I created this schedule to organise my tasks for over the weekend. I have taken some time this week to complete work for my other modules.
For next week we need to show the rest of the class what we have done so far for our project. I would like to make some more changes to the scene 1 and 3. In order to make the story coherent, maybe I could just include rough drawings for the rest of scene 2 and edit it all together using Adobe Premiere.
We also need to have the first draft for the Media Practice Brochure. Before I can complete this work, I need to amend my storyline, as I've been having doubts about it. Then once I've finalised my idea, I can write the supporting text about my project. Hopefully I will come up with a title too.
On Wednesday I was doing some research about my project as I wanted to find out how to represent my fourth scene accurately. I firstly viewed a list of terror attacks that had taken place on trains. Strangely enough I found out that there was an actually an explosion that took place on a Paris Metro between Notre Dame and Saint Michel in 1995. After a while, I had read many stories about terror attacks which started to make me feel a bit uneasy. Especially in light of the recent terror attack in Westminster, I've started to doubt that I still want to represent this subject matter in my project. I feel as though the topic has become to sensitive.
Subsequently, I met with Paul today to express my doubts. He completely understood my uncertainty and said it would be okay to slightly change my project. We both decided that I should change the antagonist in my story from "terrorists" to something else, possibly more metaphorical. Paul suggested that I research Marine Le Penn and the current state of French politics. This would be related to my project as I'm setting it in Paris. One of my biggest concerns was not wanting to completely start again, as I'm happy with the scenes I've created so far. Therefore I must find a way to use what I've got and change the story only slightly.
Workshop
During this time I had a tutorial with Mary. I showed her my progress and work on sound design. She said that I seemed to making good progress.
Practical
I used this session to update Scene1 with the corrections I wanted to make.
I firstly experimented with using the graphic tablet and photoshop to add some details to the opening shot.
I like using this method, however it was rather time consuming, so I thought I would come back to it at another point.
I added some more details to this shot so that the scene didn't look so empty. I used the tree script on Illustrator, and then used Photoshop to keep the colour scheme consistent.
These are the first three shots of my animation. I now think they look much more consistent, with a neutral colour scheme.
Music - I edited the music to sound like it was being played diegetically on the record player. I followed a tutorial I found on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD-qODP5JCY) and edited the values to suit my taste:
Sound effects - I downloaded a few different sound effects online from freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk. I then added these to my timeline, adjusting the volume and pitch.
In the scene, Alecia kicks Manon's book into her face. I couldn't find an appropriate sound effect online, so tried to create my own, using the recorder on my phone. This doesn't really sound how I want it to, so maybe I should try again using a marantz recorder.
Strengths:
I think I mixed the sound levels quite well
Timing - I believe I edited the sounds to synchronise with the visuals so that it makes sense to the audience
Need to improve:
Pacing - I think I need to add more shots to the end of the sequence, and make them longer as the pacing is too fast. Since the scene is a little bit emotional, it should be much slower to allow the audience sympathise with the characters
Music - I just used a copyrighted song that I already had in my library, but I would not be able to use this in the final version of my film
I could create some more sound effects myself, so that it sounds a bit more realistic
I think I worked really hard to complete the majority of scene 3, although there are still many issues that need to be resolved
I've started working on scene 2, however at a much slower pace. I do feel a bit frustrated as I had planned to complete this scene by the end of the week. Although I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, as there is still time to do so at another point.
Scene 2 is set in the same location as scene 1, along Pont de l’Archeveche, however it set on a sunny, happy day, before the war took place.
I created my own scatter brush of three different padlocks. This was a really time efficient method of replicating an image.
The screenshot above shows the result as I wanted to make it look like Love Lock Bridge
When creating the scatter brush, I also discovered the symbols tool, which has many pre-made shapes and objects. The grime vector pack could be useful in scene 1, to make the location look more dilapidated.
I was very much inspired by some of the sunsets I've seen this week. I love the bright blue, orange and pinks that are shown within the sky. Using these images as a reference, I created the following colour palettes:
I like the second palette the most, and I think it's quite similar to the colour scheme I used in scene 3.
Here I used the colour scheme shown above to change the colour of the sky and water along the river.
I then used Photoshop to increate the brightness and saturation of the whole image.
So far, I've assembled the first three shots of the scene. As mentioned previously, this is behind my schedule. I think I would like to take a short break from animating and come back to it in a few days, with a fresh mind.
By the end of this week I would have to have finished scene 2. I created this brief plan to manage my time. If I work on three shots per day, then I should be done by next week's class.
Workshop
I had previously emailed Mary my first draft of my first scene the feedback was:
The scene works well and makes sense
Walk cycle needs some more bounce to it
Good use of colour and line on Eiffel Tower and Trees
Possibly use a thinner line weighting around the roads
Add more colour gradient to the sky, so that it looks more realistic
Today we had further tutorial with Mary to discuss our progress. Overall I think I'm doing okay and working well towards completing the scenes. Mary suggested that I try to create a sound design for one of my scenes. I think this would be useful to think about now, since I'm not too confident with sound design, so it's better not to leave it to last minute
Practical
In this session, I continued to work on the third scene of my animation. I think this scene is going well so far, although some of my animation could be a bit tighter.
I've put together the first draft for the animation
Strengths:
I like the pacing, I think it's slow and ambiguous and will hopefully intrigue the audience
Colour palette - I worked hard on making sure the colours were consistent throughout the scene
Need to improve:
Make the backgrounds/skies all the same colour
Tighten up the edit - some weird flashes happen
I wanted to add a shot after 0:30 which was a close up of Manon's feet as she walked towards the bridge. However I was struggling to make the walk cycle look realistic.
Finally, I added a shot to the end of the sequence, which showed Manon looking over the bridge. However for some reason, when I exported the file, the last shot was missing. I tried to fix this but couldn't find a solution. Here is what the final shot of the scene was supposed to look like:
Director: Barry Jenkins A look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to manhood is guided by the kindness, support and love of the community that helps raise him.
I wanted to watch this film as it recently won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Similarly to my own project, it features an all-black cast; the film aims to challenge the stereotypes that not only surround race, but sexuality too.
Colour
I was mostly inspired by the colour palettes used, especially in the first chapter of the film. I like the use of teal blue, pastel green and an emphasis on dark brown skin tones. I found this to be really interesting, as usually in film and other media, mise-en-scene techniques such as lighting and post production editing has a tendency to make brown skin tones appear lighter. Instead, Moonlight, presents black skin as unapologetically beautiful.
“Tarell calls Miami a ‘beautiful nightmare’ and I think what we’ve done is paint this nightmare in beautiful tones,” Jenkins told IndieWire in a recent podcast. “We wanted to embrace the tension of that beauty, juxtaposed with the very dark things that are happening to the characters in the story.”
I'd like to use a similar technique in the Scene 2 of my animation. In this scene things appear to be great; Manon and Alecia are enjoying themselves in Paris and I want to convey this through the use of bright colours. Yet at the end of the scene the equilibrium is disturbed as they come into conflict with a soldier, which sets the tone for the rest of the film.
I've created a few colour palettes inspired by the film, using Adobe Color:
I used a still from the film, one that I thought had the nicest colours. I imported this into Adobe Color and it created the colour palette above.
I then used the drop down menu and changed the colour model to muted, as most of my film has muted tones.
I adjusted the colour palette to be sort of a combination of the colourful and muted palettes. Instead it ranges from the dark navy blue, to the very pale beige. I would like to try and use this colour palette in Scene 2 of my animation.
Sound
The film uses a classical score throughout. Although I haven't thoroughly thought through the sound I'll use in my film, I seem to be most drawn to films that use classical music.
What's interesting about Moonlight is that the music still has an influence from hip-hop. In my animation last year, I was influenced by both old and new hip-hop, notably Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). The director of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, was also inspired by this album and thus decided to use of the album's samples within the soundtrack.
"This movie isn’t about the entirety of the black experience, but in recognizing that people from our neighborhood don’t get films made about them often."
Even though my project isn't necessarily about being black, I'd like to pay subtle attention to the use of black characters, by using influences in a similar way to how Jenkins has done.
Jenkins also discusses how the score relates to the intersectionality of the film, as it challenges black masculinity. Similarly, my film will be intersectional is it challenges black femininity. I could somehow reflect this through the use of sound.
Pharoah is from Somerset. He studied at the University of Sussex then proceeded his education at the National Film School. He believes that much of his writing, especially Life of Mars, was influenced by a "Sussex" way of thinking; here it is encouraged to think of outside of the box, to be sceptical and to put everything in context.
He always wanted to be a writer. Just after university he listened to Radio 4, and decided to write a 30 minute radio play. He sent this to the BBC and was eventually paid for this. He always had a gift for story structure. After being told he had difficultly putting his own voice into his scripts, he was given the exercise of writing every morning for two weeks. During this time, his stories featured a recurring character, which happened to be his first childhood love. She was very spiritual and into black magic. His writing turned into a graduate film, Water's Edge, which was nominated for a BAFTA.
Pharoah then started to write about himself and is own life. He wrote a script for Eastenders, and ended up working for them for three years. Reflecting on his experiences working in soap opera production, he stated that he would constantly be writing, seven days a week. Although in this time he became better at writing with experience.
He wrote his own TV show, Where The Heart Is, which was shown on ITV. This implemented devices of social realism. After this, he worked for a production company called Quodos. Pharoah was inspired by cop shows that he used to watch, then imagined what it would be like if they were set in the 70s. This formed the basis of his TV show Life on Mars. This was also inspired by the David Bowie song of the same name. Pharoah explained how at the time he was writing the show, it was very alternative to the mainstream. In the mainstream there was either social realism within soaps or high fantasy such as Doctor Who. Life on Mars was somewhere in between the two, which made it difficult to be accepted by companies. It eight years to get the story sold; during this time the script was re-written about forty times.
I originally used this image as the establishing shot in my animatic. I made it quite rough so I wasn't very happy with it.
I made adjustments to the image so that I had a more coherent colour scheme.
After colouring the image in Photoshop, I still wasn't very happy with the final result. I don't think it looks effective enough to be used as the establishing shot for my animation
Instead I created a new establishing shot, using the more iconic Eiffel Tower. I think that using less detail in this image is more effective, as it doesn't look too messy.
This shot was used next in my animatic. The buildings don't look at all realistic as they don't have any details.
I added more details to the scene, including roofs on the top of the buildings. I also used the tree script again.
I created the walk cycle to make it look as if Manon was walking across the bridge. I was having some trouble with looping it within the composition, so I will ask Paul for help when we have our class session
Finally I added to shot 12 so that Manon was looking out across the bridge.
I completed the background image that I started working on in class on Tuesday. I'm very happy with the way it has turned out. I think that the Notre Dame build looks slightly photorealistic, but still fits with the colour scheme and design I've used in the rest of the images.
I then began working on another shot. Firstly I traced over my paper sketch. I then used the same colour scheme that I'd used in the other shot. I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out so far.
Workshop
I asked Mary for some feedback on my shot list and she said that it was fine and was easy to follow
Strengths
I feel a lot more on track with my work than I did before. I find it really useful to have the shot list as I can clearly check off each shot as I go along.
What I can improve
I could try to speed up the process as it seems to take me many hours just to improve one shot.
Practical
I showed Paul the background images that I've created so far. He suggested that I could add a few more shadows, for example around the bed in shot 29. Also he suggested that for shot 38, I should slow down the background layer and use less contrast. I should then make the building in the front layer darker.
I continued to edit one of my establishing shots for the opening scene. I used the same illustrator file that I'd used in the animatic.
To make the scene look a bit more realistic, I wanted to add some trees.
Firstly, I tried to sketch these on paper, and then I would trace it on Illustrator. However I wasn't very happy with the way they looked.
I searched Google for a tutorial on how to draw trees on Illustrator. Instead of a tutorial, I found a 'script' which I downloaded from this website:
This script randomly generates different shaped trees, which I think looks really cool. I would like to use this on a few different shots to make the scenery look more realistic.
This week's guest lecture was from the freelance radio producer, Dominic Byrne. His work covered topics such as politics, science, international issues. He studies a Masters in International Relations at Sussex. During his time here in 2008, he made a radio podcast about Sussex funding. He has also created projects within other mediums such as print journalism, video and photography.
India’s Beats: the Hungry Generation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ws24p
Atmosphere sounds
Based on 1960s Calcutta
Music
Interview
Jazz Ambassadors of the Cold War
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06j6lh3
The Audio Describers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ssqpl
Wrestling With the Iranians
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c81sk
2008
Iranian Revolution
Popularity of wrestling in Iran
Production felt like a big disaster to Byrne
Process as a producer:
Work alone with a presenter
Pitch the ideas to boss
Have to have good ideas
Research
Writing good proposals
Further advice
You can learn from your mistakes
Its good to get out there and make stuff - create projects for free
Make contacts
Audio network - good website for acquiring copyrighted music
Need to be able to write own description - apeallng; persuasive
useful to know skills in other medium
BBC never ask him to make anything - have to pitch own ideas
I created this image on illustrator for the animatic last term. It didn't have much detail
I used this image from Google Maps as a reference, to add more details to the scenery.
I drew a few extra details on paper, and scanned these to the computer.
Here is the digital version I've created. I made the scene very wide so that I can pan from right to left. I still feel as though I could add more details to the scene as it looks very unrealistic. However the emptiness could emphasise the eerie tone that I'm going for.
