my interactive narrative is designed to be used by young children. It was inspired by the cbeebies website and the jackanory website. These website are colourful and fun to use and play with, so i created my narrative in the same way using hand drawn images. I also added sound effect to my work to make it more interesting. To come up with my structure i created a flow diagram to show how the final piece will work.
One shot short film!
As part of the one shot short films we were to work in a group to produce a one shot film. Once our group was selected were we told to make a practice short one shot film. We discussed ideas, a blind date, like someone getting stuck in a lift, a day in the life of a student, an advert, but we decided to make a short film about us as a group discussing what to make our one shot film about, we would pretend we had accidentally left the camera running. We tried this out a few times, but it didnt work as it was hard to hear what was going on and the the script was made up and not very natural. But from watching back the film we had just created, it looked and sounded like it was almost like a cctv camera watching as, without us knowing. We then came up with a more choreographed sequence of events. the story was about a girl dropping her purse, which was then to be stolen by a passer by. This idea worked much better as it wasnt dependant on getting really good sound of any one talking, which was difficult with our equipment and location. it also worked well as it was simple, and the camera looked like a real cctv camera as it was filmed from above and with jolted camera movements like a automatic camera.
After the success of our first short film we decided to meet up on friday the 13th to complete our proper shot film. We thought up ideas and talked about the success of our last project and we all really like the idea and the effectiveness of filming as if it was a cctv camera. We then realized it was Friday 13th and thought about making a film about bad luck on four different people in one location in one shot!
We thought about things that happen which seem like bad luck and thought about how and where we could film them. We came up with ideas like walking under ladders, seeing black cats and things like that, but these we difficult to recreate as none of us owned a black cat or had a ladder handy. So we thought about things that we did have or could have for the shot. We came up with things like slipping on banana skins, forgetting keys, having your drink fizz up and spill all over you, and having the a cash machine out of order.
I think the filming went well, and we managed to get it done after a few takes and everyone's movements and acting worked well to achieve their desired outcome of miss fortune. Mine was to slip on a banana peal, this wasnt very difficult to do as they are just as comical as in cartoons as i found out after 5 or 6 takes. The reaction from me is real as every time we did it, I very nearly did fall flat on my face! Everyone was happy with what we had produced, and I was looking forward to editing our film and adding more detail to it to make it look more like real cctv, like being in black and white and so on..
Then it was our next seminar where we uploaded our film onto premiere. To make it look like a cctv camera we turned it to black and white, and played with the contrast. We then added a' noise' filter to make it look grainy. We thought that the film started to quickly, so we copied a section showing the empty hallway and then pasted it at the start of our film and stretched it so it lasted for short time. We also added a beeping sound to the start to make it feel like the the camera was being started by me entering the shot. We then played with the ending to make it quite funny. Caleb slips on the banana here, and we copied it and then pasted it three times to emphasise him slipping, and the third part we stretched to make it slow motion. This i feel gave the film a comedy note to finish on as you see him start to fall over but dont actually get to see the event happen. We then reduced the background noise, but still managed to keep the noise of the drink spilling quite well. We wanted to add sound effects, but we couldn't find a sound that was just how we wanted it and we wanted the piece to look real, rather than having an artificial sound playing though out. We then added a date and a clock to our film that was created in flash to make it look even more like cctv. We also added a title and an ending title to our film. We used simple text just like the font used in the clock in our film.
Overal I feel our group worked well together to come up with an interesting idea that worked well and we produced an amusing one shot short film.
Presto!
Is about a stage magician's rabbit, that is hungry and forgotten. The rabbit called 'Alec' gets in to a fight with the magician during his magical hat though the means of a set of magical hats. I feel the story works well as its a simple story line and a magic trick we all know about, but doesn't go the way we expect. In this scene new technology is used by pixar to create better motion blurs when the characters are moving face to give it more realism.
One shot short film!
One shot short films
Unlike the previous task of producing a pixilation animation, I have never done any type of video production/film producing. I was interesting in seeing what we were going to be doing as it was something I have never done before. We started off the session looking at risk assessment....to be honest was the most boring hour ever! but i understand why it has to be done! although Im still not looking forward to filling one in again. The other half of the session we were divided into groups to come up with a story on the theme of horror. As a group we came up with one of the longest and most detailed short story as well all had ideas and i felt we worked well together to come up with a very creative, maybe not a 100% original idea but it was different and worked well with are theme.
we also looked at different examples of short films. My favourite was a Touch of Evil. it was created in 1958 and was based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson and is a black-and-white film, and said to be one of the last examples of film noir.
It starts off with an extreme close up of a man putting a bomb into the boot of a car and is a one shot until the car explodes after crossing the american boarder. This sequence is a great opening as it introduce the film with mystery as to who was that man and why that car. The music also sets the scene as it sounds like its from mexico and the ticking of the bomb matches the timing of the music.
Pixilation!
This is my pixilation Animation which I created during the first rotation. I feel that it still needs some work doing to it so Im going to improve the timings and add some music to the animation, but overall I am pleased with the way its turned out. I like the way the it can be played this way or played backwards and it would still have the same story line in it.
This my pin hole camera photograph.I like the way the camera is able to capture detail in the foreground and the background with becoming to blurry. I also like the white vertical line in the image that was created by the light shinning of the inside of the can. Also i like how the photo looks like it was taken with a fish eye lens.
Pin hole camera Photo!
At the very start of the term I, along with every one else produced a pin hole camera out of a beer can and then used this to capture a photograph for 8 seconds. This is my photograph of this task. This is also my favourite image I captured, as it was taken in a graveyard and the beer can camera was placed upon a headstone on the ground. Although it wasn't intensional, the inscription was captured with in my image creating more interest in the foreground and adds more detail to the overall image captured.
Her morning Elegance-OrenLavie
I like Her morning elegance as it as if we are seeing her dreams being acted out on the bed. I also like the way she moves across the bed as if she was walking, swimming and jumping. The use of different sizes pillows add props to the scene as clouds and stepping stones. My favourite parts are the fish that are different sized white socks when she is swimming, the dancing scene near the end as it looks difficult to achieve but the movements still look natural and fluid.
Deadline post-it stopmotion
In deadline post-it i like the way the post-its have been used to create pixels on a tv/computer screen to create images and shapes. I also like the way the man interacts with the post-it by playing pong or being hit by a hammer.
Tony vs Paul
Im sure everyone has seen this before as it is very popular on youtube. I like the mixture of techniques used in this animation from the way photographs are used to create a video within a video and how he uses his hand to write a letter by pointing at it!
Pixilation:stills as frames!
Pixilation is the theme of the animation as we use a digital camera to capture a sequence of frames that assumes a frame rate of 12 per second for a 30 second piece. We must consider camera stability, view point, narrative, gag, pacing, timing, light levels and the clarity of the image. To start off with we were put in to groups of 5 or 6 and were to play around with the idea of pixilation animation. This was both challenging and great fun as we tried to make a narrative. The plot of our first story was to have to people walking to a grave yard and they were to be scared by two ghosts. After this scene was taken we watched it back and could stop laughing at the way our hips wiggled as we walked and the way the ghosts floated around in circles.
After the experimentation stage our group came up with the idea of having a magical box that people would disappear and reappear from in different locations. we couldn't find box large enough so we used a black bin. This worked well as the lid of the bin could be removed and used to hide the person getting out/in the bin. One of the difficult things was getting in and out of the bin as it wasn't big enough to fit your whole body in. As a short animation i feel the narrative worked worked and once put together on the computer should be very entertaining.
Pinhole Camera!!!
As part of another introduction to the course in the induction week we also made our own pinhole cameras out of 440ml beer cans. I have used a pin hole camera before, but this was the first time I had used a beer can as a camera. To create the camera we cut the top of using a can opener and filed down the edges.A lid was then created out of black card and duck tape. A lens was created by piecing a hole in the side of the can with a pin.
To capture the image light sensitive paper was added to the can in a dark room. The camera was now ready to capture an image. The amount of time needed was about 8 seconds, this was achieved by using some black electric tape as a cover for the lens which could be removed for the right amount of time, then replaced over the hole to stop the camera capturing it image.
Overall I felt my image worked well as I placed my can camera on a flat surface, this flat surface also had a engraving on it that was also captured as well as fine detail in the background. I also like the way the images taken look like a fish photograph.
Whiteboard Animations!!!
On the first day of the start of my course we were set the task as a small group to make a whiteboard animation. We were given the task of getting a box from one side of the whiteboard to the other, how this was done was up to our group. As a group i feel we all got on together and produced the craziest off the wall idea. It involved a stick man, an exploding monkey, a jumping shark, superman and a time traveling dragon! Overall I feel the animation worked well even though none of us had done it before. Here is what my group and other groups produced. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtCBNlCtlcY
A Little bit a about me!
Hi,
My name is Alec Page and i have just started my first week at NTU Multimedia. Before starting this course I completed a one year foundation studying Graphic Design, so the multimedia sounds exciting but a little daunting. This is my first ever blog and its going to be about various things I am going to discover this year though my course and also my own personal interests. I will include the work of others as I may like the style of their work or may like to emulate it in the future. Please feel free to comment on anything you see or read!
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