Change

For my last project before the FMP i was given the theme of change. I saw some short films which showed how change could be done in a effective way, one of these films was called maybe another time.

http://vimeo.com/76500805

After seeing this and seeing the sudden, unexpected change that occurred i started to produce ideas for a short film to produce. I started put writing down as many changes as i could think of from unexpected to unwanted, i also looked at change in scenery and lifestyle.

Ultimately i went with change in scenery and started to expand on that. I looked out how life could become repetitive if you do something you do not enjoy so for example waking up, going to work and coming back and then repeat. I started to come up with storyboards and wanted to give a focus on the change and was looking at ways to show this, i eventually went with the idea of filming it thought first person as if you watching this boring life thought the persons eyes and went filming the next day.

I filmed a lot of the same stuff over again so when i would be showing the repeat it would look a tiny bit different but ultimately the same. I also tried something different to which i have not done before which was to film my feet as i was walking and then edit it so it only lasts around 6 seconds but shows the environment i am walking in change, so from pavement to mud to grass.

When editing the whole thing I did has some continuity errors which i did improve is someway by re filming but there was one left which i did not have and that was the person walking away from the train station which is a vital part needed and people might get confused when watching it.

Overall i am pleased with my outcome but there is defiantly room for improvement and when i get some spare time i will shoot the one missing scene i have.

Freedom

This week i have been working on a small film based around the theme of freedom. I was not quite sure where to start with this so i looked back to when we watched the documentary the naked rambler, he was protesting about his rights and law so i started to get a focus.

I started to focus on law and wherever it made people more free or less free. I looked at the film the purge where it puts its characters in a scenario of for one day there is no law so people can ago around killing, stealing and so on without being punished.

I started filming by just asking a few questions and getting peoples responses which didn't take to long to do, i then went into premier and put everything together but it felt dull and to the people i showed they agreed.

I then came up with two scenarios and drew a storyboard in my sketchbook which showed almost a drama element to the whole thing. First i filmed my friend on her phone  to give the impression that because there is so much law the government are spying on everyone. The second was originally someone being stabbed because there is no law but i changed it to someone steeling a womans bag and getting away with it as i didn't have the props to show someone getting stabbed.

Once i had put these new clips into premier i added filters and some objects to make it look like it was CCTV footage and overall i am happy with the result i got.

the final film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbgQWYMmytk

Title Sequence 2 HOMELAND

For the second title sequence i wanted to do Homeland to cover the TV genre. I started by looking at the shows original title sequence and also looking at bits in the show that could be used to make a good title sequence that fit the show but also hinted to what it was about. One thing in the show was the main character Carrie has a board made up like a web of information and i looked to that for a starting point.

Once i saw this i started coming up with some storyboards on how i could make a title sequence out of this and how i would use text via filming bits on the board or just putting it over in premier. bellow is the first story board i came up with. 

Once i created this i started to gather the materials i would need and started to create some documents to place on the wall by the time i had done this i had created a newer storyboard that had more detail and was the one i was going to follow. 

Finally this was my outcome 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jz2IbONw7Y

Title Sequence 1 DJANGO

Over the last two weeks i have been looking at different title sequences for different genres. One of the set genres we where given was Spagetti western and i looked at the famous film Django. Below is the original opening for Django and where i drew my main source of inspiration from.

The main parts i took from this opening was the use of red and the music played over the top. i also drew inspiration by looking at western culture and so on and decided on using a wanted poster burning  with the cast and crews name on for my title sequence. As i went along with this idea i changed it so instead of using one wanted poster i used lots with one for every main cast member and the main crew members.

This is the original story board i had for the use of just one wanted poster and below that is what i actually did.

Finally this was my final outcome for my first title sequence. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clj1qyhUGqc

TV Project Week 2

On the second week we where placed in to 2 groups of around ten and got to rewriting the script, blocking a very rough version of our show and looking for actors.

My group worked very well with each other and we where able to do a number of things on our first day. We decided to come in a day early, so on monday we started by planning out on what we should get out of the way first. Two people in my group went to work on the script and the rest of us focused on the adverts we needed to do. Creating the adverts was not as hard as i thought it would be as we only needed to come up with futuristic themed adds so we had one where smoking is good for you and another where adds spring up in everyday life unwanted.

As well as coming up with adverts we also spent half a day in the studio blocking out where our presenters where going to be at what point in the script. this took a while as we where still working on the script and where using a rough draft just to get a feel for things. We also spent a good amount of time researching what our presenters where going to talk to our guests about, we looked at what point in time we should be talking to them about and what works of andy warhol to show them.

When it came to the friday we had finished our script, filmed our adverts and where getting ready for the next week. We where making sure that actors could be there on the days they where needed and just getting content ready for the show like for example having a power point playing on one of the screens showing off andy warhols works.

Overall it was a very productive week and we got a lot done in preparation for filming which will be on wednesday and thursday so we have two days to see how it goes with the other group first.

The TV project

In the first week of the TV Project we where told we where to create two shows with the theme of a time travel arts show. The show had to be done live and had to have a dramatised problem happen at the end with the time machine breaking down.

Once we where told the outline of what we where going to do within the next three weeks we where split off in to random groups and started to generate ideas. In my group we had ideas ranging from a never ending loop to meeting famous dead people and and as we where coming up with these ideas we wrote the good ones down in preparation for a pitch at the end of the day.

The two ideas which where chosen at the pitch where the ones about jack the ripper going though time and having a andy warhol/time zombie themed show.

The last 8 weeks have been really fun i didn't expect to like so many different things i had never tried before, although there where a few things which where not as good as i hoped they would be overall the course has been great.

Starting with photography, it was something i didn't expect to like so much. Taking photos never really sparked my interest, i knew some basics but my heart was never really there so when i found out we would be doing photography for the first two weeks i was a little underwhelmed. The first day was alright i found out some interesting stuff on past photographers and what sort of work they did but when i started to learn how to use a camera and begin taking pictures i became really interested. The first week when we had to have a picture for our first crit was very enjoyable i liked being able to take photos of things i would not normally do.

The way i got to my final piece was i looked at every different picture i had took narrowed it down to six final test shots and from those i took one and used it as my final piece. I tried to focus mostly on memory and future memory and when i was setting up some of the shoots i used a lot of things that had i or people i knew had memories associated with them.

Animation was great, I knew from the start that it was going to be something I enjoyed. We where put in to random groups at the start of the two weeks which was good as everyone got on in ours and we all had lots of ideas for our final animation. On the second day we where told to each draw a storyboard as a pitch for our short animation, i drew a comical cat with makes things worse when trying to help. We didn't go with my idea which was a good thing was our idea we went with was really good. It was about a man looking into a photo album at past memories. We kept expanding on this idea and as iv mentioned in previous posts we went from a eating book to the chain of evolution until we settled on a fly just trying to find his paradise.

Creating the animation was really fun we used a program named I stop motion where we took two pictures for every shot we wanted. we only took one some some shots as we wanted them to go really fast for example the fan starting to spin. Overall i think we worked really well as a team as we all knew what we wanted the animation to be and everyone was really open to new ideas expanding on our project. The final crit went quite well for us and we got some really good feedback in terms off the the way we shot it and also some feedback on how to improve it for the future.

Sound was interesting i learned a lot of things about it i didn't know before. On the first day we learnt what how to use some of the equipment and software which was alright but not particularly interesting until we got to use some of it. It was fun going around looking for objects that might make interesting sounds. When we got to week two we where already in groups of our own choose this time. My group and i worked very well together as we all where contributing ideas. I came up with one idea about having a scenario where we have nature turning in to a city. We where told at our first crit it was cliche so we went about changing it and reversing the idea and adding some more to it.

When we came to the final crit of our sound journey it went really well we didn't get much negative feedback aside from one person not understanding what was going on. We where praised for using all of our own sounds to create the journey and i think that me and my group did a really good job together as we got on and had the same goal in sight for what we wanted to do.

Film was undoubtedly the best part of this course so far. On the first week we got started by looking at some chase sequences which where all very different from each other. There where only three people in my group but we all knew each other and got along really well. We spent the last half of the first day planning what we wanted to do and that was when we came up with the idea of having a surreal chase. we kept changing our story with all the feedback we got so we could make a better one.

On the second week we started filming, unfortunately on monday due to the weather we could not do anything so we carried on planning and doing some test shots. all of the test shots we did really help us out in terms of planning for the day of shooting, since we where using actors from another group who had to do there own film as well all the planning we did made it very easy to film what we needed fast as we had a shot list which we followed to some degree so we could set up our shots fast and get them done.

Overall i think that the last eight weeks have been really good and surprising as i was only really ever interested in film and animation, i didn't expect to like sound and photography so much which was a good thing as they where both really good. Things which  thought worked well where all of my groups as we all got along really well and contributed lots of ideas towards the projects. Another thing that i think world well was the way in most of the projects the use of trial and error, seeing if one shot worked and if it did we would use it and if it didn't we would not. Something that i think i didn't work so well on was the blog i have written a lot to it but i have not enjoyed much of it.