Final Piece

                                                                             Spirit

Final day of editing

Was a great final day of editing. I never realized the amount of work we still needed to do. In the end we basically pulled apart all the footage we had, and spent hours on tweaking each piece frame by frame.
We originally had our group name 'Paradox' with a smoke effect. We needed to change this as this had no place in the film. We ended up choosing a kanji symbol 'spirit'. This was designed to give a more foreign look and a little more meaning behind our film without giving the story away.
This is the symbol for 'Spirit'.

We then moved to editing the flashbacks. These needed to be timed and also have a added feature of a filter that was different from the other filter that was on the rest of the film.

 

After this we discussed sound as we had moved along from the original piece we were going to use.

Pastel found a great song from the soundtrack of Naruto Shippuuden Soundtrack - Ochihabune. As soon as we had played the music with the film we knew it was perfect and exactly what we were after.

 

 

By the time we finished on that saturday night it was already 10.30p.m. But it was so worth the extra time of editing. We accomplished what we had set out to do for this project.

End is near

We are now nearing the end of this project. There are still a few issues we need to sort, Music, title, credits, and minor editing still needs to be done, touch ups etc...

I once again believe our group has taken a giant leap in showing how well we can work within a team and get things organized and done. Each member has put in the effort needed and if only there was a little more time we could have tweaked the film to something greater then the constraints of the brief.

Preview of our final film, still editing needed.

More editing.

Now that we had all the footage, we needed to once again sort through it all and cut out extra pieces that were either unusable, of were just too lengthy and dragged the film out too long.
To do this we split the footage up and went through the particular scenes we needed. I needed everyone to write the footage file number and the time of the footage so I could then easily find that footage and place it within Finalcut.

We now have a full 'rough version' of our final film. We are however undecided on music, or sound we will use.
We also discussed our thoughts on a name for our film, as this was proving difficult, we came up with an idea to use a symbol instead.
These were some name ideas

Reshoot

As mentioned earlier we needed another days re-shoot. We needed to do this re-shoot as soon as possible, and took a real chance with the weather as it wasn't that great. We were fortunate the weather cleared up for us. We set up things a couple of days earlier asking Kate if props can be brought back for the day, and if Alyse could be prepared for make-up duty. Aly had to make sure she wore the same clothes as the first shoot, and Logan and I had to source two cameras again. Pastel had the most important job of picking up Charly and making sure she was ready for the day.
The morning of the shoot we came to class prepared, at this time the weather was not good, so we decided to go away for an hour and work on our blogs and any extra editing from the first shoot. Once the hour had passed the weather had cleared and we made moves to go as soon as possible. When we arrived the car park was full and we realized that the garden festival was happening that same day and there were many people around, we did not let this detour us and we carried on with set up.
Before the re-shoot we had made a scene list on the scenes we needed. This was done so we could move quickly through the day.

We knew we had to focus on our graveyard scene, this was our last and the most important scene, we also had no footage from the first shoot of this scene. We needed to shoot this first wanting to do it before Charly become tired or restless. Doing this worked out well and we got some great shots.

We continued shooting throughout the day and I believe we now have enough footage for us to finish what we want to accomplish.

Sorting footage.

Once we had the footage, I uploaded it all to my PC, I then created folders for both cameras and also created a folder I could place random footage in. The task was to sort through footage and find what was usable, and also to connect footage from each camera for each scene as we had two rolling at the same time. It was obvious when we left filming for the day that we might not have enough footage, but when I dwindled it down it was clear that we only maybe had 1 min max of clean cut footage. This is not enough for what we want. The next step is to get together as a group and discuss whether we do another day of filming, or we look at taking another approach.

This is a image of the cameras we were using.

This is a concept for the opening sequence I had been working on, it maybe only a couple of seconds long, but took nearly a day and a half to complete.

I first did the smoke title, which was done by a tutorial on Youtube. This may sound simple but I still had to add in my own calculations and attributes to create the smoke, I also had to have each letter transforming from smoke into a solid letter with the use of key framing a mask at the precise time the smoked moved across the letters. I then flattened the worded title, and placed the footage of Aly picking up the flower. This was a learning step as the footage was very shakey and I had to apply the warp stabilizer VFX to stabilize and get the best footage I could out of that shot. Once this was all done I imported the file to Final Cut pro, and gave the footage a 'orange and teal' filter. This type of filter is similar to the colour filter they use in Micheal Bays Transformers movies and give the footage a dark vibrancy which I quite like.

This is the out come of that work.

 

Filming

Early monday morning we all meet at Tupare gardens as planned. Logan and I took care of bringing the cameras that we needed for the day, Kate and Alyse brought props that were made for the film, while Pastel brought her niece who we were going to shoot in our short video. While me and logan set the cameras up, Alyse was in charge of makeup for Aly and pastel got her niece Charly ready. Kates props were perfect, she had made daisy chains, homemade boats made from sticks, flax, and leaves, and a stunning cross we were planning to use for our final scene.

We commenced with filming and shot as much footage of Charly as we could, it was difficult to keep track of her as she moved very quickly, it was also difficult to try and get her to do what we wanted, but we expected a bit of that, and there was no real pressure to achieve perfect footage on a days shoot. 

The day was very tiring, for both the group and especially Charly, but we managed to go the full day only having to stop once we felt it was enough of Charly. We felt we had some good footage and called it a day. 

The best part of the day for me was trying to capture something beautiful, and Aly with Charly dressed in white while in a green environment looked stunning. 

Here are some shots of the day.

Location

Our next task was to seek a location to film our piece in. First we had an idea of heading out the back of the Witt institute where a graveyard is located. We took a walk on a nearby path that ran close to a river and then lead back around to the graveyard. We found that the scenery just wasn't what we were after, we wanted something a little more colorful and open. We decided this was not the place.
That same afternoon we went to another location, Tupare. Straight away we knew this was the place.
Tupare is a landscaped garden that over looks the Waiwhakaiho river on the outskirts of New Plymouth. The propertys original developer was prominent businessman Sir Russell Matthews who brought the land in 1932. The properties landscaped garden contains majestic trees, a water feature and extensive plantings in different settings.

These are some photos taken on the day we were scouting.

Thoughts

Our initial thought was to do something with Pastel's son Elan. We thought of how the world would look through his eyes, how his daily routine determined his emotions, We thought of how he might feel lonely when Pastel has to go to study or work. We talked of making the story sad until the end when he hears his mother opening the door after she arrives home from a long day away. We then wanted to develop the story more and we had an idea of Aly watching Pastels daily routine, and then her having a vision of herself reenacting Pastels life. This was great, but we needed to follow the brief and let the story evolve itself. We had other ideas to come.
Our next idea was to film children and have a spirit attached to them. This was no major idea really, just a thought that we abandoned shortly after.
Our next idea was as simple as someone putting on her shirt inside out, and for the rest of the day going through a series of unfortunate events. We then stepped it up and  had an alternate version to go with it were it showed that person having a normal day if she had put her shirt on the right way.
This was a great idea from the team.
Our last idea was discussed over a picnic at the zoo with Pastels son and her 2yr old niece Charly. This is what our group needed and we came up with a plan to film Charly and Aly. Pastel had an idea of them walking through a path and coming to a graveyard. The idea was that once they reached the graveyard Aly would disappear revealing that Charly was actually walking through a path with her mothers ghost.
We decided to go with this last idea as time was wearing thin and we needed to make decisive decisions.
We also left the idea as that. We still needed to allow it to evolve on its own.

Videos

Our group has a facebook group page where we keep in contact regularly and do most of our research and decision making. We also view images and video through there as well. As we had decided on doing a film a while after was an explosion of short film clips from members of the group popping up on our news feed, Videos we liked... that had emotion, and that just had some great shots in there.
These are some of those videos.

Idea

Very early on we had the idea of making a short film. we had the experience of piecing together images to form a "motion picture' I guess you could say, in our first project. This was done by creating images from illustrator and moving them over to after effects enabling us to be able to manipulate each image and also give them the dimension of time.

A while ago Pastel had shown me some short films, Instantly I was inspired by them, and had thoughts of creating my own short film, that would be in a similar fashion. These films were simple and elegant,they made you feel emotion towards the characters in a short amount of time while giving the audience a sense of  openness and space (not throwing everything in your face/or cramming).

Here a two that were the most inspiring to me.

I guess the idea for making a short film came from wanting to push ourselves from the last project, and saying, "hey, lets do a real movie".  

Our task now was to incorporate 'Inside out' and let that mold itself into a story we could film.

Inside out

We started with a class brainstorm determining exactly what is 'inside out'. There were many ideas from members in the class, birth, death, disease, feelings or emotions, depression, I guess for me when I pictured 'inside out' all I could see was someone watching something or an event from behind a glass panel not being able to intervene but only could sit there and watch as what ever happened.. happened.

For me, 'inside out' leaned more towards parallel dimensions, death and/or afterlife, a spirit watching you from beyond the grave.

New Assignment-Inside out

Before this assignment started we made a decision that we all wanted to stay in the same group. This was due to the fact that we all worked so well together in our last project. We found each others strengths and gave one another tasks to complete each week, that were done without any fuss or drama. 

We also have an addition of Aly who we already know will gel with the group easily and will bring another dimension to our tight nip team.

Personally I am looking forward to working with a great set of minds again.

Evaluation

Our evaluation was incorparated within our project.
This was done with power bars and was placed on our card profile.

There were three bars of evaluation.

Strength:
How you applied your skills towards the project. i.e drawing, software.

Power:
What ideas(concepts) you brought to the team.

Stamina:
Your attendence and attitude.

Because we all felt everyone had put in an equal amount of work, we decided to rate our self's then bring our ratings back to the table and discuss them as a group, making sure we were realistic in our judging of ourselves and ourselves within the team.

Next Level

As we talked about the video once it was rendered, we thought 'how can this be better'.
We came up with the idea of 3D, this was a spontaneous thought, and we ran with it. We accomplished this by downloading a 2D to 3D converter, that enabled us to munipulate a depth of 3D'ish...we then proceeded to make 3D glasses.
These are some of the images taken when we made the 3D glasses.

Music

As a group we dicided to go with the theme song, 'Blade Runner' as we thought this suited the project. We believe it was retro and spacey which is the feel we were after or wanted to portray.

                                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgz6jFxMpyk

We also thought of the Legend of Korra theme for our credits

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtGNZOoeVP4

Tweaks

After placing all our elements together we noticed some things that needed attention. This required taking a step back, and re-arranging key frames within After Effects. We noticed that our prologue we wrote didnt make sense and some timings were out. To go back and edit proved difficult but we all wanted everything to be perfect, and felt if there was one mistake then this would not be up to standard.

Near the end

Our team are now nearing the end of our project. We have completed all parts towards the project and now all we have to do is put them together.

Team Picture

This is the team picture that Pastel put together for us.

Placing elements

In this last class session, we brought all elements together. Kate had finished the profile cards, so we were able to bring them across to After Effects and place them in our scene. Pastel also finished doing a team picture that we will place on the final page of our project, this will be a loading screen.
As a team we also discussed a way to evaluate the three attributes that are on the profile cards. These attributes were Strength, Power, and Stamina.

Characters

These are our characters towards our project. They were hand drawn both by Pastel and Aylse, then altered a little in Photoshop, giving small amounts of color to everyone's toon.

Kate

Jay

Pastel

Alyse

Logan

Project continued

Over the last week our group discussed finer details towards the project. Font, music, and our origin stories were researched and applied. Each had the task of coming up with their own origin story that we can place on our profile card. Once that was done we needed to decide on a font that will match the theme of our project, Pastel took note of this.

The music was a little bit of a struggle to find exactly what we are after, this is still in progress.
We ended the class session by giving tasks to each person to complete by next week, we also included a concept of bringing in a prologue story of how each character meet.

Progression

Each individual from our group had set tasks to complete over the week.
Logan created mouse cursor and arrows that will be placed within the project.
Pastel and Alyse created charactor drawings, Kate created cards that our character profile will be placed on, and I created the start of our project within After Effects.

We discussed ideas for backgrounds and card design as we ran in to a few issues with the design itself.
In the end we decided on a final format that we will use. Please refer to the picture below.

 

Intro page to character select

Intro

This is our title 'PARADOX' using the card dance effect.

Paradox

As a team we came up with the name 'PARADOX'.
It was my task to create that title and logo and present it at the start of our project.
First I went to the website http://www.dafont.com/ this is where I found a font that I felt was suitable for a project of this sort. I created our title logo, within Photoshop, then imported to After Effects to manipulate. I then decided on a particle effect. I wanted a bunch of small particles coming together to create our title and logo. This effect is known as the 'Card Dance' effect, and I used a handy tutorial from YouTube to do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGx1Ur9GrSE

Title/Intro screen

Found a great link showing several different styles to an opening that can show your name/title within a intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fOdWFNcvxM

Character select images

These are some example images of character select screens.

http://kartones.net/blogs/viciocomomonos/street_fighter_iv_character_select_screen.jpg

http://games-open.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/street-fighter-1-character-selectaryatayebi-just-another-wordpresscom-site-pdaaa3ta.jpg

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/26300000/Ultimate-Marvel-Vs-Capcom-3-Full-Character-Select-Screen-video-games-26309843-852-465.png

 

Decisions

At our last group meeting we decided to design a character select screen that is in a video game format and that will show our profiles and statistics once having selected a character. This was decided as a group, and we set tasks for each individual team member to complete before our next class session.

Pastel & Alyse had the task of Character design by drawing small sketches. Logan, the task of making individual layers so our creation has movable objects we can manipulate within After Effects. Kate had the task of looking at layout or design, and I had the task of completing a name and logo that represents the team and project.

First Collab group meeting

To enable our random selected group to work well together as a team, we decided it was I good idea to 'break the ice'. To do this we came up with a generally questionnaire.
This is as follows:

Interests: Animation, music, movie, TV
Favourite movie\book\TV show: Game of Thrones, Vampire Chronicles
Favourite Location: China, Egypt
Favourite Colour: Purple
Creative Strengths: Animation
Favourite Music: RnB
Least Favourite Chore: Cleaning up after others
Favourite Quote: They got money for war but cant feed the poor
If you could paint a Scene.....: Other world
If you could witness any event in history: 2000yrs into the future
Favourite Superpower: Flying, The force
What Character would you most like to be: Slade Wilson
A song from the soundtrack of your life: Aaliyah-'I care for U'
What do you miss most about your child hood: Hukuna Mataata (no worries)
What would you do if you won Lotto: Blow it all on my family and friends, until I was broke again
Favourite Food: Seafood
Least Favourite Food: Insect
What combo of two animals would you like to be: Tiger, Bat
Clean or Messy: Clean
Ninja or Pirate: Ninja
How would your friends describe you: Chilled, Caring, not pashed
Idol: 2pac, Aaliyah

Facebook link

Have created a link within this blog that will lead to our Facebook group page. This can be found to the right with a Facebook logo. This is available, as we have discussed ideas and thought towards the project

Week One:

Placed in a random group within our class we are expected to basically invent a detailed profile of our team. As a team we have complete control on a design that will enable an effective evaluation of the performance of each team member.