Composition Analysis

We were asked to by our lecturer to go visit a local art gallery. So I decide at the time I was back home in Manchester so I decided visit a Manchester Art Gallery. They wanted us t go see a Piece of work that really stand out and analysis the composition off within the frame. I decided to analysis a piece of work buy a artist called Michael-Craig Martin the piece is called Yellow, It is from his collection Inhale/Exhale. I have seen this piece before and I really liked the layout on the painting. Michael-Craig Martin was born in Ireland; Craig-Martin grew up and was educated in the USA, studying Fine Art at Yale University. He moved to Britain on completion of his studies in 1966.*

The painting itself consists of everyday household objects. But there is something wrong with the composition of the painting. It appears the scale of each object is wrong and not realistic. This style follows Naïve art because of the use of bright colours and the fact there is no reason behind the objects being miss proportioned. It is clearly evident that the composition consists of mismatched objects of wrong sizes, such as the light bulb and pencil sharpener are larger that the chair which in really life would be seen as absurd.

Another thing in this painting that is not realistic is the perspective of each object is different and that they are all learning at different angles for example the pencil sharpener is learning forward so you can see the detail on the top and Metronome is learning back. Its appears Craig Martin as done this so that each abject is show most of is detail in the rather than hidden away, this is evident with the two draws in the background of the image are leant forward so the viewer an see the detail within the frame. Also the use of flat colour and the think black line of the image add to the flatness of the composition even though there is lines giving the object dimension because the colour is flat and no shades of the same colour the image still appears flat.

I fell the way the composition is set out is successful and Michael-Craig Martin cleverly presents each object within frame so the viewer asks and wonders whats different about this piece.




*www.Wikipedia.com

Flash Project Part 4 Implementation

Before I could really start my Project I had to do some testing which meant I had to test where the buttons go and what frames they take you to. Because I want my movie to have three different strands that means I had to make 3 new endings so which it meant that I had to learn the sequence of each button and decide which loops take you where.

After testing I had to get the images to put into the time-line. These took the longest of the implementation of the movie. I wanted to the make the movie really interactive like not only the buttons where interactive but also certain parts of the frame like scrolling over cliff and speech bubbles appear creating these as buttons took the longest as I had to keep test these to see if they worked.

Cliff

Cliff

Flash Project Part 3 Ideas

This was tricky trying to come up with a story for this narrative project. It was harder as I had to think for myself and not have help from team members.

I started to doodle and write ideas down. Then I came up with a image of a person called cliff I then decided to turn this character into a Student from Nottingham Trent. I really like the idea that the audience could decide where to take the Character in the movie and that they had the control over the path they should take throughout the sequence. I came up with the idea of there being three main choices in student life; going to university to study, going to the pub or to stay in bed and sleep.

I thought this was a good idea as students could bring there own experiences as a student to the movie and they can decide what type of student they wanted cliff to be.

Flash Project 2 Learning How to use Flash

We were told we had to learn the basics of flash and get to grips with the layout. So I opened it n tried to use it without success, I though I use the online tutorials and these we know help because I find it hard to learn from something that I just being shown to me. The person on the tutorials goes to fast for you to get the gist of what they doing so I prefer to learn as I go along. I prefer to do this because I am learning as I am doing my project. The only problem with this is that you make lots of mistakes until you know what you are doing. but I prefer this and I learn fast from my mistakes. I feel after just playing around with the template that our lecturer gave us. allowed me to learn and enhance my skills using the Adobe creative suite package.

Flash Project 1

We have been set knew project that involves us using Adobe Flash. The project needs to be interactive which means the audience can choose what they want to do with the video and where to take it. In the seminar we had to look at a number of websites that was interactive. I practically like the one from the

Gorillaz it is the website that is used as a marketing tool to sell the merchandise. This whole site is asset out like a game with mini games the whole site is interactive and you almost interact with everything. It is like a journey to find items to enter the shop to buy the merchandise. The audience has a choice to whether they want to go through the website playing the games or just go straight to the shop. I liked the way when you scroll over certain object and they animate or text appears over it.

The Change in Ascetics of the Mobile Phone

The Mobile has been available for handheld use since 1982. The technology has been around for nearly over 50 years were the military used the technology of putting a cell into a telephone to be used out on the battlefield. But this as not what you would call a mobile phone is was a unit that had a phone attached that was attached to the soldiers back then it became a handheld that was barely able to held because it was so large. But really this not what I want to analyses, I want to analyses the change in the look of the mobile in terms ascetics of the phones and how it as change in size dew to the improvement of technology.

Over the years since 1982 the phone has under gone huge facelift, because of the advancement of technology. The phone was not a good looking piece of equipment non-the less it was a handheld phone. When it became available to the public the handset was so large it was unable to fit in your pockets and so was not a convenient item to have. Then as the years past it became smaller and started to become popular for businessmen who needed a phone, again this was not that ascetically pleasing and in some terms would be called a “brick”. The advancement in cell technology did not advance until the technology to produce phone became easier and the invention of the “Pay as You Go” service in 1999 this allowed ordinary people to have Mobile Phones. This spurred the demand for cell technology to improve and so the Phone became smaller as the years past.

Has the technology improved Phones started to incorporate more memory for the built in software and the new colour screen allowed people to have pictures on their Phone. Then they started to introduce Cameras into the phone, which meant people did not need to carry a camera around with them. This allowed Mobile to increase in ascetics to the consumer and become a more desirable item than it once was. Then as mp3 technology improved this then increased the demand to listen to music on the go and the this then spurred the developers to incorperate MP3 capabilites of Phones. This added t to convenience of the Mobile because it meant that you listen to music and gat phone calls on the.

Has the technology of the Mobile advanced so done the looks. When it was first introduced it was big and bulky now the are
much smaller and thinner screens are large and the resolution and colour as improved 10 fold in the past 10 since the further advancement of the Mobile Phone. My Mobile is a Samsung D900i. This phone is a year old and still at the time it was the high of mobile technology and still is it is one a the Thinnest Mobile out the measures 11mm and a screen of 45mm by 34mm for this is a large screen a the picture clarity of this really good. The Phone slim and small but too small as some Phones can be and so making it harder to use and not making the Mobile ascetically pleasing. By making it slim makes it easier to put in you pocket and it won’t be bulky.




The ascetics have improved making the Mobile more usable and easy to put in your pocket making it a desirable object if not an essential item to have on your possession. Has the technology changes the Mobile will only become more and more ascetically pleasing.

One Shot Project Evaluation.

One Shot movie, this is the second project whilst doing Multimedia at university. We were given the brief to create a movie that consisted of just one take with strict rules that we had to use a tripod and only move the camera once. At first we were given a camera and were sent out to make a short one shot film with for word of inspiration. This exercise was intended for to get use to camera and prepare use for the project that was ahead. I feel this exercise went really well for our first time, We had a few problems and had to take a few takes to get it right.

I thought that the exercise was a slight hint on how to handle this project, so to make this a successful project we decided to keep this simple and not to over to complicate it by thinking to much about every thing. We did have a problem though we struggled to come with an idea and where we could film. We wanted to take the film away from student life and not film anywhere near the university. This was not much of a problem for our group because two members were from Nottingham. It took us a while to come up with an idea. We did think of an idea where we wanted to use a room in the golf club where Phil form our group works. But that idea hit a problem, the management of the club would not let us use the golf club because we were not members of the club. So this gave us a set back then we came with a idea of having a person standing outside of a run down house that is in a nice Suburban area. This house is a few doors down from one of my group member’s house. The house was actually repossessed early on in the year because the person who owned it actually owed money to a lot of people and got his home repossessed. We thought this would be a good idea for us t use. So it was decide to use this idea, we had a problem with how to use audio so we went seek help from one of the surgeries we can go to and they reminded us that audio can be a good tool for the video.

Now that we had the idea, it meant that we had to start setting up the scene and confirm that doing the shoot at this location was feasible. So we went and took pictures of the location. We found the location was perfect it really fitted into the idea that in nice suburban area there still can be something that can tarnish the perfect exterior. We thought that the steel plates would lead the audience astray in thinking that the house is in a run council estate, not a nice suburban area. I think that this message is made clear to audience, in the way after the camera zooms out and starts to pan across the street to show the rest of the street.

Now that we knew that we were able to film at this location I produced a storyboard that depicted the shots we wanted with the camera and gave a simplistic indication of the story we wanted to portray. When it came to the day of shooting the weather looked well it was a little overcast. So we went to location and set up the camera, composed the shot, then it started to rain. This delayed us by 40minutes. After it stop the wind pick up a little. Which meant that there is a slight camera shake. I tried to counter act this by having a person stood around the camera to reduce the wind moving the camera, this was not effective. Because we only had that day to get the shot we had to go on, I would like to back to the location to retake the shot on a calmer day, but dew to the weather and time we had it as not been possible to do so.

Now that we had the Shots we needed to sort out the dialogue for the script for audio. We decided to go for a silent movie with the audio overlapping the movie sequence with the audio playing. We wanted the audio to allow the audience to gain an understanding why a person is stood outside the house. We wanted the audio to sound like a Phone call between the owner of the of the house and his mortgage company. We wanted to record the dialogue from a recorded message from a phone but found this to be quite impossible because every we put the microphone next to the phones speaker there was a interference. So we decided to plug the phone into my Mac and use a software package to capture the audio. I was not to happy with the script we came up with so during the editing process I edited the audio to remove in total 5.25 seconds. This also allowed the audio to fit perfect on the timeline of the editing suit I was using. The problem we had now was to emulate the sound of a phone call because it as a tinny sound, so I discovered the plug in “Highpass” gave the effect. With the added ring tones and dial tones. I think that the audio on the video sequence is very effective and was easy for the audience to follow.

I think the One Shot Film was a very successful project despite the set backs we had at the beginning of the project. I feel the Ideas that we have put across the narrative of story combined with the audio made it clear for the audience to under stand what is going on in the frame of the video. I would like to have produced another video sequence but dew the time this was not possible but despite that I think that it is a successful project that went well.

One Shot Final Cut

ONE SHOT PART 4 - Shooting Day

Day of shooting, It was a dull overcast day; it seemed like a perfect day for the idea we had. The natural light was perfect it went with the sad undertone that we wanted. We all met up with a new addition to our group, went to the location near Phil’s house ready for a day of filming. That’s when the problems started. We started the set up of the camera, this was a hard task as the camera was not accepting the tape we inserted in the camera we were having problems with it loading up the tape to start filming. Then when John Hallam the tech guy says check the equipment he means check the equipment, because when it came to mounting the camera on the tripod I took it out of the bag and then I tried to extend the legs and then it fell apart. Luckily Phil had a tripod that we could use, it was not as good as the one we had but we had to make do. So we then went to the location to set up and fame the shot. We decided to only have to house and the person touching the wall of the house. The camera will be zoomed in at the person and will slowly zooming out then when the camera stops zooming out it will pan across the street to show the stark contrast of the house in the neighbourhood. We had problems with the shooting of this sequence with weather. When we set up the camera for the shooting the wing picked up and it stated to rain. So we had to go back. It took around 2 and half hours to get the film done. All in all it was a successful shoot.



This is the unedited footage of the shot we did. When it is complete there will be audio added and I will post the story and script for the movie sequence. Then i will evaluate the success of the idea and the shot when it is completed

ONE SHOT PART 3 - REVELATION

We got and idea. Thanks to Phil and Liam. Phil mentioned that there is an old abandoned house near him. This sparked off the idea train for us. We decided to have to show how there can be run down house even in the nice areas of town. We decided to have a person stand out side of the house, we wanted the camera zoom in at the person touching the wall. We wanted the audience to wander what the person is actually touching. Then the camera will zoom out and pan across the street to so that this place is actually not in a run down estate but in fact in a nice area. So we had the idea on a paper and the storyboard drawn all we had to do was think what else we were missing. So we attended a surgery to get more ideas on what we could do. Deborah reminded us that we could use audio as a tool. So it hit us why not mute the sound of the video and play over it a phone from a bank telling the owner that his house is about to be repossessed, and the video represents his memories of that phone call.

Narrative
A man has been going through a lot of financial problems and as not been keeping up with mortgage payments, so the bank has no option but to repossess that he is living in. The film starts where a few weeks after the repossession of his home, and we are shown the man stood outside the house with in which he once lived in, whilst he is stood there a phone call is played, as the film goes on it come more and more apparent why the man is stood outside the house.


Setting
A boarded up house in a middle class suburban estate. We wanted to show that even in a suburban areas there can still be area in which are quite run down. We wanted to move away from that idealistic view of the suburban area and the house being all pristine and well kept. Such as is portrayed in desperate house wife in terms of the house and there area, but then again the show tries to show under the perfect exterior that there is still problems within the idealistic suburban life. This is why we chose the run down house in a nice area we thought this situation would cause more shock to the audience, than showing a run down house in a council estate where they are quite common.

One shot part 2

Now that we had the brief, it meant we had to get cracking on with the project so which meant we had to set a schedule for the coming weeks ahead. We struggled to come it up some idea. Because it was Halloween all we could come up with was clowns in a pub. Then we had a little breakthrough; Phil told us that he worked in a golf club that had a practically empty lounge room. Was thing of having an old man sat on his own in the pub muttering to himself, figiting a looking to his left slightly. We then could not decide how to end it and so the clown came back to mind, be the old man was getting edgy because he could see a clown and he thought he was seeing things, but that idea just seem too silly to do. Then we thought of using a dark used room at the golf club. The whole idea of the golf club fell through be Phil’s boss would not let us film on location because we not members of the club. So we were thrown into darkness on what to do.


This is picture of the lounge room at theglof club

Health and Safety

We had a lighting health and safety seminar the other day. I found it very useful. I didn,t that there was so many health and safety procedures that need to considered before you can set up lighting on a movie set. We were also put into groups to setup a three point lighting set up. The use of this exercise was to put the procedures we jus learnt into practice. whilst it is fresh in our minds. I feel confident enough to set up a lighting setup when it is needed and keep safe by keeping health and safety in mind. When using Lighting the points you need to consider;

•A health and safety check should be performed before every shoot

• When lights are cooling lower the light and face the head down and to the wall. This represents a hot light and serves as a warning to others.

• Always use glove when handling the lights when they are on, throw away if there is a hole in them.

• Check if plug and wires are not exposed.

• Always use a matt to cover wires if the cross walkways.

• Ensure lights are secure on stands and that wires are at the back of the light.

• Always warn others when lights are being turned on

•Lights should be left to cool for 5+ minutes after being used (as they are very hot when they are on)

New Project-ONE TAKE MOVIE

Im really intrigued with this new project that we have been giving. the whole idea of shooting a two minute movie using one take really intrigues and make me ask a 101 question such as, "is this possible with out making mistakes?" lol. its going to be a enjoyable challenge that I cant wait to get my teeth stuck into. Im in the same group as the on efor the pixilation project, I think weve the creative and technical no how to create something that will be really good.

http://www.single-shot.co.uk this is a very good website for inspiration my favorite video on this is Surprise by Ben Dodd.

Pixilation Evaluation

This project a feel went really well. The planning process of the whole project went really well. It started with us coming up with the idea of the chair taking one of us on a journey the university campus. Then we came up with the idea of the chair coming after one of us to take us back to work, because we are sat in the student union having a drink instead of going to a lecture. So the chair represents the guilt of not going to the lecture, so that’s why I ran away from the chair because I want to get away from the guilt of not going my lecture.

When we shot the piece we had to take the piece and edit it because there were some shots that we were not happy with and some section were the order needed to be re-organised. There is a problem with shooting a video sequence with a stills camera because there is no sound, so a sound track needs to be considered when editing it.

I think the shooting of this sequence went really well, but there were some aspects that I would change, such as when we were outside where the chair catches me and takes me through the doors of the waeverly building there are a few to may shots where my feet touch the floor this was something we did not pick up on when we finished shooting on the. I noticed this when it came editing. In a sense I think this error on my part could play to our advantage because it looks like I could actually
Be trying to stop the chair from taking me back to work.

Before we could transfer the pictures over to an editing facility we had to do a thing in Photoshop called batch processing were we had to edit the size of each photograph to a standard 720-576, which is a standard DVi PAL format? This represents the frame size of the picture.

For the final Edit I wanted to go for a silent movie style to the picture because its done on a stills camera there was no sound only a soundtrack and because sequence was quite sketchy and fast paced this reminded me of old silent movies that I have seen such “Fatty Arbuckle” and “Charlie Chaplin” because the camera capture frame rate is a lot less than modern day cameras they a are quite sketchy. I also got the idea of using title appearing in between scenes the set the scene from old silent movies because this was used to compensate for the complete lack of sound in film of the era. Whilst looking at old films I seen that some had dark edges, so I used this effect on my edit of the sequence.

When shooting this piece we wanted to use different camera angles because we thought it would be good to experiment. I we using different camera angles add to the style we were wanted to go for. We wanted to use humour as a tool to attract the audience to the movie. There is section where I running away from the camera and the it cuts to running towards the camera. I feel that this give the movie sequence depth and a feel of travelling a distance to escape the chair. There are also panning shots that follow the movement of the chair though out the sequence, an example of this is when the chair has got me and it takes me around a corner, the camera follows my movement on the chair.

For the audio of the final sequence I came across the song by accident, because it started playing when I was playing back the video. I decided to go for the Song ‘Inside” by slipknot. This isa metal song and I choose to use this because of the Reebook ad that i look at during research and planing. I thought this really suited the pace of the whole video the song seems to make it go even faster. Especially when the chairs catches me the lyric kick and its give a sort a aggressiveness to the chair as if it is mad at me for running away from. I also choose this song because the Intro last 45 seconds the exact time of my video so I thought using this song really fits in well and the timing of the audio and the video is done well and matches the actions on screen.

All in all I think this video is done quite well. It took me quite some time to get used editing the sequences and feel it is a trial and improvement process that will take a while but I feel quite confident that I know what to do and have basic skills that will improve over time. If I could do it again I would like to have a bit more time to shot the sequence again and may be have more fluentness to the sequence but with the time we had I feel it as come out quite successful.

Hey this is my aniamtion that i had to. Ill talk more about it in the next blog. Ina bit of a hurry at the moment. If anyone watches it leave me a comment. I would like to see what people think.

THIS IS ADSOLUTELY AMAZING!

Im on about the new advert by Sony for their range of LCD tv's. It is done entirely using istop motion animtion. they actually did this in on a busy New York street with people walking around. Apparently for each shot they had a different rabbit for each pose, i cant even begin to think how much plasterscene they must have used to do this advert. The prodution crew apperently rehersed each section of this advert before going out on to the streets of New York so that the animation of each section would be quick and wont cause much chaos within the city. the crew consisted of over40 animators to make thi happen. Once again It is amazing what can be done with a bit creavtiviy can do. So sit back and enjoy.

Pixilation part 2

I feel quite bad has Ive not really made a post since last week. I just kept holding it off. Any way been experimenting with my pixilation project we were set to do has a group. I was really pleased with the shots we had and the narrative that we came up with. I thought it was really creative. I seem to write itself has we went along and shot the piece. I really like the idea of the of us sat in the Student union when we should be doing work and the chair from where we should be as come to get one of us and take us back to work. I just like the way the sketchy style of the way I run adds to the comedy value.

Hopefully I want people at first to ask and wonder why a chair is chasing a student around a university campus then they later realise that the reason this is happening is that, the should be in a class doing work but in fact sat down is the SU bar having a drink with friends.

We got the whole idea for the chase from an old advert "Bellys Gonna Get Ya" is about a jogger getting chased by a huge beer belly. The music on this would be class as metal, I think the music ads to the aggresiveness of the advert.

Pixilation

WOW! I've learnt so much in this past week. I especially enjoyed the stopmation animation we did in groups. Not editted it yet, seen what it looks like on the camera though. It looks a bit sketchy but I think that adds to the character of this tpye of animation. It also adds to the comedy of the sequence. Not too sure what music should be added to it yet, have to see what other people in the group say. But as soon as its edited its deffienately going to be posted on you tube.

I adsolutley love this animation. I was amazed at the fluentness of the sequence. I cant even contemplate how long this must of took.

Just been on youtube and viewed the whiteboard board animations we did last week. I could not believe how effective it looks when its all editted and set up. I'm defienatly going to try it myself. got my dry wipes ready to go. I thought I might aswell post the link to youtube here.

FIRST EVER BLOG

I've never really used a blog before. Only really got into facebook in the summer, only because of the dismal wether we had. But what an amazing tool that was, I found my self finding people I had not spoken to in years, not to mention how easy it is to contact friends for free whilst I'm at uni. So I was advised by my tutors to start a blog because it would be an easy way of getting my work noticed and saving my thoughts. I will deffinately make good use of this blog in the years to come. Oh just thought I would add the pin hole picture I did in the first week.