Week 3: Weekends, Working & We've finished!

We have FINALLY finished our 48hr video project. We worked on editing it mainly in Adobe Premier Pro - we all had individual parts to take and edit together - I focused on editing together the final few scenes with the hat. I also worked on sourcing and cutting the music to our film and specific scenes.

We then added in a few extra effects to create the old movie look. Kaitlin found a great tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMfYP-6D1y4 and Annita created the 'magic' effect using Adobe After Effects.

Definitely learnt a lot working on this project and it gave me my first introduction to film editing software.

ENJOY

Next time i'd love to have a go at filming something with the green-screen and editing those particular scenes together.

Maya & Me: Week 1

SO, today we had our first Maya session in the labs and it went pretty much as expected!

It's such a sparse programme with so many capabilities but after the initial 'wtf' when I was mucking around with it earlier this week i'm already beginning to feel more confident with the keys/controls and the capabilities. AND I even made my first 3D modle - a mutant jug!

Mutant 3D Jug

Research Skills & Methods: Week 1

Today we had our first Research Skills & Methods session with Jeanette Paul focusing on research, methods and critical thinking. I focused on a lot of this during my Undergradate but it's been a couple of years so was definitely handy to have a refresh of it all!

There was also a guest speaker - Prof. Nigel Johnson who showed us a really interesting presentation on methodology and research practices that will probably come in handy when I start my own for my project.

We have our first sumative task, which is to provide a 700-800 word contextual review on a subject relevant to our research / study proposal due by October 15th. I have a rough idea about my project, it will most likely involve a study around animation, biology and music but still working this out!

48 Hour Filming Day 1 & 2: Beaches, Borrowed Housemates & Broughty Ferry

SO! We've spent the last 48 hours filming our scenes for our - currently untitled - group film project.

DAY 1:
Lots of fun on the camera's shooting in the Tower Building to capture our detectives 'office' scenes. This included filming our beginning and end scenes so we could capture all the footage we needed for this setting in one go with out having to worry about the scene changing /appearing inconsistent or losing Kaitlin's borrowed house-mates.

We decided to use 2 camera's so we could capture all our scenes from 2 angles as we'd have up to 3 people in 1 shot at any time, and this would hopefully give us various shots and perspectives to cut together when we edit.

A couple of the shots needed to be in 1st perspective so we had one camera mounted on the tripod and the other which I handheld (steady hands!).

We then filmed a couple of the shots of the detective (Kaitlin) trailing the key suspect of the missing hat (Wendy) at Finchers flat. We captured shots of Wendy performing various house tasks as well as a few slightly trickier shots including both characters sneaking up a flight of stairs which I captured with use of a tripods

Again we wanted to get these at different angles for us to edit together so we could focus on various things at the right time especially facial expressions - this is particularly important as our film will be a silent movie.

Checking out our awesome footage

DAY 2:
We used today to capture the remaining scenes needed for the middle part of our story. We shot a variety of scenes, but one issue that definitely became apparent was our lack of a storyboard, which meant that there was a bit of guess work when it came to what scenes we'd be shooting (we had more of a general idea).

Filming in da beach at Broughty Ferry

This is DEFINITELY something i'll make sure to do for future projects are it would have definitely saved us a bit more time, and will make the editing process a whole lot easier as it would just be a matter of stitching the relevant scenes together. We'll now face the long task of having to decide what order we'll want to put the scenes in.

But despite that i'm definitely feeling a lot more confident using the camcorders and really feel like i've started to discover the art of capturing the right angles and trying to make the most out of a scene.

I've also learnt that Broughty Ferry makes the best icecream.

Week 2: 48 Hours, Hats & Heroics

This week we've been given a 48 hour film project. In groups we need to produce a film in 48 hours in any genre and style. The only requirement is the use of 1 prop and quote given to us by Phil.

The brief for our 48 hour film project

Our helpful assistants (camcorders)

I'm in a group with Annita, Wendy, Fincher and Kaitlin and our prop is a hat and our quote is "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so". We've spent most of this afternoon trying to decide on our genre and story, and although it took a while we eventually decided on a Film Noir, Detective type comedy that we want to edit into a Charlie Chaplin-esque style with the black and white and sped up scenes. The storyline will revolve around the detective tracking down the 'missing hat'.




I have NO idea (currently) about camera's, but Wendy and Fincher have previous experience with making short films and we're using a Canon Legria HFR56 and Sony HDR-SR5E.

I've been having a play around with how to use them and setting them up on the tripods (nearly knocked out by one) and already feeling a lot more confident about using them! I'm really liking the lightness and image produced by the Canon. It seems to have a bit more colour than the Sony, although it's probably only a little less clear.

We're going to start shooting our scenes tomorrow, focusing on the detective's 'office' (Thank you Tower Building room G3) and Kaitlin's roped in a couple of her house-mates to play the male roles that we'll need (a secretary and a client). On Wednesday we'll be going to Broughty Ferry to film the rest of our shots on the beach and around the town.

 

Week 1: Inductions, Illustrations & Idioms

Life as a Postgraduate student studying Animation & Visualisation (taught by Philip Vaughan) at the Duncan of Jordstonestone College of Art & Design (say that 10 times fast) Week 1!

After getting lost and attacked by robotic doors in the DJCAD, finally made it to the Graduate Centre in the Crawford Building where are main seminars will be held.

Week 1 Induction focused mainly on getting to know about the course and the building - including where the 3D labs and equipment are and a tour of the DJCAD library. There's also heaps of online resources and tutorials available for us to use for free (my favourite word).

On Wednesday we had our green-screen and recording camera introduction and training. Both are VERY new to me, but I learn quick, so i'm really looking forward to it. We already have our first project next week - a 48hr film project - which will probably give me a chance to get to use both.

Thursday we did short intro's/presentations about ourselves. There's such a diverse range of people on the course, all with different backgrounds and experience which is amazing, so there will always be at least one person to get a few tips from/bribe.

We start using the main software Maya next week, so going to have a play around with it over the weekend before our first lesson so I can start getting familiar with it. There are a few other programmes like ZBrush that I want to try out and experiment with to start preparing for upcoming projects.

I'm really keen to not only keep up my traditional artwork, but also become more flexible with my lines and re-acquaint myself with anatomy, so a few of us have asked about Life Drawing classes. I've already started a daily speed sketch challenge on quickposes.com to make sure I keep it. I'm excited to see my development over the year, and hopefully this will be reflected in my animations.

Speed Sketching!

Excitement and tears to be had.