Creative Networks Ident

To help improve my skills I decided to take part in a quick competition. The brief was to create a small ten second ident for Creative Networks which would play in front of video presentations that they use. The deadline was very close when I started the competition, however I had an idea coming into it and I knew it would not take long to complete.

I took part in this brief as I thought it would interesting to work on animation that isn't about characters. I also wanted to work more on my After effects skills and this competition would provide a good opportunity to do so.

I created the initial animation using Flash. As I am used to working in Flash often this didn't take too long to do. I had been watching tutorials on how Flash's SWF files can interact with After effects and I thought that using Vectors would be useful for upscaling the footage to 1080p. The animation took about a day to complete.

I created SWF's showing each individual asset then imported them into After effects. By continually rasterising the assets I was able to maintain a clear image when upscaled to double size. I was going to render this out as it was, however, when the logo moved backwards there was an odd graphical glitch due to the motion tweens that I used.

After many attempts to fix it I eventually opted to create a PNG sequence in the Flash file. This would give me less freedom to change things in editing but eliminated the graphical glitches present.

Once I had rendered the image sequence out in After effects I put the file into Final cut for some final adjustments. I added some music to the composition and a fade out at the end of the footage. The music I added I don't think suited very well with the brief but I struggled to find anything more suitable for the ident.

While the competition specified that the footage be sent by email, my footage exceeded the size limit to be sent, so I instead uploaded it to Vimeo. i have yet to receive anything back from the hosts however I feel this was a useful experience for me and a good test of my skills.

An Andalusian Dog

Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist film from 1929 by Salvador Dali and Luis Buneul. It is a film based on the psyche and dreams and as such has no real plot, however there are many interesting concepts that are explored within the film. While I believe there is no true meaning or intent from the directors, the scenes shown in the film can be related to psychoanalysis, the unconscious and the teachings of Freud.

The film begins with a young woman having her eye cut by a razor. While gruesome and an example of abject horror, it could also symbolize the barrier between the Id and the Superego, since it is only the rules and social trappings that we have created ourselves that prevents us from freely killing each other. It is also interesting to see how our educated minds prevent us from doing such a thing, though it would only take a minor lapse into the unconscious to lead into cutting someone so violently.

There are also several scenes of people looking out of windows at other scenes outside. This could symbolize people's voyeuristic nature by highlighting the way windows are a portal to the outside world and into someones personal life, with the glass acting as a social barrier, making it acceptable.

In one scene a man suddenly starts groping a young woman without warning while having visions of her naked. This obviously connotes the more animalistic side of ourselves that run on instinct. When he tries to pursue the woman, he is seen being pulled back and chained to pianos, dead horses, stone tablets and priests. This symbolizes the culture and religion of our world holding such animalistic desires back, keeping them in check.

Another scene shows an oddly dressed man having his clothes ripped away from him from what seems like a father figure. This could symbolise someones sexual identity and how people are forced to stay in there chosen identities by their peers. Later the man acquires a book which transforms into a gun. The book could represent knowledge and the gun the power that comes from that knowledge. The man uses this gun to shoot down the father figure, who then appears in an empty field, perhaps representing an afterlife. The odd clothes later appear in a small box, possibly symbolizing the secrets we keep hidden away from the general public.

Un Chien Andalou is a very odd film that jumps around in time and has little to no plot. However this can be attributed to it's initial subject of dreams and the surrealist nature of its creators. It's odd structure can also be forgiven for the time it was created in, where standard film structure hadn't really been established yet.

Team Buddies

In video games, cut-scenes are used for a variety of different reasons and are shown in many different ways. They are often used as rewards for players who have gone through a part of the game, or as something to help explain a mechanic or move the plot forward.

They can utilize the game engine to show the cut-scene or it could be a pre-rendered scene using a completely different software. Some allow the player to keep control of there characters and let them choose what they want to see, while others use 'quick time events' to integrate gameplay into these normally unplayable scenes.

I have been looking at the intro to one of my favorite games on the PS1: Team Buddies.

The scene is pre-rendered and serves to introduce the characters and concept of the game. I chose to look at this as it has very simplistic characters and could be easily replicated by someone like me! The game throughout has small pre-rendered scenes at the end of every set of levels. These act as a reward and as an introduction to a new character you can use. They were often humorous and lampooned various movies such as The Terminator.

PPP conclusion

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.

Stop motion Ryan - Toast

Recently I decided to have a go with stop motion animation, using myself.

This is not a string of photos, instead it is very small clips, edited from one part of film. For the beginning part I got up and jumped up and down, moving slightly each time. In the post edit I cut out most of the footage, leaving just the few milliseconds of me in the air.

I am quite happy with how this turned out, I have learnt a lot from practicing it. Muck like all animation, it takes a long time to create a small amount of work, it took about three hours of combined work to produce 30 seconds. It is also important to keep the time of each frame consistent with each over, I cut my attempt a little clumsily and it sometimes looks a little odd. It is also important to have a lot of frames, to ensure smooth animation.

It is also quite tiring to jump up and down over and over!

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.

Cyriak

Recently we attended a talk by the animator Cyriak, which I found as an excellent opportunity to look into his work.

Cyriak is a 2-D animator who primarily uses aftereffects and photos for his animations. Almost all of his animations involve manipulated photos and grotesque transformations. I personally think that Cyriak's animation is brilliantly bizarre and fantastically produced.

One of the main themes of Cyriak's animations is cycles, often his animations involve large complex movements that loop seamlessly together. This must take excellent timing to keep in sync, especially when combined with other cycles, like in the video above.

 will not be producing something so complicated as this, but I will make sure to take into consideration the timings of my scenes and how they play out with over movements.

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 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.

Instructional video Inspiration

I took a few inspirations for my instructional video, most notably, Stuart Ashens.

Stuart Ashens does video reviews of old or fake electronic games and equipment, almost all of his videos take place in a first person perspective, with his hands coming from the sides of the camera. He narrates over each review, giving a funny commentary for each fake toy or game. I have taken a lot of inspiration from Ashens, such as wearing a suit for the video, having some first person perspective shots and utilizing a similar sense of humour.

I also took a lot of inspiration from 5-Seconds films.

5-Second films make a 5-second video every weekday, collected all of that week's videos into a collection on the weekend. Occasionally they produce and short film. I think the videos they produce are very funny and are a constant source of entertainment, they influenced my sense of humour for the video and the small title cards for the video.

Poem 1 Animatic

Before we could film the scenes for the poem, we needed a more clear idea of the timings of each scene.

Using his storyboard, Alex made an animatic for the poem. Alex also got his friend Adam Fergler, who is music student , to produce the music for both the poems for us. This was very useful for us as we didn't have to worry about fitting the edit to pre-existing music.

Untitled from Adam Fergler on Vimeo.

Animatic by Alex. Music by Adam Fergler 

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.

Individual film ideas & storyboard

For our first task we had to create a one minute instructional video. This could be done in any style and be about anything we wanted. Immediately I started to sketch some ideas.

 

I decided I wanted to do an instructional video for something very simple (How to fry and egg) and make it very melodramatic. I also wanted to make it funny so I would juxtapose the very serious scenes with more comedic scenes.

After I fleshed out some ideas for my film I created a storyboard for the key frames of the video.

I planned to make the serious scenes black and white, taking place in a field. It would then cut to the actual instructional part of the video in full colour and in the kitchen. All of the scenes in the video would only require a crew of one, with the use of a tripod.