In design news, I’ve began development on more of the visual slides. I’ve done sleeping positions and now I’m moving on to wedding dress styles. I’ll probably move onto swords and then jewel cuts from there. I’m hoping to have some fun stuff to show the class next week. Should be good!

For this project I chose to focus on my childhood fixation of my virtual pet. Initially I had some issues deciding on which option to pursue but after realizing on-going themes throughout most of my fixations, I knew what I wanted to express. Childhood pets, my teddy bear and my virtual pet all had to do with a sense of partnership/friendship. I tend to personify things in my life I consider important and this has carried through into my adult life and applies to things ranging from jump drives (USB device) to my cellphone. This trend could have started back in the days of my virtual pet.

I thought the best way to display this complex friendship with technology would be from the digital pet’s side. Giving it a voice and personality so others could see it in the way I see it. It felt like a much more effective way to set up my video instead of just reminiscing about a childhood toy myself.

I am really happy with the visual aesthetic I have carried through. I tried to pay attention to everything that went into the video, including the primitive looping animation, the rotoscoped sequences, the still imagery and the text. I wanted to keep all the content in solid black as it would appear on the original device because it has always amazed me how a series of squares can represent virtually anything. To me it’s like a digital method of pointillism and the most amazing images are the ones that use the least amount of squares possible but still get their message across clearly.

With my content, both the visual and audio style, I wanted it to be a little foreign to the viewer, something they are not used to hearing/seeing but through watching and listening, the viewer needs to build a connection with the digital pet to absorb what it is saying and showing them. Sort of like a hybrid language between english and digital code. Upon screening my video to people to get their reactions, at first they thought they wouldn’t be able to follow along but quickly caught on and interacted with the content with no issues.
The voice I initially used was deep masculine voice, this had the virtual aesthetic I wanted but lacked the small/cuteness of the voice I had envisioned for the virtual pet. I had played with the pitch as well as added a digital beeping tone subtly in the background to give it more of a computer feel. I decided close to the end of production to put up the pitch slightly further because the voice I had been using still had a sense of what I can only describe as “alien mixed with boredom”.
I wanted everything that went into the video to work well together and express the virtual pet’s side of the story while taking previous virtual-pet owners through a nostalgic trip to their own childhood. Upon showing my video to people in my age group, I had a few people mention how it made them feel like digging out their old virtual pet and reconnecting with their old friend. I definitely wanted to get across the idea that there is a complex relationship between people and digital devices but without being too preachy or obvious about it. I just want people to look at their own relationship with technology and see what it means to them.

The article “Filmspace” contained a lot of helpful information that I tried to put in practice for the remainder of my projects. I will be going over the sections I found beneficial to me and believe will help me in the future. I always used to think about the audience’s reaction to a film as an overall experience that applies to the overall movie but after reading the section about “Questions and Expectation” I realized that there’s usually much more at play. For example, during a suspenseful moment the audience is anticipating what comes next and the filmmaker has the control to either meet their expectations or do the exact opposite of what they are expecting.

The reading goes on to discuss the different kinds of perspectives that a film can use.  I already knew most of this information, actually this semester I’ve been considering the mise-en-scene consciously, I always had just not as technically, (didn’t know what it was called or exactly what it included, I just set up scenes intuitively which has its benefits as well as disadvantages.)

I especially found the part about “the look” to be interesting, it seems like such a simple little thing but it works really well. When a person looks in a certain direction, it has become a convention to assume the shot that follows is exactly what they are looking at.

The section regarding the different kinds of shots, (establishing, long, medium, close up, extreme close-up, etc.) were more of a recap for me but still really important elements to know. I do agree with the section about not having to show everything at once, showing only pieces of the story at a time make for much more interesting storytelling.

Overall the article covered a good variety of information. Some of it I already knew but I didn’t mind getting a more in-depth looks at this principles. There was also a lot of new aspects of film I had not thought about before which I found pretty interesting for the most part. I’d say it’s a good introduction to film the introduces the basics and provides practical information that you can put into practice right away.

Reading 2: Lighting and Lighting Techniques

Ok first I’d like to start off by admitting that I have always found lighting to be the most intimidating aspect of filmmaking, (well lighting and maybe recording audio) In my non-school videos I tend to depend heavily on natural lighting to get the job done, of course coupling this with a poor quality microphone and a gust of wind, you can imagine other issues arising.

Alright my point is, I felt this article would be especially benificial to me if I could keep from getting confused by technical terms. The reading was pretty straight forward and including a lot of helpful sections. The technical terms were split up in a good way that helped me remember the different kinds of lights and how they provide a different feel or serve a specific purpose.

It was interesting to find out about how the placement of the lights work together to create a full lighting system. Once the article explain what each light added to the shot, it helped me understand when I would use certain kinds of lighting depending on what I was trying to express. Angle also comes into play much like with camera angles, (ex. high angle/low angle can demonstrate dominance or authority) lighting works similiarly, like how low angle light creates that scary effect like pointing a flashlight under your face.

The thing I liked most of the acticle was it cleared up my feelings of, “why do we need that many lights anyway?” Now that I understand their individual role in the shot, I think I’d be more inclined to say something like, “oh, we need the fill light, there’s too much contrast when we only have the key light in the scene.”

For my loop project I decided to use frame-by-frame animations that moved in the same way as a virtual pet would as well as some rotoscoped imagery as well. Both animation styles are linked by the pixel-like construction that carries through pretty much all the content of the video.

Here are a couple shots of the rotoscoped images with the original frames underneath.

Meshes of the Afternoon:

I’ll admit that this film was a little strange, I’ve seen quite a few old classics during my intro to film class and I always give them a chance but usually end up only partially impressed. This film was actually quite enjoyable. The various aspects worked well together and the universe established was filled with suprizes. It reminded me a little bit of Un Chien Andalou, the french surrealist film that mimics the state of dreaming. This film made good use of the audio by including eerie music chords and rhythmic clunking that synced up with the action on screen.

The world established in the film consisted of disorientation and spinning, repetitive sequences and a series of symbols that remained consistant throughout the film like the mirror, key, flower, record plaver and telephone. The most interesting part of using this everyday objects was how they all became interchangable with the power to swap places with eachother through the film. They almost become characters themselves.

I know when I am enjoying a film when I say to myself, “hey that’s really cool, I wish I thought of that.” or, “wow that’s really interesting, how can I express something similar”. At this point, it’s safe to determine something I’ve seen has got me interested and most likely has made me want to get creative myself.

Two parts of the film that come to mind that demonstrate this was the way the audience does not see the woman’s face for quite a long time in the beginning and this was really well done. The story still worked fine without any facial queues. The reveal wasn’t too involved, but the lead up was enjoyable for me. The other part I felt was really well done was the way the woman looks out the window and sees herself going through the actions that have already taken place, like a time loop. This comes across nicely through the use of the same scene shown from a completely different angle. I thought it was really well done, especially for an old film.

She Puppet:

This film was a lot different than the narrative story telling I’m used to watching. It had an interesting juxtaposition with the audio and visuals but I felt that the film overall could have been done more effectively. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m somewhat of a gamer and watching the death sequence over and over frustrated me at least a small amount. I found the repetitiveness of the different sequences in general to be longer than they needed to be.

The film wasn’t bad, I thought it was an interested method to pursue. I wonder in what other ways video game characters can be used as actors. Something else that might have been bothering me about this one was it brought the question up in of “what is considered a film?” This is one of those old debates of the art world. What exactly classifies as art? Anyway it might have been just the way content was taken from an existing source to create a large portion of the film. I’m sure the film took countless hours to assemble and get just right, so there is a lot of intervention, I know there’s a lot of work there.

I found myself, mostly due to the repetition in the film, examine the programming and animations put in by the video game developers but I’m not sure if this was the film’s intention. It may just be my background in video games, the graphics are quite dated but have a certain charm to them. So overall I’m glad I had the chance to watch the film because it certainly is a different take on what I’m used to and it created enough of a reaction in me to write this reflection so I guess it did accomplishing reaching me as a viewer.

http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en

Once I run the lines through this website, I’ll be applying effects to make it sound more child-like and digital, this will be accomplished through a higher pitch change and sound distortion.

I just finished creating a typeface that I will be using for my loop. It took quite a while to make but I feel it’ll work better than using an existing font. Like my rotoscope content, it’s made out of a grid of large pixels.

http://www.tamenagerie.com/oddpets.html

Storyboards and script is done, now I just need to film some scenes for rotoscoping and  gather some sounds.

I thought the cropping of the images into horizontal strips worked well to show off the texture of each location while not giving away too much. Motion provided the images with a dynamic feel and the ongoing flowing imitated a train’s movement in a very effective way. As the motion stops to show a scene play out  it feels as though we get a glimpse into the people’s lives for only just a passing moment, much like we would while on a train. As this stop and go repeats I get the feeling that whatever I will see will not last for long so I better take it in while it lasts. This is another way the film works to show fragments of something to represent the whole.

One of my favorite effects was the illusion of motion created by the different strips of images moving horizontally. This effect created the illusion of motion, like sitting on a train and watching the landscape move by. The subtle decrease in speed as from bottom to top made the higher strips look like that were farther away because it took longer to ‘pass’ them. I really enjoyed this part and found myself getting lost in the visuals, which really engaged me for the rest of the loop sequence.