Moving Image - First Edits

So I've started editing our film, as I said in a previous post, I was not happy with any of the Award ceremony scenes but I've tried to improve it through some specific scene cutting.

All scenes have now been cut and ordered, and I'm very pleased with the way the basement scenes turned out. I've added a few sound clips to simulate the sound of a bigger audience during the award scenes, having manipulated the original file in Adobe Soundbooth this has come out quite well.

I still need to play with the scene transitions, add more sound clips and add some sort of effect over the basement scenes to give the audience the idea that they're watching a flashback, and not a real-time scene.

I will be doing this over the next few days, and hopefully it will all turn out reasonably well.

Moving Image - First thoughts on footage

Having captured our film today I found myself feeling a little mixed. I found a lot of the basement scenes had come out really well. In terms of mood and feel, they hit the nail on the head, and the actors and actress themselves played their roles well. However, all the scenes shot for the award ceremony were of a lower standard.

The disappointment with the award ceremony scene may have been due to lack of planning and organisation on the 'extras' part. The whole scene didn't feel as realistic as I'd of liked due to the fact we simply didn't have enough bodies to fill the seating, and had to make do with the few we had.

Having watched the whole footage back twice, it has occurred to me that zooming in and out, and moving the camera with actor is ineffective and a poor use of screen spacing. I also thought the lighting could have been better during the awards scene.

Hopefully we can still make the film work with some heavy-duty visual editing, along with some well placed audio work.

Moving Image - Filming Stage Complete

So earlier this afternoon we finished the second half of filming off for the 'Moving Image' project. It only took us two days of filming in total. This is due to the fact that half the scenes were filmed in one location, and the others in a different. We were on set in total for around seven hours.

The first day of filming was not as smooth as the second, and we not everything went as planned, but we made the most of the resources available and pulled it together overall.

The second day of filming was much better planned, much more organised and generally flowed a lot better. I think this feeling was shared all round.

Overall the moral and motivation was very good, everyone performed their role extremely well.

I attempted to document some of the filming process by taking along my camera, below is a slide show of the images taken over the two days. As you can see, it was a lot of fun, and both actors/actresses and the film team enjoyed themselves.

Tomorrow we will start editing the film. I am looking forward to the editing, but not to using the Universities painfully slow computers in which to do so.

Visual Essay - Example Images

Below are a few images that I feel are relevant to the pathways I am currently considering going into next year.

Gollum: Possibly my favourite character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy - What I found most impressive about his character was the way he was implemented into the film. Andy Serkis, the actor that plays Gollum, has all his movements and facial expressions mapped so that a CGI version of Gollum can be layered over later. Andy also played King Kong, in Peter Jackson's 2005 rendition of the film. I have chosen this image because I feel it relates to both the 'Moving Image' and 'Virtual Environments' pathways, and I am interested in both of those.

The link below follows an interview with Andy, and how he goes about creating the voice for Gollum and the story behind it.
Andy's Interview with The Guardian

Video showing exactly how much Andy's facial expressions play a part as Gollum.


Video showing how it's done.




Wall-E: Looking at the film as a whole, not just at the specific character. I find Pixar always too an amazing job when it comes to animation. What probably impressed me the most when watched it was the life-likeness of Wall-E's hands, feet and head movement. I could tell they had really spent a lot of time giving him real human characteristics to reflect the character has was trying to portray in the film. I have chosen this image as it relates to the 'Virtual Environments' pathway, and this is one of two pathways next year I am considering taking.


Avatar: Hopefully it didn't need any introduction, though this image isn't exactly the clearest I could have chosen for the film. The entire Avatar world was created in CGI, and having experienced the film in the cinema (in 3D!), I found they had done a phenomenal job. Many people have said, after seeing Avatar, that it's ruined other CGI films for them, as nothing compares. Including promotion costs it was estimated that James Cameron spent somewhere in the region of $500 million, and still turned over an enormous profit, in one weekend it managed to make $232.2 million worldwide. So clearly CGI is a big money spinner.

The cash figures are irrelevant, I chose this image because I thought it was topical and best represented CGI, and in doing so, the 'Virtual Environments' pathway.

Visual Essay - Pathway thoughts

I am most interested in 'Moving Image' and 'Virtual Environments'. However, having not yet done much on 'Virtual Environments' I don't think it would be fair of me to make a justified decision.

Since the start of this academic year I have done both 'Interactive Media' projects, and I feel that this really isn't for me. The whole process does not seem to interest me, and I find it quite tedious.

I am currently doing my second 'Moving Image' project, although I did not enjoy the last one very much, I am thoroughly enjoying this one. However, as we're only halfway through the project I'll reserve final judgement until it's complete. Though this is an aspect of media I will be considering in the future.

So far I have only done the Pixilation project in the 'Virtual Environments' part of the course. I enjoyed the project but having to take that many photos started to become monotonous. I look forward to the next project, as this is one of the pathways I am considering following next year.

Interactive Media - Quiz Topics

So far my biggest issue with producing the quiz was not the actually coding, but on what topic to base it on.

Originally I was going to simply do a 'General Knowledge' quiz, though this seemed a little bit easy, and would make giving the quiz any sort of generic theme difficult.

After spending much time thinking about I have come up with a few possible topics on which to base the quiz, they are as followed:

Transformers - Theme-wise this will be relatively to achieve, as they have the whole 'roboty, futuristic thing' going on. It will also appeal to fans and, having watched the old cartoons and new films, it will not be too difficult to think of the questions and how to incorporate the use of sound and a movie file into it.

DC/Marvel Trivia - Again, generic theme throughout, easy to think of questions and quite topical, especially considering all the latest Hollywood blockbusters are based on the comics. Only thing to consider would be whether the facts were based on the films rendition of events or based on the original comic. Either way, I will have to make it clear before hand on what source the trivia is based on.

Twilight - Having a lot of female friends that love the books and films, this topic seems very much targeted at a more female audience. Creating a theme will be easy and already knowing the target audience will make this very easy to produce. As with the DC/Marvel style quiz, this will also require me to decide whether I base the quiz on the books, or the films. However, having never read the books this might be quite difficult and require outside sources to make sure it's accurate.

Any film-based quiz would be easy to produce, in terms of theme and simplicity, but now it's just deciding on that topic.

Film - Interpretation

For our latest project we have been tasked with producing a short film. We have been given a rough script and stage play, and from that we're to interpret it ourselves. In addition to that we have to add a new scene to the script of our own choosing.

Our script was called ‘Figure’; we have interpreted this quite sinisterly, and have decided that the film will have a lot of contrast, switching between very bright, light-hearted scenes to very dark and sinister scenes.

The film itself follows a young man called Stan who, like his father, believes true art is about intricate detail, detail that cannot be produced by modern day methods such as computers. We see this young man win an award for his accomplishments and get recognised for his talent. However, we soon learn that behind all that ability lies a much darker, sinister secret. Everything Stan produces is modelled off unwilling, live individuals, and once Stan has finished producing his models, the original is 'disposed' of.

The film flicks between Stan receiving the award, with frequent flashbacks to him initially modelling his award-winning figurines. We have also added an extra scene featuring Stan's dad, and Stan himself as a child, in which Stan witness' his father doing the exact same thing when he was younger. This scene is in place to give the audience a better idea of why exactly Stan does, what he does. Playing off the idea that children of an early age are easily influenced, especially by a fatherly figure, and will grow up to believe some things are acceptable, even when they're not.

The films continues to switch back and forth between real time (The award ceremony) and flashbacks of the past (Stan at work in his workshop, and from his childhood) until the end. We plan to make the film very dark, and eerie through use of lighting, clever camera shots and carefully chosen background music and sound effects.

I am thoroughly looking forward to working on this project.

Interpretation - Lighting

My role is to make sure that the lighting for each scene is ideal for the mood/feel we're trying to create. As our film has a lot of contrast between scenes this should be fairly interesting.

The scenes in which we see the main character receiving their award will have to be relatively bright and cheery to portray a light-hearted, yet exciting atmosphere, whilst at the same time still remaining quite dark lighting-wise. This is due to the fact that a typical awards ceremony will only have lighting cast on the stage while the rest of the venue remains in darkness. This is to create focus on the person currently on stage.

The scenes taking place in the workshop area will be a lot darker, mainly because the scenes themselves are of a darker nature. I will be trying to create enough light in these scenes to illuminate the key features whilst still giving the effect of a dark, damp and sinister looking workshop.

I have looked at a technique called 3 point lighting for use in the Award Ceremony scenes; this eradicates all shows on the subject and illuminates them from behind, making them the main focus of the shot. This technique relies on 3 lights positioned at fixed points around the subject. This method forms the basis for most lighting techniques.