Oh shit.

BRIEF

First thing’s first…

8 WEEK PLAN

Because I am so unsure what I want to do I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to plan to my time so that I have targets and aims to keep me on track to finish and leave enough time to complete my project well…

(Week 1+2 I need to focus on Ident and my essay alone…)

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Skills 

What Skills I have learnt and enjoyed that I want to try and take on into this project…

• 3D
• Invisible Visual Effects
• Green Screen/ Nuke
• Grading

What I want to show for my showreel

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Idea Generation

I made a mind map of everything I was thinking coming into this project because it was easy to get everything down quickly with a pen to paper.

These are some ideas that I have seen that I like the aesthetic of and am putting here to reference to when I come to developing my idea

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Previous Work 

Irena Smitakakova:

• Smoke effects are so authentic in the way it is presented naturally around the scene and also the way she has animated it is really interesting
• The way she builds up frames using compositing skills is something I have always wanted to explore so this could be an opportunity to enhance these skills.
• The matte paintings are incorporated fluidly, knowing I want to incorporate green screen doing some invisible visual effects is a field I would like to get into.
• I like the use of feet and how they are layered over one another with the glitch effect making more people appear into the scene. This could work well with a clone effect with loads of the same person

Audi Advert:

• Subtle Layering as speed builds up it adds interest into the areas of the shot that are quite bland
• Quick cuts to an area of colour like a long exposure photography and the way they use shutter speed to add long imagery of lighting which I LOVE.
• The use of speed ramping makes the shots more aesthetic and they use a sort of jumpy frame by frame effect to add the idea of time moving and fast pace
• Most of all I picked up on this video because of one shot where the camera is going through the street, reaches a taxi and then goes through the window and carries on down the street as though it had passed through it. It is an impossible shot that obviously used Vfx and I would love to know how this was done.

Shot 1:

Shot 2:

Shot 3:

Shot 4:

Yat Fung Leung:

• Strong concept
• Strong Integration of 3D sing lighting appropriately to bend around the shapes and make it look real
• I also like how images have been project and tracked onto the shapes
• The story is ambiguous and allows

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Creating Clean plates

This lecture we did with Jack talked through how to create a clean plate for a shot that hasn’t got one. It showed mom how to take information and rebuild sections to how we imagine it to look like.

my notes:

Screenshots:

Method 1- Transorm 

Roto + transform node allows you to move the information within a certain area. in order to recreate the wall this allows you to move it across to duplicate the footage and hide the part you don’t want

Duplicating the roto and transform node to move the other way and clear up any edges

IBV Colour + Keymix to remove the top of the person and input with the same green as the green screen to key out later

Method 2- RotoPaint

This method uses the clone tool allowing you to paint out information using sections from other parts of the scene. This is really useful in particular for the wall because the detail is so textured. You don’t want to make it look like you have borrowed information because then it is obvious to an audience that Vfx has been used and takes away the aspect of realism. The paint tool allows the process to be a lot more experimental and creative.

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Receate?

I don’t know if I’m allowed to recreate a piece that I have already seen but this is something that I am really inspired by and would like to have a go at…

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Visual Inspiration 

These are two instagrams that I have found that create visuals for music mostly for stage performances. Originally I was really into doing a whole piece for stage visuals looking at mapping it onto boxes and different shapes. I spoke to G and he was really interested in this project and said it would be a good idea however there is a mule next year where we focus on that. I figured I would leave my idea until then so I can develop my skills to create the best possible piece. Whereas for this one I want to concentrate on what I already know and really stretching my current skills to see what I can do.

This is the project that I found that inspired me to do stage visuals…

I have still put on these accounts because there work is extremely beautiful and very influential to me in their originality…

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What Media I want to create

I really want to create a visual representation of music, a way of showing the integration between art and music. Because of this I want my piece to be in a music video type of style. In this way I can achieve the abstract style that I like and create something that isn’t just beautiful but holds a deeper meaning. I really want to create pieces that have purpose or personal attachment and I think this project is the perfect opportunity to start exploring this. I would also quite like it too be quite dark and “weird” not scary but provoking.

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Songs

Song Number 1:

Just Looking by Stereophonics

There is a strong concept behind that song which is very interpretive which is why I chose it for an option. I see it as being about childhood and growth and how we are always told what to do that we have expectations. We are always looking for something more so we never settle with what we have have we aren’t ever “buying” we are “just looking.” I think this could be fun to visualise because it would allow me to explore imagery of freedom and expectation and go into material wealth and all of this. When I looked up the actual meaning for the song it said that Kelly hasn’t stated it so these are some peoples comments on it..

Song Number 2:

Sun of Jean by Loyle Carner

I am very passionate about Loyle Carners work because he writes from the heart and personal experience which I think adds connection to the audience. This particular song explores the story of him and his mum and the respect that someone should have for their mother. With this I could create a really nostalgic and vintage piece that suits the tone of the beat and mirrors the poetic lyrics. I would portray a sense of love and fluidity in transition. It would give me an opportunity to play with layers and camera effects.

Song Number 3:

Side to side by Ariana Grande

Ive put this song on because it is a good example of a song that has a hidden meaning, Ariana Grande is an artist based for all audiences, yet she writes very sexual content. This song as written by Spotify is literally about, “sex so good it leaves you sore.” Yet a younger audience would not notice this. I think it could be fun to make visuals that play with that adult child border, that are quite sexual but with very normal objects and can only be seen this way through the right eyes.

Song Number 4:

Nikki by Logic

Love the double meaning and how something is so sexualised. Addiction is a concept I am personally very familiar with and I am currently cutting down on smoking so the song is very relatable. I like the darkness within the lyrics and the raw sexuality that is presented through it that gives me an opportunity for a very aesthetic piece.

This is what is actually stated as the meaning of this song:

I have decided to go with Nikki by Logic because I think it gives me the largest amount of opportunity and I am passionate about the song. It has a strong tone

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Exploring Addiction

This is something I found of the NHS Addiction help page

 

These are a list of very common symptoms that someone will experience when they first quit smoking…

• restless
• irritable
• tired
• frustrated
• difficulty sleeping
• Weight-gain
• persistant coughing
• Mood changes

These are all the aspects that I would like to focus on when it comes to presenting what it is like to be stuck with an addiction. I do really want to focus on cigarette addiction and smoking imagery however the whole point of the song is that anything can be anybody’s Nikki. Nikki is a metaphor for an addiction of any kind whether it be a phone, gambling, drugs whatever and I also want that to come across.

Addiction affects the brain very heavily and I found this tutorial months ago that I wanted to try and do and thought it might fit well with this project

I am going to have a go at recreating this anyway even if it doesn’t end up being in my final major.

My Attempt:

This is the final creation that I made. I thought the version that I followed was quite fantasy like and “pretty” so as I followed along I created a darker kind of look which I really liked. The only thing that I would want to change is the shape to make it less circular and perfect. Also in the original the edges of the cell join into the nucleus of the cell to make them look connected so I was increase the glow effects to allow this to happen. I did add an adjustment layer to see how I could’ve work with colour grade to get a creepier effect and created this..

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Ink/petrol/liquid

I stumbled across this video accidentally when I was looking for something different and was instantly inspired. I have always loved using filming to create this creepy liquid piece from doing my Breaking Bad title sequence to the Channel 666 piece. I think this type of thing could work well representing toxins and all the gunk that is bull,t up in your body physically and mentally. Smoking in particular builds up tar into your lungs and mouth but it all take sour your mind with cravings.

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Photographs 

I took these photos agesss ago as part of a personal project experimenting with different camera techniques.

Vintage Effect

I took these on a 35mm Film Camera which was really exciting because I hadn’t used this media before. It was a summer piece where I wanted to show exposure of personal space. I took someone into a public area and had her as the only one aware of the camera. I quite like this because it adds this feeling of complete isolation. This is what people can feel like with an addiction like they are completely on their own. It is something only you can feel you feel unable to talk about it with others. This is a strong concept that could be very interesting from a cinematography point of view. I also like the noise effect from using an old camera.

Stephanie Aline is a photographer and filmmaker from Birmingham who talks about how she makes her digital footage look like it’s been taken using a film camera

https://www.stephaniealice.co.uk/make-photos-look-like-film/

Smoke Effect

This could have very easily been created in post however these are two totally accidental  images that I took when holding a cigarette in my hand. Being a straight it gave off alot of smoke and being so close to the camera it picked it up really nicely and gave me two beautiful photographs. I really like the darkness and depth created from having a strong foreground and a stark background. This kind of dark raw visual is something I want to pursue in my FMP. (authenticity of using a cig opposed to a smoke bomb e.c.t)

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Skin Texture

As I thought more about the song I think about the senses and the feeling of touch and taste that adds to the addiction of a cigarette. Sharing a cigarette has also been known to be a sexual interaction in a literary sense from years and years ago. I liked the idea of tension and sexuality playing a part in the anxiety that is clearly presented in the song. Imagery that came to mind was fingers against the skin. This can be both flirtatious and anxious and I think works well with the tone of the music. This is a quick mood board of the kind of images I have been thinking about…

Other things I thought of that could be interesting is the transformation from young to old skin. This gives a representation of time and ageing and how it speeds up your life too quickly. I also liked the idea of goosebumps because that indicates sensitivity around the skin and fear. When you get goosebumps it can sometimes mean you are uncomfortable and I think this could be a cool way of taking this project. Creating imagery that might be a little hard to watch, something real, nothing sugar coated.

I also spoke to my boyfriend about the project and he come up with a really interesting concept that if I can do right I think would be incredibly effective. It is the idea of having water drip onto the skin but as soon as it hit it becomes smoke. To visualise it a bit better I Created these two quick stills on photoshop..

(When I say I made them quick I mean like 5 minutes quick so no judgement on how tacky they look hahahah and the backgrounds on both would be black)

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3D Eyeball

my attempt following this…

I was really happy with the result of my 3D, because the reflections look natural as well as the textures adding to the realism

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Veins

I would ideally really like to add veins to the piece and animate them slowly running down the leg and turning from the red/blue/purple colour to a deep black.

I had this idea as soon as I came up with using skin within my project in the third week. However as I have thought about it more I became inspired by Billie Eilish’s Imagery in her music videos. In the one for bury a friend, she is shown with blacked out eyes and then her veins appear black as they emerge from needles that have been put in her back. Billie has a really creepy yet interesting way of setting up her visuals. I don’t want mine to be as scary as shown but I like the cuts and the way that lighting has been used to create transitions.

Shots that I took from seeing this…

She also has a really interesting concept presented in her song when the party over where Black ink like liquid comes pouring out of her eyes. I wanted a large focus to be on the eyes anyway, the eyes being the key to the mind and addiction is known to be a mental state as well as a physical burden. I would really like to find ways of recreating this kind of look. I would like to take footage of the eyes all white to add a creepy, messed up side to the piece as though the addiction is taking over the body.

These are two shots that I find really interesting…

Tutorials

Some tutorials I have found to play around with when I have shot my footage..

Veins:

Zombie Eyes:

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Lighting

I was inspired by one thing that I saw on instagram that was this image..

…and I really loved the way it looked and thought it could be a fun progression in my piece. I looked into it further and created a mood board of these kind of ideas and types of looks

This a link that I found that shows you how these coloured shadows are created…

http://www.exo.net/~pauld/summer_institute/summer_day6color/colored_shadow_exploration.html

A lot of the ideas that I have looked at include the use of a projector, which is something I would like to look into doing. I could use one in two ways. Number one is to create imagery to go behind the person and film the person in front of it like a shadow. And number two is to actually project the image into the whole space and have the image refract over the background and the body in the frame so the imagery folds over the skin.

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Music video Inspiration 

Seeing as I want to create visuals that would be in a music video I decided to go in and look at music videos that are existing and see how they relate visuals to the beats of the music. I don’t want the piece to be sound synced as such but I do want it to fit fluidly against it and capture the vibe perfectly

Jagwar Ma

I have already looked at this video when I was looking at my sound sync project. Seeing as I am going in a more cinematography vibe compared to the sound sync where it was very motion graphics I decided to go back to this as it suits more appropriately here. After looking at Billie Eillish I have decided that I really like the flashy kind of glitch effect on the layers to creating interesting transitions and this video does this as well. I really like the way that it explores moments where it is quite dramatic and holds frames so that you can appreciate the singer. But then it goes on to an upbeat crossover of visuals that brings in an abstract piece.

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Lyrics

I decided to go in and dissect the lyrics and find all the key  parts within it that I can use to strengthen my symmetry from the visuals to the song. I want to keep it as close to the meaning as possible whilst keeping it abstract and unusual.

After really analysing the lyrics of the song there are certain images that I want to make sure appear in my FMP which are…

1. veins
2. lungs
3. bloodstream
4. going crazy
5. hard drugs
6. Nikki Baby
7. mind
8. young
9. together
10. run
11. fresh
12. breath
13. taste
14. erase
15. crave

I have also realised that the song is longer than the amount of time that my FMP is allowed to be so I need to select which part of the song I want to create imagery over. I have a lot of effects that I want to include so I don’t want to make it too long so that I can really focus on getting the effects looking how I want them too and as realistic as possible.

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Footage

• I decided to shoot in the Green Screen Studio so that I could use the black curtains as a backdrop using polly on the floor to stop the green reflecting.
• I wanted the main lights off so that I could use the two small lights and the RGB lamp to adapt the gels I wanted shot by shot
• I used C-Log to give me more to play with when it came to editing, having the freedom to deepen the blacks as I please
• I used Joe (my boyfriend)  as my model. I wanted it to be a male because the voice in the song is a male, and also because this is supposed to be subtly sexualised and I wanted focus to be on the skin he was comfortable being in front of me with his top off.

I forgot to take a picture of my set up so I created the layout on photoshop…

Group of all of my footage one after the other…

I also took some shots that were just green screen, of Robyn. I wanted to visualise the female of “Nikki” and have this flashing up throughout the piece like a memory of his like the moments he remembers of her. I had her laughing and spinning and talking to the camera as if the view is looking from hers to his eyes.

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Colour Grade

I have tried some simple colour grades using After Effects Lumetri Colour effect in order to visualise how the footage is going to look better.

Tracking:

Ok so I have always wanted to be able to track but knowing we were going to learn it next year I had kind of pushed it aside. However with a lot of the effects that I want to add to the skin, tracking is a big part of it. I want to have a go with it from things I have read and from tutorials and then if it is too difficult I can push the idea aside and try something different. I found many tutorials that use mocha ae tracker that is built into after effects which are really easy to follow so I will try and use these on my effects.

Ok so this is my first ever go at tracking I used a software called mocha ae on after effects. Before any of this I took one shot that I knew I wanted the veins effect on and put it into after effects. Having shot entirely in C Log I graded the piece and this was my result…

I went back to one of the tutorials that I had saved earlier and took inspiration from the way they created veins. Instead of using a plug in, it was simply the Advanced thunder effect with the settings altered to how I liked it…

Then it came to tracking. I took the Mocha Ae effect and placed it onto the original footage which brings up the tracking tab. I then used the pen tool to create a loop selection around the nipple and tracked it forwards to capture it’s movement…

I then applied this to a null object which I parented to the vein effect and this was my result…

Being a MASSIVE BEGINNER at this type of thing, the track is obviously a little wobbly and this is especially obvious underneath the armpit of him. I don’t think it quite tracks in the way I want it to, however I do want to add layers on top of this and use Gaussian blur to add depth to veins and help them link with the skin more. I want to speak to my lecturers tomorrow so that they can guide me through this and help me understand tracking better.

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Creating Smoke

I tried to create a smoke effect using fractal noise and VR fractal noise in after effects. I go a feel for smoke however I wanted it to have more of the thin twists and turns of cigarette smoke…

I put in this screenshot because it said that someone else was allowed to use for for a uni project so I assumed I could too hahah 🙂

Dark Energy Tutorial

I played around with one tutorial that used shockwave files that are merged together, using effects on after effects to give it to circular shape…

These are the smoke videos that I downloaded…

screenshots of my process…

1. I drew random lines on the screen and used the offset and polar co-ordinates effects to make it look like it is revolving outwards over and over

2. I then used fractal noise to make the image look really smokey and mirored it to have this floaty illusion to fill out the circular shape

3. Then I overplayed each of the downloaded smoke effects to join up into one smokey ball.

Im hoping to use this as a background for my green screen shots of Robyn.

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Eye Popping

Trying to recreate the eye popping out of the face – trying to match the colour of the eye

Ok so this ended up being a huge no. I couldn’t get my head rough the grading and how I would push the pupil around the eye and I figured that the concept of the shot wasn’t vital to my piece so have pushed it aside. I wish I could’ve got it to work, so Ill make this a summer project instead.

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Creating coloured Eyes

I needed a new alternative for the inside of the eye because it would no longer be popping through and I went for the cataract sort of look. I used a mask and key-framed it over the eye movements to black it all off. I started off with a totally black eye like the demon tutorial I found but then when I experimented with fractal noise it gave this gel kind of film over the eye which makes him look blind. I like this because this is an effect of smoking.

The mask

The outcomes

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RGB Channels 

Colour distortion using the split of RGB Channels and a glitch effect. I Thought that these might add distortion to the piece adding another level of illusion.

 

My Attempt:

It didn’t match the creepy look I had going on lol. I am going to keep the grain to make it look older and dated because this adds to my aesthetic making the skin look less perfect and more damaged. However adding the RGB channels took away from the darkness. I like the simplicity of having the black contrasting with the warm towns of the skin and the red effects, the rib makes it too busy.

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Other Smoke Effects 

Drifty Smoke

Focused smoke

Lung Smoke

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FINAL PIECE

For my final piece I created a sequence on premiere pro with all the raw footage to figure out the look of the whole thing. After doing this and making sure it all matched to the music, I  went into different softwares and created the effects I wanted and then simply replaced the footage from the bins so they fit into the right slots…

Green Screen Process

1. Denoise
2. My Key and Grade

3. This is an alternative grade that I liked but ended up being too dark and didn’t fit my piece

4. Using Roto to Darken out the white pattern in the trousers to make it neutral

5. Final Key

My second Green shot: Final key

Grading and effects on both keys…

This one only needed Colour grade because of where it was going in my piece

On this other shot I used the shockwave smoke effects from my practices with a slight tint to add this dream like memory emphasis on the girl

Veins

My main veins for the piece were focused on the very first shot. I used the mocha ae tracker like I did in my practices to make them stick to the body using core drain and decay to make a gradual growing effect

I also keyframed the colour of the veins and the glow so that it gradually turns from red to black as if to be turning the body toxic

I also used the veins on the leg section. This wasn’t in my original plan but it matched up with the part of the music where it was really suitable so I used the same format for how I made these veins, on the legs, and rotted around the hands to make it look like they were running over the top of them.

One other thing I added on to this was a wiggle. I didn’t track the veins because they are barely moving but theres slight twitches so this added to the realistic effect.

The last shot that I used the vein effect on was the pulled down eyes. The eyes were always going to be dark but I feel like this gave it a dripping more dark feel and that it what I was going for.  I started just using a mask on a black solid with the opacity slightly dropped to deepen the blacks in the eye.

I then added two masks on a solid just to deepen the sharing around the eyes

Then finally the veins to finish it off

Smoke

For the smokey veins I took my original comp and placed it over top of the chest shot and messed around with the blending modes until I got the look that I wanted

The second smoke shot was actually a lot simpler because I just took the downloaded file and placed it so it travelled up the curve of the arm. Then quickly rotoed the arm so it appeared to be running on top of it

Darkening

For the mouth shot I did the same for the eyes and created a mask to add the bruisey effect around the edges of the face. I also then had a black solid over the tongue to make it look black in colour apposed to red because alot of the damage from smoking goes to your teeth and mouth.

I used a similar effect again on the shot where he grabs his chest. this one ended up being a very happy accident. I used the mask on the part of the skin that is grabbed and upped the contrast and colours so it created a sharp red across the skin. it created a flow that goes down the skin like blood and I ended up loving this. The Highlights and Blacks are crushed to the point where it roughens off all the edges giving an eroding effect and I think this really works for the concept. It shows the body like it is melting away from the addiction.

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Other shots

For alll the other shots that didn’t have effects I just used lumetri colour on After effects to make them match. I also put a light grain over the whole piece to get that feeling of old and vintage like I originally wanted from seeing the shots I took of Hayley on a 35mm film camera. It really added authenticity to it.

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My Final Outcome:

That’s it for first year.

 

 

 

 

THE BRIEF

Initial Research:

Research of TV Channels and what colours relate to each ones

These are the channels I initially thought of as they are ones that I can either relate to in terms of there Channel identity or is one I watch and am very familiar with it’s content and branding…

1.BBC One – Colour Red

Red, Circle, World, Earth, Connection, nature, people

2. Sky Atlantic – Colour Clear 

Glass like, Clean, Crystal Water, City, Jelly, Bigger picture

3. ITV – Colour Yellow 

4. BBC Two – Colour Blue

5. E4 – Colour Purple 

6. Channel 4 – Colour Mixed

7. National Geographic –  Colour Yellow

8. Comedy Central – Black and White Circle

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First TV Ident

Tv Ident’s are a great way to give an identity and a brand to a channel. The ident will play just before the programme starts on that channel to let the audience know what they’re watching. As well as being a strong advert for a channel they are also used to attract a certain target audience using colour, concept and audio to do this. The most important part of an Ident is that they are relevant and memorable.

BBC is the Station that began the ident in 1953…

Since then many other channels began to follow the trend and as technology advanced 3D began being introduced to the animations. Brands constantly adapt their idents to keep up with trends and keep their channel exciting.

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Physics

We were shown this piece of past student work and it really inspired me because of the way they used physics in 3D. I think that the ripples and reaction of the letters against the tea really sells the ident and although it’s simple it works perfectly.

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Other TV Channels 

Even though I like the Tv Channels above and might end up doing one of them I feel like I haven’t explored all the channels enough to make a decision when I still have no concrete ideas. I don’t watch TV, I’m a serious Netflix and catch up TV kind of person that I’m never flicking through channels to discover new ones or see any of their idents. To broaden my research I Literally typed into google “All the Tv Channels” so that I could find a long list of them all and look up the ones that jumped out at me.

My Phone screen as I did this on the train coming back from Cardiff Bay…

BT Sport:

Circles, graphics

Travel Channel:

Planes, paper, maps, stairs leading to new place

Animal Planet:

Animals/Textures, Scenes, different environments

Sky Arts:

Creative, fun, challenge, Clear theme, Ambition

W:

Eyes, looking, entertainment

 

 

 

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Learning Materials:

The previous method gave me some ideas but it was taking me really long to find visual inspiration by researching each channel individually especially when I didn’t know them very well. Therefore I remembered about a site we were told about in a lecture which is ManvsMachine. I couldn’t remember the exact name so I went onto the learning materials and found it along with a site called The Ident Gallery which both gave me so much inspiration that I am starting to frame a real idea.

Sky Arts:

This is one of the first Channels that I found and was really drawn to because I remember both of these idents that are so encapsulating.

Sky Arts is a channel all about art so it makes sense that they’re idents have all been very classic and expressive. The Channel shows all kinds of programmes that show very highbrow art forms like theatre, music, opera e.c.t.

The colour scheme is fun because it’s so vibrant almost always against a really bland white background so the colour is the forefront. It would be cool to take out all the colours at once and have three sections of the ident where you highlight certain colour palettes.

(One quick idea I had was to use someone that is colour blind and they are trying to track  all the shapes within the glasses but it’s all bland but then when they turn the glasses on, the camera goes through the lens where everything suddenly starts becoming less saturated and bold and beautiful. The concept is that the channel opens your eyes to so many new art forms you were “blind to” before)

After looking into the brand a little further it showed a few examples of actual art (pencils and pens) being used to define the brand as “Art.” I made a list of all the other art forms I could think of that I could use to make my idents..

• Music
• Photography
• Painting
• Mosaic
• Architecture
• Animation
• Dance
• Ceramics

 

 

 

 

 

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Animal Planet:

The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet were the first two that took to my mind as soon as I heard the brief because I’ve always really wanted to do a project that included a Tiger. I am so obsessed with the animal and print and thought this would be a good opportunity to finally bring that in too my work.

This Channel is not as raw and harsh as some of the other factual channels on tv. It’s mission is to keep the childlike passion of animals alive and therefore is aimed at a family audience. It’s logo that includes mismatched shapes of all the letters that make up the word animal is to suggest the variety of sizes and shapes of them and the accepting nature of the channel. It suggests diversity and reality. I really like this ident as it ingrates the 3D Lettered animal in amongst the real animals to really draw on that up close nature of the shows that are broadcast. They are walking amongst the wild. My idea for this channel ident would be to focus on Textures and how I can incorporate all the different materials to make it as raw and natural as possible.

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National Geographic Wild:

I AM OBSESSED with this ident. The Yellow Rectangle is so well known and this ident takes that fact and runs with it. I like that the animals are integrated inside the shape as if the channel really dives into the depths of the animal kingdom. The contrast from the texture being in the frame with the large plain background adds a curiosity and the simplicity is beautiful for the subject.

This Channel is documentary based broadcasting shows not only about nature but also about history, culture and science. It’s partner National Geographic Wild is much more animal based. The one show on here that I love is called Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan and I think I would take this as a focus for my ident.

This is the ident for Wild and I really like the blend of the footage with the letters. I think even if I decide against doing National Geographic Wild this will be something I would look into doing with the branding of the chosen channel.

 

 

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Channels that inspired me in terms off colour and visuals:

DMAX:

DMAX is a channel that was made for men as a lifestyle channel that is operated by Discovery Networks. I was drew to it because of it’s dramatic/cinematic visuals. I think the lights could be really fun to play with especially with the angling of it shining through the letters. Even if I don’t choose this channel as my ident I’d really like to take the visuals as an inspiration.

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ESPN:

• collage
• blending appropriate images together
• Overlaying
• Exciting visuals
• Busy like the channel
• Black and Red as a theme

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TLC:

• Bold colour schemes
• Simple
• Textures work together with one another
• Complimentary Colours

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ManVsMachine

This just popped up scrolling down the main page and I liked it so I put it on here as a mood board picture. Its an interesting way of creating typography that when I saw it I could see being animated. Its unique.

BT Vision:

This jumped out at me because of the craziness of the colours, and it reminded me of SkyArts and why I got drawn into that. I like the consistency of the shape against the spontaneity of the colours it brings out the vibrancy so much more. BT Vision is an on demand platform for BT. The site broadcasts a hugeee range of programmes and therefore has to reach out to everything. I think it shows this really well by having the single point which is the box you have in your home ( the triangle ) and then all the colours bursting out of it which is like it bringing the excitement out of the box onto the screen and into your living room. I think that the concept is extremely strong.

More4:

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This is a very Successful Campaign created by Channel 4..

From previous projects I’ve always been more interested in including filmed aspects into my pieces rather than doing it all on the computer. This new branding of More 4 allowed the Channel to move away from just being about documentaries and art and more towards lifestyle pieces. The colours and the flipping of the tags is a reference to the digital Scrapbook platform as they are meant to depict mechanical pages. It has began to compete with Sky Arts and BBC Four.

Film4:

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Physical Attributes. Film. Cinematic. That’s what has drawn me to the Film4 Idents. I like the illusions that they use and how they build up the letters. There are constant references to films that are broadcast on the show and the whole way that they are shot suit the type of programmes that are being shown; it’s very aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Film4’s identity is red and is owned by channel 4.

Seeing the way they make the Film4 Idents also reminded me of this video that I used in my inspiration for Sound Sync but didn’t act on…

 

Watch:

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I love Watch’s Tv idents because they all have so much expression and freedom within them. Watch went through a range of different branding from the big eye Blinky to the Semi-circle and the creative splashes of colour to finally just being W. I much prefer the branding of the show as Watch and if I were to do this Channel would stick to that. The Channels brand is al about entertainment shows and a large amount of energy so this has to be depicted in it’s ident. I also found out that it is a pay-television channel which means it’s subscription based and therefore I feel like the branding should be expensive and sleek.

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Netflix

I did think about Netflix as an option because I thought it would be cool being something that I watch allll the time. The Red and Black colour scheme is really striking and the symbol itself is so well known by everyone. This is the latest ident that inspired me to think about Netflix as an option…

But as I rewatched it on YouTube I  realised it was actually very simple and short but actually thats why it works so well. I want to have a project that pushes me a little bit more in playing with 3D but if I did Netflix I feel like it would personally hold me back a lot. It has such a large range of shows it doesn’t give me a specific enough pathway to follow, the brief is very vague whereas other channels give you clear target which is what I like to have in my projects.

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Instagram

Instagram is always a huge inspiration for me. Whenever I start a new project I always try and find pages for inspiration so that even when I am just on social media I am constantly getting inspiration for my projects and outside work.

Following the # on instagram #tvident to build up some ideas.

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Idea Generation: Narrowing it down

Idea 1: DMAX

I really like the cinematography that is used of every channel ident with the lighting effects and drone like shots of nature and surroundings. I like the way that the writing is incorporated into it so would want to take a more motion graphics route with this idea twisting the letters of DMAX in all different angles to see different sides (very much stranger things vibe) and then take inspiration from the nat geo wild where all the imagery is embedded in the letters but have mountains and trees growing that are graphics e.c.t. This could be really creative and fun.

Idea 2: Watch

Eyeball. The first thing I thought of when it came to this channel was the huge eyeball that they used when they first made the channel ident. I like the physical act of having something that is thrown around or created much like in film 4 with the big wooden logo.

Idea 3:

Ok so this for Sky Arts…

(One quick idea I had was to use the idea of being colour blind. In the reflection of the glasses their is very simple 3D shape of the word sky in reverse so it’s not clear all in white making up a bland setting and he is in a white room and then the camera pans around the head of the person and through the lens in the glasses where it reveals a setting that is much more saturated and bold and beautiful. This could possibly be like a garden or maybe I could think something more inventive for how I could present a splash of colour which the logo emerges into somehow. I like the idea of having the “SKY” already there in the scene when it zooms through the lens and then the arts appearing afterwards when al of the colour emerges. It could come in as a bubble being popped in reverse or hits the ground like a shaking the ground using physics. Or it could be ink or paint in reverse. Not sure yet. The concept is that the channel opens your eyes to so many new art forms you were “blind to” before)

…was a throw away quick idea but the more I think about it the more I really like it.

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Sky Arts Colour Theme

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sky pop up in Cardiff…

Mood Board of how I want the colour to look on my ident. I want a really white/ bland background to be contrasted a really large burst of colour. I thought it could be cool to have a piece that when it gets really colourful each piece gradually gets more saturated.

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Learning Cinema 4D

This is my first time ever touching the software Cinema 4D and my first impressions of it are really good, I enjoy it a lot. These notes are mainly describing the the tools on the interface and how to move around the screen for future reference when practicing with it. G gave us a mini project to recreate a chess piece using the skills we had just learnt as accurately as possible.. 

Screenshots of the Chess Piece Project:

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Pinterest

Visual Inspiration…

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Screen Replacement

In Tom’s lecture we went through how to replace a screen in nuke as a still to be tracked in future. These are the notes that I made to document the process…

Screenshots:

Bringing in Reads and settings

Corner Pin:

This node allows you to reposition the scale of the read to match a certain shape on the screen. This allows the screen to look angled as if it were the screen.

Reflection:

By putting the screen on top of the original screen you lose the glare on the phone glass that is cast from the window. To bring this back you use a unique keyed node that takes the luminance. A quick roto around the shape that you want to keep and then you can place this back over the whole piece.

Checkerboard:

This is purely used for checking purpose to ensure things are working

Depth of Field Blur:

To create a depth of field blur to match what is already on the phone footage I took a defocus node to add the blur effect and used a roto with a fuck ton of feathering to create a point of high focus.

Grain:

Matching grain to the original footage is the most important thing. That’s why I made the effort to go through each RGB Channel bringing up the gamma really high ad matching each one individually using a wipe.

I think this process will really help with how I want to create the reflection in the glasses of my subject, using a screen replacement for the lens and using the opacity to make it see through. I will need to learn tracking however because this is just a replacement for a still and my shot will move around the head of the subject.

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BALLOONS

LITERALLY was just thinking about how I could make something really creative and colourful that could be through the lens of the glasses which isn’t super boring and I’m thinking balloons could be fun. I would have to work out the practicalities and the feasibility of making this work but I like the idea of having loads o colourful sparkly crazy balloons falling all at once to fill up the space on the screen with A R T and S in the mix across the screen. Got the idea from looking at the piece made by watch where all the people are carrying a huge blow up eye and how much I loved the idea when I first saw it.

Balloon mood board:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ok so this was me going kind of crazy with ideas so instead I came up with the bubble idea…

BUBBLES

I thought it would be really cool to have bubbles with all the colours spiralling inside of them drifting across the screen in a really colourful background. I’m yet to decide what that background is going to be yet. This is my bubble mood board…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Recreating Channel 4 Ident

My notes:

The actual TV ident:

This Ident was created as part of a channel rebrand for channel 4 and we learnt how to recreate it….

• Taking the logo off illustrator using format (illustrator 8)
• Extruding each individual piece

• Creating the tray to make up the backdrop of the advert
• Also gives the lips for the shapes to hit against and move around in

• Adding textures to create colours on the objects
• Using a camera to plan the output angle

• Adding gravity to the piece so that they don’t fly out of the frame but instead slide inside of it. (Moving mesh)

• Using the co-ordinates of a null to tilt the box and make the pieces move inside of it

• Using lighting to create a mood for the piece
• It is important to make sure the light is inside the null as well as the camera so that it doesn’t move around when the box does

• Using the render preview to see the effects of the shadows on the piece

My Final render of this project:

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Quick Storyboard

 

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Footage 1:

My set up- for the beginning of the ident 

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Practice with my Channel:

This is the sky logo for every sky channel…

I want to use this to practice the skills that I learnt in the last lecture by extruding it and playing around with textures and look. I am going to try and attempt creating something like this…

…From scratch

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SKY

I took the sky logo and placed it into illustrator. By doing this it allowed me to rasterise the image and create paths around each individual letter snd split them apart from one another. I did this to give myself more freedom in c4d. It splits apart the logo so if I do decide I want to extrude them in different way or drop them one after another I can. This is what the beginning looks like…

These are my attempts on making this logo without any support from the internet and lecturers, playing around with the software and seeing where I got…

They are quite what I wanted to achieve but I love the last one with the repetitions it looks really effective against the black. If I decide to go down a more dramatic path I would want to incorporate this into it.

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My plan because I’m running out of time…

PLAN

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C4D Practices

Bubbles:

This tutorial really helped me create textures for the bubbles. However my final material was really a trial and error seeing how the selectivity worked in the scene and how much refraction I wanted.

(This is a side note screen shot because I found something called bulge and thought I could keyframe it later on)

My material..

The set up…

The result

This is way less bubbly then I wanted them. trying again…

Bubbles take 2:

New Tutorial lets see if this is any better

Ok so these are my three outcomes after playing around with the settings a bit…

I really like the way it twists the image behind it butttt then it takes away all of that nice glossy stuff. And if I have all the nice glossy stuff I get the colour. Omg Help.

Bubbles take 3 – hopefully the f**king final one:

This has the exact style I want but I want more shine to the edges to make it appear more like a bubble but at the same time I do like the abstract In this. I want to try and apply this to the arts logo now.

After talking to G I realised I was being really stupid because I was trying to give it reflectance without giving it anything to reflect against. He showed me something called gig c4d studio which is a plug in for a lighting studio. By doing this it imitates the exact lighting you would achieve if it was created in live action.

Instead of taking the plug in I created my own lighting simply by using cubes and adding luminance to make them brighter. This is my set up…

and this is my outcome…

WEHAY I LIKE IT

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Arts logo:

Getting the logo

Making it an alpha

Extruding on C4D:

After I extruded each of the letters and connect the objects together I noticed that the letters with holes in were solid. This is not really ideal. So to fix this I extruded the inner pieces and then Boole’d them out of the letters.

I’m really happy with the outcome of this

Adding the glass like bubble texture to the text…

I tried to use the same texture as I used for the bubbles but I got this. And well. It looks a bit shit, because its sooo transparent it blends in. I tried it twice with two of the original textures but it doesn’t quite work…

Trying to make it more prominent:

Adding colour

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Camera Movements:

I don’t think I will end up using this but I have added it just incase it becomes useful as my idea progresses

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Random Movements:

One thing I stumbled across when looking for tutorials about Moving things randomly to move my bubbles was this text animation. It allows you to move the text into an unusual place and then bring it back into the position you want with keyframes. I clicked that this could be really interesting for when the bubbles come up I could have the arts letters doing the same thing. Merging with the bubbles and them coming into place. I did a quick practice with this tutorial to see how effective it was.

My Practice:

The Final Outcome

(It hasn’t got textures or a background to make it really interesting but I like the flow and the natural aspect to its that it is something I want to continue on with)

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Making the Final Ident

Step 1: Glasses in c4d

These are the reference es that I used to create my piece. I used the shape of these glasses as well as the real glasses I used on Dan in my footage to have a physical source to turn around and look at.

I made the glasses a texture on a shape so that it would sit behind my model as I made it.

I couldn’t get the exact shape I wanted using the bevel on a cube it didn’t work out accurate enough. Therefore I used the pen tool which created a spline and then extruded these to make shapes.

Create splines around the centres and extruded these so that fit inside the above shape ready to texture like glass.

Adding nose pieces. Spheres and extruded the bottom scaling it in and out to get the shape that I wanted. Then I flattened it and angled it to fit correctly by the edge of the glasses.

After Booleing out the middles of the glasses I duplicated the piece and put it in the same place but this time made it transparent to act as the glass. I also used optimise to connect the piece together and then beveled it inwards so that it would reflect more shine.

Trying to make a glass texture for the lens of the glasses

Attempt 1:

Attempt 2:

Attempt 3:

BEAUTIFUL

Finishing the touches to the glasses.. So first of all I followed a tutorial that showed me how to create a plastic like texture which worked really well and then I added an orange hue to give it that authenticity. I also create a piece to join the glasses together using a tube with a fillet to create the arch and then extruded it slightly to give it some depth at the top.

OVERHEATED MY MAC DIDN’T I WHAT AN IDIOT.

Here we go again

fuck

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Ok so this is after I Recreated it all..

I wasn’t sure whether to add the temples of the glasses because they could look awkward in the frame and I quite liked the stylistic approach without them. However I modelled them anyway just in case..

Ok finally glasses are done..

Step 2: Bubbles in c4d

I need to animate my bubbles so that they float like bubbles. I made this on the same c4d file as I made the bubbles I liked with the right texture so that I could take this material and apply it to the new one.

Using an emitter to create a flow of bubbles…

In order to adapt the way the bubbles will move I turned off the bubble to be able to focus on the particles. I had to ensure that the the variation on them was high so that they moved randomly amongst the screen. I also adding anti gravity to make it float upwards and a fan to spread it around.

When I first attached the bubble to the particle this happened..

which was annoying.

So to stop this I adapted the size of the emitter and also the size of the bubbles themselves..

I am much happier with the flow that I see now so just to add some differentiation I duplicated the sphere, and scaled it down. I then put this size into the emitter too so that it would flip between the alternate sizes. This is my result and I am happy with it because it seems much more natural…

At the moment my render is ok. The bubbles have white splurges on them and they are reflecting black from the edges of the screen

I changed the set up of my piece to add in lighting to bounce off the bubbles and also added edges so that it takes information from there instead of nothing

MY SET UP:

The outcome with this is sooo much more how I envisaged it..

New Footage:

Step 3: Colour Correction

Original Video…

Edited with Lumetri Colour on after effects..

Curves-

Colour Wheels-

Basic Correction-

I also used roto because I really liked the correction for the sky but this meant that the colours in the graffiti weren’t that bright and that is the reason that I filmed here. I really want the expression of art to be really obvious in my title sequence therefore I used the roto on an adjustment layer so I could just brighten these areas

Before and After

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I also made another adjustment layer that is slightly more blue with the intention that I would roto it to make the sky brighter. However after I made it it made a really nice blue glow across the whole piece. I turned the opacity down to 20% but it still makes a huge difference and I like it. This is the result before and after…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Step 4: Adding the pieces together

Just to visualise what my actual footage would look like against the bubbles I took out the pre-vis photoshop file I had made and replaced it with a screenshot of what’s above.

Then I put my glasses into the framing really roughly just to see the blend of the background that I made…

Correcting the camera angle and removing the black area from around the glasses…

I did this by using compositing tags and making the pane a background instead

Step 5: Camera Movement

I had no idea how to make a fluid camera movement to go through the lens of the glasses, so I looked up animating a camera on a spline and all of this difficult stuff. I spoke to g and he told me that the easy and best way of doing it was just to animate the camera co-ordinates. Which I did. And looks super cool.

Step 6: Making sure the bubbles refract the background

I went to my render view and this is what I saw. Although I really like the effect that I am starting to get with the bubbles and the movement I really don’t want to lose that distortion effect that I was able to achieve before.

I want to get it back to when they looked like this…

I am starting to think that this is happening because I changed my footage to be on a background apposed to being on a flat surface. However I know that if I bring back the flat surface that my camera won’t be able to move in the same way. Confusion.

I need help.

I was right in thinking that the background was the problem. It isn’t close enough to the objects to refract the images inside of them and therefore I have to use a Pane. What’s good about a pane is that it won’t fuck up the way my camera moves because I can just make the pane a child to the camera. This way it is stuck to it and will follow it in it’s movements keeping it’s framing.

Whey it refracts

Step 7: Making the Logo

First thing I did was take my illustrator files from the desktop and bring them into c4d as individual paths. By doing this it allowed me to extrude each one individually and if I want to I’ll be able to animate them seperately.

I definitely want the two different halves to be slightly different to show the differentiation between sky and arts. I want sky to be every glassy whereas I think It would be cool to work on a colour colour maybe animated gradient to work into the Arts section in a pink colour to match my setting.

SKY:

I like the idea of having an inner bevel effect so I did this but pushed it sideways and it came out weird..

However I tried it again with a straight bevel and it looks way more effective…

I tried also extruding the outer of the arts but I’m not a massive fan

I put the logo into my Piece and started to add textures to them

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SMALL CRISIS

This is the point where I found that my Render view/ render doesn’t work help. Because it was coming up black and I could figure out why the compositing tags had made it do this, I ended up taking them all off. This isn’t a problem because all it was doing was making a frame around the glasses however now I will just roto it all in after effects afterwards.

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Step 9: Creating Materials for the logo

I knew that I wanted the two to be separate so I started with a dark metallic material on the sky and a pink reflective colour on the arts and this is what I got

As much as I hate the colours against this background I LOVE the way it looks when the bubbles run over them. I tried the texture I had which had the thin film effect on it and it looks so much more glassy and arty which fits the channel brand so well. But I know that the black is definitely way too dark and doesn’t fit right.

I then took the thin film effect and made the colour saturation so low that it merged with the sky behind and made it look really glossy and I’m so happy with the result I think it looks really professional. Even though I liked the purple colour before against this now it looks really dull

Therefore I made this version and even though their isn’t loads of difference it still looks brighter and more positive which is what the channel is all about.

Step 10: Finishing touches

This is the final set up of the scene. One thing I noticed was slight black refractions from where the bubbles cross the borders of the screen size and bring it back into frame. To stop this I made a sort of set with copy of the pane so it reflects that instead

Then I rendered for 12HOURS but it actually took 22HOURS

…and imported it into after effects ready to created a black mask to roto around the glasses.

Step 11: After Effects

I am importing my project into after effects so that I can create that black background that I wanted before, but without the composition tags. Because my render is taking so long whilst it’s doing it I took the first tiff and put it into after effects and roto’d around the shape of the glasses.

I can do this before hand because the roto doesn’t move it just expands. After this was finished I inverted the mask so that it created that background as shown…

I really like the black because it imitates that darkness before being revealed to colour. This is exactly what I wanted my concept to be, I wanted to show that blindness we have to all these beautiful things until we watch sky arts and discover all these art forms that open our minds and I really think I have succeeded in doing this. I also wanted to try some other colours just in case they looked more effective…

Dark Grey..

White..

But I decided to stick with Black. To see if it made it look any less flat I added some simple textures just to see the effect of them.

Texture 1:

Texture 2:

G said texture. I’m going with texture.

ITS FINALLY RENDERED HELL YES

Now that the annoying part is over I took the footage and put it into media encoder so that I could import it into After Effects

Key framing the mask to move with the camera movement that I made in C4d.

Step 12: AUDIO

I was searching for chill glass like tv ident music and it really didn’t bring up much. This below is the best that I found but even that is quite sad and down.

I always really struggle picking audio so I went onto the sky arts idents to see what they are using for their idents.

I knew that having bubbles and all the colours I want something quite flowy and glassy with a really delicate feel to it. As soon as I heard the music on the Dalmatian piece I knew it was so perfect do downloaded it to mp3 to see how effective it would be with my ident instead..

The part I want starts from 47 seconds and then because it is longer than my ident I will just fade out the end.

Step 13: Roto on the footage

I have had to create one solid to make the black surrounding on the glasses but it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to. It’s really hard to match the mask perfectly so there was a lot of white showing and flashing which didn’t look good and therefore I had to bring the mask expansion down to cover this up. As a result of this ALOT of detail in the glasses was lost which is quite gutting. I want to continue this after the project has finished but using the compositing tags with a lecturers help so that it’ll be way more fluid and keep it professional looking.

Step 14:  Blink

I also had to use a mask for a part where 2 frames FOR SOME REASON randomly just zoom in which is a pain in the ass. Because I’m using a first person perspective of looking through the glasses, an easy fix for this was to create a blink. Not only does this add to the idea that we are looking. through the lens of someone else but also it makes it very unnoticeable.

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Final Tv Ident for SkyArts

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Quick Summary

Just as a quick note of what I have now seen when looking back on it I think the one thing I would change is the size of the logo at the end. After looking at previous sky arts idents as well as many others the brand is considerably smaller because it’s being projected on a tele that has a much larger screen. I also made a creative decision to leave off the original footage I took of the camera panning around and through the head. As much as I still really like this idea I feel as though it made it seem more like a story piece rather than an ident and also the footage was a lot darker than I planned on it being so it didn’t work how I had visualised it in my head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whey green screen lets go..

Green Screens place in industry 

What is  Blue Screen and What is a Green Screen?

What are the usages and the limitations

Using a green screen allows creators to make situations that would’t be possible in real life. For example they can be used for completely 3D Environments of people in space (something that is impossible to film) or if they can be used for situations that are too dangerous to put an actor in. For this reason green screen can help to make an illusion of a real life situation. Another purpose is cost. Some aspects can be way too costly to film against so it is much cheaper for the scene to be created in post. The limitations of green screen however is that it does make it a much more long winded process and obvious one is that you can’t wear green. This problem occurred when superman was made and they used a blue screen even though they wanted a blue suit on him. To overcome it they made him blue

Green Screen allows the audience to believe in situations that aren’t real and this is what most interests me about the process. In my green screen I want to keep believability at the forefront of my project and bring an impossible or very difficulty to fit situation to life.

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Brief:

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Examples of green Screen 

I follow a range of VFX and Motion graphics pages on instagram so that even when I’m on social media Im constantly being inspired by crazy work being done by crazy clever people. All of the images below and ones that I have saved from a page called @movies.effects.vfx. It’s been so interesting to see the use of green screen that has been displayed on this page because a lot of them are films that I have seen and although I knew green screen would’ve been included it’s mad to see actually how much of it is green screen and the very little amount that is filmed. The top shot of Aqua man on the blue screen is the most interesting because of how messy the sheet behind the actor actually is. It gives you a real insight into the difficulty that keying becomes when on set they are lazy or don’t have the facilities like we have here due to the expense.

This video below was really fun to watch because it gives a before and after approach. I watched many of these but this video was my favourite…

John Mayer

This beautiful artist is on my blog purely because I remembered that he had created a music video using a pop up green screen company costing him $30 to shoot his whole piece when he had a 2 million dollar budget. despite the fact it is there for a laugh and the integration with the background is just not good the key on it is actually really clean and I like it for that.

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Nuke Lessons

All my notes from my lectures:

Learning how to remove trackers:

Step by step to creating a good key in Nuke:

Step by step on how to key in After Effects:

(Even though this process can’t be used for our submission it helped in two ways. Firstly in industry not every company you work for will have nuke so it is useful to learn both ways. Secondly the process is exactly the same as in nuke just with a different layout so by understanding everything on a familiar software the process to making my key in nuke will make much more sense in my head.)

These are all photos that I have taken in workshops on Nuke to use as references in my project especially in terms of layout.

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Idea Generation 

Ive though about this project for so long and I’m STILL so stuck for an idea. The brief allows the piece to be short which makes things easier and due to learning a whole new software we are told to keep it fairly simple because the most important aspect is the integration between the key and the backplate. But this is soooo broad for me I am 100% struggling on what to do. The one thing I am pretty certain on is having a miniature person in a situation of some sort. It’s one of those things I have always wanted to do and this project gives me an opportunity to do it, well. I looked into the ways that small people have been integrated into the industry so far as research and inspiration…

Films I know of that have shrunken people…

Ant Man:

Alice In Wonderland:

Honey I shrunk the kids:

 

I have 3 main ideas running around my head right now:

• A little person sat on top of a Fire Exit green sign. As the lights in the hallway go out (for example being turned off by a cleaner or something) the green light flashes on and scares the person sat on top of it. They get up and start stamping on the top of it trying to get it to turn off
• I like the idea of having a photo on the wall that has a person in it frozen. The person then comes to life and steps out of the frame as if to have escaped the picture and runs across the desk to get away.
• A person underneath a car tyre asleep. The car engine turns on waking them up and rolls back slightly at which point the person has to crawl away really quick as not not get squished and then the car rolls away forwards. The person looks around seeing the coast is clear falls back asleep.

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Oscars

I was watching the oscars when I saw a close up of all the trophies and the idea just clicked. I thought it’d be really cool to do a piece that still included my main theme of having miniature people by have one of the trophies jump of its stand and run away from the table. I also thought about having a trophy that opened up to reveal an ordinary person that jumps out and runs away. So its like all of the the trophies are actually filled with loads of little people and one eventually broke free. This is an idea I’m happy with and am going to run with…

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Trophy 

Picture 1: I like the  depth that is apparent between each of the trophies and the red and gold compliment each other really well.

Picture 2: This is a close up image for reference. If I do want to go with the idea of turning the person into a trophy I needed to see the exact stance to try and match it in my footage.

Picture 3: This is another reference photo to see the size of the stand and how a full award would look to be able to start making my back plate for the piece.

Picture 4: I stumbled along this photo which is quite similar to the concept that I am taking. It could be a possible way of working around having to create an exact replica of the statue in a human form but making it very drastically different. Purposeful.

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Problems to fix

• how to make a person gold
• how to open a trophy

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Green Screen slot

We split into groups to work in the Green Screen room to support one another with equipment and set up seeing as the studio is a new skill for all of us.

We have a slot on Wednesday from 9-11:30 in the green screen studio. (I’m writing this here so I remember.)

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Lighting + Shot Plan

• I want so have a soft glow of a yellow light to give the face a golden effect
• I want all the lights on one side so that when the subject leaves the scene they enter shadow. Most of this will be done with post but losing the lighting here will be really helpful
• I will shoot two angles so that I have some freedom in moving from one to the next adding some interest
• I will use the green steps as a prop for the subject to step down off

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Colour scheme 

Red and gold are colours that sell expensive which is perfect for an award themed piece

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Time in Green Screen Room

• I did all my own lighting with help from Robyn having a Clear vision of what I wanted. We used the RGB Kino as our main light as it has a range of Gels to play with to come up with the perfect colour
• Sarah, Dan and mike took care of the camera side of things being more interested in that area.
• 1/100 Shutter Speed
• C Log Footage
• I set up the block in position and seeing as it is only one action nothing else was needed so this part was pretty simple

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My Footage 

I took 4 shots two at one angle and two at another. This gave me a little more choice and selection when it came to putting it with a backplate and space for error.

Making them into .exr files through media encoder allows it to be easily dropped into nuke as it works on a frame by frame situation. We made the mistake of doing 4 of our footage at once so it all took about 2 hours to convert which was not fun.

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Simple Key 

Step Number One: always always always… look at your footage on repeat and figure out what the hell you have to do…

I told the .exf files in their folders and dragged them into Nuke so that I could analyse the footage. I have two problems that I need to work out how to resolve. The first situation is the huge lamp I have on the left hand side there, but using roto and techniques that I learnt with Jack when removing trackers I don’t think this will be a problem especially as none of the action crosses the lamp. The second which is more of a problem is the slight green reflections that appear of his hands and face. This is something I am not aware how to fix at this moment but will talk to my lecturers about.

Step Number Two – Project Settings: Although I know that we filmed in 1920 x 1080 because that is drilled into my head by know it always says the dimensions around the edge of the read to double check. I changed the project settings to this format and the frame rate to 25 to match the footage.

Step Number Three – DeNoise:

Denoise is more commonly used on footage that is taken on film however I have added in this step to cover the bases. Although the difference between the images below are subtle I can see the change and think it will have impact.

Step Number Three – Primatte: A problem I ran into when starting my key was that by using the non commercial nuke on my laptop it does not allow you to have the primatte node which is the only key I have learnt with Tom. However to work around this I went with a do it yourself approach because I know how to use key lights and to see how it would go to do it totally with key lights instead.

Non commercial version

Step number 4 – Key light:I created a hard key in my key light as a core key to act as a primatte. Rather than using the clean BG and FG noise tool I had to do it more manually by using screen matte which clips the blacks and whites crushing the grey.

The problem in this key (which I expected to happen but was super hopeful would just work out) is the stairs. Because of the different colour greens and dark shadows it meant that the shadow on the step he’s own would key out. Problem number 2 to make everything better was the fact the green had reflected onto the shoes shiny areas which meant even with a second key light it wouldn’t match right.

Jack helped me with a solution using the erode node..

Before:

After:

Step Number Five – Lots more key lights:  in order to add nicer edges around the key and keep all the hair detail and hand detail e.c.t I have used the key light method we learnt with Tom which uses the key mix and root nodes to add information to the key.

I have run into so many problems with my footage.

• The stairs cause shadows that are difficult to take out
• The spill cover the shoes so it doesn’t just cut into the feet it takes off the soles and each key I have tried to use doesn’t work
• I got Jack involved and to fix it he started using nodes I did not understand lmao
• My character ran which caused a lot of motion blur that was extremely time consuming

Even though this footage has worked, there are a lot of problems with the footage including the feet as a main one that has caused me a lot of stress and not being very aware of the software I have relied on lectures a lot which is not where I wanted to be. Although I need to them to guide and support me I would rather have a piece that I could really try and indulge myself in and work out for myself, so for that reason I have decided to create new footage…

LMAO so last minute but lets do it…

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Ooopss 

Guess who changed their idea! Amazing

So after all that research I’ve decided to go back to one of my original ideas that took a miniature person as a concept and had them coming out of a photo frame and running across the desk. I think what will make this really interesting is to have a frame that is filled with jungle like Plants that he fights through before jumping through. That is what makes this piece have that impossible factor that makes it need green screen. When looking back at the Oscar idea I faced a lot of problems including how to make the figure to look statue like and if I went for the idea where he comes out of the award I face the problem of animating this to look realistic on after affects. (which I tried and was not very successfull)

• Id like to have the inside of the frame the beginning scene
• It would zoom out slightly as he begins to fight through to reveal the frame
• Then he steps out to run away across the table

Quick Still of my vision

(None of my own images all made through the internet)

Inspiration:

This is from an instagram account I follow called @movie.effects

Mood Board 

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Starting my back plate

I created my still but then when I looked back at it, it seemed a little plain and flat. So I thought it might be interesting to play with angle. Having the wall on a slight tilt would mean that the I could add depth to the jungle environment and add more interest to the image. This is a quick sketch of how I see it now…

images from the internet

For each of the images that I have used I imported them onto photoshop which allowed me to separate each asset that I wanted from it’s background and smoothen the edges easier so that they blend easier together. I then took the photoshop files and put them into after effects as individual comps so that if there were changes I needed to make I could just edit the photoshop file which would automatically appear onto my composition. I Decided to use after effects as my main source because I wanted some moving image.

Making the Room:

Walls:

I didn’t edit this raw image at all because I like the way that the shadow casts over the wall because that gives it depth and a good sense of where my light is going to come from. I took the two of them and put them into 3D Space so that I could tilt the images to Create a corner to get the angle that I wanted in my original idea…

The walls felt quite flat so I then took a texture as shown below and but this onto a blending mode (soft light) with the walls so that It would pick up where the shadows were on the walls and match the lighting…

I put this into my room comp but decided I wanted a little more darkness on the image to exaggerate the light which is where I added a solid with a feathered mask to create a half vignette..

This is the final outcome for the base of my image

Desk:

I took this desk and put it into 3D Space. I used the transform tools to flatten the image and get it to the right angle to fit my Room space. I also used the lumetri colour tool to grade the image to fit in the space. I took the saturation right down increased the contrasts and changed the hue slightly to more of a yellow than an orange.

How I integrated this into the shot – I matched up the corner as step one and kept going between the comp and this comp until the angle felt right. I also added in a solid with a feathered mask to create a patch of darkness between the edge of the surface and the wall to show where it sits against the wall. It has made the image look less like the foot and more like something pressed up against it.

Mirror:

For the mirror I took out the centre to make in clear in photoshop. As the image is slightly leaning backwards I used the Transform tools to tilt it  as if to be hanging on a wall.

Having such a harsh edge when I added it into the comp against the walls I added drop shadows to make it look realistic. I looked at my own mirror and shone a light on it to see where the shadows appeared. To match the background the light is coming from the left so have a shadow being cast that way was an obvious. However it also needed a very slight shadow coming from the left side to separate the mirror from the wall, without this it doesn’t look like it is in the room, the line was too clean and stuck out. I added masks on both of these because the centre is transparent shadows appeared in the centre which is not what I wanted.

Before:

After:

At this point I am too super happy with the look of the desk and the mirror and I think all of the perspectives are good and align with one another. The problem I have now is that it looks super plain and simple. One of the things I really wanted to capture was an idea of depth. I think by doing this it adds a sense of realism. To do this I decided to bring in a plant.

This is my Plant:

After removing the background on photoshop I bought it into a comp in after effects and received it so just the leaves are seen peaking out of the edge of the screen. I also duplicated the plant and layered them to give it a fuller effect. Seeing as it’s going to be really close to the foreground I used a Gaussian blur to act as a depth of field blur.

Before:

After:

The white is not going to be a problem in the main comp as it blends the plant into the walls. I was thinking about it and I knew that to make them look more real I was going to have to make them move in someway. In my last project I used an effect called Turbulent displace to really change the shape of my image. I tried using this but key framing it so the movements changed over a long period of time and subtle movements and it ended up being really successful.

Making the Rainforest/Jungle:

Step 1: Merging together all of my images…

I started with a path as the main focus of the jungle forest however the more I looked into this the less it made sense. I tried to adapt the path to fit the way he would walk on it in Photo shop using the puppet wrap effect but it didn’t create the vision that I wanted…

I added it to my frame in my room set up and it looked very out of place. The idea with this was to have the subject walk down the path and then straight out of the frame. However I saw this image which excited me a lot more…

With this kind of style I could have the person interact with the scene by ducking underneath the branch and then almost climbing out of the frame. It gives more interest to the action and (if it I can do it right) it will be a lot more realistic.

New back plate:

The images that I am using:

(I used a blue solid behind all of the images to see the edges more clearly and how they blended together ready to remove once I move the image into my main comp)

Integrating this with the Room:

I took the image of the mirror and duplicated it into a new comp to integrate the two pieces together to look like the photo in the frame. I made a path around the edges of the mirror to create a mask and then added the information so it appeared in the frame. I removed the mirror from this comp and then placed the new comp “integration” into the Room comp and I’m super happy with how it turned out…

Now I look at the footage I don’t get the idea of it being a frame anymore but instead it makes the approach of like a portal. This is a much more exciting way of seeing it, like it.

I was thinking about the logistics of how this will work when I put it into nuke because in order to have the subject duck underneath the branch I know I will have to Roto it. but because the plant is blurry it will make this difficult. I spoke to G and the best way to get around this is to have the plant rendered out as a separate file and place this on top of the file to make all of my life easier.

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New Footage 

My set up:

I wanted two lights all from one side to keep the lighting and shadows consistent however when he is in the frame I have a golden/green light to match the golden sun sort of effect as if the places is tropical. Then the other lamp is using a white light, to act as if the source of lighting is from a desk lamp to differentiate the movement between the two settings.

To help me film I had 2nd year Adam who was super helpful. He knew how to use the larger monitor which meant I was able to put my backplate onto the big screen and then use this to perfectly align the person in the green screen area…

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Keying

AGAIN.

For this footage I used NukeX commercial rather than Non-commercial so that I could use the primatte method one I am much more familiar with in comparison with the harsh key on a key light.

Primatte:

Using NukeX Commercial allowed me to use a primatte for my hard key which made things simpler in my head because I was able to click auto compute and very quickly clean the BG and FG noise.

Key lights:

For each key light I used a key mix and a roto to ensure that each edge is smooth and clean. One key won’t work for each section so I have used the rotor to single off each section and keyframe them throughout the sequence. This process is especially important on hair because it has so many transparent sections that you want to cater for to make it look natural.

Garbage Matte:

I added roto nodes onto the end of my piece changing the alpha fill colour to black to punch all the rubbish out of the alpha.

Also used this method to fix my alphas but creating a roto around each section of grey on the chest and key-framed the movement until the primatte filled the space again.

Write node:

My render was happening really slowly when working on it with more and more keylights that I realised it was my denoise that was making this happen. In order to speed this up I used he write node to render out just this section. It took LONG, but after I have bought this back in my whole project will run so much quicker.

Bringing together the Alpha and the RGB:

To do this I used the Copy and Premult node. By doing this it takes the really nice alpha that Ive made and the really clean RGB and punches its through to create a final looking piece. However as you can see when I did this the whole thing was super green.

Despill:

In order to get rid of the green spill I despilled with yet another key light. To do this I went onto the screen colour in the node and changed the green value from 0 to 1

Before:

After:

VOILA.

Fixing Edges:

Some of the edges still looked a little rough even after doing this process especially on the legs. A quick fix for this as advised by tom was to use the dilate tool which really slightly erodes in the edges. Tom said as a rule try not to go below -1 because you are taking away information and it could become problematic.

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Integrating a background

Media Encoder:

Taking the two elements from my after effects file and exporting them as exr files so that they can be imported into nuke as read files.

 

Transform Node:

I used the transform node to try and align it better. Although I used the monitor in the green screen the feet are every so slightly off the edge of the desk so I used thus tool to scale it appropriately.

Frame Roto:

I went top Jack to help me through this process. I started using roto nodes and well got into a bit of a mess so Jack showed me a better way of doing it using channel merge nodes. This allowed me to create 2 rotos, one for the frame and one for the foot stepping through using an alpha to mask it off. The frame roto stays static whereas I keyframes the other shape to move with the foot so that it would show past the backplate. I then just keyframes both of the masks opacity to 0 as soon as the second foot appeared above the frame because from that point they are no longer needed.

Colour grade:

I graded the subject using the grade node and the due correct to add tints and levels to the contrasts. I tried to match the shadows as best as I could to the trees behind and took the greens and yellows up to create an explorer tint.

I then added other grades with rotos attached to act as sources of light in each environment. They pretty much stay static so that when the subject comes in contact with them it will add highlights and shadows appropriately and look like a natural light source.

This is the image with no grade at all…

Adding grade…

Second Shot – G jumping through 

Basically I repeated everything that I did above because it was the same backplate for a different movement through the frame

and this connected into a merge node with the previous shot.

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TO DO TOMORROW

• Plant is opaque.. why???

• Add Grain

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Finishing touches 

Integrating the plant:

My Plant is see through. WTF. So I need to try and sort this out. I tried using a shuffle on my existing exr files and changing the output alpha to black or white but it made no difference. So I added a black solid to the back of my plant and rendered it out again to try and use blending modes on nuke.  Guess what? This also didn’t work, so I am now trying a tiff sequence and praying on that.  

^ALL OF THESE DIDN’T WORK

So Tom fixed it. Cheers Tom.

I needed to render it with an alpha channel rather than with a solid so that it can be picked up in Nuke

Grain:

In order to grain appropriately, Jack showed me a way that brings back the grain from the original image, and puts it into the background of the image. To do this I used the furnace regrain node that takes a sample from the original read, (I chose the darkest area with the most concentrated grain) and puts it back over the whole image using a constant alpha that covers the screen.

Clean up the backplate:

I was slightly unhappy with the neatness of my backplate, as there is a white line around the mirror that has been annoying me and some of the feathered edges on the trees are white so because I have time to do so I have gone back in and made little tweaks to it…

Using Photoshop to take away the white:

(I used a red background on a different layer so I could see both the black and the white clearly then Tok an eraser with 80% hardness and went around all the edges)

Putting it with the forest:

(Due to taking away the white it left me with a black line because the roto matched up to the previous image, so I extended this to give a clean edge)

Spacing the Rainforest: 

(I neatened up some of the comps by going back into the photoshop and taking away awkward feathering an cleaning the rougher edges to blend better with one another. The other aspect that annoyed me in the forest area was that at the bottom where the grass is I created it by duplicating a different image so there were lines along it where the bottom of the image is. So I used masks to feather the bottoms and blend the grass into one)

Before:

After:

When I put this into my piece I added a grade node over the whole thing to bring it all together.

Creating folders to organise my files appropriately

My render nodes:

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Final Render

My Final Script: 

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Premiere pro

Audio:

Integrating the two:

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GREEN SCREEN PROJECT

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Evaluation

I am really happy with the result of the my green screen however with more time I would’ve added shadows to the second half of the shot. Where the light comes through from the lamp it would cast shadows down onto the desk and I feel like this would have improved the believability that I aimed for in the beginning of this project. 

Mini Brief:

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Music Video Group Project

How I did my section:

This was a simple sense affect with a masked circle on top using colour keyframes to match the girls dressing gowns. I moved onto the second section rooting around all of the girls and used this to take out the background and draw focus on the people…Once that was completed shape layers allowed me to drip on into another and match this with when the heads turned.

I didn’t use sound synchronisations in this mini challenge however I learnt a lot about rotoring giving me a chance to perfect that skill and the dripping between shapes and key-framing colours to merge into one another is a technique that could become really useful if I plan to go down the motion graphics route.

https://streamable.com/kvzx1?fbclid=IwAR1Mxf7gfyAZBPp2hlK4IVJ64vvpxuTGK6LhiIRdkEoNx3ZrAQSKbh1CJ6U

Link to the final video ^

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The Brief:

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Sound Sync Examples:

Yellow Days

• going down through rooms
• symmetry
• illusion
• live action
• Repetition adds to interest

Tame Impala

• Pattern
• Reoccurring image (head)
• Stop Motion Animation
• Colour movement in the first few seconds hits the beats
• Holds the viewer
• Constantly changing

ALB

• 3D Environments
• Black and White Theme
• Repeating imagery for the beats
• Tunnel illusion
• Effective use of transition to move into different spaces

Jagwar Ma

• Layering
• Collage
• Colour reveal aspects on the beats
• Imagery is slow mo which is effective against the fast moving shapes
• Using busy people as visuals compliments the beats

Glass Animals

• Short Cuts
• Live action
• Tripod setting stays the same
• Like the similarity between each cut
• Becomes a game – not as much as a fun of this part

Artic Monkeys

• Black and white
• splashes of colour as the music gets more intense
• line matches the sound waves
• The line is the base for the whole composition which I like
• no matter how crazy the imagery gets it comes back to a single line

The Chemical Brothers

• environment
• natural looking
• not an obvious sound sync
• Detail lies in all the subtleties
• Uses a symbol for each beat even if it isn’t thrown in your face
• Follow the camera movement

Beck

• Use of colour to show a sense of hierarchy between figures
• Using people with graphics to enhance it
• Hands and arms are repeated to create tunnels
• Dancing is the part that is sound synced
• effective with that many people – satisfying to watch
• Took the theme of the lyrics to create a theme for the visuals

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Experimentation with techniques

In this lecture we learnt different ways of using after effects to created effects that we might want to use for our Sound sync project…

Three Balls:

The position points for each ball vary because although all would bounce when they hit the floor due to their weight, mass and size each ball would react with the floor differently. I used reference points to help me with the tennis ball by physically dropping one onto a hard surface and seeing how it reacted with the floor.

In order to make the movements less linear and more fluid I used easy ease on the keyframes and changed their velocity using the speed graph which allows me to alter the exact points that the movement eased in and eased out…

Following the rules of animation, I added the rule of anticipation and squash and stretch to the bouncy ball by adapting the scale up and down squashing and stretching it also added a more realistic effect.

2D Animation: Motion Graphics

This Lecture with G, allowed us to use some of the motion graphics skills we had been taught and apply this to a creative piece of our own. We were given a set piece of music and rather than going to wild with this piece I decided to practice each technique we had been taught in order to perfect it and match it up the sounds appropriately.

• Transforming one shape into another using scale and velocity
• The effect of the speed graph to ease movements
• How to use trim paths
• Key framing colour

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JEMMA:

I really enjoyed this task we were set, as it gave us a bit more freedom in style. The challenge was to create a short motion graphics piece to highlight our name. As well as masks and the graphs that we had learnt from the last lecture we were taught effects like CC bulge and CC bender to add emphasis to some letters.

My layout:

I used different comps for each letter in the name to keep my housekeeping tidy and trimmed the comps to where they come in so that I cam find the problems easier if there is anything wrong with overlapping…

Letter E: Position

Instead of using an actual letter I found the Helvetica bold font and created four rectangles over the top to make up the shape of the E. By doing this it allowed me to bring in each section separately. I staggered each of them to give an offset effect that eventually all come in together as one using the speed graph to make each position change smooth.

Letter M: Smiley Face

I decided to put both M’s together to make something rather than just copying and pasting the letter animation. The first M has a bounce affect and it gradually grows up to meet the second M which has slid into position. It’s like two different things colliding against one another. I used the CC Bender with the second M to follow the rule of anticipation.

I thought it would be quite nice to incorporate the use of the effect fill, to change the colour of the letters once they hit one another. It makes it look like the two have become one thing.

The actual smiley face aspect was the easiest part of this as I just offset the two eyes so they popped up one after another. Whereas for the smile I used a path rather than a shape which allowed me to animate it with ‘trim paths.’ I changed the values of the start and end points which bought the line in and out and create a weird curve and a sideways smile.

Letter A: Masks

Instead of an A, I actually used a V rotated 180 degrees because I knew I wanted to create the line across the A from the line of the E when it was on the final comp. To make the appearance of the V look slightly more interesting, I decided to use two masks and smiley animate the Mask path to make it appear.

The Letter G: Rotation

This letter was rounded so I figured a roll in would be the best way to bring it in. I used the position and rotation to create this effect and then added CC Bender on the end to make it look more realistic. Like the roll in had caused it to shake at an abrupt stop.

Rather than a linear roll, the G comes on slow, then fast and then slowly glides into place. I achieved this with the speed graph…

Final Comp: Bringing everything together

Using the brown and purple lines to create a sort of lining across the piece as well as to finish off the A. I animated the two slightly differently and I can’t remember why I used position on one and mask on the other but they both worked!

Letter J: Bounce Effect

using the techniques from the ball thing

using the speed graph to add weight to the J to push the G off the screen

The important message I learnt from this mini project was to visualise the letters as shapes rather than as letters and then each animation is a lot more interesting. I feel like I achieved this with the G, E and A, whereas the J and the M’s could have been applied to any letter making them less interesting. If I get time I would like to go back and create a concertina effect of the M’s like an opening gate and something long Like a tail for the J.

Final Outcome:

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Song Choices

Bill Loves you – Hidden Spheres

Wii Music

Frank Ocean

Oliver Tree

Jack Johnson

ELO

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My Thought Process 

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Main Inspirations

Tame Impala – Feels like we only go backwards has become the main inspiration for the way I want my video to look. These frames are the most exciting to me, and the kind of look that I want to achieve in my own sound sync.

 

 

 

 

 

I also really like the Jaguar Ma video which I found as a technique but have grown to really like and think it will really inspire the final decisions for my sound sync. I like these frames the best from this video…

But I have started to become really found of the line like effect which is found in videos like alb and artic monkeys. The movement is slick and smooth and I like the flow between each element. Motion graphics is something I have wanted to practice for a long time, so I thought I could take the opportunity in this project to see if it is my thing or not.

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Stop Motion Animation Effect 

I talked to G about doing stop motion for my piece but he showed me some tricks on after effects that makes something very fluid and neat look like it had been filmed on a camera. I practiced doing this with a motion graphics piece I had already made to see how the effect looked…

Aspects I changed on the masked portion…

• Pasteurise time: 12 FPS
• Gaussian Blur: To make it look like it has been filmed
• Noise: Adds grain to the image
• Transform: Added a wiggle to give it a frame by frame feel

The differnece:

https://vimeo.com/318482825

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Artistic Influences 

Element Design:

I went into two seasons in Cardiff (to shop oops not for the project) but then I saw one of the brands elements had a new line with a really interesting design on that I thought could be effective for the kind of piece I want to do.

 

 

 

 

 

Instagram Motion Graphics pieces:

I saw a piece made on a page called motion graphics_collective which really caught my eye so I followed the page and looked through for inspiration..

Fluid: I’m not too sure how it was created however I love the colour and the fluidity so I could easily film something to create a similar effect. I think it’d be nice to combine motion graphics and my own footage because thats something I found really fun from the last project.

 

 

 

 

 

Collage Effect: In motion this is made up of very quick cuts between shots where the visuals layer up upon one another in time to the fast beats within the music. The piece is confusing but it’s slow enough that your mind is able to register each image that appears but also fast enough that it keeps you completely encapsulated. I’d like to included this layer like effect in my own piece because I really like playing around with textures and building them on one another.

 

 

 

 

 

3D/2D Motion Graphics: One of the main parts of this video that I enjoyed was the very fast pace cutting to very slow because although it’s a strong juxtaposition the two work because of the two beats that are in the music. It really shows off the sound thats within the music and even if it doesn’t directly match every single beat it doesn’t matter because it presents a feeling and a mood of it which is really effective.

 

 

 

 

 

Paint-like Effect: This is a frame by frame artistic style, that is very different to every other example that I have found. It works with my main inspiration having that stop motion animation sort of feel but I really liked the movement across the screen and how each thing reacts with the next. it is unusual for the action to happen from right to left as the eye naturally reads left to right giving it an edge. I also really like the colour scheme, the pastels and the whites make a really tranquil feel.

Themes

I’m just gonna brainstorm some quick themes that I could use to base my visuals on. I want to have a central idea so that every section fits in together nicely.

• fruit
• Skate
• Pattern only
• Eyes and the mind
• Trippy/ Illusion

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Colour Mood board

Idea 1: Vintage

I typed into google vintage logos because I had seen an old bottle of whiskey in my cupboard and took notice of the unique style it had.I therefore simply typed into google, ‘vintage signs’ which came up with a collection of images that took my eye.  I like the curves and the way letters and shapes are put together in them to look beautifully aesthetic where all the elements are layered on top of one another to create a construction of sorts. This search not only gave me not only inspiration for a layout but also for the colour palette. The faded but bright colours are interesting and work really well together but also the range of patterns that are made up angst the signs could look really cool animated.

Idea 2:

So basically I accidentally opened media encoder when trying to get to after effects and saw this…

…and I was like woah ok thats a really cool visual. I really like the colours in particular and how they work with one another. I thought about these colours and made a mood board of things I like in these colours which has become the main colour palette for my piece. The image has become my main inspiration because it’s vibrant but still subtle and the pinks are calming but the way they are used makes the image strong.

My Final Mood board…

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Adobe Colour Schemes

G introduced us to a site called Adobe Color CC when we were practicing motion graphics. It give you a range of different colour bars consisting of 5 colours that work really well together so I used this as inspiration for my piece. Now I have found a constant theme that I want to follow, it was much easier to find palettes as I related my research to my mood board above. This is what I found…

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Footage

I was interested in having texture as a part of my final piece to add levels to the shapes. It creates more depth to the piece and I thought it could be interesting to match the movements in the pattern to the beats of the music. When I was in Lush shopping for myself me and Robyn went over to the sink and saw this,,,

The colours work perfectly with the colour scheme I’m aiming for and could create a really trippy sort of effect. I bought two of the bath bombs, and created a set up with a large box to capture the swirls…

 

 

 

 

 

My Final Footage:

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Stroke Effect

1. Path

I created this sing stroke and trim paths. Using a line shape without a fill creates a stroke and I used the trim paths options to make it grow and shrink and move to other side of the screen…

2. Glow effect

I initially used this effect just to create a nice close on the edges however when I opened the effect I found a lot more options to play with. On this particular path I used the alpha channel opposed to the RGB and used the glow operation in the same way that you use blending modes and it created this sort of rainbow effect…

3. Duplicate the layers

I used both methods above so that all the lines moved along the same path but offset them on the time line to create a layering effect. I also played around with the dash effect on stroke to get dots and dotted paths…

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Practice Illusion effect with shapes

Triangle Tunnel 

First attempt:

This is the first attempt of trying to create a triangular tunnel. I layered up shapes using trim paths again to make them circle as they appeared and I put each one into 2 1/2 D Space. The idea was to have a triangular tunnel that the camera moved through. This proved more difficult than I thought and created a very villa effect that didn’t look as illusion like as I wanted…

Attempt 2:

In this triangular tunnel I used an effect called radio waves. This was a perfectly symmetrical tunnel which was the original aim. I added opacity to the edges of it to make it look less flat on the screen and changed the polygon to have 3 edges to make it a triangle opposed to a pentagon…

I also had a go with the spin effect which looked really cool in it’s own comp, however it wouldn’t sync effectively to my music and when I added it to my main comp the fluidity wasn’t right…

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Playing with Bath Bomb footage

    1. Time Stretch

    2. Without Effect CC Bender

    3. With Effect CC Bender

    4. CC Lens

    5. Wiggle effect

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Tunnel 

1.Mask Layer

I created a circle on a solid and inverted an alpha matte on it as it scaled up…

This effect is created with the wave warp effect

2.Drop Shadow

This effect simply creates a shadow in the masked area so that it creates distance when the layers are put together…

3.Duplicated the layers

I created the layers and changed the colours so that you can differentiate each layer form one another. I also offset them so that they appear underneath one another…

As you can see there is a clear area underneath so I put my bath bomb footage bellow it all so that the tunnel becomes a transition from one frame to the next keeping the progression smooth.

However when I did this the separation look too large so I just used a simple blending mode and I was really happy with the result…

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Screenshots – Final Piece

Beginning Eye

1.Using Trim paths to create an eye shape

2.Created a masks on the eye so that further on Id be able to put an image through it

3.Expanding the eye to fill more space in the screen, I adapted the hue and opacity to create differentiation between the two

4.Effect ‘Turbulent noise’ used to match the three beats that come after the main eye section

5.I took the stroke effect that I created before and placed this underneath the eye, through the mask and expanded the mask as it continued to slowly reveal the pattern in time with the music…

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SIDE NOTE

(THESE THINGS HAVE BEEN MY LIFE SAVER TO SYNC EVERYTHING)

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Motion graphics

I really wanted a whole motion graphics sections with shapes doing cool things, so I used trim paths and scale to move each piece around and then easy eased the keyframes to add fluidity. The velocity change worked really well for the practices I did so I thought it’d work well here…

Hand

So the hand took me forever to only last like 4 seconds

1.Each part of the hand is make up by key framing the path shape and changing the shape frame by frame

2. I was going to parent the nails but I forgot how to do it so I used the position and rotation of them to follow the fingers frame by frame and the result was actually really successful

3.I precomposed this and then time remapped it to reverse the comp and put them back to back to open and close the hand

4.I placed it in the main comp and adapting the ball to look as though it was being squashed by the hand

5.The Goo effect was created with 2 different shape layers to make it look stringy and again used the frame by frame process to link it to the hands

Flash Tunnel

1.I created a set of lines and used trim paths to make them appear like a flash. I then duplicated it and turned the opacity down to give the image depth

(I accidentally made it all on the main comp and couldn’t precompose it without everything moving so unfortunately this bits a bit messy 😦 )

2.For the second tunnel I put an adjustment layer above it and keyframed the hue to add a twisting colour effect

3. I took a load of these and put one on top of another and scaled them down to make a tunnel effect

4. This did turn out quite flat, but as soon as I added a 3D Camera it enhanced the look of the tunnel and makes it look like you are seeing through the shapes…

End Triangles

1.I simply created a range of triangles in a funky pattern and placed them onto my piece using trim paths to have them come on to the music

2. On unusual beats I created a small effect on wiggle paths on some of the shapes and changed the color to make it more obvious it was happening…

3.Finally I overplayed this with the previous Triangle tunnel I had made as a practice giving it significant depth and making the screen look less empty

Voila thats a sound sync project

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Abandoning stop motion

I tried out the stop motion effect that I used early on in the project on the ‘Jemma’ I made however with the new style that I decided to adapt to it no longer looked as effective and in fact looked messy.

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Final Piece

Before the brief was set…

Dr Pete’s Lectures:

In Petes lectures we learn about the effects of typography and how they are used within title sequences to create messages. As well as adding to the aesthetics of the sequence they are symbolic of the theme.

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History of title sequences

Movie:

I found a youtube video talking about the history of title sequences and their relevance throughout time…

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G’s Lecture:

This lecture was all about research and finding examples of what we liked. It was interesting to look at previous title sequences and how the visuals matched the purpose, analysing the way symbolism creates tone and mood. These are the notes that I took on each sequence for reference to see what ways I can adapt my own piece in similar ways to the ones I liked.

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Mini Challenge:

Stills are a key part of a project like this because it gives you a clear vision to what you want the outcome to be. It is a way of projecting what is in your head onto a screen so that when it comes to making the sequence you have a visual to guide you rather than getting lost whilst still giving you the freedom to experiment with new proccesses. I want to do this for mine because getting stuck and lost within my projects is something that has happened a lot and held me back.

This mini challenge was set by G with a rough outline of what the customer wants (as shown above in my notes section.) From this I took all of the elements and researched all the themes of each component and ways I could demonstrate this without being too obvious. For example when it describes a “detective feel” I thought of things like calculative and maths opposed to a magnifying glass. I tried to be as imaginative as possible to avoid cliche.

These are all my research points:

Visual Mood-board of inspiration points:

My final Still…

What I used and how it relates to the brief

• Cork Texture: Early 1900’s rustic look and Medicinal
• Orange curve: Peach colour
• Bottles: Medical Theme
• Vignette: Drak and uneasy feel
• Purple Ink: Violet and uneasy feel

I didn’t get round to finishing the text in the time frame given but this is what I was going to put in a detective like font. I did how add the spacing in the way I wanted to look. The kernings are important, I tried to include the irony of having large kernings in a word that would usually have small ones because they indicate speed and match the word rush. However I like the fact that it contradicts this because it gives the sense of their being something wrong.

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3D Workshop in After Effects

Chris T taught us our first introduction to 3D Cameras in After Effects and working with 2 1/2D space.

We worked on a piece with Football players, each of the players 2D images having the camera zooming in and out from the players to create a sense of depth.

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Channel 666:

Chris T is a lecturer that came in to teach us some work on after effects.He taught us a range of skills that could be helpful in creating a title sequence and how to work with them effectively on the software. these are all the notes I took in the workshop with him with and everything I want to remember and take away from it…

Screenshots of my work on this:

First things I did: How I made the main comp

• Overlaid an ice texture onto the hand footage
• Used displacement maps to allow the hand to react to the texture
• Vignette effect adds subtle darkness to the edges to make the screen appear smaller and confined adding to a horror like feel
• Also a slight effect on the writing so it appears eroded
• I made the kernings of the letters closer to create a claustrophobic feel and kept it in the colour of the hand to tie it all together. (Just off Black)

Colour correction:

• Used the Lumetri effect with the tool Look to create an instant colour grade.
• I also created my own colour grade used the colour wells and playing around with the contrasts trying not to crush the whites too much
• I decided that my original colour grade was much more effective as I was able to build up colour and tone more slowly to have a more subtle overall look

New comp for the 666 section:

• I used an Alpha matte on the raw footage of the 666 to be able to add contrast and take away the areas of grey
• I chose the blue channel on the RGB to bring out the most information in the grey areas
• I then duplicated them and staggered them so they come on one after another

Adding textures

• I used one of the texture files on the alpha matte to add something interest to the 666
• I bought up the colours and saturation to bring in a red colour to go with the red theme

I then added this comp into the main comp. I think that it was really effective to use two separate comps instead of building onto one as it separates the overall piece into more manageable sections that are tidy and are easier to edit individual parts.

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Brief:

My notes on the brief and key points I need to remember…

^G’s little bit of inspiration

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Mini Challenge: 

G gave us another mini brief in this lecture looking at creating stills. This time we were asked to make a mid title sequence still for a Sci Fi movie using the colours Cyan and Green as focal colours. The piece could not include galactic imagery but still had to present a sense of scale with aspects of landscape to support this. These are the final stills I created…

I used a very simplistic text for this still because there is already a lot going on in the image that I wanted to writing to be strong but subtle. Having the small text before the name gives it a sense of hierarchy and I think all caps made much more of a statement. At first I decided to put the text on the side as it nicely aligned with the neck of the person however after moving in dead central I decided that this was much more effective. Having the small text there adds to the illusion of a sense of scale looking so small in comparison and it also levels out the shot.

I again created a mood board for reference photos to accompany my idea generation…

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Idea Generation 

I have struggled SO MUCH with this part of the project. Deciding what the hell I want to do is the bit that feels impossible. I asked a friend for help to which she said first pick whether you want to do a film or a tv series as the two are slightly different. Being a much bigger fan of series and being addicted to Netflix I decided that was the way to go. Then she asked what my favourite tv show was and to do that because I like it. Problem is my favourite tv show is friends and friends is unbelievably iconic and popular that it is not worth changing. Much like Seven or stranger things, the title sequence and the music is part of the show so I disposed of that idea pretty quick.

Not knowing what show I wanted to do at all, I did it totally the wrong way around and made a mind map of all the feelings and ideas I have for the type of piece I want to create looking at other title sequences I’ve seen…

Wanted to do something intense, moody and a dark vibe to it.

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Title Sequences I like:

Spectre:

• 1:34 – 1:38 – Glass shattering involving sections of the live action from the actual film
• I like how it travels through the shards to reveal the faces amongst them
• It has constant themes running through it all shown in different aesthetics for example the smoke and the octopus
• Sense of maturity
• Grand scale suggests the drama and the genre of spy
• Everything stays in a dark shadowed lighting creating a sense of eeriness with sharp highlights on key objects to subtly outline the shape
• Appropriate audio adds to the intensity

Deadpool:

• Moving around the 3D Space
• Use of 3D Cameras around still images
• Constant colour theme of black and red – suggestive of the graphic content
• Angles are dramatic and overdone against a subtle music adding to the comedy within the piece also seen in the names that are given to the actors
• Slow mo over each feature builds up the picture more and more
• It’s a slow reveal drawing in the audience

The Walking Dead:

• Rustic feel with the colour grade
• Sense of distance with the use of blur putting the audience at an awkward angle to make them feel on edge
• Slight movements are subtle but effectively get you I’m the mood for a horror
• The slow pace of action vs the fast pace of the cuts is effective
• right close to far away is also a good juxtaposition

House M.D:

• Anatomy imagery gives sight to the doctor theme
• low light throughout for a dark tone
• Almost confusing approach as things overlay one another much like the human mind
• I like that it goes from really intense slow movements to really quick rushes through overland images as if to be travelling around the scene and going on a journey through the body
• None of the footage from the show except an image of house himself as to give nothing away
• Particle affect to fill the space and suggest movement of fluids

The examples that I have looked for tv series all range around the 30 second mark so I plan on keeping my sequence around that

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Breaking Bad 

I’ve settled on creating a title sequence for breaking bad as it is a series that I have recently watched and really enjoyed. When I heard the brief this is the type of series  I had ideas for and it is the type of programme I want to watch so the prospect of making it excites me. The plot is still fresh in my memory and it has a very strong theme within the content. However the title sequence itself is quite bland and simplistic and I feel like with a show as loved as it is, this sequence could be much more inventive. There is a lot more that you could do than just the green. Theres are aspects I do like about it for example the chemical theme that lies underneath the whole thing and the way the type erodes. It foreshadows the way the series goes as Walter White’s (the main characters) life gets worse and worse. I also like that it isn’t too lengthy and over exaggerated. It is a tv series not a film so instead of just seeing this once you see it at the beginning of every single episode. Therefore you don’t want it to be boring or make the viewer wait too long to watch the show but instead just give them a taste of what they are going to see and build up the excitement.

What I want to keep from it

• Green or yellow or blue colour scheme
• Chemical symbols that make up the title (Thats the brand)
• Chemical symbols in the Actor and directors names
• A similar music

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Genre:

I looked into the genre of breaking bad so that I look into title sequences for series or films of the same to see how other people have successfully captured the themes. Breaking Bad is classed under three separate genres…

I understand what a drama is clearly however to get a better understand of the other two I looked into them..

The key points I picked up is that they will give the audience heightened feelings of suspense and surprise and that it puts a comedic twist on topics that aren’t known to be funny. Having watched the series myself, it made me feel on edge a lot of the time so have a title that would portray the intensity of the programme is vital. The way the show is laid out also starts with the end of the season and then all of the episodes lead up to you realising what the beginning part was about. Theres a sense of eeriness in the unknown and I like that everything isn’t always clear so symbolism of key parts whilst giving away no spoilers is something I would like to achieve.

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Black Mirror: Thriller

• Cracked text is really effective not only is it a horror type series but it actually has “mirror” in the title and breaking a mirror is bad luck
• Extremely simplistic purely using the text to present to mood
• I think it’s really well done because despite it’s length it tells the audience everything they need to know about the show
• Every episode is so different that something too detailed wouldn’t actually work for this
• The symbols and glitch audio suggests a hack on a computer
• even the glow effect is like glow from a screen the cyber genre is really enforced in this

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Theme Overview:

I typed the series into google and looked at what images it bought it. This gave me an idea of what visuals are related to the show so I could use this as inspiration.

• Green and blue and orange
• Rustic
• Early 2000s
• Scientology
• Chemistry
• Street

I also looked up fan art on the show to see how people use art to describe the show and the way in which they manipulate the characters to present personality and the themes in it…

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Main Inspiration

Orphan Black:

This is what I was most attracted to when looking at title sequences and I think it would work really effectively. These are visuals that I have always admired and is something I would aim to create. When being told to push ourselves in this project I saw this and although the skillset I would need to create it is out of my comfort zone it is something I want to aim to achieve.

What I like:

• Everything is central and their is a clear focal point for the eye
• Kaleidoscope effect adds to the plot line (all about twins)
• The same is for the text as one thing becomes two
• Blue and white and black colour scheme – sinister and scientology
• Transition to red has connotations of blood and fear and horror like qualities
• focused around the human body relevant to the series but not explicitly obvious

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Quick Ideas

An idea I have settled on is creating a sequence with the evolution of the production of meth. I want the focus to be on scientology and chemistry and the intelligent aspect of the show to present both the actual science that is created within the show as well as the clever plot line and the way the story is put together.

These are the key frames of the show that help inspire me…

Season 2 episode 9 – 16 minutes in

season 4 episode 1 – 37 minutes in

season 5 episode 3 – 24 minutes in

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Typography

In deciding what typography I should use on my Title sequence I gathered that it would be a good idea to have a look at what styles are used currently in this genre as inspiration…

This is just an alphabet of a typeface that is typical in the Thriller genre. The typeface is called Thriller Regular and Im referencing it because it is the most typical type for a film like this. The type is rough yet allegeable and stretched as to be seen as bold and prominent. It is the type of thing you’d expect on something to do with halloween. Heres some examples of how it’s used…

Other thriller films and the types they use…

Psycho:

Inception:

Seven:

Gone Girl:

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Breaking Bad Logo

This is the original Breaking Bad Logo..

I spoke to G about whether or not I had to change the logo to make it unique but he told me I could keep it as it is the branding of the show. I’m really happy about this because I like the typography of it and how it links in with the periodic table.

However the green would look really out of place with the colour scheme that I am aiming for so I decided to play around with that on photoshop…

Original:Mine:

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Stills

3 stills of different ways I could create a title sequence

1st Still: Bubbles on bubbles

• Two different types of bubbles layered on one another
• All text central using colours from within the visuals
• Vignette effect using paint tool to draw focus to the middle
• Black background

-Can create with fairy liquid and a straw in the sink

2nd Still: Blood against the shaving foam with the cracked glass texture

• Blue cracked glass texture and shaving foam to create a smokey effect (always shaves his head = reference)
• Heisenberg iconic drawing
• blending modes to merge them together

-Can create with actual foam swirling it with water and the image in ink coming through paper

3rd Still: Close ups of key imagery with a smokey/eery effect

• dodge tool to brighten the highlights on the letters
• The colours of the text matching colours in the image
• Close up of a book that becomes the demise of Heisenberg with red colour to indicate danger (cant tell if its subtle or it might give too much away?)
• three textures: 1 a soil. texture like the red dust where they park their rv and then the other two being a peach faded texture and a smoke effect to give a mystical effect

-Can create with a close range shot of key items and a macro lens on textures 

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Breaking Bad Overview 

I found a video on youtube about the evolution of the main characters in breaking bad and the all the key features in the plot line that helps the story unfold.

Key features of the series:

• The Hat
• The sunset
• The RV
• The production of meth
• The barrel of a gun
• Eyeball

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Practice

Struggling on how to approach my idea I had a 1-1 with G to discuss my ideas. I told him about the orphan black title as my main inspiration of which I thought was quite out of my reach but he showed me a simple way to achieve a similar effect. We went through the use of 3D Cameras and how they can be used to move all the way through the images and explore the 3D space.

This is my quick experiment with what he taught me using 2D images of chemical bubbles in after effects…

In this experiment I worked with 3D cameras using the idea of zooming through the images and I really like the effect it gave me and want to continue to develop this.

I also played around with different blending modes between the 2D images to see how it made each image react with one another. I don’t necessarily like the colours that have come out of it, the yellow and blues clashing however when I create my own footage ill be sure to keep colour blending in mind.

Alongside the camera moving in and out of the 3D space I used keyframes on the opacity of the images so that it created smoother transitions between the shots.

The outcome:

One thing I do want to try out to add to this is the wiggle tool to create a more natural movement

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Final Stills

1st Still: Bubbles on bubbles

This was my favourite still from my 3 choices I made but I adapted it to be in the colour scheme I want

-Can create with fairy liquid and a straw in the sink

2nd Still: bubbles in a chemical container birds eye view

-Can create with bubbles and fairy liquid on a black sheet of paper

3rd Still: Shards floating around

-Pieces of glass attached to string surrounded by black paper 

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Procrastination 

So I started drawing on my foot tattoo because this is what happens when I can’t figure out what to do next…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Audio 

This is the official score that they currently use for the breaking bad opening title sequence. I think that it is important to keep the audio to something similar to this as it is sinister and makes the audience on edge which I think sets up the theme of the show perfectly. The audio needs to get the watcher excited for what they are about to see so I want to make sure that excitement is there with the track I choose.

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AUDIO UPDATE:

NOTHING I can find is even close to being as iconic as this soundtrack so I am struggling to find anything worthy…

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AUDIO UPDATE 2:

I Spoke to some classmates about my problem with audio and they told me I can use the original music which has made my day

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Names 

I watched one of the first episodes of breaking bad to find the names that I need to include in my title sequence. In terms of hierarchy, The first will be the creator of the show and then following this will be the biggest character to the smallest. The two main characters are Walter White and Jessie Pinkman so I plan to put their actor names in larger text or higher up in the screen.

Created by: Vince Gilligan

Two main Characters: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul

Other key characters: Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt

I want to keep the symbols from the periodic table in the names of the Actors/Actresses so this is my list of how that is going to work…

Vince GilLigan

BrYan Cranston

AAron Paul

AnNa Gunn

Dean NOrris

Betsy BRandt

cc glue gun

cc mercury

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Footage 

I want to create a piece with all kind of chemical bubbles and reactions so I watched multiple youtube videos on how to make water fizz over e.c.t. In order to do this I picked up lots of different supplies from around town.

Test tubes and Scientific bottles from a local pharmacy:

Coke/Lemonade and Mentos:

Powder Paint:

I also got bicarbonate of soda, cornflour and vinegar to create the fizz like effect and the blue was food colouring in the solution.

I wanted to keep a black and white like colour theme so the contrast was high and pulled more focus to the blue which is the iconic colour throughout the series. The meth they cook is made by substituting pseudoephederine with methylamine which brings out the unique blue colour so I want this to be vital in the title sequence.

My set up: Everything was done on top of a large piece of glass (That took out many chunks of my finger) and black paper underneath for a solid background. At one stage  the water seeped into the paper and made a really interesting texture behind the glass so I worked this into a lot of the shots…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Final Footage thumbnails…

I sorted through and these are the ones I like the best:

• 56 – Green liquid on the glass
• 60 – Green fairy liquid bubbles
• 61 – Bubbles through big bubble
• 62 – 1 minute 13 Bug bubble through shot
• 65 – Growing bubbles out of a test tube
• 68/69 – Pull focus bubbles
• 71 – Screen filled
• 72 – Blue overflowing thing
• 74/75 – Overflowing with blue on the background
• 79 – Dust across the background
• 83 – cornflour bubbles
• 88 – Bubbles on the glass
• 90 – Mentos and lemonade
• 93 – Smashing the glass
• 96 – Glass still

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Kaleidoscope effect

I just simply added the Kaleida CC effect onto some bubble footage to see the effect and was instantly super happy with the results I got…

I really enjoy the trip effect and because why project is all about drugs, the trip is a side effect so could work really effectively in my piece. I want it to imitate the mind of the drug user as well as the production of the drug.

I also tried adapting the size in the effects panel to add more shapes to the image…

Although the patterns are really effective I don’t like this as much as you lose the effect of the bubbles and I like that you can still see the gloss of the bubbles in the first one. This way you can still see that it is an experiment taking place.

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Mirror Effect

As well as the kaleidoscope I decided to play around with the effect called “mirror” to make my own kaleidoscope. This way I should be able to fade into the trip looks from the original bubbles.

First I took the footage and put it into a new comp. I added an adjustment layer as to not be destructive in my editing, keeps everything tidier. I added the mirror effect to this layer and duplicated it 5 times, changing the reflection angle each time up by 15. I also had to recenter the reflection centre as it start point is central on the right hand side. This was my result…

To add the fade in I simply just keyframed the opacity on the adjustment layer from 0 to 100 over the first few seconds…

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Particle Effect

I thought it would be nice to add some digital particle effects to go alongside the live actions to create fluidity between the shots. To do this I took a black solid with the effect CC Particle World.

At this stage I simply just changed the particle type to faded sphere and took away the velocity and gravity to make the particles central.

At this point I really wanted to particles to start central and fade out to the edges. To do this I adapted the X and Y radius and key framed them until the particles left the screen…

I  changed the death rate to slightly larger to give a more faded effect but then changed the particle type to darken and faded sphere to depths the shadows and give the particles a rounder look. These colours suit my colour scheme better and I like the way the two look together against the black background…

The previous experiment created particles that were quite flat. Because my title sequence consists of moving through 3D Space with 3D cameras it was important for me to add depth to work alongside this. To do this I just lengthened the Z Radius…

I added the a one-node 3D camera to this to see what it would look like key framing the position to more through the particles. However I didn’t quite achieve the effect I wanted to as I wanted to seem as though I was going through the particles but instead it seemed flat and moved unnaturally.

I tried to fix this problem by key framing the position of the Effect so that as the camera moves through the particles move against it until it becomes black but it still doesn’t look quite perfect…

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Particles Take 2:

 

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More Footage:

I looked back at the stills I had created as an outline for my title sequence and realised I hadn’t taken any shots for still 3 and I really like the look of that one. Therefore I took the glass that we smashed in the previous shots and used it to recreate it.

My final footage:

I sorted through and these are the ones I like the best:

• 17
• 20
• 21
• 24
• 25
• 28

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Very Quick Storyboard 

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Fractal Noise Effect

Creating a smoke effect over my text by editing using the fractal noise effect…

I also played around with the saturation so the logo starts of in black and white and becomes colour, and this way it makes the appearance of it look more natural and liquidy. (not sure if thats a word but I’m running with it)

A Gaussian Blue Effect also helped the fluidity…

And then to finish off these piece I simple just added a mask around the edges with a slight feather bring in the darkness of the solid into the corners of the squares giving it this moody undertone which I am superrrr happy with…

Cracking text

I followed a youtube tutorial to help me figure out how to crack text..

This is my result following this tutorial

Things I learnt from this tutorial

• How to use masks to reveal effects
• The use of the Easy Ease tool when using 3D Space
• The Shatter Effect
• Using depth to increase reality in the image

Whenever I do Text on my after effects it is also very pixelated and I feel like it should not be like this so I emailed G to help me…

He replied…

and basically I was being really stupid. I put it up to ‘Full’ resolution and it worked instantly. Oops..

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Creating my Title Sequence

Screenshots of my production:

I input the first footage file into the main comp and added in my 3D Camera that is going to be the base of my piece…

OK. So I may have forgotten to screenshot all of my progress up until I literally just finished now. Got so tuck into it for about 3 days straight my blog was the last thing I was thinking about. So I am going to go back through each section as chronologically as I can and try and show how I did everything…

Colour Grade

Lumetri Colour effect

I used this a lot on my footage as an easy way of colour grading it all together without having to put in in DaVinci. The first thing I did was take out all the red/orange tones and make them blue to match my colour theme…

Final Thing…

Next section – Colour Graded

Lens effect

I liked the effect of the last piece but if I made the image bigger to fill the screen it just blurred the footage which is not what I wanted. Therefore using this effect allowed it to give an unusual stretched effect which I really liked because it also made it look much more 3D which goes with the 3D Camera going through the footage…

New comp

I used a new comp for pieces of footage that had more effects on to keep my timeline tidier. I used the kaleida effect for this like in my practice…

Beginning footage…

Kaleida effect

Lumetri colour grade

Adding it to the comp

Added more effects to add intensity within the blending mode

Vignette 

Without vignette vs vignette – used a mask with an oval

I put a dark vignette on the image above and used the same idea on single shots with masks to make it darker. Using a mask also allowed me to keyframe the mask expansion to give a fade effect which I ended up really liking…

Texture

texture vs without texture

I used a blending mode between the layers to intensify the bubbles. It made it clearer so the over flow looked more interesting. I changed the opacity of this to come in and out to make the change look natural and building

Breaking glass

The lumetri colour really helped me with this shot to make it match the other footage…

It made it much easier to blend it with the previous shot. After putting them together I bought up the shadows a bit to make the two more in sync

I created a mask for this layer, a square shape with a feathered edge. This was important because the shape is smaller than the screen and the edging is slightly opaque so the clean edge was really obvious and ruined the overall effect. the feathered edge made the movement look natural.

Particle Effect

I really liked the eeriness this bought when I made a mockup so I included this really subtly on my final title sequence where the screen felt empty or where I felt it helped tie in shots together…

On this shot I used it to make the hand look less out of place with the opacity on 40% so it didn’t take away too much focus

It is must obvious on this shot because of the stark black background and that is why I most like it because it stops the screen looking empty after a full screen before. I also like that the particles look like a mini reaction

Glass smashing

This is my original still and I realllyyyy want to keep this effect as it zooms out from the smash

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I tried moving the camera through the original Footage of the glass smashing but the only effect I got was this…

It didn’t give me the circle effect. THEN IT CLICKED that I had made the stills of the broken glass and added them in…

I colour graded them to have a blue light on it to in keep again with my theme and used blending modes to overlay the two of them…

I added the second still because the first one felt too short and because of the 3D Camera movements the first still goes off the screen so the second one keeps it in the right place.

Text

Incorporating the Logo

I don’t really know why I didn’t just import the comp I made because because I copied everything into this comp…

When I went to add the other text I used alpha-mattes to import a texture into the white of the text. To make sure the two matched I literally copy and pasted the effects from the logo onto the text comps and then it was smooth as hell.

I imported this into my main comp and I’m so happy with the transition. I just added keyframes on the position of the text so it looked like it was tracked with the camera to make it fluid.

Names

I definitely liked having the text Blue for the symbol to make them really prominent and stand out..

I created these texts in different comps and created masks to make them appear by key framing the positions…

This was the only exception because the background was blue and the blue blended in so I changed this to white another colour in the surrounding and it worked really well…

I used labels on my piece initially to plan out exactly where I wanted text to go

Final vs Storyboard

How my final piece relates to my initial storyboard

• I pictured this originally without a blur but I much prefer it with as it gives a lead in to the sequence.

• I pictured bubbles overlaying from the very beginning of the project even in my first practice and I’m so happy I managed to include this into the piece especially because it came out exactly how I wanted it to.

• I kept the zoom in on this shot as the 3D camera throughout gradually goes through the images, however this shot much better into my title sequence with a reveal keeping the edges dark rather than the white bubble background coming in straight away.

• I drew the bubbles on this shit as particles rather than actual bubbles. This texture was a happy accident as I was trying to create a good transition between shots and gave me a much better border than I had even thought of doing. It allowed the transition between shots to be smooth too.

• This is one of my favourite shots within my footage and I know being the strong gesture as it is I wanted it to finish the piece as a statement, and therefore I followed my original storyboard with it. I did try it at the began but then I didn’t have anything powerful enough for a strong finish.

• These last two shots match my original plan pretty much exactly, I tried it out and I liked it so I kept it.

The Final Piece 

thank fuck

 

 

 

 

Before the Brief has been given..

Mini challenge: 

“Make a film trailer with a completely different genre”

The idea behind this lecture was to see how we can create a genre using tone and mood through the way we cut visuals together and use audio. We can convey a theme to an audience using just editing so it is effective to learn how to do this as well as content to make a more round piece of work. The best example that we were shown is a film trailer for Mrs Doubtfire being shown as a horror when it is usually a comedy.

This is an example that I found that is really effective because it changes the colour grading of the trailer as well as adapting the audio to emphasise the genre as horror.

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Brief:

Key points I have taken from the brief:

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PechaKucha

Mini project: In order to learn how to effectively research this brief and grasp the idea of documentation we did PechaKucha as a class. PechaKucha is a presentation which consists of 20 slides and for each image you have to speak for 20 seconds. The idea is to have ideas that are concise enough to fit into the slides but you can fully expand on each idea and development your reasons for each point you make.

Each group took a different title from the assessment brief to work on, ours was music. This is the presentation that we created for our idea…

A key lesson I took from this project was creating photographic moodpboard as a way to present themes and branding as well as understanding the importance of coming up with more than one idea. We came up with three different aspects to research before even starting our idea generation for the album advert and this lead us to a very different idea at the end to what we started with. However we were even happier with this idea because it included a bit of everything we had thought about, it was the perfect version of what we initially came up with, which is something I want to carry into this project.

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Examples from Jason

Im struggling with an idea. So I figured the best place to start would probably be blackboard. Jason put up a range of different TV Adverts and promos to inspire us and these are the ones I like the best.

John Lewis 2013:

John Lewis create Christmas adverts which are an essential part of their advertising strategies, to the point where people are excited to see the new one, it is a part of their brand. The traditional look of this advert is what makes it so relatable to audiences with a narrative to hold the attention of the viewer. A story is an affective way of keeping focus to the advert as it gives them characters to put their heart into. Sensitivity is the key to being captivated. Another key aspect for John Lewis is to have an advert that is created of a quality standard. If the advert shows quality then it reflects quality of the brand.

Boxing Corner:

This Advert took my interest because of the way each feature in it is directly linked to what it is advertising. It does this throughout for example the typography is fragmented and split up to look as though it has been punched by a boxer as well as being aesthetically strong. I think the strength of the sport is also presented in the colour scheme of the contrasting black and whites with a bright solid Yellow for the text. Even the glitch effect suggests someone has punched right into the camera and smashed the screen. Each element is tied it to create a dominant mood to demonstrate the tone of boxing and therefore their is a fluidity between each shot. Also being a promo opposed to an advert you get a Call to Action which is used to tell the viewer what you want them to do. It gives the advert a focus and an intention, to give it a purpose.

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Initial Ideas

I have no idea which title I even want to focus on so the bets thing to do is try and think of something for everything and work from there…

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Product

I had a mini Brain wave.

I most like the idea of doing an advert for a product as I feel like this will allow me to make use of motion graphics which is something I have started getting into and really enjoy. This therefore gives me an opportunity to use it in a way thats effective as an advertisement technique as well as improving my skillset in this area.

I looked up the difference between Adverts and Tv promotions to help me understand the exact format of what I want to make.

After reading this I feel as though I have understood the difference more clearly. Advertisements are made for long term impact and to increase sales of something over a period of time by building up an image of a brand to bring recognition from an audience and persuade them to buy it. Whereas a promotion is made for a more short time effect to push sales immediately spreading the word about a product but is not necessarily unique to just that product. After understanding this I feel as though I would like to go down the advertisement route as I feel like the process is a lot more personal and will give me a lot of creative freedom.

https://www.diffen.com/difference/Advertising_vs_Promotion

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Adverts that Inspire me 

These are adverts that I have seen that work really effectively as a promotion of a product…

Corona:

The advert is used to brand Corona the alcoholic beverage as a “summer” and “holiday” drink and they use this aspect to CANT THINK OF THE WORD RIGHT NOW the whole advert. They stick to this theme both in location and colour grading consistently bringing the brand into shot to keep the audience focused on what the purpose is. The message is concise and positive, as something light hearted while reach out to a wider audience and your more likely to buy something that made you feel good than something that you relate to something negative.

This Motion Graphics section is my favourite part about this advert because it fluidly sits alongside the motion graphics and is purely included to represent the product at hand. The image merges into the shape of the bottle that zooms out to a location where happy people are drinking the beer and then the corona symbol pops up, cleverly guiding the thought process of the viewer. It is also important to note that the brand name is dead centre in the screen after the screen has zoomed into it taking the eye in to make it the focal point of the screen and their mind.

Apple:

I really took to this advert because it really made me think about what I was watching. I knew it was an apple advert from the beginning as the product pops up consistently throughout it (automatically good if we know what we’re watching) but it isn’t strikingly obvious why they have advertised it like this until the end. I think this is a good technique to use because it keeps the viewer watching rather than allowing them to shut off half way through.The actual visuals themselves are very interesting to watch because it’s bizarre. We as people are more likely to remember something that is out of the ordinary opposed to something we already see everyday. It is also important to mention what great quality all the effects are. The giant cat and the moving buildings and a girl flying by her bubblegum are very obviously not real but we believe it because it looks so good. The better quality of the advert indicates a better quality in the product which is what everybody wants.

I think this is the most impactful part of the advert as it brings in a direct correlation between the theme of the advert and the part of the product they are trying to promote. We see the actor using the product to start with where they have used a focus pull to the screen of the phone. I think this is really effective as it shows what the normal eye would see as blurry emphasising the quality of the phone and it’s abilities. And then the eyes of the actor looking out of the edge of the screen before flipping to outside the window and directly the viewer to the tagline. The tag line is one of the most important parts of this adverts as it brings the visuals together and allows it to all make sense for the audience; everything you love just got bigger. And then to make it even clearer but subtly, we see a dramatic shot of the actual product and the phone grows behind a different model showing us exactly what is new and good about the phone. VERY POWERFUL.

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Mind Map:

Shoes! I wear shoes I like shoes I can DO shoes.

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Checking my idea

I checked the brief to ensure that my idea aligned with the task at hand and when I went through it it seemed as though it had to be a tv promotion opposed to an advert which is what I believed we could do from our lecture with Jason. I emailed Jason to check this over…

After Clarification from my lecturer I have decided to go ahead with the idea of advertising shoes because it is something I am passionate and feel I can create something interesting with. I have also decided to stick to his advice and go for a 29-35 second advert so I can keep it relevant to other adverts in the industry.

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Trainers Advert

As I have narrowed down my focus on what I wanted to do, I have seen a couple of adverts that have really inspired me in all different ways from the way it is colour graded to they way they tell a narrative. These are the pieces that will have the most influence on the look of my final advert.

Loyle Carner + Levis:

This piece was created with a large brand to promote the music created by Loyle Carner. It is not laid out like a typical advert and this is what most inspires me about this piece. The way everything is cut together is more jerky in the fact it flips from one scene to the next but this work as we are learning about the subject as a whole and his surroundings. I think this style would work effectively for me as I’m trying to achieve this all rounded visualisation of the shoe and what it can do. The colour grading to this is also beautifully done with a slight fade to every shot giving a very vintage feel to the whole thing and I think it’s very aesthetic to the eye.

Janoski:

This advert works for me in different ways to the first because even though it has the same cinematic feel, it uses effects to develop the plot line and I like this a lot. The effects are not just there to make it look “pretty” but they relate directly to the skating audience which is the target for the advert by emphasising something that annoys most skaters; finding places to skate but it not quite being skate-able as explained in the behind the scenes video. I also like that it isn’t 100% focused on the product yet the message is still really clear and we, (all audiences not just skaters) understand exactly what it’s about.

Bacardi:

This advert has created my main inspiration for how I want my advert to look. The advert is not for trainers but instead for Bacardi a drink so the main focus is on this however the visuals were really interesting to me. I like that each individual personality can be seen in just the shoes and the uniqueness of each persons footwear contributing to a bigger group. This is emphasised by the fact the camera doesn’t show the faces of any people in the shot it is all shot from the waist down so all identity is projected in there feet and dancing.

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VANS Adverts 

I thought that as well as finding inspiration from adverts themselves I should also look into some of the Adverts that Vans themselves have created to represent themselves…

Vans: The story of Vans 

The reason I like this advert for vans is its use of motion graphics to tell a story. Narrative is a key aspect in any kind of advertising because it gives the viewer something to follow and have sympathy for drawing them in, making you want to see the ending.

HOW do Vans Brand themselves?

https://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/off-the-wall-branding-vans/

This vans advert has a very direct focus and purpose advertising just one type of shoe they offer as a promotion of the new product. Everything is then directly linked to this to emphasise the point: very clear focus.

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Branding

Evolution of their logo:

A key branding for companies like vans, is through social media. Social Media platforms – some statistics on how it benefits promotion. Adverts that we see on tele can be created in small 10 second pieces that flash up on everyones phone on facebook making it widely more noticed. I decided to look on their instagram page to get to grips with there style more and to understand what theme they use to advertise themselves because it is a popular social media that is all based purely on imagery.

All the words I think of when looking at their page

• Clean
• Quality
• Rustic
• Vintage
• 90’s
• Mixture of appropriate colours
• Yellow, blue and red
• Skate
• Surf
• Street wear
• Relatable to genuine people
• Positivity
• Everyday/Casual
• Aesthetically pleasing

Vans Cardiff

My own images:

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Textures

I ahem taken some reference photos of the product that I am advertising to get some inspiration from the textures and unique style they have. These are my vans that I have bought and wear and it is interesting to see all the different aspects that make up the “van” that you don’t notice as a buyer until you look this close.

Red Old Skools:

Black and White Checked High Tops:

List of features:

• Complimentary colour palette
• Clean design
• Retro vibe
• Gum
• Geometric shapes
• smooth vs rough
• Skate
• Sense of care in design
• QUALITY

I have decided to use a lot of these textures within my motion graphics to draw everything back to the shoes. However I want to have my main focus on the tread of the shoe. The pattern on the bottom is the same on every pair of shoes but people decorate and design the top half of the shoe however they want to, to make it unique. Nobody thinks about the sole of the shoe because you don’t see it most of the time yet it is at the heart of every pair and I think I could use this as an effective advertising strategy.

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Necessities

Aspects I need to include in my advert

• The brand name
• The tagline
• At least three shots of the product
• Suitable audio
• Website Link
• Logo

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My Idea

I really like the idea of adventure and having shoes that “leave a mark.” An idea that I have is to has shoes walking, tapping skating, all the different brands and as they step onto things or touch things they become the tread of the shoe they are wearing. It’s like goldilocks where they leave a path of where they have been, so wearing this shoes, are shoes that will leave memories.

Frozen Movie:

The inspiration I had to have the things become something else when troop on was when I was watching frozen (no judgement) and saw this scene… From 1:30-2:12

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Tag Line

A tag line is something I knew I needed as most adverts have them to give a punchy statement that the viewer remembers and takes away with them. When think about the idea of adventure I brainstormed words that I could that linked to trainers and shoes and the ones I came up with were Tread and Sole.

From this I came up with…

– Tread with Soul/sole

– Give your tread some sole

I like the play on word with sole and sole as it gives the line some sentimentality which as I have discussed is very important in advertising.

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Change in plan

Originally and all the way through I have been very focused on just having vans shoes. But then I thought that it would be cool to have lots of different treads being splashed across the screen. Somewhere that I shop at that I love is Two Seasons. Two seasons is a skate shop that sells a range of brands of shoes. They sell clothes too however I am going to focus on the shoe range. It works really well as well because the company doesn’t actually have an advert on tele so it gives me a reason to create something to promote them.

My new idea

TWO SEASONS:

Two seasons Cardiff

My own images:

 

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Typography

I looked into all the different brand of shoes that they sell at Two seasons because although they also sell a lot of clothes I want this to be a shoe promotion. By looking at all the different typefaces it will help me to find something suitable for the text on my visuals.

Converse:

Nike Janoski:

Adidas:

Etnies:

Lakai:

Element:

HUF:

New Balance:

Emerica:

What do they all have in common?

• Bold
• Black and White
• Chunky
• Simple
• Geometric

Decided to choose 3 or 4 of the main brands because they are going to be the names that people know and will draw them to the advert and these are going to be the main sellers for the company. I also own pairs, or know friends with pairs of some of the shoes that they sell which makes it convenient for me to film.

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Audio

Within my advert there are walking shots that are the base of the plot and therefore I thought it’d be a cool idea to sync the audio to them to keep the “quality” finish I was aiming for. I really want audio with a strong beat so that this can be emphasised, I researched this with my boyfriend being a Music student to find the perfect song to fit it to. I want it to be something funky that it draws attention but that it still has a skate and “cool” kind of vibe so it in keeps with Vans Branding.

Chroma by Mt.Eddy: Too generic

Insane in the Brain by Cypress Hill: Too many other connotations/too well known

Blue Orchard by the White Stripes: Upbeat, strong

No one loves me and so do I by them crooked vultures: strong riff

What if I go by Mura Masa: Nice defined beat

No CD by Loyle Carner: Funky, skate, very relevant

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Mixed Audio

The Crooked Vultures:

Loyle Carner:

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Creating my Piece 

Time line of my shots in placement using premiere 

I played around with the Reverse tool adding a bounce affect to the piece like the feet are creating a pattern and a journey that we look back on as a memory. I did this using the speed and duration tool and selecting Reverse Speed.

I also used frame holds to lengthen shots to keep them in sync with the music…

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Graphic Textures 

I created a way of having textures appear in the scenes by creating masks and lumar mattes….

The problem with this example is that it pops up and looks very unnatural. Therefore to make it look more natural I added key frames on the opacity to have a more gradual  appearance.

I also wanted to have this texture effect in the puddle section of the piece but the difference in this shot is that the legs and feet are no longer still there are assets moving in and out of the water. Therefore I had to use rotorscoping to mask them out.

I added the texture onto the shot using 3D Space to allow it to fit with the lines on the ground and look like the floor.

Because I had set the solid layer to red the texture didn’t match the environment I had placed it in. To make sure that it looked the most natural I changed the solid to a white blue and I think this worked much more effectively.

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Colour Grade 

In the audio there is a shift from the intro to the main riff. Thew riff is where all the colours start to appear and where I want to put the tag line. Because of this I tried out using black and white until the scene where two seasons pops up and then adding in colour. I really liked the way this worked out because it puts so much more emphasis on that section so I have kept it in. To colour grade the whole section I used a white solid with a luma matte and cut the footage in half to match with the solid.

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Text 

For the text I really wanted to emphasis the textures of the souls so grabbed images on Adidas and nike souls as well as the waffle from the vans. I used the luma Matte on these to put the textures in side of the text. Because the image had a clear background I was able to animate the text going one way and the texture going the other that meant the text eventually disappeared. It made a smooth transition for when it was against the footage.

I also took the saturation down on the texture and gave the shadows and highlights tints of colour that would match the footage I wanted to place it on top of. The good thing about putting the text into different comps was that it allowed me to go back into them and edit them without affecting my main comp.

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My Final Piece:

 

 

THE BRIEF:

This brief excites me and I am keen to get started on it. It’s a fairly open brief giving me a lot of room for imagination and exploration. 

I made key notes on the brief that was given to us highlighting all the most crucial aspects to remember…

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INITIAL ARTSIST:

This is an artist that I have followed for a while and came to mind instantly when we were given the project brief. Chris uses illustration is short gimmicky gifs that have a light hearted attitude to them showing simplistic narratives in a visually interesting way. 

https://dribbble.com/crispe

View at Medium.com

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INITIAL IDEAS:

I heard the brief and brainstormed everything I could about my personality to jump start my idea generation…

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PRIMARY RESEARCH: 

I struggle myself to define who I am as a person. Trying to think about your own personality is a very bias way at looking at who you are so to help me figure out a theme for my Animated Persona I decided to ask a couple of people close to me about how they see me and who they think I am. It will help me define my key features and take into consideration how I appear to others. To do this I asked people I know to give me any words that popped into their heads when they think of me and my personality and these are my results… 

Hayley: (My sister)

• Dopey
• Brotendo (Childhood nickname)
• Dogs

Kaye: (My auntie)

• Friends
• Crazy 
• Dogs

Hoppy: (My uncle)

• Loving 
• Calamity 
• Milk
• Kum By Yah 
• “Blonde”
• Funny

Gail: (My Mum)

• Dogs 
• Chocolate 
• Crazy good memory 
• Literal 
• Milk

Courtney: (My Uncle)

• Bouncy 
• Zany 
• Dogs 

Joe: (My Boyfriend)

• Bubbly
• Sunflowers

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REFINING MY IDEAS:

After brainstorming myself and then asking friends and family for advice I have refined all these ideas into just 3 and came up with some simple concepts to base my short piece around. 

Idea 1:

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Friends is my ultimate favourite TV show I watched it all the way through multiple times. I would recreate the title sequence of friends using myself as all 6 friends. With this I would take the most well known section with the fountain and the umbrellas and do this is my own way using rotoscoping as a key technique.

Idea 2:

JJ the Dog 

I want to use my face and morph this into a dog with a collar on, a gold tag hanging off it saying JJ. This links to my childhood memory of making my family pretend I was a dog and I named myself JJ only answering them in barks; one woof for yes and two for no. The dogs head would then become a little dog that would bounce across the screen. This example would be mainly motion graphics. 

Idea 3:

Milk

Since being at Uni for 6 weeks I have drank 24 pints of milk which is insane. I have always drank loads it is literally part of my personality. I would have myself trapped in a milk bottle and either break through the edge or have the bottle tip over pouring me out and the spilt milk would reveal the words JemmawithaJ. I would also create this pretty much entirely in motion graphics.

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VISUAL INSPIRATION:

ARTIC MONKEYS: 

This music video has always took my eye for it’s unique artistic style

1:36 – 1:59 – The transitions between the shots and the look of the drawings

The aesthetic code within the music video is slick and clean, the people all drawn from a single line. The simplicity of using only two colours makes the composition easily decodable and having them so contrasting is a striking feature to a viewer. I like the way they have used motion graphics to animate the narrative as it allows them to add abstract qualities to the piece. I also really like the way that it uses Black as the base colour with all the details in white as it sets a dark, mysterious tone to the graphics. 

3:25-3:43 – The way that colour is integrated into the animation

One of the main aspects of this animation is the way that colour is integrated into the black and white theme. The black background is continuous throughout the action to ensure a flow from one shot to the next as well as keeping the same style of people. The block colours in keep with the simplicity of the design whilst adding an interesting splash of colour to the piece. It also only adds in colour when it is necessary, jumping from black and white to vibrant designs highlighting the key points of the scene and guides your eye into the parts the creator wants you to focus on. It cleverly directs the audience all around the edges of the frame which is very impactful with something as dynamic as this. 

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JUNO TITLE SEQUENCE: 

What I like:

• The way it mixes Drawn line with a realistic figure is really effective. 
• The almost stock motion like approach, seeing each frame opposed to fluid movement gives it a unique characteristic.
• The beginning sequence interests me as the completely real footage because an entirely digital image. It’s almost like a curtain sweeps over the piece and changes the entire setting.
• The audio suits the tone of the visuals, the song that has been chosen in keeps with the mood they are trying to reflect. The song itself also contributes to the personality of the person that we are seeing as it follows her movement in time. 

In my piece I want to have the same effect with my audio. Even though the piece I will be making will be a lot shorter than this I want to ensure the audio in keeps with what we are seeing in order for it to have a purpose. I like the idea of having something with some kind of personal connection to me so that if people heard it they’d think, “Jemma.”

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MONSTER ENERGY:

What I like:

• Incorporating live action and motion graphics into one is merged seamlessly together.
• The “Monsters” are intentionally placed to look as though they are emerging from the person in the frame as if to mould the two people into one. I like how this can represent two different sides to one person or the “monsters within”.
• It can also be interpreted like the live action is what we see from the outside but the real story that we don’t see is being exposed with the digital art.
• The edits aren’t just used to be fantastical some of it is just used as a way of stylising the live action for example the eye at the beginning.
• The colour palette is simple but really effective using just greys and oranges to differentiate the man to the monster. The warm undertones under everything even the brick walls brings everything together as a whole piece rather than it feeling fragmented.

When I create my Animated Persona I would like to work with both Live action and motion graphics much like they do here in order to challenge myself to work with areas that are slightly out of my comfort zone. I also like the ideas of having splashes of colour to create highlights for key aspects. 

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MY BRAIN:

What I like:

• The movement is an effective way of guiding the eye and keeping the audience encapsulated waiting to see where the frame is going to go.
• Similar effect to artic Monkeys in that the action doesn’t stay in one frame we pan across as if there is so much more hidden waiting to be revealed as the camera moves.
• The colour palette constantly changes throughout just a 10 second video but because we are taken to a different section of the screen each time we only ever see 3 or less colours at a time. This prevents the confusion and keeps the neat simplistic style throughout.
• Each shot is framed really neatly by something whether is paint drips, water or the eye itself balancing out each one so it’s pleasing for the eye to watch.

I am going to use the movement of the frame as inspiration for my short film and I want to consider the infusions of colour and changing them to convey different moods and tones. One thing that I find very effective is the flow of one thing to another and I want to ensure mine has the same amount of excitement whilst still keeping the fluidity.

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MINI CONCLUSION OF WHAT I’VE SEEN:

Overall after this initial research I have come out with some main points that I really want to consider when creating my animated persona. I definitely want to attempt merging Live action and Digital art in one rather than doing a piece that is entire motion graphics. I also want to try a frame by frame stock motion effect, however I will practice this first to see how time consuming it will be. I want to play around with the effect of audio on the audience maybe by trying different pieces and asking people which one they think best reoperesnts me and finally looking at ways to stylise my face to become a representation of me rather than an accurate depiction. The actual look of something matched up with a visual representation of something allows you to add feeling and emotion to it. So with a face instead of just a face you will see personality shining through the face.

A stylised drawing gives you to opportunity to put meaning into the image rather than just facts. I had a Lecture with Pete talking about the differences between Pictograms, Ideograms and Logograms and how they can impact the audience. It’s all about how we can use symbols and signs to create an idea rather than just taking it literally. 

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FEEDBACK:

I have decided to roll on with Idea 2; JJ the dog. It allows me to make it as simplistic or as complex as I would like to with freedom to do different things as I learn how to do more in my lectures. However to ensure that I am making the right decision and that my concept is strong enough to fit the brief I’ve been set I spoke to G for some advice…

My Email… 

His reply… 

HE DIDN’T REPLY LMAO

But I spoke to him and my feedback was that he hasn’t done morphing before in the way I want to do it. It would be a hard concept to try and explore myself being a beginner on after effects so I will try it briefly and if it is not successful I will adapt my idea to support my skillset. 

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ARTISTIC STYLE:

I have made a Pinterest board looking up artistic styles and techniques, colour palettes and design as inspiration for my project… 

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TECHNIQUE LECTURE:

Notes from G’s Tips and tricks lecture. We learnt some key skills for different techniques on After Effects and I have written down all the ones that I want to practice before starting my animated persona. 

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TECHNIQUE 1:

Parenting:

This is not necessarily something that I initially wanted to explore when I started the project but not only has it given me ideas for my animated persona, it has also given me a lot more confidence with After Effects.

I have also taken note of some of the new skills that I have learnt from this session so I can remember it for my animated persona.

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TECHNIQUE 2:

Displacement map:

Using displacement maps to add dimension to the dogs face 

I also tried out a layering effect with this Piece adding a mask to the footage. However in practice this created a very disjointed look to the overall piece 

To stop this I reworked this idea with a more solid shape like a circle so that the overlay was cleaner. I also played around with the opacity tool which allowed me to highlight when the dogs eyes came into alignment with my eyes making them look together as one.

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PHOTO REFERENCES: 

My own little doggos…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographing my own dogs makes the project really personal to me and it also allows me to gain any specific angle I want for when I decide how I want the dog to look. These are just a range of angles for now so I can practice some artistic styles in the different positions. 

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ARTISTIC STYLE:

Using one style in particular that I liked off my Pinterest I created a range of different assets to inspire my piece…

For practicing the overlaying I Also tried a picture of my dog and added the same splotchy effect for if I wanted to use this over top of my face and morph them together. 

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CHANGE OF PLAN

I have had a slight change in direction with my project as I have come to realise, I had packed my plate really full trying to do a purely frame by frame animation in just two weeks. I was also in quite way over my head, so I have decided to re- evaluate the processes within my piece and make it more “Jemma- friendly.”

1. I have always liked the combination of live action and motion graphics, so I am going to make this more prominent in my piece. Ever since learning how to do displacement maps, I have loved the way it looks and thought it could work well in a double exposure sort of situation. This wouldn’t take it too far away from my original idea either because my whole focus is on having two sides of your personality.
2. Following on this “Two sided” idea I decided that I would incorporate more aspects of me rather than JUST dogs, but I still want to incorporate that as a main feature.
3. After talking to G about the difficulty in morphing one subject into another and that it was a complex skill that he himself wasn’t too sure how to do, I want to move away from this idea and think of an alternative to make it look as though I become the dog.

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COLOUR GRADING

A very popular colour grade in cinema today is teal and orange; The two have become a classic combination. D L Cade discusses this on Peta Pixel and explains why the combination has become so common. He explains that all skin tones naturally have tints of orange or warm tones at least so by pushing teal into the darks of the image we are able to accentuate the key features. The second reason he uses is all about depth. In order to create a very cinematic image we need to achieve a sense of depth. He says that teal and orange are THE most contrasting complimentary colours so it creates the most amount of separation between the highlights and the shadows without taking away the realism. In my colour grading I decided to take the teal and orange theme as it worked affectively with my choice of shots. Blues bring out the skin tones, so this worked especially well when the water falls behind my face. The colours were naturally there so on dissolve I was able to create subtilties in brightening the tones rather than changing it to look fake and put together.

D, L Cade (2017) Online: https://petapixel.com/2017/02/23/orange-teal-look-popular-hollywood/

I had two different shots to try out with my piece for the walking shot, one across by the poles and the other in front of the colourful buildings.

Colourful Buildings:

I was originally going to use this shot as I thought the background would give the shot something interesting rather than it just being walking. However, after playing with the colour grading on it I decided that overall it was too busy and loud for what I needed. It took away from the focal point: the dog. As much as I tried to reduce the vibrancy and saturation there was still a lot of STUFF in shot. I also figured that on a background this complex, that if I wanted to still morph myself into a dog this would have proved very difficult.

Poles:

This shot is much better in a lot of ways. Firstly, it’s cleaner. The framing is right having me in the direct centre of the screen, so it is more pleasing for a viewer to watch. Secondly the convenience of this shot makes it much easier to animate a frame by frame dog giving me the ability to create the illusion of a person morphing into a dog, allowing me to stay as close to my original idea as possible. In terms of colour I really like the lighting for this shot. Unintentionally we shot where a shadow is cast across the one side of the pole and light is thrown over the other side. This way when I walk across, I am in darkness and when I become the dog it’s in light as if to have been revealed. I also really like that just before I get the second pole a small cast of light hits my face and then I disappear as I’ve been taken in to a different place. I used the teal and orange on this also to extend the contrast further and to in keep it with my other shots.

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RED BAR:

I have chosen the colour red as a focal point for my final piece for two reasons. Number one, it is my favourite colour. This is a personal project that is supposed to show off who we are, so I wanted to make sure that even details like this reflect me. Number two, the colour scheme that I decided on for my footage was teal and orange.The two colours are complimentary on the colour wheel ensuring a satisfaction when looking at them together. The red is close to orange as they are both considered warm tones so the two fit smoothly together with my colour grading.

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Displacement maps for Final piece:

This is what I used to get the double exposure effect for my final Animated persona. 

I used the same solid and the mask that I used for the  red bar and then adapted it with key frames as the timeline continues to expand and stretch it and create a mask of the image. Keeping this mask allowed me to overlay the two layers together as well as creating aesthetic effects over the image to add some interest. 

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FRAME BY FRAME:

This is one of the techniques that G taught us in our lecture and knowing I always wanted to do do some kind of frame by frame approach I decided to incorporate this with my dog. It has allowed me to keep that live action/motion graphics balance as well as creating something visually creative.

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Final Animated Persona: