Instilled Emotion - Critical Reflection

    Instilled Emotioned was developed to explore what motivates individuals to capture moments in photography, as well as what role authenticity plays as a result.

Bjarke Ingel 

    Prior to our documentary, Clara De Luca and I watched several productions in preparation. A large inspiration for me was the docu-series, Abstract: The Art of Design, in large part for its interviewee driven structure. In the episode focused on Bjarke Ingels, the filmmakers made heavy use of indirect interviews to allow Ingels tell his story as if talking to the viewer.

Directed by Banksy

    Another documentary we watched in preparation for this project was Exit Through The Gift Shop which did make heavy use of voice over, but it’s used to present a manipulated view on some of the interviewees. For our documentary, we didn’t want to use a voice over since we believe it would create a disconnect from the interviewees, and we wanted to avoid having the viewer feel as though they were being stringed along directly be creators.

    Not including a voiceover though came with the difficulty of keeping interview clips concise yet informative as well as transitioning from topic to topic. We had initially intended to include a third interview with a young macro-social influencer, but we struggled with figuring out how to introduce them in a way that would make sense without voice over. Ultimately, we decided to scrap the interview, but in doing so we removed a way viewers would have engaged with the documentary.

    

    While we didn’t expect viewers to relate to the fame and success she had, she was a high school student; not including her left us with 2 men in their 40s and 50s to lead the documentary, which doesn’t match with our intended target audience age of 16-25 year olds. We chose this demographic since people within this age range use social media much more than people of different age ranges. Even if the documentary, on the surface, focuses primarily on photography, the topic of authenticity is prevalent throughout and is an important aspect to those who produce and consume social media. With the decision to include those two interviews, we’d then appeal to older audiences 40-55 years of age, since they’re the only ones being represented as well as for their views against social media.

    I would’ve liked to see how the structure would have benefited if we introduced the topic of social media sooner, since from the first half and title alone, I believe some viewers would not know that we were going to touch on the topic.

    To make up for viewers that can’t relate to the interviewees or the topics discussed, we did our best to keep the documentary visually engaging. For our interviews we wanted to use two camera angles to emphasize certain parts of the interviews, rather than stay in the same angle for everything. For our b-roll we mic’ed up the interviewee, in order to capture things he said and unique moments, like when he asks the worker towards the beginning if he could take a photo. These two techniques were both used in Abstract to emphasize emotional moments and present the interviews as real people.

    When it came to finding people to interview, my partner and I first used social media to find photographers, but ran into the issue of many of them living an impractical distance away. As a plan B, I decided to ask a friend about their father, Juan Carlos Perez, who I knew was a freelance photographer. He was then the one who connected us with an old colleague of his, William Benshimol. At the time Clara and I jumped directly into writing questions and planning out the interviews. And it was only after filming the two interviews that we realized that we had only 2 latin men providing us with perspectives on photography.

    Deciding to only include these 2 photographers, doesn’t properly represent the photography scene in South Florida nor in photography in general. And naturally since they were friends, they tended to have similar views on the medium. If more time was put into researching possible photographers we could’ve included, we may have found other interviewees from different backgrounds and different views on the topic. This would’ve helped to present the photography community as much more diverse than how it is currently being represented in the documentary.

    We also have the two photographers speak on the topic of social media as people who don’t like social media, hence the documentary ends up generalizing the inauthenticity that is found on social platforms. If Clara and I were able to properly include the social influencer, it would’ve helped to diversify the perspectives shown towards social media.

    Looking back on this production critically, after sinking so much of my time into it. I definitely see the cracks that I glossed over initially. For subsequent projects I plan to spend some more time in planning to think more about representation. I’m still proud of what I was able to do, but I will be referring back to my experiences on this in the future.

The Hard Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

     Now if you remember last year, The Hard Part documented the hardest and most tasking part of my EXTENSION - Film Opening. And long story short, I basically spent a whole week and a half animating at least 6 to 8 hours each day. Now I didn't spend 2 weeks in post-production for this documentary, but that’s not to say it was easy. After filming each interview, Clara and I would each loosely transcribe them in order to plan a final structure and make editing easier. Two of the three interviews were nearly an hour long so it was a lot to look through, and a lot more that wouldn’t make it into the 5 to 7 minute documentary runtime.

The only photo I could find of the editing process

    When it came to actually editing after filming b-roll, it was annoying. We had already written out our plans based on the transcriptions of the interviews, but scrummaging through hours of interviews and hours of b-roll made it daunting to even start. For me the hardest part was making a flow that bridged together a wide array of subtopics without a voice over. The beginning was especially hard for me, since I knew how I wanted it to begin, but I needed to find a way to start with b-roll that looked establishing, clips that had diegetic sound/nat pops, allowed room to include the very beginning of the interview, and most importantly flowed well. I probably spent an hour and half trying to make the first minute of the documentary; I put in over 10 different clips into the timeline to see if it flowed and none worked. Eventually I got it to work, but bigger issues seemed to rise.

    The first issue I ran into was that we were initially going to have both of the photographers introduce themselves at the beginning, but it felt repetitive and didn’t flow with the b-roll or the grander structure. We cut William’s introduction since we couldn't have it flow at the beginning and it felt like a speedbump including it over a minute into the documentary, so decided to keep it concise and just keep what we needed.

    Another big decision we made was to cut out the social media influencer completely. When we planned the structure, we found a way to introduce the influencer, but as we were literally making the rough draft of the documentary the tone ended up different to what we had planned; not a terrible thing, but it just felt odd to introduce the influencer almost halfway through the documentary. Her interview also didn’t provide a super didn’t perspective to social media and authenticity. She said that much of what is success on social media is fake, which is similar to what the photographers thought of social media.

Second to last editing session.
We were hard at work

    After about 18ish hours of editing we had only a few small things let to add, so we left them for the last editing session. During the last session, my computer began to act up more than usual so I restarted and it said there was something wrong with the F Drive, a.k.a. The hard drive I use for bulk storage and that we had used to save the project. I restarted again and it wouldn’t even turn on. Now a week before I had been interviewed by my buddy John about an SD of mine from 2019 that corrupted all my footage from a project, and how I dealt with it for his documentary (Biases aside I thought it was cool, Check it out). While a relatively small project, that day when I lost my footage really hurt me and almost made me contemplate pursuing film as a career.

    Flashforward a to the final editing session and I’m beginning to see parallels to that day with the SD card. My computer wasn’t responding, and it reached the point where me and my dad had to open up the PC tower to see what was wrong. During this whole process, I kept thinking about how much a single SD with 1 project impacted me, and now here I was with my PC of 5 years thinking that the worst was going to happen. My Dad’s uncertainty and Clara looking up if Adobe Premiere projects can be recovered wasn’t helping. I believe I began to have a panic attack and went to another room to catch my breath for a few minutes. When I came back my dad was running probably the 3rd diagnostic on the computer. When it was complete he went to restart it again and after what felt like a lifetime of looking at the Dell logo, the computer finally loads to show the login screen. We all seemed cautiously optimistic as I typed in the password. When it went through, the F Drive was working again. Everything was still there.

    The wave of relief hit me like a truck and I almost burst into tears right then and there (luckily for me that only happened about 10 minutes later B] ). I told Clara that I was going to make a backup of my files and then we’d meet up again later in the day to finish the doc. And that’s what we did, we finished up, sent it to others for feedback, and then submitted. I was really happy with how it came out, both as my first try in the documentary format as well as it being the longest short form project I’ve completed. And the whole experience is something that has engraved this project in my brain. And I’m thankful for all the ups and downs that occurred. We hope to share a definitive cut soon, but for now here's the link to the version that was submitted for the initial due date. I simply can't wait to share more info about the next big project.

Post Submission Pic

I'M BACK!!!

I’ve awakened from a long slumber, and miraculously I made a documentary during that time.

    First things first, this is Clara. For eagle eyed readers, you may remember her from this blog post. We decided to work together for this documentary, which was honestly about time we finally worked together. I’ve never properly worked with her in the past, but I’ve been taking TV Production classes with her for years nowand quite frankly I wanted to see how it’d go.

An experimental short that
attempted to show what a
dream felt like

    On our first day we threw around some ideas, and eventually became fixated on a topic related to photography. Our first few ideas ranged from exploring different forms of photography to the process of developing 35mm film after physically capturing a moment. After a quick with our teacher though, she hit us with the “I think you can do better.” She did give us a bouncing off point when she mentioned that the capturing a moment part could be cool. By this point, it was the end of class and we split off to think on our own and then regroup. Luckily for us I took a nap after school and a possible structure somehow formed and I was able to write it down when I woke up before I forgot. When I told Clara she confirmed to me that it wasn’t just crazy nonsense and good, so we based our structure off a dream (Un Chien Andalou has NOTHING on this Doc)

    We were going to make a documentary about the power of “captured moments” and its influence on authenticity. We’d focus on photographers and their beliefs with staging and documentary photography. Then switching to their beliefs on social media and its influence on authenticity. Our main goal was to determine what really makes a photo or post authentic and whether or not it really matters.

    Not long after we elaborated further on topics, wrote questions, made plans to check out equipment from BECON-TV, made a film schedule, and found possible interviewees (including 2 photographers and a successful social media influencer for a separate perspective). Throughout most of the pre-planning process we’d talked with peers and an alumni about our topic and possible methods to go about practically filming the documentary. Generally speaking we were basically ready to go with everything, and we we’re very excited to begin!!!!!!!!

Schools and District offices will be closed tomorrow, Thursday, November 10. All before and after-school activities are canceled, including field trips, committee meetings and night classes. Aftercare will not be available. pic.twitter.com/KyrTwz6Ovc

— Broward Schools (@browardschools) November 9, 2022

    The hurricane had forced Clara and I to change just about everything with our schedule. We couldn’t pick up equipment since BECON-TV, a BCPS office, was closed, so all things filming were delayed. Even if we did have equipment, we were planning to film the photographers taking photos during events for b-roll, but those events ended up being postponed. We were left punching the air, but after calming down again we got back to work to make a new schedule.

    The next we had made plans to pick up equipment, film the 3 interviews, and shoot b-roll. At times it did feel very back-to-back, but we were on schedule and we were liking what we filmed. Also during that week I won a National Emmy, so that also helped with giving me an extra boost of excitement for the documentary. Anyways by the end of the week, all we had to do was edit.

Very Cool Thing

The Season Finale

 Here's the link to the CCR:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-DB6hkYVD712R0ZwtFuVDyzk1FgFgPZf/view?usp=sharing

WEE DID ITT!!!!!!! LESSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0O0OO!!(!(!(!(!(!(!)!()*!()!*g#i&g!b(*o

 wow just wow

Here's the link to the opening :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dSVGxV_LDbamtxAew5rhNFdUvS-jAxY0/view?usp=sharing

*UPDATE

I suppose I deleted the original link from my Google Drive. He's a link to slightly different version that's on my YouTube.

Only real differences were correcting spelling mistakes like "muisc" to "music" and "Vaccum" to "Vacuum"

New link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iZHHIktV8c

Short and Sweet yet Really Not

     So this opening is due on Monday, and I'm pretty much at the end. It's kind of of sad really. This is the first major project that I've allotted this much time to and the experience way surely something. Over this past school year I've made u somewhere in the ball park of about 20 videos and this opening is was probably one of my favorites to work on. Being in CBTV's weekly show Aftershock, it's easy to fall into a habit of doing things that have already been done before. For the opening I made sure it was definitely a different experience.

    A big part of my motivation came from the National Win at STN, so I felt and knew that I can make something really good if I just put my all into it. I was luckily able to think up a story that was personal to me and something that could feed my hunger for mix media/animation. As I began to story board I became even more motivated with the idea and really wanted to make this something that I would be proud about. Simply just flipping through my sketch book or writing out my blogs I'd just get super excited about the project.

    Before filming, I wanted to plan out the mise-en-scene elements of my opening, since it's something I tend to ignore with other productions I've done. Being a story that was inspired from personal experiences, I had a ton of props that would make the opening feel real. I was super happy to include things from previous projects as props. The story boards from the Take on Me music video I made last year, the Empire magazines that I've recently gotten into, and old copy of a script I made back in the 8th grade. It's nice knowing that everything I've done has led me to where I am today. 

    And how can talk about this project with mentioning the animation. As much as I like a lot of it, its been a real pain in the ass. Both metaphorically and literally (like there'd be days I'd spend 10 hours sitting in the same chair animating). In the end its still worth it though because I'm happy with the final product. 

    While it's sad to be leaving to project behind me, it's definitely got me thinking of how I'm going to have to top this. Maybe I'll animate some more, maybe I won't, but I'll find out soon. And before I go I just wanna thank Tstok and Cambridge for giving me the opportunity to make something I'm proud off. Special thanks to Isa, Kim, Martina, and John. And of course thanks for reading my "intense" blogs. 

Opening and CCR are soon to come...

The Hard Part

    So I've already talked about The Easy Part of this project, but since this is one of the last few blog post I've going to be making about the process of things, I feel I must take about what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks. I've been animating and I've been slowly going crazy, but it's not that bad. I really like how things are turning out. 

    For animating I've been taking advantage of Blender, a free to download 3D animation software. I've used it a handful of times in the past, so I'm kind of familiar with the ins and outs of 3D modeling and animation.  The funny part is, only some of that knowledge actually helped me because there is a HUGE difference between 3D animation and 2D animation. 

    I wanted my opening to include 2D animation, so why did I use a 3D animation software? Well, the program has settings built into it in order for a user to create a 2D animation in 3D space. To briefly explain, your camera view is locked down to a specific angle and axis meaning that as long what you animate remains in that range of few and the camera doesn't move, the animation can look 2D.

    I started off with the main chunk, with each of the characters. I began with Line Guy, then Box Boy, and lastly with Hot Head. Before animating each character, I would sketch them out on the side to get an idea of scale and proportions. I began with animating Line guy on ones (every frame) I did this because I wanted he rising up animating to be smooth and organized since Line Guy's suit and character design is overall busy and could be confusing if it's seen in a rushed manner. When Line Guy was still I switched to animating on two (every 2 frames). I continued going on two following Line Guy's death to the red lines.

    For Box Boy it was a similar process, sketch them out on the side, and then go from there. I started with the head and animated all the motion for it before doing anything else. Since Box Boy's character has more complex design features, I decided to animate them all on twos, with some excepts toward the end. Decreasing the frame rate also helped because Box Boy's spends more time on screen than Line Guy. I also made use of animated loops for when Box Boy stood idle. I would animate about 10 frames worth of material and loop that. I was initially going to do a similar thing with the eyes, I when I did a test run through, there was just way too much going on at once. I decreased the eyes to animate on fours (every 4 frames), but it almost gave me a headache seeing two different framerates in a small, busy space. I decided to make my life easy, and just made 1 main frame for the eyes and kept them there for most of the animation. Luckily for me that ended up with the best result. 

    For Box Boy's body, I had to do a bit of guesstimating on how a body would ragdoll into place. For help I looked at fish eye photos of people. As silly as they may look it has a similar idea in which you can't see the person's body because their head appears too big. For the color palette of Box Boy, I decided to go for a similar look as the scene itself. The character is mostly composed of just positive and negative space, so I made the main palette a light gray and a dark purple. When I went to fill in the sides of the head, I stuck with the same purple but I ran into an issue. I lost the depth and sense of dimension in the head as it got spun off. It just looked like a purple blob. To combat this, I made the fills and outlines two different purples. The outlines would remain with the light shade of purple, but the fills would take on a darker purple. 

    Then it was on for Hot Head, while I go a little bit of experience working with different layers and colors with Box Boy, Hot head was the real challenge. I started with the outer flame (red) and then I went to orange and from orange I ended up at yellow. For this character I had to adjust the distance between layers and move certain layers so that they would appear on top of other layers. For the body I was initially going to give them a bomber jacket and pants, as I was sketching it out it felt too similar to Bod Boy. I decided to keep it simple and went with a lighter design. I also had to make the flame start semi-accurately and get blown out in a way that made sense.

    While I spent most of my Spring Break working on the characters this wasn't the only moment to be animated. This past week I've been working on animating the portion of the credit sequence before the title card. Though still not fully finished. I've used just about all the tricks I learned with the character in order to make quick progress this portion of the opening. I animated on twos, used loops, reordered layers, and made use of some rotoscoping. 

Like I said towards the beginning I like how a lot of this is turn out. Of course I still have to finish a few things, but for now you can enjoy a brief snippet of shot I have to tweak a little bit.

    

Thinking about the CCR

    So on Wednesday, in class my teacher gave a brief presentation about the Creative Critical Reflection portion of the AICE Media AS Final. She mainly reviewed a few points and mentioned that there were examples on her Canvas page. A bit before filming I had skimmed through her page, and did find the rubric for the CCR which did help me a little bit towards being prepared for it. Up until that point I hadn't directly thought about genre all too much, hence the Visual Comedy blog post. 

    Since the presentation I have been thinking about it a lot more and I've started writing the outline to my script. I'm writing out the 4 main questions in a Google Doc and answer them each properly before moves around certain portions to create a nice flow for the CCR. Since the set for my opening hasn't been torn down yet, I might try to find a nice angle of it to serve as the background. I'm probably going to stick with primarily a typical standup style video with some behind the scene photos, used footage, references from other movies and mediums that helped me put this project together.

    I'm not super nervous about the CCR, since these blog post have helped me better understand my experiences and how I've changed over the process of this project. I just need to finish the script for it, so that's want I'm going to do now. I'll see you soon.

Jammin'

 So I've added music. While Zinc Vacuum did say that I had permission to use any song from their discography, I stuck with Orange. I felt including different songs might feel off because they all convey different moods and moments. The song is structured with two main choruses and a valley of sound in between. I initially wanted one of the loud choruses to be for the title card, but the pre-chorus synced up surprisingly well with the grabbing and throwing of the sketch book. To add an extra oomph to it, I copied a classic Daft Punk tradition of putting a low-pass filter and then coming back at full force. So now I need a piece of music for the title card.

Daft Punk's 2nd live album with many uses of low pass "fade in's"

    I first tried to see if I could repeat the chorus and have it serve as a motif of sorts, but it didn't have the same punch and felt a bit lazy. I listened through the rest of the song, and after the last chorus there is a synth that rises and falls as the rest of the instruments fade out. I tried it out for the title card and I liked it. I did raise the overall gain of the clip since it was originally lower. 

    I'm still experimenting a little bit with the music. I have one version of the the chorus that's shorter, while another version has the chorus playing for the full duration. It mostly depends on the final graphics I'd place for the credits. Right now there are some place holder credits just to visualize timings. At the current state in time, I'm leaning towards the shorter chorus since it wouldn't seem as dragged out, and as a practical purpose, if its shorter, I don't need to animate as much. In terms of the line edit of Extension, it's for the most part finished, I just need t add in the animated portions tweak some audio at the beginning and we should be fine

Unplanned for Success

     So here I am I'm like a week into animating. (Full blog about that coming soon) Brief spoiler, but throughout most of the animation process I've been listening to music. All different playlists that I've made and albums I like. And yesterday I was listening to the Score/Instrumental playlist I've made. While listing I began to think about the music for the opening. It's funny, if you were to ask me how the video would look, I'd be able to give a specific answer. If you were to ask me about how it would sound, it'd be a slightly different story.

    In between all the Italian Jazz, Video Game OST's, horror movie scores, and ambient music I was reminded of Orange by Zinc Vacuum. I don't fully remember how I found the track, I just know that I somehow got a hold of it through Instagram back in late 2020 and I've been following them since. I've always appreciated the loud and crashing chorus, and I've toyed with the idea of including in certain moments or scenes for a number of projects I've wanted to make. I looked up their account again, and saw they had a relatively small following and had direct message open. I thought to myself, "Why not?"

    This morning, I drafted up and sent them a message, and in a few hours I got a response! They said that if I wanted I could use any music they've made, as long as I credit them. SOOOOO LETSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Anyways, they were super nice about. We confirmed the official credit which will be, 'Music by Austin Barnette from Zinc Vacuum'. I also mentioned how when the project is finished I'll share it with them.

    I have also added parts of the track Orange to the timeline and now have a better idea for the sound of Extension. I do plan on sharing it with a few people to get some secondary opinions, but for now I am really excited for the final product!

If you want to see more about Zinc Vacuum (previously known as Austin Barnette and the Wall of Sound, I've linked some of their socials below:

https://www.instagram.com/zinc.vacuum.music/?hl=en

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_299CJms3BU8Qegu6Wb0iw

The Easy Part

     So I finished filming and it's now time for EDITING! I like editing because you begin to see how things are shaping up to look like. And sometimes it's a fun trying to figure out what the best order for the sequence would be. Sometimes I could spend upwards of 6 hours in a single editing session, but this wasn't necessarily like that. It was actually much easier because I already edited my opening:

https://frameisokay.blogspot.com/2022/03/editing-before-filming.html

https://frameisokay.blogspot.com/2022/03/timing-and-math-yay.html

    Having a storyboard to follow is really convenient because you don't have to think on the spot about the timings or order, you just follow the plan that was already laid out. Granted it's only a line edit and doesn't have animation or properly mixed sound, but the timings and shots are all there. Unfortunately, I did notice 1 single continuity error and I'm probably have to refilm it. It shouldn't be too bad though since it was during one of the establishing shots of the workspace. if anything it's just annoying because I'm probably going to spend about 30 minutes setting up and tearing down just so I can get an 6-8 second shot. But you know what, this is a lesson and I'll be sure that for whatever my next major project is, I'll keep an eye out for things like that.

    Anyways, I'll let you know how that goes. In the mean time, I'm going to work on animating...

    

How Did Filming Actually Go?

     I've delayed it enough, and I feel it's finally time I write out the actually experience of filming. I wanted to start production earlier in the day, but my sister had her friend from college over in the earlier afternoon. I had started to set up the set around 3:00 PM. Moving furniture, finding old props, placing props, making parts of the set, and setting up lighting took about 6 hours. Though I should mention that I took a break at one point to eat, so the total time is probably a bit less. By the time I started filming it was around 9:00 PM. 

    I'm personally used to filming at night, and I honestly prefer it because that way, you can fully manipulate the lighting without having to worry about outside light. And it wasn't that bad either because I was filming on my own and didn't have to worry about pertaining to someone else's schedule. And more importantly, I'm use to filming things on my own and having to problem solve to make it work. One such strategy, I used was taking advantage of the Canon Connect App. For the opening, I decided I'd use my Canon EOS 90D which can connect to my phone via the app and Bluetooth, so that I can both monitor the shot and make any adjustments.

    I started off with the 2nd chunk because I knew that was going to be the most time consuming shot. Because I had to react to animated characters that aren't real, I had to make sure my timings and reactions were right. To help with this I made tweaked the 2nd chunk reference video, so that there would be auditory cues for me to react and help me know where to look. I only included cues for when I would have to react or look over. The video would be playing off my laptop and would be placed on a chair right below the camera. And to help me a little bit, I mirrored the video so that I could more easily follow where exactly I have to look.

The video I made

    Luckily, it only took a few tries to get right. Following that shot I tried to get shots that had a similar character placement like the shot of my hand and the computer screen or the over-the-shoulder sequence. The hand/computer shot took a while to get right. To make sure I was on beat with the pen taps, I had my laptop play a 240 bpm metronome. For the shot I wanted a rack focus, so I used the Canon Connect App, to adjust the focus. While filming I had to count 8 beats before I would select the next focus point.

    I skipped around a little bit getting shots. Towards the end, I just need the shot of the "One Day" computer on the sticky note next to sketches. And somehow it was only at this point that I realized I need to make the sketches. So for about an hour I was drawing the sketch on the right of the photo below. By the time I fined drawing that it was about it was around 2 AM. As much as I wanted to get last shot of me on the phone before the title card, I was just too tired. 

    I ended up filming the last shot the next day (or I guess later in the day). For this shot it was fairly simple, but I just had my mom help with watching the camera. And since this shot required dialogue we also found a way to hide the phone lavalier mic I have. The best setup we found was just using a band-aid to keep the mic in place and having the wire go through my sleeve.

    Overall I had fun filming and I like how a lot of the shots came out. Though that's not to say it went perfect. Of course there was the oversite about the sketches in the "One Day" shots. And probably because it was late there is a continuity error in one of the shots. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I'm planning on re-filming the shot since it's a fairly simple one.

Lighting the Scene

     So now that I've talked about the set, lets take a minute or a two to talk about the lighting. I am personally under the impression that lighting, is very much an underrated aspect of filmmaking. It seems redundant, but without lighting you can't see anything. Because of that I love designing the lighting scheme for a scene. Sure, its tedious having to move a light slightly to the left or right in order to find a perfect position, but it pays off the in the end.

    For the lighting of the scene, I again referenced real photos of the workspaces animator use. I wanted to create a warm atmosphere. Warm hues tend to be a bit more welcoming, and generally if you're working in a space for a long period of time, you'd probably want to have a warm light as oppose toa dreary cold light. And especially if an animator has to use a computer for long periods of time, its better for their eyes to have warm light rather than cool light that could irritate their eyes. 

    I made it a priority to include practical lights in the scene that would help to motivate the lighting on the subject. I tried to work in props that emitted light and would make sense in the context of the scene. The first things I considered were two lamps, one a table top lamp and other a regular one. I placed then on far ends of the frame to light up the left and right of the scene. To achieve the warm look and feel, I swapped out their regular cool LED blubs, for two tungsten blubs that were in a box in my garage. Not only were the not as bright, but they also fit the mood I was going for. These lights along with a salt lamp, gave the background a warm look to it. They also served as backlights that would help with distinguishing the subject from the background. I also included some practical cool lights in the form of my computer monitor and the tracing surface. This mostly serves the purpose of just adding some variety to the scene.

    While back lights are cool for making silhouettes, that's not exactly what I'm going for. So I also included a key and a fill. For these lights I used two GVM 800D-RGB's light kits. I placed the key light downstage right (it might be late to mention, but last year I did take a theater tech class that taught me skills that I would end up using in this project). The key light was set to about 5300K to achieve the warm look. This light would light a major of the subject's face as well as give the background a general coat of light. While this set up would light the scene pretty well, it still felt flat, so I turned on the fill light. 

    For the fill, I wanted a different color light to contrast the key. I wanted to create an illusion of shadow. This was a technique I learn about last year when I saw a video about lighting design in theater. The concept is that rather than lighting a face and having the other half fall into darkness, lighting designers would use contrasting hues to create a fake shadow on someone's face. This serves to gives form to a subject, while also properly lighting all sides of that subject. Since I've been building up the warm atmosphere, I decided to use a purple fill light. Purple of course is on the opposite side of the color wheel than yellow, meaning that they'd heavily contrast one another. The purple hue could also been seen as moonlight and can be implied that the animator is working late at night.

    Overall I really liked how the lighting and set design came together. When I was setting up for film and planning it all out, I took both aspects in account and made sure they would complement each other. Before I leave, I'll leave you with a still of how the set and lighting ending up in the final shot.

"His blog is Intense"

 Originally I was planning on writing about the lighting in my opening, but the other day in class we actually had a group critique of our current progress. The class was randomly split into groups of 6 and we just talked about our project and problems we've encountered.

From Left->Right; Top->Down: Vale, Gianna, Hannah, Andrea, Clara, and me!

    Up until now, I haven't really known what other people's openings are about, so it was nice for a change to talk to other people about how their projects have been going. I love the collaborative process of making things. The simple fact that no one thinks in the same way as you, begins possibility to so many new ideas. Like at one point Vale mentioned how she was struggling to pick a title for her opening, and Clara gave a suggestion that clicked instantly with Vale.

    In our discussion we talked about certain problems like finding music and locations. I recommended that if they were looking for music to search on Epidemic Sounds. The site has all kinds of features to help find the perfect song, like searching by genre, bpm, mood, and artists. Like for me I mentioned how I wanted to include some music for when there's the cosmetical explosion/credit sequence, I believe it was Clara who recommended I go with some Alternative Rock. Putting aside my love for that genre, I thought it was a good idea since and help bring a heavy presence to the sequence. 

    Another highlight of the experience happened as I was about to explain my story and my blog. Before I could formally start, our teacher interrupts and warns the other group member saying, "his blog is intense." That then proceed to all of the commenting on the fact that my blog posts tend to be long. I thought that all that was pretty funny.

    Overall I really liked the group's discussion. Like I said it's nice to finally know what other people are doing for their projects and how they're all going about it. I also really liked some of the ideas that other people were working on, and I am excited to see how they turn out!

    

    

My Interior Design Phase - Pt. 2

     Finally the long waited sequel to My Interior Design Phase - Pt. 1. In the previous blog post I wrote about the big structural changes to my work space. In this post I'll be talking about all the small details that came together to bring the set to life. And there are some details that are hard to 

    Let's first go over the back wall. I wanted to concentrate on this part of the set since its visible for most of the opening. Going left to right, the first slot has a salt lamp. The lamp doesn't really brighten a whole lot, but it adds some color to the frame and serves as more as an aesthetic addition. The next slot over is the book section. 

    There are books from filmmakers and books about filmmaking to show the animator's interest in the field. There are also 2 photo albums, one for photos taken by the animator and the other a collection of photos from musician, Phil Elverum. And of course there are a few books that were later adapted into films like The Martian and The Shining. The third slot is fairly simple with it just being place for a small digital camera. Some of the photos on this camera would be printed and put into the animator's photo album. 

    The last slot has a wooden manikin figurine on a wooden motorcycle. Mankins are often used as references for making characters of certain body types, so it'd make sense that an animator would have one. And the figurine sitting on a motorcycle is meant to display that the animator has fun with their job. Having the manikin seat on the motorcycle gives it a bit of life as opposed to it just standing on display.

    Above the organizer there are a few folders, some sketches (some of which you'll see within the first few shots), and a pile of magazines from Empire. While barely visible in the actual scene, I really liked the addition of the Empire magazines. Being a magazine focused on filmmaking it'd make sense that the animator would have a few of them. And as a nice tough, the top magazine of the October 2021 issue from Empire, a.k.a. the Edgar Wright Special Edition that was release along side his most recent feature, Last Night In Soho. If he's going to influence me and aspects of the project, I might as well include him in it. Fun Fact: I started reading through issues of Empire because Wright said they were his favorites to read.

Empire magazines and sketches

    On the actual wall we have a few things on display. I personally believe that if anywhere is meant to be some kind of work space it needs at least 2 things, a clock and a calendar. The calendar was the first things I put up since it was already on the wall, so all I had to do was just move it. I wanted a blank month, so I skipped ahead to June; this was I able to cross out all the days leading up to the final due date (Friday, June 17).

    Next up was the clock that was initially going to be a small stand for a clock, but I decided to switch it to a clock that could hang on the wall. The choice was made more for practical purposes, since when I initially put it up I realized it casted a huge shadow on the calendar. For the new clock I stole the clock from my dad's office. And placed it on the far left. 

    For the chalk board, I luckily had a sister that bought one that never used it. I was going to have it above the 3x4 organizer, but it was too tall; I ended up placing it to right of the organizer.  The chalkboard would have "Friday!" in large text with cross hatching surrounding it. Cross-hatching is a drawing technique that is fairly easy to implement and tends to have an aesthetically appealing look to it. And the crosses imply the animator has procrastinated their job, by instead choosing to stress about the due date than actually work on the final piece they have to make.

    As I was setting up, I realized that the clock, calendar, and the chalk board progressively got bigger and bigger, so I decided for the quark board to be in between the the sizes of the calendar and the chalk board. I've had some quark rolled up in some closet for the last several years, so I crossed my fingers and pulled it out and unrolled it. Luckily for me there was nothing majorly wrong with it, so all I had to worry about was trimming the edges. Okay so now I have a nice piece quark up on the wall but with nothing. I thought that the quark board can show off some of the storyboards the animator has previously worked on. 

    Luckily for me, about a year ago I made a different music video to the song Take On Me, where I tried my best to mimic the original's art style. In order to do that I physically animated with graphite and paper at about 6 frames per second. This meant I didn't have to work on making new storyboards since I could just use the ones I already made. I eventually dug up the folder with all the drawn out frames grabs 2 pages each from 2 different scenes. There was an issue though, the frames were too lightly drawn, so I had to add a darker outline around the frame and some of the subjects in the frame. This made each frame pop out a bit more and if it's out of focus you can still assume that they're storyboards.

Frames I drew for the Take On Me music video

    With that out of the way, let's move on to everything else. On the right, its fairly the same to how it usually is. It's a general work station, so it has the mouse, keyboard, and a tons of sticky notes with reminders and notes. There's also an agenda that serves a similar purpose to that of the calendar. And below the monitor there are a few pieces of memorabilia collected over time from the animator like the photo with friends. This is mainly to show that this person does have a life outside of their work.

    On the left desk, we have the tracing station. My mom recently has wanted to get a bit more into art and bought a tracing surface with a  backlight. A common element in the references I saw were all the tracing stations people had. The only issue was, the tracing surface didn't have a kick stand, so I had to jerry rig a kick stand with some blank canvases and a lot of tape. Since the surface did light up it provided another light source in the scene. Next to the tracing station, is a script that is further implies that this person is just one gear in a massive machine full of other filmmakers. This also adds a bit of pressure on the animator knowing tat other people are relying on them. And of course how could I forget the massive 3 foot Akira poster. When looking at the photo references, many animator would display projects and items that have inspired them. Akira has not only influenced me in real life, but I have a feeling this character would also be a fan of Akira.

   And lastly on the main brainstorming desk, there are again more sticky notes with memos about certain due dates are notes to consider. There's also cup full of Pilot G-2 07 pens. Personally they're my favorite pens to use when it comes to sketching things out, and tends to be a favorite of many other artist that I know personally as well as online. The collection of pens implies that the animator tend to be very specific with how they go about things; in this case it shows that these are the only pens this person likes to use. and on top of all that, personally I think it's a funny sight seeing 15+ of the exact same pens.

    And like that I'm done taking about the set design. You should hopefully be able to assume that not only I tried to put a lot of effort in this project, but also a lot of myself. All the elements that came together were real things I've used and made, so I feel that made it easier to give off the impression that the set is a real lived in space. I'm honestly Super happy with how closely I was able to follow through with the initial sketch I made, and I'm really happy that it just looks cool. I've even joked with my mom that I might just leave it all as is.  Anyways, I promise the next blog post shouldn't be this long, but I hope you had a bit of fun reading it. Until next time, I'll see you soon.

My Interior Design Phase - Pt. 1

    Hello, helllo, hellllo! So I finally did it I filmed my opening. As much as I'd like to write about every little aspect about it right now, I'm going to stop myself and talk about the experience bit by bit. This blog post will focus on what I found to be the most fun part of the experience: production design! 

    In class on Friday, I took the time to sketch out the ideas I had for the set based on the photo references from my pervious blogpost. I've already go over the 3 different desk, but the recap, the right desk is for day to day task and putting animations together, the middle desk is where brainstorming task place, and the left desk is a station for tracing. The 3x4 cube organizer is meant to serve the practice purpose of storing things, but the top row would serve to show little hints of the animator's character. And of course the back wall would have a chalk board, quark board, and calendar. And lastly, but definitely not least the Akira poster that would serve as a visual representation of one of the animator's inspirations. Now all that is only really cool if I ended up following, spoiler alter, I did and more.

Desk workspace prior to production

    Similar to how I would tackle most creative endeavors, I first focused on the big details. The metal rack and the electric drum kit were the first to go. I also move the side desk from the original setup to be up against the left wall. Then brought in a white table to serve as the middle desk and provide a bit of symmetry to the mirrored desks on the side. I had also brought in a table to act as the brainstorming table. I also swap the placements of the red lamp and black lamp. I thought the lower light of the black lamp could help to light the back wall as well as appear in the frame and serve to motivate the light.

    Then it was time to tidy up a few things. I put the books in the 3x4 organizer as well as a camera to show some of the interests of the animator. I I also decided to move the black table top lamp to be more on the right side of the frame, in order to free up more wall space. With the realestate I moved my calendar over and added a clock as well as a chalk board. I would soon also add a quark board to the back wall where the table lamp would to reside.

    After spending sometime on the back wall I considered tidying up the left wall. I  realized it was time for me to take down my Hereditary and Green Room posters so they wouldn't appear in the shots. But like they say "when one door closes, another opens" and that's when the Akira poster comes in. I had also pushed back the metal paper organizer and added an inclined surface for tracing

    By this point, you can begin to see the general structure of the set coming together. That being said, I'm going to stop here, so that in the next post I can ramble on about all the small details that are sprinkled throughout the scene. Around this point of the prcess I began to get excited with how things were looking, so I'll be sure to tell you all about it soon. In the mean time, I'll leave you with a photo I got from outside my house, during the set up process.