For the VFX project I've decided to use the film Labyrinth (1986) because it is so quirky, odd and just interesting. The title itself offers an image - a maze, perhaps I could use that to my advantage here?
I'm leaning more towards animation and text animation since it's something I'm really interested in anyway and would love to know more about, plus it fits the storyline. The entire movie is driven by a book and the very specific words within it, so why can't the title sequence.
I'm thinking of almost drawing the maze and as the maze is drawn the names of the actors appears - such as flipping downward in this screenshot. Or the maze could reveal it etc. I'm trying to remember how we did a certain effect in class but I need to remember the specific name of the effect, something to do with shape paths? I'll figure it out eventually.
I've drew up some storyboards (however they looked pretty similar to my last AE project, Image Factory) so I'm trying to take a different approach but for now I'm sticking to research however the deadline is pretty close which is terrifying. I'll find some time later this week to start my composition.
Imagine the powder, the extension of her body as she dances symbolising the pain and the brutality of dance, flying through the air as she scoops it from the ground and throws it around her body. It stays in the air, floating like fog until it suddenly drops to the floor when she stops her performance.
I want that.
But how?
On Friday we met with our dancer for the first time and she's lovely, great to work with and has only ever worked with production companies before and claimed the main reason she offered to work with us was because we were interesting - which means a lot to us. We did a rehearsal/improv session going through each chapter of the dance leaving the big performance till last, and she went for it.
Megan put together a video of the rehearsal to show to Pi so when we next meet she will be able to have learnt the dance, something I loved at the end of the performance was she did this little jump to signify the end of the main performance and all I could imagine was the powder falling down around her to also signify the end. And now I want it. This would be the second VFX shot we have in the film the first being a camera trick mirror shot in which the audience is tricked into thinking the camera is a mirror.
My current thought process is to make the powder in a 3D animation almost or stock-footage, do the 3D landscape again with the backdrop the furthest away and the dancer rotoscoped out near the front, then add the powder in the middle and just in front of the dancers layer. Add some 3D lighting and CGI camera movement it should work. But I need to try it first. This week we will again be meeting with our dancer and I'm hoping to get some of the equipment out of stores that we'll be using on set to have a practice with the rest of the team as well. Whilst also doing pre-vis on the effects so I know in advance on any shots we need to get that I may not of thought about.
But for now I'm working on the shoot approval and production packs, minus the location permissions because still haven't signed off on a location yet - but we're getting there.
Also £219 on Indiegogo! Plus hopefully our fundraiser at the SU, I think we're on the right track.
I found this performance just recently, here the powder is used to show her transition into dancing with joy and passion, something she discovered whilst with her friends at the beach. Beautifully shot and just a really nice, feel-good film.
I got hit by a car this past Friday and had memory loss for a good 4/5 hours, then the following morning I got a bath delivered to my front garden because I'm going to fill it with milk and put a dancer in it.
From that you can probably guess why I was so hard to convince about my memories being real.
However that aside I'm fine (Honest - the NHS have told me so, I'm fine!) so it's back to work. The past few days I've had almost half days simply because I've been catching up on sleep but tomorrow we head out on a location hunt. Location has been proving difficult simply because of money, we've been fund raising online (Here's a link incase you want to check it out) and today we finalised a sponsorship page which we have since handed out to local businesses in hopes that one will help us in return for film credits, promotion and a heartfelt thank you.
I was also asking around my hometown to see if anyone knew of any arts sponsorship schemes, in passing I asked my friends one of which jokingly said ask Cravendale - so I did. And....
It's very possibly our milk could be getting donated - but we'll see if they reply to my email first.
We also have our dancer! A lovely dancer called Piedad has offered her services from London and submitted us a video based of our treatment, on Friday we will be meeting with her in the studio to start working out the final choreography. Here she can also listen to the music and look at the storyboards and give her opinions on her character, which could in time change the other elements of the film. My aim is to have everything in the production pack approved by me on Tuesday, so on Wednesday in our tutorial with Rachel she can have a look over and see if anything is missing therefore on Thursday sign off should be very straight forward. I'm aiming to have a fundraising event in the University next Wednesday also but that is down to different sign offs and permissions. At the moment everything is on track to shoot on schedule and I'm pretty confident that after this week it's just a case of getting all the props together and doing a mini-test shoot in a studio one day, so everything will run smoothly on the shoot days.
So we're getting there - now just to finish the music.
Last week in VFX we started piecing together different elements of photos, arranging them in a 3D space and creating a virtual camera to move through that space as if it were a film sequence.
I loved this because I felt like I was creating something that I could actually see myself using in the future - maybe not for this project but certainly for a film title in the future, or even a production company title sequence.
After working on this I decided to try it out with the storyboards for our dance film to make something almost like a trailer. This is the first attempt I had that I'm really not pleased with but I haven't really had a chance to fix it yet - but I'll get there.
When I agreed to be sound designer for the dance video I was being very optimistic about my skill level as a musician and as a sound designer. I've made music before, the standard of which is questionable, but I want to try it again this time integrating sound effects.
I do have a back-up of using copyright free music but other than that it's just me sat at my piano and trying my best to make something I'm proud of.
I've recently got the new version of Protools, Protools | First. A free version of the software (just as a stand in until I get my new computer, meaning I can buy the license to the full version of protools). It comes with pre-sets, one of which was Jazz. Now having never used protools for midi-work I started with this as a base to set everything up. Whilst now it's not really recognisable as the pre-set it was a great base workstation to begin with.
For the bass line I stuck with a jazz inspired D Melodic scale, a very basic scale often used as a piano warm-up, mimicking the dancer as she warms up for her performance.
I also started work on a very basic drum beat to accompany it, the drums are there solely to keep the tempo (a standard 4/4, it was originally going to be a waltz in 2/5 to make things a bit more unsettling however I realised that would be harder for the dancer to improv to). Through out the entire piece the drums are made up of a closed high-hat, a kick bass and a clap, in different variations.
As the piece goes on I started to introduce a synth pad in the background, something with a bit of delay and reverb on it, punctuating the 'out-of-body' experience the dancer is starting to have as she immerses herself in the dance to the point she can almost not hear the real world (represented by the acoustic instruments/Sound Effects).
Whilst searching for another sound I came across the 'Basic's' section of xpand!2 and started playing around with it, when I started improving on the guitar plug-in I really liked it and thought it would sound great covering the first motifs. However when I played it, it sounded too happy. After my first night of working I showed Emily and Megan and the only comment they had was the electric piano I had originally picked was too happy - so I knew it was out of the question. But the more I thought about it, I realised it would work well at the end of the piece, where she is savouring her time the bath before she has to go back and start all over again. So I eventually placed it around the 2 min 40sec mark.
The only major problem I'm having is how to speed up the track in the middle section without it sound disjointed. I've asked Megan (as Director / Concept Developer) to come up with a character profile for our dancer as I feel I don't know enough about her as it stands to make these decisions and have them work. I'm a strong believer of having the character drive the different aspects of a film, maybe the character is a logical thinker so having the tempo speed up in sections would make sense? Or perhaps she's rather spontaneous so everything could jump around until it evens out, only to surprise the audience by changing again when they don't expect it. I"m treating what I have now as a base that can change up until we go into post-production.
I've also been paying close attention to interviews and lectures given by film composers, here you see the importance of a tonal centre - what is the Joker without his tonal centre of 2 cello notes? Something I've yet to discover for our character but I'm sure I'll get it soon.
Recording in Protools (G23)
On Thursday we went into the foley studio to get some sound effects to layer over the music, ground it and make the soundtrack just as much about the dancers body as the rest of the film. Once we got in I realised the only mic in there was a condenser mic which isn't that useful for foley recording, so I went to stores and got a shogun mic, then arranged the studio so we could use it efficiently. We recored everything from a foot hitting concrete (Curtesy of Meg hitting a brick with her foot), a heartbeat (Em making a very realistic sound using her mouth and Meg running around the studio before holding the mic near her chest) and just sounds your body can make, hands, tapping, clicking and even punching in some cases. Overall it was a lot of fun to be back in the studio and we got some good samples for me to play around with. We will also be recording on set to get sync sound (as described in Making Video Dance by Katrina McPherson), as I'll be busy on set as producer a friend of Megs from Film Production has kindly offered to be our sound recordist for the shoot.
As of yet Protools | First doesn't like working with samples and virtual instruments so I haven't been able to do much, however I hope to have a version ready for our tutorial wth Rachel on Wednesday so we can start thinking about choreography.
That was a very long post, this is what I get for not blogging about it as often as I should - I'll try and make it shorter next time!
My final elective for Professional Toolkit is VFX in which I return to my old friend After Effects - this is still a touchy subject.
In our first lesson we took to rotoscoping, something I had personally never done before. A lot easier than it looks but rather laborious if you pick tricky footage, something I may have done accidentally. I chose a piece of animation of Mickey mouse riding a bathtub/bike hybrid, why? Because I could. It was then a case of scoping out what I wanted, playing a few frames forwards and then when the tool went of track, backing up and setting it straight. Something that with footage filmed for this purpose wouldn't happen as often as it did for me.
My first run through, getting a chunk of him out of the way before going into detail.
After going through frame by frame I managed to get something I was proud of that included a bit of the water splash that was appearing behind him. I then went on to try and motion track him so I could add the co-ordinates to the image behind him and make him look like he was riding through the river. However due to the fact that it was an animation this proved difficult because the track point would be there for a few frames and then vanish, so that idea quickly went away.
I then decided to make the best of it and move, by hand, the background and keyframe it to give it some motion - I also added a displacement filter onto it to make it look less 'perfect'.
Add a bit of colour correct (or anything to make the two pieces look like they belong on the same image) and I exported.
It wasn't until I saw the piece on a different monitor that I saw all the problems at the end that were probably a result of me sitting there for hours staring at it and hoping it was fixed, to the point it became true.
But I really like this technique and I can see myself using it in the future, more specifically in my my fields and frames project.
I admit that I am a bit of a geek when it comes to learning tech-y things such as coding so the lesson on Thursday, whilst fast, was a lot of fun for me. I've never been able to code before but HTML/CSS is something I've been wanting to learn for a long time and getting to play around with it was great. At first I wasn't sure that I was ever going to use it, it was just going to be a skill that I would have and use for fun however that's when Jake started talking about his practice.
He mentioned that his background is actually in technical theatre and that one of his current projects is working with major companies in London to develop technology that will enable deaf theatre goers to enjoy the show just as much as able bodied people. Something, that as you can guess, caught my attention especially when you look through my blog posts from my last project where accessibility was a major concern for me.
Whilst I may not use coding for my fields and frames project exclusively it is something I hope to continue with in the future.
Writing this I'm sat on a train heading into London listening to David Bowie, why? Because I can.
Sound is obviously a key element in the making of a dance video and after the screening with Rosie at the beginning of term creating our own soundtrack seems to be the way to go. After working with sound for the last two projects I feel pretty comfortable taking on the role of sound designer however I am questioning the workflow. A common idea at the moment is the create the soundtrack from sounds the body makes but that then poses the question of do you choreograph your dance to make the music or do you make the music then choreograph the dance to it. But that's a question for another day.
Right now I'm researching styles of music, what would work with the idea and what wouldn't - I'll figure out how to make it later.
Ok so I love Troye Sivan so I'm a bit bias however I love the 'drop' in this song that occurs when it gets to the chorus, the structure of the song, the difference in the amount of instruments being played giving the illusion of a different tempo. I just love it. Something that stands out for me is the deliberate use of synthetic instruments with acoustic, a trait I hope to mix with out piece. I believe this grounds the piece but also gives it a ethereal quality, a quality that would be perfect for the moment our dancer gets so far into her dance she forgets where she is.
The same goes for Bowie, The Labyrinth is still one of my favourite films of all time and the music is simply integrated into the film to the point it's almost another character. The energy it gives the story is just amazing and it's something that I hope to use as inspiration - again the integration of acoustic instruments and synth is a good balance for me.
In Space Oddity I really love the beginning guitar and slow introduction to the more obscure sounds, again something I wish to incorporate and this paired with the first songs traits (in my head) will sound really interesting and more importantly aid the telling of our story. I'm also toying with idea of having some Jazz influences (think Oscar Peterson, Steely Dan, Sonny Rollins to name a few) to give the music a more spontaneous edge to it, pairing with our dancers improvisation however this depends heavily on our final storyboard/narrative.
Something that is decided already is that we will incorporate the sounds of the human body, more specifically the sounds of the dancer hitting the floor, clapping her hands, breathing, heart beat - as many variations as possible. This is to, again, show that the sound design isn't a separate entity from the dance. Loads of dance videos seem to get rid of diegetic sound all together and create a deliberate barrier between the two, we don't want that. Perhaps as the dance progresses and becomes more like a 'real' performance the sounds to merge into something more music based, still there with the same motif but with a more musical quality only to return to form once the performance has passed.
Here is an example that takes the sounds and uses them in a musical context - something I'm leaning towards.
Here we have a live art installation in Brighton in which the sounds of Andre Borges body is amplified and in the process triggers the lights around the room.
Then I came across this amazing TED talk (What a shock right?) not exactly what I was looking for but if you have a spare 10 minutes - you will be blown away!
Right now I have some books that I need to read so I can fully get my head around this concept and simplify what needs to be simplified to make this concept plausible. I have my piano and Protools, plus an upcoming studio session to get in have a play around and just see what's possible. I think this project is going to be a lot of fun.
Now I am normally tag/colour code everything I do, however this time I decided against it. Why? Just to see how it would work out.
When it came time to edit the studio shoot I still didn't have it in me to go through and look at all the footage - I couldn't stomach hearing the script again, too soon. So when I imported all the footage and saw there was around 130 rushes my first instinct was to go through all of them, name them, and colour code them. But that would have took for forever. Instead I went through the beginning of each clip and the end to see what part of the script it was and put it in corresponding bins under names like 'Close Up' 'Pick Up' 'Opening' 'Smash' 'Ending', something I would understand. I also had a bin full for the original AMA linked files (as per lynda.com because that method seemed to work) and a non-usable shots, however I never permanently deleted anything just incase I missed something.
Because it was a quicker way of organising than naming individual files (something I would do on a bigger project, but for a 2/3 minute film that only I was editing it seemed pointless) I got to making a rough edit, based on the master shot we had taken and the original script. What I love about working on Avid is how quick you can get a task done once you have everything laid out in front of you, you barely have to touch your mouse and the work flow is almost relaxing (Note: Almost).
I created my opening titles, a series of pick-up shots and the actors credits, in a different sequence as I couldn't quite remember how sync locks worked and didn't want to mess up the edit. I started playing around in title tool to get the basic credits made and rendered so it would just be a case of importing them over my footage. I chose my font and spacing and got to work. Regarding the title the group seemed to agree on 'Home Sweet Home' as a form of foreshadowing and as a nod to the sign seen in the left hand corner of the set. I chose the colours of my title to reflect this and I think it fits rather nicely. Then it was just a case of switching on the sync locks (once I remembered how they worked...) and importing the footage into the beginning of the mast track.
Most of the project is now complete, the opening sequence, credits, bulk edit. The only things left is to figure out how to sync up some audio and fix it (in regards to panning etc), add the foley track for the flashback scene and do a bit of colour correct on some of the lighter shots. But I'm getting there, it's just finding the time to sit down the Avid suite for a few hours, it should be done by the end of the week.
Welcome to my blog, here you will find everything I'm currently working on during my degree along with some... insights into my mind. I guess that what you could call it, insight.
Also please bare in mind all opinions written on this blog are correct at the time of posting however, you know people grow up, some of them might change. Don't hold me too them.
