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.