Inspired by Wriggles & Robins(check out theirs!)
Set up in my bedroom with window wide open at night, tempurature -12ºC/10ºF,
LG HX350T projector, a lot of layers, and hot water stand by. Animation made in AE!
For now, it’s just a one-day simple projecting test. For future, I’d love to connect this with more interactions, exploring possibility to be generic art of emotions and communications. Pam suggested using words recognition to tell user’s speaking content then it can easily avoid pre-rendering! Seems to be having a lot of potentials. Exciting!
Oh there’s one big cannot unsee problem. It’s restricted by the temperature and amount of breath! Hmmm…
It’s the final group project with Hellyn and Mex, for Video and Sound, a fake Kickstarter video. Our product is a sticker that will remind you if you forgot anything to bring with and also inform you the location of object.
First of all, as one-shot scene mentioned in the reading, here’s an one-shot scene I’d love to share, from movie Atonement by Joe Wright. I respect it more after filming by ourselves.
There’re two points I find relatively interesting in the reading.
Like sleeping therapy, editor helps director to make description more clearly(when things don’t go as what director originally think about, director will defend for it then thus become more aware of the theme/thoughts). It’s so true. We’re both the directors and editors in this class project, and when we started editing, we kind of rethought about the whole concept and became more aware of the shots we missed.
Filming and editing are like learning foreign language. You know it well enough but it’s always difficult to speak or even write it. Sometimes you just have to let it go and speak whatever come across your mind, or you’ll be framed by the grammars and then stuck. And this happens in filming/editing as well. A lot of things didn’t follow the script at all. Storyboard and script become a big concept to follow, and improvisation gradually dominates all. But I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, because it seems professional movies and animations follow the script strictly. Some of the final shots look exactly the same with storyboard. That’s probably because they spend a lot of time in the pre-production and sometimes it takes years, so they can make sure what they really want clearly and then be able to follow the script. And maybe it’s also related to the scale. It costs hugely so you don’t have space to waste, and it needs clear descriptions for a lot of staff to follow. And it makes me wonder, is it normal and good to improvise in small scale production? For either filming or editing?
Below is my first editing work, and since it’s a fantasy told by reconstructing clips of movies, it’s relatively simpler than filming and editing at the same time.
There’s an old Chinese saying– “Water can carry a boat; it can sink a boat”, and I think it can also describes technology perfectly. There’s no black-and-white judgement for technology, and in my opinion any innovation is neutral. It is human that makes the difference. For example, text message can be an excuse to avoid talking to someone(causing isolation), but at the same time it’s efficient to send quick and clear information(saving time). It all depends on how human use it.
But, I don’t mean that inventors don’t need to be aware of their doings. At least not in the vicious way. Inventors cannot control the usage of their invention by others, but at least they should, or try, to hold an intention to make this world better. Villains are not welcome to this world, sorry.
Neva and I wanted to play sound with space and left/right tracks to build up an environment in which the audience would feel being cooked, burned, sprayed on, drank etc..
CookYouAll
Except the intro music and high heels sound, we recorded every pieces in Neva’s place. And then we used Pro Tool to edit. Thanks to the advice from teacher Craig, we edited whole piece at first, and then decided which one goes to Ceiling or Floor, which one goes to right or left soundtrack. And for some of the sound pieces , like rolling, we cut one single sound into pieces, and assigned them one after one into the right and left soundtrack.
In the end, the effect is quite good! We did create a 3D sound effect and it’s really interesting to hear our work delivered by 4 stereos(Much better than listening through computer).
Before I start my feedback to the Video and Sound week_01 reading/video-admiring, let me introduce you the “70 Million” by Hold Your Horses, one of the millions(or countless) of sweet and juicy fruits of plagiarisms!
Before this essays/videos assignment, I had an impression that America was strict about copy write and filing law suits about it every single days. And now I know they only represent business. Free spirits exist behind those ugliness and I feel awesome to be here, because I buy the spirit that plagiarisms is inevitable and it dose make good works. Just like before writing a good movie screen, screenwriters must read/watch tons of scripts/stories/movies before, and it’s a lie to say they aren’t affected at all. Indeed, I might hesitate or even be angry about the plagiarisms if it’s about my works. BUT. Since this hasn’t happened on me so I’m good.
Also, there’s one thing really turns me on–“Most artists are converted to art by art itself.” quoted from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstacy of Influence: A Plagiarism. In my ITP two years I’ll keep copying and pasting myself, and wait to see what will I become in the end of this journey.
There’s another things I want to mention, that’s in Kirby Ferguson’s Embrace the Remix video, he said that “… Creativity doesn’t come from within, it comes from without. We’re not self, we’re dependent on one another…” Isn’t it one of the important core notions of ITP, to collaborate? We rely on each others, building ideas based on other ideas. For me, the process is like building a pyramid. We collect “resources” to construct bases, layers after layers, and in the end we reach the point of the pyramid and finish our works. Everyone builds his/her pyramids, with different heights and shapes.
In my first class of Video and Sound from Craig Protzel, Yu, Zoe, and I made a short yet strong film for “The 30-Minute Film Festival”. It’s a black and white horror clip and it is amazing.
(a teaser)
