Masking Environments

This project is a precursor for my final project. The intention of this piece is to combine two environments and have them work as one. The point of this is to give the viewer a sense of being out of place, causing them to wonder what environment is the right environment to be in.

Street_Collage

This movie is an experiment in video collage mixed with simple graphic shapes that express the mood of the environment. The environment that is captured consists of alley way scenes that are the center of activity for service workers and business people alike. The mood that I want to capture is the constant and methodical system that that continues on within the city. Although the people may become hectic the system of interweaving business is slow and methodical, progress as a whole across society is slow. This is the reasoning for the meditative movement of the graphic shapes. This work is what I am interested in doing as I see these as moving paintings, compositions that can convey the mood of the environment through color, composition, and movement.

young_dog

The dog is a metaphor for the young man. In his youth the dog is in search for a way to grow up, the journey and destination are symbolized by the map to the "me booth". The "me booth" is a magical booth that turns you into the self that you wish to be. Along the way to the booth the young dog visits with a friend who is drinking and this is part of the challenge of getting to his goal. He must be persistant to get to his final destination, and continue on despite distractions. This project does not conclude as it should, the man would appear from the "me booth" at the end of the movie, see his old friend, and then blast off into the sky.
The short movie as it is now ends with the dog going into the "me booth".

state of my project

My final project deals with environments that are mixed together. Originally I was going to use just the figure in motion, placed in an environment that would be made of simple shapes in motion, a graphics environment.
The trouble with doing this is time and available participants for video shoots and the fact that I don't have extensive experience with shooting with lights. I have chosen to use footage from from downtown that was shot in the daylight and consists of alleyway shots and the movement of peple through these corridors. I'm using the shapes of the building to create interesting patterns as the videos have been masked and layered on top of eachother. I think that I have plenty of footage and I believe I have a good start on the project. I really need feedback from other viewers so that I know what is working and what is not. I have a tendancey to like things that are out of place so I need feedback to compromise with. Right now my video is at 2 minutes and it feels a little packed with info. My gosl is to stretch it to three minutes, depending on what the class says.

Final_Comp

In the vein of Oskar Fischenger, I wanted to create an atmosphere of graphic shapes that interacted with each other and created a space that is made with two dimensional shapes, eventually these shapes will be moving with a soundtrack. The twist to my final is that I will add cut out figures from movie clips to add in with my shapes. My hope is that these cut out figures will fit in with the two dimensional scheme, as they represent a collage feel and although they move in a three dimensional space, there cut out shape will tend to flatten there appearance.

text ani

I chose to use the monologue of HAL from the "2001 Space Odyssey." I wanted to show a continuous flow of text. I need to work on my timing still.

Final Project

I want to use actual video footage combined with an abstract environment that I create myself. The footage that I use will be of a doorway, like the front doors of the school, showing people going in and out of the doors. But the people will be cut out of there environment and put into a graphic environment. The "doors" will show the transition between two graphic environments.

Oskar Fischenger

The work of Oskar Fischenger consist of using light in simole shapes over lapped in order to create a psychadelic effect and the movement of the shapes are very much integrated with the musical composition that accompanies the film.

This is how Fischenger found himself making graphic art:

“To write about my work in the absolute film is rather difficult. The only thing to do is to write why I made these films.

When I was 19 years old I had to talk about a certain work by William Shakespeare in our Literary club. In preparing for this speech I began to analyze the work in a graphic way. One large sheets of drawing paper, along a horizontal line, I put down all the feelings and happenings, scene after scene, in graphic lines and curves. The lines and curves showed the dramatic development of the whole work and the emotional moods very clearly.

It was quite an interesting beginning, but not many could understand this graphic, absolute expression.

To make it more convincing, more easily understood, the drawings needed movement, the same speed and tempo as the feeling originally possessed. The cinematic element had to be added.”

In 1921 Fischenger worked in Frankfurt where he invented a a wax slicing machine that created film titled “Wax Experiments”. He also worked Munich and then Berlin, leaving Munich to escape financial trouble he decided to walk to Berlin. There is a short film that includes these stills: “Walkling from Munich to Berlin.” In Berlin he worked doing special effects in his own studio. He also produced a series of abstract Studies that were synchronized to popular and classical music. A few of the early Studies were synchronized to new record releases by Electrola, and screened at first-run theatres with a tail credit advertising the record, thus making them, in a sense, the very first music videos.

In 1933 the Nazis took over Germany and Fischinger was soon to arrive in Hollywood in 1936.
He worked for MGM, Paramount. Frustrated in his filmmaking, Fischinger turned increasingly to oil painting as a creative outlet. Although the Guggenheim Foundation specifically required a cel animation film, Fischinger made his Bach film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) as a documentation of the act of painting, taking a single frame each time he made a brush stroke -- and the multi-layered style merely parallels the structure of the Bach music without any tight synchronization. Although he never again received funding for a film, the breathtaking Motion Painting No. 1 won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949.

His work is fluid and relies on pure shape and movement to reflect his emotions and ideas, proveing that you don’t always need fancy special effects to get a reaction out of people but good ideas.

The simple approach to graphics is relevantr ot our class because it is a good example of what can be accomplished with our knowledge of After Effects.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5095385112130615024&q=Oscar+Fischinger&total=38&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5095385112130615024&q=Oscar+Fischinger&total=38&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

concepts in beginning

1. I would like to combine found video with animation of still images as materials, the concept would have to do with placing people in environments where there actions did not fit the circumstances of the scene like the first video I did that had the figure cut out in the alleyway, but I would also like to combine the animation of the still images in order to create a surreal feeling.

assignment touch-up

My project compositions were set up in a way that would have to recreated to set up parenting so I spent my time working on zooms and other things. I realize that this was not the point of the assignment but with the time I had to work with I felt that this was the best use of my time so that I could have something to work with in class. I plan to go back and recreate the scenes after class today.

AE

My first attempt in after effects was fun but I did get frustrated with some of the features being slightly different than other programs such as photoshop, but that won't take long to get over. I could not figure out how to change anchor points successfully, not sure that I should at this point, things seem to move funny when the anchor point are not consistant with other obects on the stage.

I think I will understand more of what I want to accomplish once I get these scene into final cut pro and see them all together.

scene creation

Creating my scenes in photoshop was interesting. Thinking about how these things are going to work in movement is a new challenge.

Transformation of project 1

At the start of my project I was intending for the main character of the the film to have three things that he has to go through in order to make a transition. But did not consider the amount of urgency in his journey or the consequences that would occur if hid did not reach his goal.
The consequences could be time based, the "me booth" will slip into another dimension if he doesn't make it in time.


Also, the troubles he endures on his journey do not seem hard enough on him. He needs constant trial on his way. People popping out constantly but keeping the main obsticals where they are.

Story boards

Dog Man Story

A man walks down an alley, the man has a dog head that is of a blue color. He looks down in his hands at a map that holds instructions on how to get to a location that is marked "me booth" and contains a code for entrance. He points to a point on the map and follows the line to the box that represents the "me booth." Panning out from the map the dogs/man looks around and down the alley. He takes a step and a man with a computer screen head comes over to him and takes the map from him and shoves it in his screen hole.
Computer man walks away and dog/man barks at him but computer man keeps walking away. Dog/man walks after him and stops him. He then reaches in the screen hole and retrieves his map. As he is pulling out the map, the alley way changes color as if there is a transformation, the dog/man comes away from the ordeal with a grey color now. He reaches over to the computer man and pushes his power button, computer man then disappears.
Looking back at the map, he restarts his journey down the alley and he is met with another dog/man who is drinking heavily from a bottle and comes over to share the bottle with our original dog /man and they drink and begin to walk together in stagger. The new dog/man decides not to walk and leaves the scene. They wave goodbye to each other and as our dog/man walks down the alley and doesn't make it very far before he starts running into the walls with his stagger on.
He eventually collects himself and walks down and around a couple of alleys getting to the "me booth." Punching in the code he walks into the booth. The booth changes color and so does the alley. Similar to the computer man transformation earlier, but this time it is much stronger and brilliant. When the colors die down the dog/man starts to come out. You see now that he is now a man with a man head.
The drinking buddy dog/man comes into scene again. At this moment the scene pans out and the new man/man looks up and rocket flames appear beneath his feet and he shoots out of screen.
The End.

Movie Detail

"The kid stays in the picture" is a great documentary that has a great subject in terms of resources available to the directors. Robert Evans and Paramount provide the bulk of the materials for this movie. Robert Evans had already done a book and a book on tape before this documentary had come out, so the directors had the benefit of knowing how well Bob's voice would go over as a narrator. But this movie is brilliant because of how it goes about telling non-fiction in the format of fiction. One of the directors comments that the story consists of three acts and includes a love story. This just sounds like fiction, and it is as much fiction as any thing else because to hear Evans tell his own story is to hear the image of himself that he wants you to hear. The directors took this theme of image and and developed a visual language based on the lavish fairy tail that existed in Bob's world. The visuals achieve this by using the many photographic stills in storage. They would cut out figure and backgrounds in order to be able to move the two independently to create an effect of interaction within the environment. It also used long pan shots of stills and shadow effects. The film also includes stock video footage of highways, storms, clouds, airplane runways in order to illustrate emotional tides. The smooth transitions between each clip also made for a dreamy quality in the picture, when it came time for a quick cut it was really noticeable.

Some of the same clipping out of figures and environment manipulation was used in telling the John Darger story. His drawings we separated apart in order to create action sequences that seem to occur within his paintings. The combination of seeing the paintings with movement and hearing his writings together tell a great story that I wouldn't get otherwise. I don't think that this one is as entertaining as the first in this critique but only because they didn't the resources to compete, and they didn't manipulate actual photographs like in "The Kid Stays in the Picture", but I think a reason for this is that it didn't fit the concept.

Ken Burnes uses long pans on large images.

Photoshop Animation

For my animation I used some footage of alleyways in downtown Memphis. I wanted to attempt to combine two different scenes with similar perspectives in order to create a scene that is more dynamic than a single scene by itself. This also illustrates a part of my overall theme for the class: getting in and out of cars/ environments.

Proposal

In our lives we occupy many different types of environment. Work, school, home, cars, these are all environments that we occupy and they all have the the ability to effect our moods in different ways. For my theme I want to use the car as an environment that is able to take your mood through a transition. For example: A man and his wife argue at home unable to come to any resolution. He leaves to take a drive in his car in order to get away for minute. While he is gone he is away from the scene of his fight and alone in the car with his thoughts. He goes through a mental transition and by the time he gets back to his wife the tone of the argument has changed and they are able to resolve the situation. This theme's purpose is to take an everyday form of transition and to magnify its importance so that it becomes a metaphor for a mental transition in general.

I wanted to explore this theme in hopes that it would help define my own transition from being in college to being in the work force. How has college, as a vehicle, effected my mental transition? When does this transition actually occur? was it a gradual transition over the course of my college career, or does the bulk of the transition happen at the moment of graduation? You could compare this to my analogy of the man and his wife. When does the man transition from anger to acceptance and understanding, was it actually in the car ride, or was it the culmination of his thoughts up to the point of walking back in the door of his home.

extensions of self / your car

Deciding on a car is probably the most fun thing you can do when you are a kid, but you grow up and you don't get to decide on one at all. You just get one handed to you. But somehow tis car becomes a part of your personality. You have a way of making it your own. You put fuzzy dice in the mirror, the kind of music that you play affects the atmosphere in your car, how clean your car says a lot about who you are. Our cars are extensions of ourselves. They help us live. They transport our bodies from place to place, before we would have to ried an animal, ride a bike, or just walk. The differences between these things and a car is that the car is a capsule. Its even different than riding a motorcycle, which is an extension of ones self, and does describe the kind of personality you are or desire, but it does not work the same as a car or any vehicle that has a cab. So we are looking at the car as a place that takes you places but at the same time it can take you away from places, literally and figuratively. The car can take you away from home literally, but I would say that even just the act of getting in the car and shutting the door takes you to a place that is isolated from the outside world, kind of like your own personal space that is made just for you and your brain to get together and talk. This can be the only place for solitude for some people. If you live with people or not, sometimes your car is more comfortable to be with yourself than your home.

contrasting metaphores

1. jail
2. pit falls
3. hand-cuffs
4. towers
5. overcome by piles of crap
6. quicksand
7. depressed people
8. man as child
9. cement shoes
10. bureaucracy
11. legal paper work
12. glass ceiling
13. handi-capped people
14. crashing computer
15. chained dog
16. walls
17. straight jacket
18. locks
19. broken clocks
20. mangled machine parts

metaphores

1. cacoon
2. getting out of car
3. getting out of building
4. defecation
5. rivers
6. dandelion puffs
7. half-way house
8. graduation ceremony
9. passing of the torche
10. cross-over dribbles
11. cross-over country star
12. heart break
13. changing lanes
14. a-ha moments
15. sailing the seas between islands
16. key in the door
17. computer screen access
18. musical transitions
19. breaking of the bottle
20. burning / flame as transition

words2

Antonyms:

1. clog
2. cramp
3. delay
4. embarrass
5. encumber
6. fetter
7. handicap
8. hinder
9. hobble
10. hold back
11. hold up
12. impede
13. inhibit
14. interfere
15. manacle
16. obstruct
17. shackle
18. tie up
19. trammel
20. hamper

words

synonyms for change:
1. amendment
2. correction
3. rectification
3. conversion
4. deformation
5. distortion
6. metamorphosis
7. mutation
8. transfiguration
9. transformation
10. fluctuation
11. oscillation
12. shift
13. displacement
14. replacement
15. substitution
16. adjustment
17. modulation
18. regulation
19. alteration
20. difference

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