They sense fear!

So assessment went well, no major issues and it's time to reedit the film in order to meet the standard needed for some dance festivals we have lined up. I'll be getting rid of the fire exit, the plug, the piece of tape (I hope you missed first time around) and retiming somethings - nothing too strenuous.

I concluded most of the project during the presentation but this is my own, personal evaluation.

As producer I should have been firmer (I say this every time I produce, I'm beginning to get the message), I set deadlines most of which were met but some pretty important ones weren't which caused a bit of a domino effect. When I realised how big this project was my first instinct was to make sure we could afford to do it - this included saying no to a lot of things which didn't make me the most popular person. Especially when, in the end, we met our target. Something I had just not expected to happen, so I planned for the worst. On set I have this thing were I think everyone knows more than I do, so I just let them get on with whatever it was they were doing without really questioning anything (well out loud a least) which caused a problem later down the line when I did speak up and no-one really listened to me, it was like they sensed fear! In the edit I would have named my files before I put them into Avid - rookie mistake, I won't be doing it again. I wouldn't have taken on so many roles because whilst I do love what I do it didn't end well, my sanity and will to live got left behind in the Avid suite. 

But most importantly - I would take more ownership of my work. 

When I realised we couldn't use the music I had been working on in the film it hit me harder than it really should have. I've been working on this project for 4 months (and I'm still going!) yet I had pinned most of my creative input into the music, so when it was gone it didn't really feel like my film anymore. Working on projects I tend to take the apolitical role and act as mediator when people are fighting, or the voice of reason when people make impossible demands. So getting a creative input is becoming rare, we made our film so in the edit it would be easy to piece together and it was, it was made by the storyboard. There wasn't much I had to fight for to get into the edit, but I can point out I did and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the soundscape (note: it's pretty different from the music) and I worked hard on it. We communicated well from start to finish between heads of departments and other crew members. I'm proud of the fact this movie exists because so many people were originally against it. I just wish I had voiced and stood up for more of my own ideas, nothing that can't be fixed for third year. 

People rarely bring me onto projects to be anything other than producer, I hope working in post-production on this film has changed their mind. I think next time I'll try something new, doing something crazy and slightly insane worked in our favour this time around, I may as well try my luck again. 

Boom's in shot

When I agreed to do VFX on the film I thought there would be 2 shots to do - the crazy mirror scene, and the crazy powder drop scene - this changed quickly.

Crazy powder drop scene never happened, there wasn't enough time and we just didn't film with effect in mind which would have made the entire thing a lot harder. But the crazy mirror shot? We had 3 attempts at this shot before the final try, 2 with me and 1 on the second day of shooting because we were ahead of schedule. Now our dancer was wearing green so common sense meant we had to use a blue screen, right? I mean, what can go wrong? Somehow the natural lighting from the location made the blue section of the RGB pixels in her hair the exact same hue of blue as our blue screen - something we couldn't notice until we go into post and tried to key out the screen, and ended up with a clean key of the mirror but also her hair was missing alongside it.

I worked on fixing it with Phil and tried a lot of different keys to try and fix it, changing saturation to get more of a difference before keying it out, using multiple keys at the same time to make a difference. When my last resort was rotoscoping a friend offered to try his hand at fixing it - he got the shots to match up but the blue screen was still a mystery to him so I have the project file with me, it's just a case of cleaning it. Tomorrow I'm going to be rotoscoping a lot - or I may find a solution on adobe.com, We'll soon find out.

Now you see him

Now you don't

One of my jobs was also cleaning up the shots - in some shots you can see people in mirrors, it was destined to happen at some point and my general threat on set was 'if you're in shot, you VFX yourself out'. But when it's the boom in shot, you've just got to deal with it. I spent today masking it out and trying to fill it with something similar, frame-by-frame, as the shot in question is not only a moving shot it's a shot in which the camera was dutch and returned horizontal meaning tracking wasn't the easiest either. I ended up tracking it manually rotating and moving a cover up as and when needed - hopefully you can't see it. When we take this film into festivals and I've had more time to work on it I'll have taken out the fire exit signs, the plugs and anything that ruins the overall aesthetic of the film.

Also update we got the VFX mirror shot working! It took a lot of masking (from Phil, I had seen enough of masks today) but we got it working and now it's in our final edit.

It's not a music video

When I took on the role of sound designer I knew from the beginning that I wanted diegetic sound recorded on set.  At first the soundtrack was heading more in a soundscape route but as it evolved it became clear that music would be needed - but the piece needed grounding. As soon as you take the diegetic sound away from a film you're in silent movie territory, it's more a music video and is more focused on the music than the image and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen.

Before we started production I wrote the music to go with what I imagined the piece to look like on the assumption that I could add the foley tracks, synch sound and have a re-edit once the piece was filmed. However I ran into problems.

Day 1 in W103 - I still had my sanity

My main problem was I had wrote most of the music before the piece was made, meaning that when we got on set there was no guarantee it would work. What I found was the overall 'atmosphere' of the film wasn't what I had imagined meaning that the music just didn't match up in post - there was no saving it. I spent 2 days in the Protools studio adding foley sounds, synch sound, changing chords, adding instruments, taking instruments away, trying to be the drummer I was destined never to be. At the end of the 2nd day I knew it was pretty must over, I just needed James to confirm it for me, in case there was some fix for it that I was oblivious too and in all fairness there was, the solution was to re-write. Still not one to give up easily I decided to try and re-write over night, Meg and James gave me some reference tracks - I reverted to my theatre routes and got influenced by Sweeney Todd, many violins were played that night. The next day I begrudgingly admitted defeat and returned to my edit suite. 

The opening after my night of re-writing

A friend who had been giving his opinion on the music through out the production agreed to compose a new track in time for hand-in so that I could focus on my other roles - still keeping me as sound designer, just not music composition. 

Since I had been integrating the foley/sync sound with my music the basic layout for the soundscape had already been laid. I just needed to clean it up and make some decisions on which sounds should take prominence. Taking away the music also made me realise that we were missing some sounds. Nirav our sound recordist on set was amazing (when he wasn't in shot) and told me early on that the microphone I had originally booked out just wasn't up for the job we were asking of it, it didn't have the power and just wasn't made for the amount of movement we needed to make. (At one point he used a C-stand - you could hear his pulse through the boom pole). But this sadly made the sound from out first day shooting (powder and bath) pretty much unusable and I had to work around it. Also with the complexity of this shoot we couldn't get that close to the dancer as when he did he would be in shot in at least one mirror.

After getting the soundscape pretty much done I booked out a zoom and decided to get the rest of the sounds at home. This was just the sound of the dancer hitting her body gently and a few more water tracks. Water was easy, I just really wanted a sound to match up with her foot entering the bath becuase it seemed so bare without it - standard setup of me holding a sponge over my kitchen sink. The body sounds where a bit harder. We recorded some in the foley studio (I think Em actually bruised herself punching her shoulder?) and we recored some on set but it didn't sound natural because we were so far away. So decided to hit sausages. It makes sense, honestly, it was the raw meat thing and the only thing I had was sausages - I read it the Sound Effects Bible. I just ran with it and it worked.

Tomorrow is the day we finally export - I have to finalise some VFX, finish the sound, get the music approved and finish the edit. Then export. It's going to be fine. Just fine. 

Finally, an answer!

We wrapped on the Sunday, gave equipment back on the Monday morning and by 10:30 I was sat in Avid waiting to go. At the end of every shoot day we had all stayed back and watched the daily rushes and I made a mental note of what worked well, what didn't, which shots would need major editing, which were fine on their own - that kind of thing. My problem was that the station I was booked on was being used by someone else who had set 150 files transcoding over the morning. The upside to this was I got upgraded to the Symphony suite, which just makes life better. 

I sat and transcoded everything from the Sony codec to Avid codec and named all my files - this took all afternoon as we had around 60 rushes, so I named them, named the sound we recored live on set (it makes sense, honestly) synced everything up and left for the night. Come Tuesday morning I've made a rough cut of the edit trying to keep continuity the best I can and get a general overview of length and pacing. I had the bulk of the edit down by the time Megan came by to have a look and give her opinion. Now by this time I had already watched the rushes a lot, too many times to be honest. So that meant that sometimes I'd act on the feedback, others I'd know from the other rushes just wouldn't work match-up wise. But we tried different things, trying to match up the edit in a different way that may not match up perfectly continuity wise but the match of the movement makes you over look it. 

During transcoding 

Transitioning between the scenes was causing problems as when we originally storyboarded the transitions we were filming everything in one location which meant we could literally film her walking from one room to the next, however that's not what ended up happening. This film had relied so much on continuity and match-up editing so far it almost felt strange to break from that but the main problem was - the match-up wasn't working. In the powder scene the edit had to be montage 1) because it was simply to hard to film for continuity whilst using powder 2) In movies the happiest scenes are always cut to a montage, some slow-motion shots, some fast. Mainly because the point of a 'happy scene' isn't to show the happiness taking place, it's to capture it. It is one of the few emotions where encapsulating it and embracing it as an editor is more effective than leading the audience by the hand and trying to make them experience this specific version - they have their own versions to dip into, it's the audiences empathy that make it effective. It's also a great way to signify time passing without using built-in transitions. 

After our tutorial with Rachel we noted we really needed to fix the scene transitions - I was in Avid pretty early one day and started a new sequence to completely rework the montage because I simply wasn't as happy with it as I was with the others. Here I just let myself do whatever I wanted really - there was no stipulations to meet. This resulted in some changes to the final edit because I realised there was a more experimental answer to my question.

Meg colour grading

When I brought Meg in to watch it again with the changes she liked it and it made me sleep better at night! I even made some changes to cut down on time (because I felt like it was a bit too long - just a bit) and my rule was if Meg didn't notice it missing, it didn't need to be there in the first place. Meg colour corrected because I just can't - not good at it, plus I needed to leave that Avid suite. But we are now in the final stages of editing. I had to drop the visual effect (powder drop) because I simply didn't have time to make it anymore, there's a few more that need to be fixed (get out of shot Ben and Nirav!) and the mirror shot but we're getting there.

 Now to sync sound and export. 

When all is said and done....

'It's a wrap on My Daughter'

I really regret not posting about My Daughter for so long because so much happened in a short space of time and now I just have too many things to say all at once - it's a real issue.

During the Easter break we met our target for fundraising (actually we went a bit over which helped us a lot  - we didn't have to starve on set!) which meant that when we came back we hit the ground running.  I took on the responsibilities of a 2nd AD to make life easier and made call sheets (can be found here, here and here), booked cars, was the main contact for the Van Hire company (who were lovely and helped us out a lot) and just took the time to make sure everyone got to set, on time and ready to shoot/rehearse. 

Shoot days varied in enjoyment for me simply because I would be so preoccupied with planning things (or even making food at one point, no-one got food poisoning I was rather impressed) that I wouldn't be a point of contact for crew which wasn't an ideal outcome. On set I like being kept in the loop of whats going on, are we on schedule or are we not? Which piece of equipment needs repairing in time for tomorrow? That kind of thing. My biggest headache was the bath simply because it leaked - which is quite possibly the one thing you can't really prepare for on a shoot like this. After using our limited phone signal to try and find hardware stores (Firstly to find the missing plug which had been left at the wrong location, secondly to stop it leaking) we happened to run in to a neighbour of the hall who gave us his duct tape which was amazing - we tried to pay him but he was lovely and just gave us it.

The first lot of duct tape was me - which was terrifying. I had not prepared for this mentally and it was freaking me out, mainly because the day before I had received a bit of a lecture of the hall caretaker about how much the village prides itself on it's victorian flooring, the same flooring this bath would flood if something went wrong. I put layers upon layers inside the bath and did the best I could on the outside before we started filling it up. Halfway through the shoot however we noticed it starting to leak, a group lifted the already full bath in the air whilst Lawrence was laid underneath and I was trying to give him tape as quickly as possible. It felt like something out of a Carry On film - but we finished on schedule and got all the shots we needed! 

Shoot days after that didn't seem as stressful. Nothing could really compare too it really.

As soon as we got the final shot down I had a line of runners complete with buckets ready to empty the bath as quickly as possible. It took around 10 minutes to empty, it was rather impressive. 

My view when on the floor watching for leaks!

But other than that shooting went fine, I realised I have an ability to re-arrange plans quickly, no-one got hurt in a potentially dangerous environment, the crew seemed happy enough and our dancer wants to work with us again. 

My only criticism is that people need to speak to me on set, people say that on set I freak out easily which is true when I don't know what's going on. If I walk onto a set and see a camera team looking concerned whilst looking at an already faulty follow focus I'm also going to be concerned. Whilst people realised that I was the producer and I did have authority over things that happened on set occasionally things would happen and I would just not know about it because I was busy doing other things and no-one had kept me informed. Which at one point nearly resulted in some equipment not being fixed because I had instructed people to leave it in storage rather than take it home to be repaired. It was that, that made me realise I needed to have more of a presence on set before I run of and do odd things that needed to be done because no-one else was free to do them, which I still did occasionally but at the end of the day, that's why I had runners. I couldn't afford to miss parts of filming because I was making tea or making phone calls - I had worked on this film for 4 months and I wasn't enjoying seeing it become a reality.

Please don't read this on the assumption it was awful - it truly wasn't - it was one of the most successful, organised and straight forward shoots I've been a part of and in the end we've created something we can be honestly proud of. Things that went wrong were things that we had in the back of our minds anyway so they weren't a huge surprise on set. It's just during the shoot I felt very out of place, maybe it's because Producers don't really have the artistic license on set or have specific jobs to do, or maybe it's me being afraid to speak up on things I'm not 100% certain of. I loved the time I spent on set engaging with the project and I'm glad we as a team put as much pre-production hours in as we did because seeing the pay off was worth it.

With this in mind, the last day of shooting was the best for me. The most relaxed with people joking around, finishing ahead of time so we could go and grab food from a (very nice) burger van. It was just a nice atmosphere to wrap on and when all is said and done the crew were fantastic and we utilised all their skills to their full potential. 

Now we have a beautiful film - and like I said no-one got hurt from set or me trying to punch them because they got caught in the mirror during a take. 

PS - Oooo also forgot to mention we came in £40 under budget! We were running over a one point which was a major concern for me (which results in a few cut backs) but when the locations dropped their price in return for film credits we were bang on budget. Then because of the faulty follow focus (it was a big inconvenience on set....it wasn't fun) we were reimbursed for a days use which will now go towards some festival entires we have lined up.

You can see more of my bugeting/expenses report here - it's a bit confusing to anyone but me, but honestly it does all make sense. 

300 hours and counting

Taken in the lighting test, when we also tested the powder and its density in the air.

I'm writing this whilst in rehearsal - this is how much time I don't have

Today we had our final presentation before sign off, I handed over most of my production pack (minus location permissions) and got to work in the studio for lighting tests before the start of production which is only a week away and that's terrifying because days are so short and there's so much to do still and now I need to take a break but I can't and now I'm here. Editing. Usual really.

In the studio we got the basic lighting plans down for the opening scene and final scene, the scene with the powder was a lot of fun to play around with - messy but fun. I had my camera with me and with a makeshift slider (aka Ethan's skateboard) I had a lot of fun playing with cameras which is something as a pre/post-production person isn't something I get to do often.

I've also been working on sound, I had a meeting with James were he just gave me loads of examples such as The Necks, Brian Eno, Stars of Lid to name a few. I've been listening to them on a casual basis (whilst working, doing life things) because it's easier for me to take in music like that rather than sitting down and analysing it from scratch. I did a very quick re-time last night at around midnight to stretch it to meet the new time constraints of the rehearsal footage. However after looking at it I still need to fix the middle which is proving to be more complicated than I originally thought.

I'll be looking at how to fix that soon, I have changed the drum beat to a loop that's built into Protools just because I needed to get an idea of beat/tempo. As I don't want to change the overall tempo of the piece just for the middle section because tempo changes in music are very hard and often don't give the effect that you desire. Whilst the drums are truly awful (Sorry AVID why do you provide people with this?) but I shall keep the tempo and find a drummer to make a better version of it than I can. I've also been looking into making it more 'weird' and less melodic, whilst keeping it in a melodic scale. When speaking to Pi, our dancer, she mentioned that imagines the dance to have a 'nosey' tone to it, like that of TV static. I'm also trying to find a way to work that into the piece, whilst it doesn't fit as it stands the track will be changing soon so maybe it will then. I haven't yet found the right tonal centre, this may be it.

Whilst I refuse to share the whole track online as it currently stands I did use the track for the end scene to make our fundraiser video - I'd like to point out that when we added the video a company donated £125, I like to think the video had something to with it.

In this video you have the music from the actual dance video, animated storyboards drawn by the lovely Ben Murray who offered to help us out, powder tests from our day in the studio and of course the link to the Indiegogo.  

We are currently at £426 plus £90  from our fundraiser and an extra £50 we're waiting on that's a £566 total - only £136 to go to get our goal and it seems more reachable now than ever.

Since beginning this post in rehearsal we have since had to postpone filming due to not being able to get the location we wanted, we are now shooting the first week of April which gives up an extra 10 days to raise the rest of the money. It also gives us enough time to re-group and get everything signed, confirmed, paid and just simply done before we all go off on Easter Break.

We got this.

Although it seems more like 450 hours than 300 at this point.

And that doesn't include post either.

But how?

Sky 3D. "DNA" from Jon Yeo on Vimeo.

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.

Kai from Andrew Cumming on Vimeo.

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.

There's a bath in my garden?

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.

Who's the wise guy who thinks he's a Joker?

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!

CoolGulls.jpg

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.

I mean just look at that web design.

I clearly need all the lessons I can get.

Dance Magic Dance!

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.

Flour, who'd of thought?

The Spinning Dancer - 

oil painting by Afremov

 by Leonidafremov on 

@DeviantArt: Oil Paintings

Whilst I've been at home I've been leaning more towards Fields and Frames research as that's my individual project and so it's more under my control, however yesterday me, Megan and Emily had a quick conversation around Wednesdays tutorial and what we should have in regards to research. The idea itself is still pretty much an accumulation of different ideas however slowly but surely links are being made the main this for us at the moment is to not force the connections.

As I mentioned in my last post my initial idea was the use of paint/powder paint to create something during the dance so that when the dance is over there is a tangible thing left of it. But pursuing this idea would then limit the production to a studio (something we are aiming for anyway but with grad films still shooting I believe it will be quite difficult). But it just looks so intriguing, occasionally I like to pursue ideas that just look nice and see where they go. The current thought was that an acro-dancer would use talcum powder whilst training, to migrate the ideas together we talked about slowly having the powder evolve into coloured powder the more confident she get's whilst warming up before eventually washing it off in the tub of milk.

I know Megan has a better overview of the base storyline (Seen here) but here's my interpretation. Shot starts with the dancer approaching a room, once in the room - full of mirrors - she starts moving stunted, not fluid, in constant view of a mirror, constantly being judged. She then picks up the powder to start warming up, clapping the powder between her hands and rubbing them together (some of which are close ups, some shown in the reflection of the mirrors) and starts warming up - stretching and just generally preparing. She grabs another hand full of powder and claps her hands together before the camera follows the powder into the air acting as a transition to an empty room. It's here where the performance starts to happen, slowly the powder starts to turn into different colours as she warms up and then she starts performing - free, fluid, graceful - everything she wasn't in the first section. The dance then slows down to a almost painful speed as she starts cooling down and starts stretching again, eventually making her way to the bath of milk, dancing around the bath prolonging the experience before immersing herself in it. The camera would then track up just as her head goes beneath the milk showing the powder still in the air (highlighted by the studio lights), showing the remainder of her performance.

That sounded overly dramatic, but you get the idea?

Whilst I love the idea here I don't think it comes across too well, the yellow light being a particular pain taking away the dramatic effect of the powder - I'm also not a fan of drawing on the floor with it, it's just a bit too childlike for me. 

I then found this video, I was so excited when I saw the thumbnail because this is exactly what I had in mind when I thought of using the powder paint the first place. However it's a slideshow of images but the idea is still the same. The common theme when using this style of the video/photography is that the dancer tends to be going upward to get the ghost-like effect. A movement that could be very symbolic for our dancer consider the dance is her trying to improve herself. 

It turns out the way to get best results is to use flour? I was a bit skeptical but it looks amazing. 

Here there is a mixture of techniques that I like, the fact that they VFX the colour onto the flour is intriguing and looks fantastic in the still shots, I believe it would only look better in the moving ones. The mixture of slow motion shots and regular speed shots also shows a bit of what Megan spoke of in her blog by merging the two speeds together to show different sections of the dance. I also love the use of the powder as a transition - something I mentioned earlier.

Here is also a video showcasing some very interesting, crow inspired choreography. A style that could possibly be suited to the first section of the film but maybe a bit slower.

However the music in the final piece is very dramatic, overly dramatic to some extent which is why I have a whole other blog post ready to go on that side of things. You'll just have to wait and see. 

Working from home is hard

Due to a family emergency I had to come back to Middlesbrough for the week without any real plan of how I was going to work around missing Uni. I get quite restless when I don't have anything to do so I just started doing what I normally do when stressed - planning.

A mini timetable showing the end of Feb - March

For the dance video I wanted to expand on my post-production skills whether in sound or video editing I haven't really decided, both if possible. However I do enjoy the pre-production process so when Megan approached me about producing her idea it was a no-brainer. In the workshop I also spoke about an idea I had of a dancer dancing using paint and the paint flying everywhere so when the dance is over the camera would pan up and reveal the artwork that the flying paint had created. A long shot from the idea of a dancer warming up and stretching before entering a bath of milk. But we got talking and we thought about merging the two ideas however after that we both got caught up in different projects and didn't get to speak much about it other than who we are going to get to crew our project - Emily was then brought on as Head of Production Design.

Afterwards I went out and bought myself a new notebook because unless I physically write something down 9 times out of 10 I will forget it. The first thing I did was split my book into 3 sections (as this was mainly for Fields and Frames development) and draw up a potential timetable for the Dance Video, mapping out when we had tutorials and using them as mini-deadlines giving us something to aim for. This is primarily so the group can start working on F+F and know when to plan out their work so things don't clash.  You can see a full digital version here.

I'm still pooling together research and have a few books on hold for when I return but I'm afraid the next tutorial will be me playing catch up and working around Open Days (Work are being very understanding and letting me leave for 20-25 minutes at a low point in the day - I just need to work this into the tutorial sign ups). But other than that I'm still here but I miss my desk and the library, next week I'll hopefully be back to normal. 

And it's Finished.

Finishing this project has been so tedious and just painful to an extent I can't even put into words. I once again spent the morning fixing the animation - rekey-framing every single wave. That's 73 layers. All of them. Re-animated.  I also acted on some feedback for instance I changed the colour of the text to make it more visible, I added some waves to the 'sea' to give a bit more context (although I'm still not completely happy with this part, I may have to re-think this for the gallery), I changed some timings and just had a general clean up. 

Once that was exported after many attempts - I apparently made something transparent that shouldn't have been and it was coming up bright blue during the export, but only during the export not in the actual After Effects preview which meant a few failed attempts.

Then in the afternoon I went back to Protools to re-sync the music and add a few more diegetic sounds the the social media tones and some general sci-fi noises just to give the audience a bit more information to grab onto.

For me sound has been the most straight forward aspect of this project so ending on this was a good move for me because it gave me the chance to do something I was comfortable with and use that to make the piece better. However there was only so much I could do before I overworked it. So I finished up quickly and exported in Premier Pro.




I honestly could have continued working on this project for a lot longer, I feel like what I've produced isn't quite up to the standard that I had in my head and that's been messing with my judgement a lot. As I'm typing this I'm not entirely sure I feel comfortable putting it on exhibition in the gallery or even handing it in. I don't feel like it's my best work, although that might be the stress talking.

But on the other hand I also have to keep reminding myself that the majority of the skills I used in this piece were brand new to me. I have never used Illustrator before, I've never used After Effects in this capacity before, I did my sound scape in within 2 sessions in the studio because I forgot to schedule time to do it.  It's been eye opening and the actual conjuring of the idea and the research was fascinating to me, the actual execution could do with some more work. I guess the most relevant thing I've learnt during this project is that when you have an idea you're passionate about you also have to be prepared to fail.

Also that there is no shortcuts - sometimes you just have to sit at a computer for 4 hours staring at binary code going up and down. Always up and down.

My time management skills have been pushed to the limit and whilst I'm in a better position now than I was with my last After Effects project (I seemed to have planned up until the studio shoot and then nothing, it's like I never expected to make it out the other side). But I've worked hard and whilst I'm not entirely happy with the final product I can honestly say it's not through lack of trying. I'm aware of the shortcomings of the piece and have tried to fix them to best of my ability. Working alone has been hard but worth it because now I am aware of my strengths and my weakness, giving me something to aim too.  I'm also very proud of that wave.

Trial and Error

Before leaving Uni on Thursday I started work on the illustrator heavy aspect of the piece, something I wasn't looking to. As I've said before Illustrator really isn't my forte and working with it was proving difficult, I'd go to use tools and they would be in a different place or simply wouldn't exist. So I turned to the internet.

Social media has a heavy influence on this piece and I've used my own experience with it to figure out parts that should be included in the projection. Something that really stand out for me was back in the days of MSN you could assign certain GIFs to words/letters sometimes to look good but mostly to annoy your friends and the best thing about them was - they moved.

I wanted to incorporate that somehow and decided that the 'Social Media Pop-Up Scene' should have moving emojis, the downside being I would have to then make the moving emojis. So they aren't elaborate or fancy but the slight movement catches the eye and I think on a big screen will look really interesting.

Also here is the guide I used to make the base emoji and then I just animated the sequence within my own knowledge before pre-composing them in After Effects.

At this point I also made the base for the social media scene, now I really wasn't proud of this work and it was literally giving me nightmares so I knew it had to change I just wasn't sure how. What I did know was the content. I gave each of the characters on the ship a profile page including; Name, status eg King, Nobleman etc and feeling. I also included a little quote I feel represent them as characters, each quote is from the text and is either said by or to the character in question. I got this idea again from the days of MSN, being able to put a little message beside your name and from the idea of a Facebook status - hence the colour scheme. However instead of a profile picture (which let's face it with my drawing skills would have been laughable) I put the animated emoji that corresponds with the characters current feeling either; concerned, scared or worried. 

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I then saved the vectors as different images, every time loosing a character so when I put it into after effects I could do a bit of stop frame animation. Overall I'm finally becoming happy with the final product, I've still got a way to go before everything is ready but for the first time I think I might actually meet the deadline which is a crazy concept to have considering where I was this time last week. 

Here's the latest test I've made and since I've made significant changes to the animation the sound is not a bit more out of sync, a problem that will be rectified by assessment day.

'Sound Is Half The Experience' - George Lucas

This past Friday I finally managed to get a computer in W103 (I left booking a bit late - I always forget you have to book this room) but I was finally in a better position to start arranging my sound properly. I had already set up the project and had everything ready to go so I went in at 9am and didn't leave until 1pm and there's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm going to explain what I've got so far.

As explained in my last post about sound, which can be read here, I recorded a lot of water effects.  I wanted to ground the adaptation and almost juxtapose what you see on screen. One of the things you absolutely (or really shouldn't) associate with computers is water and that is the grounding element of the play and I needed that grounding within my adaptation for it to be successful. I also needed the water to help add to the character of Ariel. In the original play the 2 characters which are complete opposites in demeanor and in status are Ariel and Caliban. I was reading around the character a while back and saw an article on how Shakespeare intentionally made Ariel an 'Elemental Being of the Higher Order' by assigning him the upwards tending-elements Air and Water. To oppose this he made Caliban an 'Elemental Being of the Lower Order' by assigning him the downwards-tending elements Fire and Earth. Meaning to give the piece more depth of meaning juxtaposing the sound and the projection is, for me personally, the best way to go.  

When I first pitched this idea I described the soundtrack as water effects with 8-bit orchestrations and I've tried to stick to that. One of the things I love about working in Protools is being able to take an existing sound and change it so that the timbre is the same yet the effect is different. One of the things I tried out whilst editing was taking the existing sounds of water (and my piano simulating objects hitting each other underwater) and turn them into more computerised / robotic sounds. I would then play them together and play around with the mix so you could get the best of both effects, the grounding of the water along with the diegetic sounds of the computer. 

Throughout this project I really wanted to get a midi track in there to give the project a musical element alongside the soundscape as Shakespeare did this himself, in The Tempest more so than others. Ariel in particular sings a lot of his 'spells' so he has a even bigger presence as a spirt. However now we are so close to deadline I think this is very much a time dependant element that may have to take a backseat as whilst I've done a fair bit of research on the subject I've yet to figure out the composition.

I should also point out the waves in the track is an online find, I thought I could get away with just having water sounds but nothing could really replace the actual sounds of waves and since there's no sea nearby I turned to the internet. I do think that it was the right decision though, the piece really needed a better tonal centre than the keyboard typing. 

So I played around with the sounds I've already got then imported my video to sync things up however in the soundtrack I had to accommodate around 10 secs of film at the beginning that doesn't exist yet. I also had to work around the fact that some of the sounds are sill missing. It's completely self inflicted, I just forgot that I needed to record some extra 'computer' sounds to give a more diegetic sound to the track and to accent some of the movements such as the 'pinch-and-zoom' and the social media pop-ups. But this can all be rectified with one last session in Protools or Audition if I desperately have to to.

So that's all I've got so far - here is a another trial run I did quickly in Premier Pro, I tired to match it up the best I could but without the little bit of video at the beginning it proved difficult. There are still some things now looking back I need to change but I think this is a better representation of the final product. George Lucas is right - sound really is half of the experience.

Power Through

The past few days have been hard. It was if I was working non-stop yet nothing was getting any further, it was just a constant uphill battle. What was more annoying was that I knew what I had to do but I just didn't know what order. Part of me was leaning more towards working on the soundscape and then animating in time to the music but then I needed to see the visuals to figure out what the sounds would be and where.

Layers of coded 'waves'

I keyframes the Y axis for each wave

So I made a list and just - powered through. It's always annoying when you get to stage of a project, when it's no longer creative it's just a bit draining. I was also faced with the problem of needed to heavily use a program I don't normally use, that being Illustrator.

As I said before Lynda.com has been my friend and a lot of last minute Google-ing has happened during the making of this project. Something I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to make something look less 'adobe-manufactured' in illustrator, or After Effects for that matter meaning right now I'm not best pleased with the outcome but I'm just going to go with it and get it finished, then I can make it look pretty again.

I also put fillers in for the information points so I could figure out time whilst still working on the graphic

                           

This is how the video looked at the end of a few hours work on Wednesday, not that much of a difference which is really annoying but hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. Although I did figure out how to get the wave to move the way I wanted it too, now I just have to animate the rest properly.