PRODUCTION DAY 11

We have officially finished our project! You can view the completed project below

PRODUCTION DAY 9 AND 10

During this day the other members of our group went out to film/refilm our credits sequence.
They had to fix a few small typo errors and spell my name correctly!
Once the piece was finished we got to work on editing it into our project.

PRODUCTION DAY 8

Today we edited the credits that Alex and Kieran into our project, but as we put it in we noticed many typo's in the text and some very skippy footage so we had to go back and re-film the short piece.

PRODUCTION DAY 7

Above you can see the stop motion credit sequence that Alex and Kieran produced through the day, Matt and I supervised this work. Personally i found everything worked out really well (After a few failed attempts) it took them about 3 hours to do the above scene.

PRODUCTION DAY 6

Today we did not do much, as we had nothing to do at the time due to a lack of group members! All i did was get the title sequence and slot it into our project. here is a photo of some leafs.

PRODUCTION DAY 5

I spent all of today creating our films title to a high standard in Adobe After Effects, it took us a whole day to edit this single piece as we tried to use motion tracking to steady the footage, but the motion points kept snapping to our actor today we almost finished our title, now all we have to do is import it into our project

PRODUCTION DAY 4

Day four we went out and filmed the last shot for our entire piece. Falling over in the forest.

An extremely simple shot that proved to be quite a challenge to film due to our surroundings, we wanted to have Matt fall backwards past a tree, and as the camera passes the tree the credits would slide/fold in from the edge almost flawlessly.

Directly after capturing this shot we rushed back to the room to edit the last of our footage

PRODUCTION DAY 3

Today we went out filming again, capturing the last of our footage in the hallway and a forest. We had to get Keiran to put on his suit, which we would change in post to make him look like a far more sinister... well dressed man. We had to take multiple shots of Matt walking down the hallway in different fashions, fear and determination being two of them, we had the camera at a high angle during all of these shots to illustrate that whatever he was running towards was taller then him, and far more intimidating. We also ended up retaking our mirror shot two or three times.

Above is our health and safety sheet for the piece, it was required incase anything we planned to film could be dangerous. we also had to fill out a small form about where we planned on filming.

PRODUCTION DAY 2

Today i sat down to edit the first half of our Trapped piece, Whilst the other three members of our group went out to film a little bit more, i stayed back to edit what we had, it was very straight forward cuts and transitions, for the security camera shot i added a filter that created a blue tone and a square camera frame on the video, also putting in a blinking "record" light to make it seem more realistic.

Above is some of the test footage from our outing with the camera and wheel chair, we went out to just get some test shots of what we had previously planned.
We saw that the wheel chair gave us very clean smooth shots, using the wide angle lens we managed to get a lot more into our shots without tearing the edges of the images.
The first shot is of some mirror work, in the actual piece the camera will be stationary on a tripod as to not have any camera shake, we will set it up so the ground looks flat, Almost like it is one surface!

PRODUCTION DAY 1

Today we went out and filmed the first third of our "Trapped" Film. we went to a unused classroom and moved all of the tables in the room to a side, we used the dead zones of the camera to put the tables so that the room would seem empty, we placed a single table in the middle of the room with a chair to be the location that the box is placed. after we positioned the camera and set it to record we all sat just out of shot, excluding our protagonist who completed his roll in the shot, after filming this we captured some key moments from different angles again. We filmed the entire scene in complete darkness.

On the left you can see part of last weeks work, in one of our classes i went aside to work out what props we would need, although there are only two it is still important to be aware of what we are planning on using/buying. I used google to find cheaper alternatives to individual items, whilst i was doing this i asked Kieran to make a costume sheet for our further plans.

On the right is our costume sheet, fairly straight forward showing masks, suits for a smartly dressed protagonist and cloaks for a hooded monster/threat

 After a lot of work and re-takes we created our location sheets, a variety of pictures illustrating locations that we plan to take our shots from.
We have many different photographs to give the camera-crew as much of a view of the location as possible so that they could plan ahead and know what the locations look like.
The shot on the left is of our forest location, as you can see we took photos of the trees, and a almost panoramic set of photographs to show the area, the leafs on the ground make for a very dark environment.

Location 2 is found just outside the G block at Long Road, it is found in the doorway leaving the building. a shot of the wall we plan to mirror is also involved, and an inside shot of the door the actor will walk through

 here are a variety of shots of the hallway that our demon will be in, its a very straightforward set of shots as with them we managed to get everything in with little effort.

MC 900ft Jesus - If I Only Had A Brain

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/demon_face_warp/
The above video is related to a plan for our piece, in which a demon chases our protagonist, we plan to use what we have learned from this video to make the demon far more terrifying then a normal person.

Working on storyboard

For todays class i finished and inked our story boards, i drew them all on post-it notes so that if we needed to rearrange something we could just lift up and move the post-it's. i did a total of 19 frames in the entire piece. to do this i had to visualize the entire piece in my head, and go back on what i thought in a more literal sense.

For this task we had to create an image in photoshop presenting our target audience, showing the things that they would be interested in and things they would regularly do.
As you can se in the image on the left our target audience member is a "Punky" individual, with a interest in horror/thriller. They would listen to rock and Hardstyle (Grind like Techno). They would be interested in video games, with the slightly scripted nature of our piece. They would probably use the internet for searching for new music to listen to.
To make this image i created a A4 sheet and rotated it 90 degrees, i then added new layers for each image.

In our previous class we created a mood board for a horror genre, All images in the collaboration are related to our plans for our trapped piece.
As you can see we have monsters, a bear trap to represent a trap (less trapped, more falling into a trap!) Cages to show locked in. The image of the desk to show being tired, killing time and lazy.

All of these images relate to the final piece that is planned.

Find your tribe

You are an Indie Kid! There’s nothing like the twang of a guitar to get your Converse tapping. Indie Kids are part of a mass – whether that means swaying with their friends at a gig, commenting on Drowned in Sound’s message board or trawling through band profiles on MySpace for the next exciting sound. It’s amazing what can still be done with a guitar, you know.

I found that the find your tribe result was close to my own personality, although less guitar and more synth. I found it would have been more accurate if we had more options on what to pick, but it was very close.

Idea brain storming

Yesterday our group set out to come up with an idea for the "Trapped" Project, in our group of four we all set out to create our own ideas and then join them into one/pick the best. Our film could be any genre from comedy to thriller, it just had to have the title Trapped.
My plan was to have a mental adventure, in which the main character is lost in his mind. A horror thriller adventure with a creature, a confusing master piece. The film would open with an ordinary security guard takes a crate into a room, the door locks and he is trapped. There is a small time lapse as time passes and he falls asleep, then emerging from his slumber outside of the room, but able to see himself inside the room, he attempts to leave the building but ends up back in the same building, he sees a monster in the hallway, it then flashes up to him,  he shuts his eyes and opens them in an open field alone, the camera will pan him as the credits roll, leaving lots of unanswered questions.

In our group we went over all of our pieces and joined features from different parts to create the final project. The final piece is very similar to my piece with a few small added features, including somebody intentionally locking the main in.

Demon photo sequence

In todays class we came in and sat down in preperation to do the editing work with our previous photographs, Due to a technology issue we couldnt do quiet what we wanted (And it was too late to notice i forgot to edit two of the photographs correctly!)
I opened up photoshop on my Macbook and began to work, We had about 60 photographs and only needed 8-10, So i sat and went through picking the best and sorting them into a seperate folder, After i had found them i labled them all one to nine depending on when they would apear in the shot.
I loaded all of the images up into photoshop and made them all monochromatic and darkened the edges to turn what was a bright sunny day, into more of a strange dark/light mix which worked well to add a nightmarish environment.
To make our monster seem that little bit creepier, I tinted Matt's (Person playing the monster) eyes red, Blooded his teeth and hands and made him in colour (although the levels had been changed to make it look like he had a red glow around him, with pale white skin)
Due to the lack of internet i had to scower for stuff already saved on the computer, i thankfully came across another students colage of things from music groups to hair styles, one of the groups art had what looked like a cut open arm, i snipped this out and slotted it into a frame on my image in which the victim had his throat slit open, I kept the blood red to make it stand out more against the rest of the image.

Horror/Thriller prep

In todays class we had to go out and take photographs in preporation for our horror/thriller story board, For this we where given a stills camera (But in our case, we brought in our own) and asked to take photos matching the theme, Before we got sent out we had to draw out our story board and plan everything ahead of time, Although we would not go exactly to plan it is always good to have an outline of whate you want to do.
Whilst we were taking the photographs we did have some moments when we had to convert our shots to make use of the space we had to work with, Replacing the high angle with a long shot for example, Capturing both of our actors at different distances, but still keeping them in focus.
After the hour or so of photography we returned to the class to import our work and sort everything out before the next day in which we were going to edit!

Rosie Ball Visit

Today we had a surprise visit from the greatly interesting Rosie Ball. A student at Long Road in 2006 and now a graduate of the Norwich University College of the Arts who came in to talk about her recent Computer Art and Design degree and BAFTA nominated iPad game.
Rosie came in to talk to us about how she works as a games artist and the many stages she has to work through to get to a finished product, and talk about concepts and final design ideas.
 
The game above was created by a team of five people (including Rosie) where each member of the team worked on stuff that reflected there skills, From 3D characters to the sound track, The visit was extremely interesting and very fun, I personally enjoyed just listening to everything that was sad through the day

Post 8 & 9

(I am going to condense post eight and nine into one post here)

Durring these sessions we were asked to create a piece of audio, to match with our panning sequence of new york.
For this i created a calm slightly chilled piano/violin piece with a clean drum kit in the background. To link this to the video clip i had to import the video into Garage Band, After doing that i had a new "layer" on my Garage Band track, On that layer i could see the video clip as the music plays, and adjust the music as i see fit with the video. After i had finished my piece i had to remove the video clip by selecting the layer and clicking Track>Delete and then confirming the popup.
After doing this i would export the track uncompressed (aif) and import it into Final Cut.

I then added titles for the people who theorhetically assisted me in the creation of the movie. Including an allmighty army of monkeys for the script! I used key frames to make the text layers which i had added previously pan across the screen, at one point in the clip i had the major issue of the video being black, so i had to change the colour of the text to white, which turned out to be more of a challenge then i initially thought, I then did the standard exporting method to export a .mov file, Which i uploaded to vimeo, And embedded above!

Garage band demo

Above is the embedded link from the song i wrote to test Garage Band for the first time, I used the preset loops, then proceeded to adjust them to create slight variations to put together to blend well and work together smoothly.
As this was my first time using the tool, i could not do everything i would have planned.
(Plan to add more to the post after the lesson with more stuff that happened!)

As you can see in the above image, I have a sample selected, on the lower half you can see the "Bones" Of the sample, These lines are the notes for the short piece, I edited these parts on almost every sample i used to create something that was far more personalized and different from anybody elses work, On the right you can see a list of samples with the filter "Grooving".

This is where i got my original samples from before i had edited them, I would drag a sample into the track where i wanted it, On the instrument i wanted it on.

In the upper left you can see a list of my instruments, ranging from a drum loop to an electric piano (And a synthesizer!)

For the first session of the day, We had to upload/finish our work, We used "Vimeo" an online video service like youtube, but for more professional work.

Logo Brainstorming

For this session we had to brainstorm our ideas on a sheet of cartridge paper, I was trying to thin of ideas no other people would think of, Such as logos crashing together to form one, Or something of the likes?

Logo Research

For this short session We were told to do some short research into company logo's, I chose Valve Software and LapfoxTRAX, I chose these because they both relate to things that intrest me, and i like the style/simplicity of the two, We had to write some information about the company, and also how the logo could represent them, Strong solid fonts with a playful character? Could present something rigid but fun.
Valve's logo could show a package, Modern?

Photoshop Skills: Club Flyer (Day 2)

 

For our second session, We were asked to use the blending tricks we had learnt in the previous class to create a "Club Flyer" We had to blend two images to form our background (For me it was an abstract blue/black image and a vortex) We then had to add layers showing which artists would be playing, Some images to show them, A date and location (Station road, September 7th-22nd) And an advertising swing (Live?)

For the artists layer i decided to take inspiration from a Major League Gaming flyer in which the background was made up of a translucent list of Starcraft 2 teams which would be playing for the grand prize, I used three logo's that three different artists are known by (From left to right: NightCore, Sharktits(aka mayhem) and The Pitcher) so that if you are handed the flyer (And know these artists) you would instantly know what kind of music there was going to be, And if you didnt the keytar and blue/black background would give you a hint that it was very techno like music.

Photoshop Skills: Earth & Eye (Day 1)

For our first full session we were required to create an image which replaced the iris of an eye with an image of the Earth, We did this using Adobe Photoshop CS5.X, The files for both the Earth and the eye had been uploaded to "Flickr" prior to the class for us to download and use in photoshop. For this session i was paired with (My now good friend) Kieran due to a lack of systems.
The image of the Earth was about twice as big as the image of the eye, So I used the "Free Transformation" option located under "Image>Free Transformation". We shift clicked the corners to keep the sphericle shape of the earth as we resized it, We then trimmed off the top so that it would not clip with the eye lid/lashes. We then used a layer blending technique to merge the Earth with the iris.
I added a little personal darkening around the edges to give the core a bit more emphasis, and some slight colour tweaking.