Moral Kombat

During a session, we watched Moral Kombat, a feature length documentary about the history of violence in video games. The film goes at great length charting the history of violence in Games, giving a balanced view for each argument, though I personally believed that the film leaned against violence in videogames.

Violence in videogames has been discussed many times over its history, many people complaining that this violence causes real life violence in children. However, I disagree with this standpoint. In this day and age millions of children have been shown violence in video games, and barely any have repeated the actions in these games. I think that most children can differentiate violence in a video game
and real life violence and the idea that they can't comprehend the difference is a little insulting to their intelligence.

I believe the rare moments of history where video games have influence people to cause violence are in people who have other, deeper factors affecting them as well, it is foolish to assume that a video game alone could affect someones mind so radically. Much like movies and books, violence has always been around in our media, just because Video games are a new media doesn't make it suddenly much more dangerous.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Spy Edition

To highlight how important title sequences are to a film I decided to change the genre of a well known film and show how the titles would reflect this.

Space Stallions

When making and watcing animation, I personally prefer 2-D animation, though I may be biased form my experience with 2-d animation and only starting 3-D animation recently.

Recently I found an animation which blends 2-D and 3-D animation very well. A cartoon made by The Animation Workshop called 'Space Stallions'

Much like the animations from Harry Partridge, this pays homage to the Saturday morning cartoons of the 80's. It uses 3-D for the characters with a cel-shaded look and 2-D graphics for the special effects. The combination works surprising well and doesn't seem jarring as I'd expect it to be.

The animation is very high quality and smooth and the aesthetic is pitch perfect with the 80's cartoons it is trying to emulate. This shows that 2-D and 3-D animation can be combined with success.

Stop motion

When I think of stop motion, I immediately think of clay animation, however there are in fact many forms of stop motion animation and all of them differ quite a lot.

Strata cut animation for example involves taking cuts from a block of clay and talking an image of each one, producing an animation. It produces a very unique look and is something that is rarely seen these days.

Pixilation is where a stop motion animation is created using photographs, this can allow the movement of inanimate objects and make things seem a lot faster than they are, such as in the brilliant Wizard of Speed and Time.

Le Paysagiste, Jacques DROUIN, 1976 by shortanimatedworld

Pinscreen animation is something that is rarely seen. Animation is created by altering the points of tiny pins, creating an image. This must take an incredible amount of time to do and gives the animation a surreal quality about it.

Graphic animation uses cut outs and hand drawn images moved around by hand to create an animation. Obvious examples are the animations of Terry Gilliam from Monty Python and South Park. While the animation is very simple, it still offers appealing characters.

Object animation uses things such as action figures, lego or any object to animate something. The best example is The White Stripes music video 'Fell in Love with a Girl', which is one of my favorite music videos of all time.

All of these animations are stop motion and all of them offer a unique style. I will have to make sure I look into more into these other methods of stop motion and not just clay animation.

Poem 2 Animating

Since I was the most practiced with animation software, it was my job to animate the character in flash. This provided some unique problems that I had to solve.

We learnt quite quickly that SWFs (Flash's main export) wouldn't work with After Effects. This would mean we would have to use GIF files to get the character into the composition.

Another problem was the lack of transparency in the GIFs. Flash did not have the capabilities of exporting a GIF with a transparent background. We came up with the solution of making the background bright green. This would essentially act like a green screen for us, that we could key out in After Effects.

Finally there was the problem of the length of the GIFs. I began work with the assumption that After Effects would automatically loop a small GIF, this was not the case however. This would mean I had to lengthen the GIF files to play for longer, but even then some problems come up.

Throughout the animation I employed a technique known as boiling. This is where the line of the character is constantly wobbling, even when still. I did this because the most important aspect of animation is movement, so to see something completely still would look wrong. Boiling ensures the animation keeps its energy, even when the character is still.

Overall the character animation took about a week to collectively finish. As it was close to the deadline I rushed some of the later animations, but that is ultimately my own fault.

Poem 2 Storyboard and Animatic

Alex drew up a storyboard for us to use in the animation.

Once again, Alex got, his friend Adam to produce the music for us. It was a lot more important for us to get the timings right for this poem as animation is a lot more time consuming than filming.

Alex produced an animatic using the storyboard.

Island Film (almost complete music) from Adam Fergler on Vimeo.

Poem 2 Ideas

With Poem 1 in the stage of editing, we decided to start on Poem 2. We all agreed before choosing a poem that we wanted to do an animation. We also wanted to do something simpler than our first poem. We all decided to do the poem 'Isolated' by Zenam Bi.

Zenam Bi

Isolated like the emotions I have held for many years.

The cold weighs hard on my bones.

As the dark clouds begin to gather,

quiet surrounds the air.

The rural space echoes with stillness.

The picturesque image engraved in my mind.

Like a single tree embedded in a field,

The wavy grass hangs around to help ease the loneliness it feels.

The sheep wander aimlessly in this desolate sphere. 

This time, we decided to come up with ideas together as a team.

The roles for this poem were changed slightly, Alex would edit the film together, Sophie would provide background illustration and I would do all the character animation.

We wanted to keep the animation as simple as possible, so we decided to have a simple character and keep it black and white. Quite quickly we realized the drawings were similar to the art of Limbo.

The art style is very similar to want we wanted, the character is even similar to one we designed. The feeling of loneliness is quite profound in Limbo, which also fits our film well.

Poem 1 - shooting

On the 16th of January we went to York to get the shooting done for our first poem. We started around 10:30 am.

Me and Tom where there for using the camera and setting uo the positions of the actors and camera. Alex and our actress Luxi Zhou were also there to act out the scenes and make sure the scenes fit with the storyboard. Sophie was there to help out with everything and to set up the location for a later shot.

 

We spent the vast majority of the day filming the montage at the beginning of our poem, where the couple are happy together. This worked out well as we needed these scenes to be in the day time and the later scenes to be darker.

We were originally going to have the Alex and Luci change clothes for different scenes, to give the illusion that this montage was going over different days. However, on the day of filming it was very cold and needed to wear a lot of layers at the time. We decided to keep the clothe changes to a minimum due to the weather.

 

We managed to get interior shots in a coffee shop fairly easily although the first time we went it was far too busy for us to film in. e returned a couple of hours later, after having a lunch break to film this scene.

Since we were not going to have any dialogue in the Poem, the actors could talk about anything they wanted during filming, as everything was going to be muted. This allowed for some naturally looking acting.

We filmed happy scenes right up until sunset. We planned to have a timelapse of the sun setting, with the city in the foreground, however we all agreed that York didn't fit the bleak look we wanted for that timelapse. Tom would do the timelapse himself at a later date.

We then went to Sophie's house to film the final night scenes. By now it was 5:30 - 6:00 pm and very dark. We underestimated how dark it would be for this scene and the shots we filmed were very hard to see. We needed more scenes in a lighter time of day anyway, so we agreed to film the night scenes the next day in Leeds.

We once again all got together in Leeds to film the last scenes, we went into the city center, around 4:00 pm to film the sad scenes of the film. Leeds is a lot more busier and bleak than York so it fit better than if we filmed them in York. We used Luxi's home as a setting for the last scene. This time we rented out a light to help make the scene visible. This time it ended out a lot better than the filming in York.

Poem 1 Inspiration

Our first video was about forbidden love, so we researched similar videos for inspiration.

one step forward (award winning 48 hour film project) from ben crowell on Vimeo.

At first I was quite confused with this video but still intrigued. It features a very belated man going backwards through time. Throughout the short film we are revealed how he got so messed up and what ridiculous things he had done. At the end it is finally revealed why he is so happy: he had just successfully proposed to his girlfriend.

It is a very heartwarming film which keeps you interested through to the end. by making the film go backwards the audience is left guessing as to why he is so happy so continues watching.

As a group we toyed with the idea of making the video be in reverse order, to keep the viewer interested, we decided not to however. Our film would also be a lot sadder than this film.

Be Near Me from John X. Carey on Vimeo.

This film fitted a lot more with the emotions we wanted to show. In this, a montage of happy memories shows, while being juxtaposed with much more sadder scenes at the end. The difference in colours between the memories and present day are very clear, making the switch between scenes all the more noticeable.

Sophie also produced a mood board to fit with the video we're making.

Poem 1

We have all been put together in a group and each given ourselves roles (Ryan, Tom: Camera Alex, Sophie: Storyboard Tom, Daryl: Editing) There will be some overlap with the roles but I think this will be alright.

We have been given a poem to produce a short two minute film inspired by it. The poem we have been given is 'Outline Your Implications' by Razia Afzal.

Razia Afzal

Outline Your Implications

Force feed your diminishing, decadent desires.

You stitch and outline every lie in an idealistic insane manor.

Outline each implication, and re-enforce your own version.

Characterise me and state me, within a controversial, concealed category.

Freedom of an open-minded human being ceases to exist.

Breed the birth of analyzed emotions.

Hindered, lavished love does not level with her silk satisfaction.

Expectations are tightly sealed, within this hopeless century.

The city promotes carnage, which is tormented with ridiculed rage.

Welcome fiends, to the branded mimicking millennium.

A person could bleed you dry and squeeze the last penny, from a boneless, breaking body.

An impulse of greed is every follower’s Religion.

She sustains and conceals a faint finished memory of the love with a foreign man.

But loving him was felicity, breaking every boundary within her.

The magic, lust and love were another fantasy carving a sin, within her mechanic al memory.

She must obey and command to follow the system.

A virtualised afterlife abolishes her love for a ruthless man.

She preys on the innocent men.

They cherish each kiss and tarnished touch.

An empty hole tightly tugging, her harmonic heart strings.

He predicted every aspiring aspect of her frail future.

She takes the long route, but yet she never discovered her own self-identity.

The high demand in the public’s aspirations grows and grows, till there is no space for gossip galore.

Negative perceptions are sprayed within the air, and replenished with agony.

False lights are signalling the negative vibes across the channel.

Lie once, and again, but your prediction was a complicated framework lining, every eventful aspect again.

The Astrologist will re-create the foreseeable future, to the girl again. 

Already we have been discussing as a group where we can go with this poem. We are quite intrigued by the love story in the middle of the poem. We will develop more ideas.

How to Make an Egg! & Making of

This is my instructional video for how to fry an egg. I have tried to keep to the storyboard I created as much as possible, though there have been some changes and problems. I am very happy with the black and white scenes, which came out a lot longer than expected as I wanted to keep it to the music. There are certain scenes which I feel could of been improved on. Such as the egg smash and the recording of the actual frying of the egg. I originally recorded the audio at my house, but some of the recording didn't turn out as well as I thought they would. I ended up recording it in College, which turned out much better than my house recording.

I also recorded myself going to the field scene and setting up for the video with my other camera.

The Man Eating Machine.

Corporate Cannibal is a music video performed by Grace Jones, directed by Nick Hooker and released in 2008. It makes use of a variety of video effects to make it look like Grace Jones’ body is twisting and warping in impossible ways.

The effects being used throughout the video are relatively simple; the colours have been de-saturated to leave only black and white and a mirror like effect in certain parts of the frame to distort shapes. Despite this, the end product this produces is quite eye catching, creating this bizarre, alien figure, shape shifting in a seemingly endless void.

The only colours on show through the whole music video is black and white, this adds to the ‘dehumanising’ effect that both the lyrics and the shape shifting visuals are putting onto the character. It also coincides well with the warping effect, as it makes the parts of her body which are greatly exaggerated seem smoother and real.

The camera never deviates from showing the top half of Grace Jones’ body; however the positions of where the warping effect takes place change throughout the entire video. Close ups and extreme close ups are also used, sometimes highlighting or even multiplying an eye or a mouth. The fact that we never see her body makes her seem more alien and keeps her the centre of attention throughout the whole video.

According to Grace Jones, she was "very obsessed with the subject" of the video. She takes the role of ‘Man eating machine’ which she describes herself as a “a corporate cannibal, a digital criminal”. This could be references big businesses in general and how ruthless they can be. The fact that she is portrayed in the video as such an intimidating, alien being seems to strengthen this.

Unlike other music videos, the music and the visuals stay together. Without the effects, the video would simply be Grace Jones singing to the camera. I personally feel that for such a long music video, someone may get desensitised to the warping figure after seeing it so much, however it may be for the best that she is the main attracting and there are as little distractions as possible.

When I first saw this video I was initially surprised by the warping figure in the video, but I quickly got used to this and got tired of it. In my opinion after a while, the effect looked quite cheap; it reminded me of the ‘Photobooth’ feature that certain Apple computers have built in using the webcams.  I was quite surprised to find out the music video was made in 2008, as I initially thought it was released much later than that, the visuals to me seemed more commonplace for something in the early nineties.

 I do not think it is not entirely without merit; the symbolism and the lyrics in the music video is very good, and the warping effects do an excellent job of making Grace Jones into something completely alien. Throughout the video I couldn’t help but be reminded of the sci-fi short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”. Perhaps it’s the line “man eating machine” that reminds me of it (the short story features a mad artificial intelligence) or that the warping visuals remind me of HR Giger, which the story uses his art as an influence.

Overall I felt Corporate Cannibal was more dated than it should be and went on for far too long, but it certainly was an interesting watch, to say the least. 

LEGITIMATE BLOG POST

Good morning, Internet.

Hey.

My name is Ryan Lancaster, I'm a Digital Film, Games and Animation student at the Leeds College of Art.

I make stuff like this:

And this:

And even stuff like this:

Hopefully new and better things will crop up here. In the meantime; make yourself comfortable, grab a Werthers Original and check out my older* stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RyanLancasterBomber

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