Think Cisco Ramon meets R2D2

If you've seen my Youtube video for November you'll know that one of my goals for this year is make my work as accessible as possible. Whilst audio-description won't really work for this piece it doesn't mean that I have to make it boring for those who can't see the visuals. When I first came up with this idea I imagined the soundscape to just go hand in hand with the piece, especially when thinking of it as a gallery installation rather than a theatre piece.

I found this article with Ben Burtt  which I read to get some inspiration and I'm a bit of a Star Wars nerd so this is just really cool to me. I also watched some Youtube documentaries surrounding him, one of which can be found below.

I really do like working with sound and I finally got my hands on the book 'Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema' a book I've been trying to get out of the library since we started our sound project it was just never available! So I ordered it from Rochester instead. Anyway this book basically covers all bases including music in my original post for this project I said the soundscape will be a mixture of 'water sounds' and '8-bit Orchestrations' and that hasn't really changed. I have however realised how hard that would be in the time frame that I have so I'm scaling it down a little bit.

But before starting the project in After Effects I booked out a Zoom and made a list of all the sounds I could possibly need - however there weren't many. I actually recored the majority of them whilst cleaning the bathroom (I know, classy right?) I was experimenting with how water can sound in different situations, I thought I may as well do something practical at the same time.

After that I sat down at my desk and just started playing around with things since I knew what sounds I wanted to make I just wasn't sure how to make them. I wanted 'submarine tracker' sounds - rather specific I know. I started flicking my steel ruler against the table and really liked the reverb you got and how you could change it by adjusting it's position, so I recored that. The way my highlighter rocked on the table when I was simply moving it out the way sounded interesting, so I recorded that. I was  even just messing around with my piano when I realised that when I play the keys and it's not switched on it sounds like something making contact with the ground, just under water and muffled, so I recorded that too.

The only thing I have left to record is the sound of a keyboard typing, I'm hoping to use the typing as the 'keynote' (Which apparently is the sound design equivalent to a tonal centre). I'm thinking that if I have a general typing noise in the background I could layer different versions of the sound, each layer relating to something different. 1) General typing, diegetic in the fact the act will be typing on a keyboard during the performance 2) To show the beat 3) Possibly a pitched shift version of the beat to represent Ariels personality within the situation. I'm still deciding on the beat of the sound piece to go with the text, Ariels monologues are in iambic pentameter and my first instinct was to have the sound in 4/4 to match but then I started thinking that having it in a waltz would be more interesting to listen to juxtaposing the voice over since the voice over is actually quite light and care-free in comparison to the actual subject matter.

On Wednesday I also met with my actress to record the voice over in G21, we recorded a few versions of the voice over some going all the way through, then individual lines with specific direction. Over the next few days I will be putting together an edit of the voice over so I can finalise the timing of the piece and get a better idea of what parts of the film needs to be shortened/made longer etc. I'm also still reading loads of articles on the sound design side of things before I go into protools to have a go at making the soundscape itself.

It's fine.

As Producer I've found that a lot of my job is writing. Writing risk assessments, timetables, notes, minutes from meetings, emails.... just a lot of writing. Anyway at the start of the project we were all quite laid back about it and then we found out that the script that had been written wasn't plausible to make and wasn't as creative as we thought it was. So the synopsis went from this;

A 1-2 minute advert focusing on the hidden nature of domestic abuse, following a character watching TV in his home, oblivious to the abuse happening in the adjacent room. The advert will focus on the hidden nature of domestic abuse, how it can often go unnoticed and its direct impact on the victim. The goal is to raise awareness on how to spot the signs of domestic abuse, promote helplines, and most importantly encourage people not to ignore the issue when they notice the signs. This will be achieved by utilising skills developed in the professional toolkit units.

To this;

A 2 minute long campaign film focusing on the stigma against male domestic abuse victims. Based on the classic sitcom the campaign will open with the male lead entering the set talking to a friend about how how his partner has been hitting him. At this point you will hear a generic laugh track. This will continue often with his friend quipping in remarks about ‘manning up’ and ‘don’t be a wimp’. The laugh track will continue until the character notices it and address the fact that it’s not a funny subject, at this point the actor will look directly into the camera breaking the fourth wall. Tracking backwards the camera will reveal the set (eg lighting, other cameras sound equipment) showing the audience how the media control our perceptions of abuse alongside the actor who will be speaking about the importance of the stigma being dropped. And now to this;

A 2 minute long campaign film focusing on the stigma against male domestic abuse victims. Based on the classic sitcom the campaign will open with the male lead entering the set talking to a friend about his recent family holiday. Whilst talking the friend will leave the set and go to grab a beer from the kitchen, at this point the camera will zoom in on the male lead as he sits on the sofa. Sounds from the kitchen and object around the room will become more prominent and the character will be very much in his own world. Once the camera is in a close up a bottle will be heard smashing in the kitchen causing the male lead to jump, linking back to the story regarding his wife bottling him on holiday . At this point his friend will come back into the living room where he will be trying to remove a stain from his shirt before asking the male lead if everything is ok. The male lead will then say the smash made him jump to which his friend will reply that it was only a bottle smash. At this point the male lead will look at his hands saying 'Yeah, man up'. And if I have any say in the matter it won't be changing again. After some very tense meetings I finally feel comfortable saying that we will get everything done on time as long as everyone works together as, to be quite frank, we don't have any time left. So far we've had around 7 production meetings (some of which the minutes from the meetings can be found here, here and here). I will say I'm quite comfortable leading meetings of this size as it's something I've done a lot of in the past, so I'd like to say I'm pretty good at it although some people may disagree. In the past week since the idea change around I have found myself becoming stricter with people regarding deadlines and changing ideas simply because when you look at the timetable (found here) you can clearly see that time isn't on our side. We also had a move around with the job roles (found here) to make sure everyone had a job to do during the shoot. In the past few days we've had a script drawn up (here is one of the later drafts of the script) and after meeting with Anne we made some changes as a group to make the script easier to work with on a creative level, the final version of the script will be ready by Tuesday. Once the script is finalised that means the Director/Storyboard Artist can work with the D.O.P on the shot types and storyboards of which I hope to have by Thursday to look over and finalised by Friday so that the Ast. Director can figure out our shoot schedule and the Lighting director can get started on plans for the shoot. I guess what I'm trying to say is, we're getting there. I'm working my way down a checklist from last year and it's working in my favour I mean look - the risk assessment is almost done and everything. Just hang in there, everything is going to be fine.

Accessible Art

My Vlog for November talking a bit about my Maps and Journey's Project - below is also an interesting TED Talk around the subject I found after filming.

256 layers later.

When I started this project I'm not sure why but in my head it was a lot simpler. Maybe it was just my nerdy excitement but I have found out that there is a lot more frame by frame animation than I anticipated - which is fine. I mean would be better without but it is fine.

For the past week I've been working a lot in W104 just powering through, having things go wrong, freaking out for a bit, going back and fixing whatever went wrong and powering through again. After the first night of working I realised quite quickly that the effect I wanted to use wasn't going to work the way I thought it was. In my head mapping the binary text around a 'wave' shape was going to look good, however just trust me when I say it didn't. The shape was off, it moved funny - it just didn't look the way I wanted it to. So I started playing around with After Effects, I had the idea of animating the code in it's own composition and then mapping out the layer shape from that and seeing what happend.

I found a binary translator online and started translating the monologue the actor will be saying into binary, from there I then changed the colours of each number and started layering them and animating them to look like waves. 256 layers later this is what I had. And whilst the fact the computer wasn't even flinching to preview it (Something my laptop just couldn't handle) it still looked a bit off.

That's when I remember something, I remembered when I was trying to come up with an idea for Time Art last year I spent far too much time on Video CoPilot and one of there tutorials was how to make cool sound waves in After Effects. Now I just wanted the wave part but a stylised sound wave, coloured blue and instead of showing sound showing binary code, that could work. So that's what I did 

This took a lot longer than I expected in all honesty but having previewed it I think it's going to work. Hopefully once I've built up more waves they will move across the screen and 'take out' the island with a splash leaving the screen blank ready for the next part of the scene.

Now I had worked out that problem I went back to my first one. In one of my scenes when Ariel is first conducting the storm I wanted to show it through hacking, to this I wanted sot to appear on a world map one by one and then change colour to green as if Ariel has gained access to them. However once I got over my image vector problems with the world map and returned to After Effects I was face with the problem of having another 250 layers individually timed to appear, change colour and track with the image as it zooms in all without pixelating - I'm not even sure that it's possible.

So after googling for solutions and coming up dry I decided to work in Illustrator again and just create loads of vector images containing more and more dots, then another set of vector images containing the same dots just a different colour. I then put them into After Effects as if they were drawn animations. They look good in preview for now but I'm not sure how they are going to look when they are blown up bigger so I'm classing this as a temporary solution whilst I get the rest of the base down.





Other than the technical side of things I also reached out to Acting and Performance and the UCA Freshers Pages to search for an actor.



'Hi guys, I'm casting for my 2nd year project a modernised performance piece of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I'm looking for a male actor to play Ariel (a computer genius in my version of the show) to say a short monologue and interact with a projected computer based background. Whilst it is a performance piece there is a chance that the project could be exhibited in the James Hockey Gallery after christmas so there will be some filming/Voice over work next week (VO Wednesday 11th/ Filming Thursday 12th).  I can work around class schedules and will pay expenses for the days of the actual performances, other than that you will be paid in chocolate :)

If anyones interested just message me, thank you! :)

PS The monologue will be said true to text so if you've worked with Shakespeare before that would be great but not necessary.'

However after realising that most of the actors here at UCA are actually female I started thinking about switching the roles because - why not? There is nothing in the script that says Ariel has to be Male and there is nothing in my adaption that's gendered, so why not? After that I had an actress message me about the role and I'm hopefully setting up a meeting her for Monday, after which I'm hopefully recording voice over on Wednesday and filming in the studio on Thursday.

It's been a bust week, but hopefully once the bulk of this is out the way it will be smooth sailing.

However it is me and it is my project let's not speak too soon. 

This Could Work? Like Really?

I've been trouble shooting somethings whilst getting the basic idea into After Effects for instance in my last blog I mentioned not being able to find a world map image of a high enough quality for me to zoom in. After talking to Steven over the phone he mentioned using Illustrator to create a vector image so it wouldn't loose it's quality when zoomed in, the only problem was I don't know how to use Illustrator, I have it on my computer but that's about it. So I went on Lynda.com and starting having a look around the basic essential training guide. At this point I had already googled vector images and found a perfect match for my project that was also editable on freevectormaps.com so the hard work was already done for me, lynda.com just helped me figure out what all the buttons did.

After messing around with in for a bit I changed the colours slightly to match my story board and then added my little island - Prosperos island.

Nothing to fancy just small enough to make sense in the story yet big enough for the audience to see without getting distracted by it when looking at the map on a whole.

At this point I had already pre-composed the first 'scene' of the piece which is the entering password bit and the subtitles, just to make life easier for myself.

 I also went in and add my 'main character' markers. This is to show the people already on the island (Prospero, Miranda and Caliban in blue and Ariel in red.... because spirits deserve different colours in my little world). Due to my computers age I didn't even attempt to add all the dots which will cover the world map, not only would that be too many shape layers for my poor computer to handle I'm sure there is an easier way around it than animating them all individually.

Then finally, the moment of truth, I animated the zoom. Something that in theory shouldn't cause this much bother but it worked. It finally worked.

I exported the beginning of the sequence to see what it looks like all together, running a lot faster than the final piece again to save on the export/rendering time since this is a experiment. I then went in added some 'green submarine tracking device' rings that eventually zone in on the boat.

But for now that's everything. I am thinking of coming up with some cues for the actor so they know when major things are going to happen because I'm not sure I'll get that much rehearsal time with them. I also got a reply from Tom in which he said that the university does have a rear projection screen however it's 10' x 7' and needs to be set up in the studios it's that big, so I'll get back to you on that one. I also need to get a PC compatible hard drive so I can start work on this properly and not be held back by my computers dislike of Adobe programs, but for a weeks work I'm rather proud. 

This Could Work?

I started doing some tests in After Effects today and I'm actually quite shocked at how it's actually working? I know that sounds a bit crazy but it's pretty close to what I have in my head and the computers co-operating (to some extent anyway) and I just- that doesn't normally happen. I'm not normally able to translate whats in my head to whats on the screen. Now I'm not that far into the project so there is still all the time in the world for it go horribly wrong, hence why I'm starting early because it's me and if something can go wrong it probably will I'd just rather it go wrong a month before than the night before.

For the test I'm go as basic as I can because 1) I want to see how it looks before I make any changes and 2) My poor computer can't handle much with 4gb of ram.

A quick test to see how everything works together

I've emailed Tom regarding the projections and if rear projection is a plausible thing for me to do and I'm hoping to get an ad out to actors by the end of next week. This way I can start a working relationship the actor early on and talk to them about timetabling so I can have them for the live performance as well as voice over and silhouette. I'm hoping to have a bit more of a visual aid before I speak to Phil regarding help with After Effects because as I've learnt in the past my explanations are kind of complicated and wordy.

I'm also faced with the problem of needing a line drawing of the world map that's got a high enough resolution for me to zoom in without it getting pixelated, a problem I didn't really think of whilst story boarding.

Either way a lot of thinking and a lot of trial and error - but I think this could actually work.

A Digital Tempest

After talking with Rosie after Tuesdays presentation I realised that all I was doing with my original idea was being rather literal. The reason for this is because the version of the show that I'm referencing is the Shakespeare's Globe 2013 production  and as you can see, there is nothing there. So to me I guess I was building on the performance by adding the rather obvious effects because there was nothing there to begin with.

However, after speaking with Rosie, I started trying to come up with my own take on The Tempest something many people have tried and most give up on because it is such a classic Shakespearian comedy. I started thinking of how I could modernise it without taking away it's true value and the context of the show. I began by dissecting the scene I'm intending to use into character, character intention, context and reaction.

Character: Ariel
Characters intention: To do as his master asks of him without hurting the crew or mariners.

Context: He has just created the Tempest (using magic) that caused the King of Napels ship to 'ship wreck' upon Prospero's island, a ship containing Prospero's brother Antonio. This is so Prospero can finally get revenge on his brother for usurping him 12 years prior to the play.

Reaction: The audience shouldn't be alarmed by Ariels actions as he never intends to harm the ship mates, simply scare them. Ariel is also known for his human like emotions in which he doesn't want to harm anyone, as people find out later in the play.

What caught my attention was the that the main focus of the monologue is Ariels magic and that he never intends to hurt anyone, so I began thinking of what could replace the magic then it came to me - the internet.

To an actual Elizabethan audience digital technology and the internet would have been like magic so why don't I take Ariels magical powers and turn them into Ariels computer skills. (Now stay with me here) I plan on turning Ariel into a 'mad computer scientist' because 1) he can still intercept the ship and control it meaning he can still make the crew scared enough to jump overboard 2) you get to see information points 3) the projection can be used as a giant computer screen and 4) Ariel stays true to character because no matter how carried away he gets, he's behind a computer screen and can't really cause any harm.  

Storyboard: I told you I couldn't draw.

Still using rear projection I would stand the actor in front of the screen, back facing the audience, furiously typing on an old keyboard (You know the type that actually makes a noise). I've also added points that the actor can use 'tablet gestures' like point and zoom, swipe ect so the screen looks interactive from the audiences point of view.

Since this is a performance piece I'd also like to add sound to it, kind of a hybrid of water and submarine sounds with 8-bit orchestrations, so you get a very immersive experience. After the performance is complete I will add a silhouette of the actor (possibly from a green screen or still images) along with subtitles for the hard of hearing, meaning if it does indeed go to a gallery all the elements would still be present for the piece to make sense.

Also to get a head start on organising everything (because if I don't I'll freak out) I put all my projects into 1 timetable as seen here, very colourful and very full in general - but it makes sense to me!