Wednesday, February 27, 2008

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.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

scene creation

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

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

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.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

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.