looking version before I ask for help because without that version I can't explain what it is I'm trying to make. And no my badly drawn storyboards are of no help.

Andre also took some picture whilst on set, here they are!