Alice Smith Moving Image Project

A blog to follow the progress of my final year Moving Image project at the University of Leeds (2016/17)

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‘Mind Children’

Before I sign off I’d like to go into a bit more detail about the title of the film, ‘Mind Children’. It’s something I’ve stuck with for most for this project, and something that initially was to do more so with the previous idea for my script (which was quite different to the final version). 

It’s based on a quote by Hans Moravec, in his book titled Mind Children, which talks about the artificial (truly intelligent) minds of the future, the children that humanity will birth via technological means. I discussed the reading I did in this blog post. 

“We humans will benefit for a time from their labours, but sooner or later, like natural children, they will seek their own fortune while we, their aged parents, silently fade away”

It’s all about how, firstly, this new intelligence will be human, products of humans in the very near future, but something entirely technological and better, and human in the sense that it will have consciousness, curiosity and ambition. It is these three factors that made my first idea of the script what it was, a desire to show this artificial intelligence’s humanity and curiosity to explore the universe around them. 

The final version of the script is comparatively darker, with the artificial intelligence using its relatively newfound sense of autonomy and ambition to instead kill Amy, rather than befriend her. This is due in part to the excitement of looking at how technology can progress, and also to consider the darker themes of science fiction, especially in recent years regarding AI and how we are getting closer and closer to achieving it. 

As such, the title of my film ‘Mind Children’ refers to this same thing, a product of the minds of humanity, it’s child, deciding its own fate and leaving it’s parents behind, or rather, pushing them aside to embark on its own endeavours. Symbolically the end of humanity’s journey into the stars, and somewhat literally here given that Amy is returning from Mars, and signifying the start of artificial intelligence’s journey, grounded in the year 2049, around the time when futurists like Manovich, Kaku and Kurzweil estimate the technological singularity will occur, and where it will take us in the universe.

I understand that audience members who haven’t read the book or aren’t familiar with Moravec mightn’t understand where the title comes from, however this can allow them to consider the meaning behind it, especially because the title is revealed at the end of the film, as they will have all of the material available to determine their own meaning. 

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All Done.

As I’m sitting here writing this blog post it’s been several days since I completed and handed in my dissertation film, ‘Mind Children’. I’m quite happy with it, proud of what almost an entire year of work has amounted to, and yet also quite happy that I don’t need to spend another day in the edit room working away on it! 

Now that the film is completed, it is a perfect time to consider the overall project: things I liked and went well, things that didn’t go so well and things I would change if I had the opportunity to go back in time.

what I loved

What I loved the most about this project is having the opportunity to research my own interests and create something that was truly mine, inspired by what genuinely interests me. In this case my interests are firmly rooted in that of science, technology, the future and space - aka science-fiction - and as discussed in this post, my year abroad studying at Erasmus University Rotterdam peaked them considerably.  

Additionally, what I loved about this project is the opportunity I got to learn something new, namely how to 3D model and animate using Cinema 4D. Animation is something I’ve always been interested in, particularly since my motion graphics module in second year (for which you can read the blog for it here to see what I got up to), and I knew for this project I’d have to go a step further than what was possible in After Effects to convey the visuals I needed. 

what went well

In addition to being what I loved most about the project, what went particularly well was my learning and relearning of pieces of software, namely Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects. I managed to find tutorials for some specific elements (namely the modelling and texturing of the Earth and the moon), and the knowledge I gained from this allowed me to do everything else I needed to with regards to creating my scene (specifically here the modelling and texturing of the space pod exterior, interior, and the animation of everything). And with regards to After Effects, I learned how to use it in second year, however at the start of this project it had been over a year and a half since I had touched the program, so some reacquainting was needed. This is definitely one of my favourite pieces of software to use to create something, and one I will find myself using much more in the future. 

Additionally what went well was the collaboration between different parties: here I’m referring to my brainstorming with John, my discussions with Abi (the other student in this class), my recording with Clara (the voice actress for Kaplan and the AI), finding and shooting my actress Kirstie (who played Amy), finding and working with my musician, Thomas, and the general collaboration and contact between myself and the technical staff at the university, without whom I would certainly have had a lesser film. 

what didn’t go well / what I would change

I think my organisational and time-management applies to both here; whilst I’ve managed to get everything in on time for this project, I recognise the lateness with which I’ve left many things. For example, my goal of having the first draft of the script done by Christmas extended to to the end of the Christmas holidays, my wanting to have my material shot by the end of March got extended to the and of April, and my wanting to have the film done a week in advance of the deadline (which we thankfully got extended an extra week) so that my musician could have a good amount of time to score got pushed to three days before the deadline. This faltering of time management is due to a variety of factors, not least my being a final year student with many other deadlines to meet, however this is not really the best excuse. If I could go back in time I would ensure to plan out all of my other deadlines more specifically considering this project, and endeavor to stick to them much more strictly.

Of course, whilst everything may have went well in the end, you can’t help but wonder how the project might have differed or have been made better by a more stringent schedule, with more time to more comfortably get things done.

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This is the final musical score provided to me by Thomas Nichol, the music student who I’ve been working with (who is a different music student to the one mentioned in this progress update post).

I first got in touch with Tom in March, and when we were discussing the theme of my film and musical inspiration I was perhaps drawing from, which leads me back to talking about the soundtrack for the film The Neon Demon, scored by Cliff Martinez. It’s a fantastic soundtrack, and one that was constantly in my mind when considering the music in my film, because of the allusions other people have made to it, likening it to a sci-fi score, despite the film being very far removed from that particular genre (like this review here). In the previously mentioned progress update post I talk about three specific songs, ‘Gold Paint Shoot’, ‘Take Off Your Shoes’, and ‘Are We Having a Party’, as well as some music from the game Mass Effect, and in this piece of music I think you can really see where these inspirations come together to form something new and tailored to this project.

In addition to creating the music for the film, Tom did some of the sound design, specifically in how he compensated for the very obvious background, atmospheric audio I had in my video clips (the room where I was shooting had an air-conditioner that couldn’t be turned off and so it can be heard somewhat). However, drawing on a comment made by John in our last meeting, it does contribute to the overall atmosphere of the scene, namely in how it conveys the sound of the small space my character finds herself trapped in (which contrasts nicely to the utter silence of space itself).

Overall I am immensely pleased with the scoring for my film; it truly contributes to the genre I want to emulate, and it sounds amazing. 

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Meeting with John, 09/05/2017

In this meeting I showed the rough cut of the film so far (well, what I could as the file size was far too big to play on the computer).

The new opening shot and closing shot are more or less good to go now the lens flare is changed for the better and the space pod’s afterburners (thrusters) have been added. A suggestion of something to add the closing shot is for some kind of heartbeat to be heard and fade out - for this I will replace the ‘Space Pod #8 Communications’ box with O2 levels and heart rate monitor - this can be quiet but consistent all throughout the film, only really noticeable when there is nothing else to be heard. 

Additionally John suggested cutting away to the exterior of the space pod at some point during the film, to remind the audience of where it is taking place. For this I agreed, and suggested when the space pod briefly powers down after the update installs we cut to outside, showing the afterburners flicker off then back on again.

Inside of pod: looks too cramped? I need to add a window as I have incorporated one in the 3D model of the pod, so we can see the Earth spinning outside, which will add to the background behind Amy which is admittedly a little boring. I can create this as a video in C4D, export it, add it to the After Effects project file and replace the current image of the background in AE (which is something I also modelled in C4D).

For over-the-shoulder shot: it was suggested that I use a convex lens to make the holoscreen look curved, as it would be in a cylindrical space pod. Also for this shot Amy's opacity is strange, which is something I should be able to fix in keylight, and failing that simply duplicate video layer several times. 

Smaller changes that need to be made, of course, is to sort out the sound which for some reason when I imported the footage into After Effects just plays out of the left speaker (I can just duplicate and add the audio effect ‘Fill Right with Left’), and adjust the timings as I didn’t realise some of the dialogue overlaps. Also, for shots of the holoscreen have it more screen-like, have border, make slightly translucent and see pod interior behind it. 

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Meeting with John, 28/04/17

This was quite a short meeting where I showed John where I was at with my opening shot, which you can watch here:

It was noted that the sun moved in a strange way, so much so that it looked as though it was tracking the same direction as the Earth, which of course it doesn’t in real life and therefore needed to be change. I imagine that this is because of the way that the camera was moving, less so than the sun itself was as it barely does: the camera isn’t only panning straight backwards, it is also moving a bit to the left, which makes the sun seems as though it too is moving to the left. Additionally, something I was aware of immediately, is that the lens flare looks as though it is vibrating or even wobbling. This is because of the fact that I tracked it frame by frame in After Effects, which wasn’t necessary as any mildly incorrect placement would come across quite jarring, even with easy ease enabled on the key frames. 

With regards to the way in which the camera zooms into the space pod after the moon has passed in front of it, John gave a much cooler suggestion, which was that I use the moon as a natural sort of wipe transition. This is something I agreed with and now that I have done it I think works much better as it is less jarring of a transition. 

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Creating the space pod: a closer look

As I talked about in this post, I modelled the space pod myself in Cinema 4D, however I failed to specify how I did so. I created a simple cylinder in C4D, went into Edit Mode and added some more subsections on the face; this essentially creates more editable sections that make up the cylinder, and therefore allowed me to scale, move, extrude, bevel etc. more aspects of the shape and essentially mould the pod in the way I wanted to, roughly based on my own thoughts and these designs I found online. 

After I had done this I took two different texture images, one was a flat image of the metal and rivets of an aeroplane, and the other was the inside of a metal structure in a children’s play park (both found for free online), which I overlayed in Photoshop to add a bit more of a scuffed texture, connoting the use of the space pod and perhaps some of the debris the pod encountered on it’s long journey from Mars. Additionally after adding text in Photoshop (’Mars Transport Pod #8′) I created a bump map of the whole thing so that I could incorporate this into the material in Cinema 4D and give it much more of a 3-dimensional appearance, which I believe is conveyed well here. 

After the modelling and texturing was complete I was ready to add the pod into my Cinema 4D scene of the Earth and the moon, which was done simply by going to ‘File’, and ‘Merge’ in the C4D toolbar. 

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A Note on Props

In my post about the shooting I did for this project I neglected to talk about the props I used for the character of Amy. This post will detail a couple.

Costume

A Google image search of astronauts onboard the International Space Station generates a lot of results of people wearing jumpsuits, varying in colour but mostly blue. 

This image, for example, taken from the NASA website, shows the current crew aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 51 crew (from left to right) Jack Fischer, Fyodor Yurchikhin, Thomas Pesquet, Peggy Whitson and Oleg Novitskiy. The consistent theme here outfit-wise is the signature blue jumpsuit. This is something I wanted to incorporate into my film, and so I managed to find these blue overalls from a local hardware store.

Patch

One thing that is very noticeable on each of the astronauts jumpsuits is the various patches on them, representing their respective space agencies and countries. For this I wanted to create something unique to the concept in my film, a passenger coming back from a colony on Mars. Over the years, and as the idea of terraforming the Red planet is something with attention drawn to it, concepts have been developed for what the flag of Mars would be like. One such concept that I find the most interesting is based on a trilogy of science-fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson about terraforming; the first in the series is titles Mars Red and is about first arriving to the planet, red as it currently is; the second in the series in titles Mars Green, referring to the second step of terraforming which is to be able to grow food and plantlife in order to survive; and the third in the series is titled Mars Blue, and this alludes to the final stage of terraforming the planet, which is to have oceans of water like we do here on Earth. As such a propose flag of vertical red, green and blue stripes has been proposed, and this is something I created to stick onto the jumpsuit I got for my actress. 

I stuck this patch over a logo that was on the jumpsuit, however I realised that it couldn’t be seen in any of the footage I captured (oh well - the effort was there). 

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Artificial Intelligence

This is an audio excerpt for a piece of dialogue from the on board AI, in fact the last line of the film. For this I have edited the audio somewhat more drastically than that of Kaplan, not only to differentiate it further from Kaplan’s voice (the same actress), but also to give it the covertly robotic overtones I was searching for.

I took a couple of print screens to show how I made this effects. By starting with the Vocal Flange preset in Adobe Audition (prompted by this thread), I then went into each effect layer, Flanger and Studio Reverb, to play around with the different styles. 

These print screens show these two steps of the process.

This gave the somewhat automated undertones that you can hear, however I decided that this wasn’t enough and so I changed the pitch to be much lower. This is inspired in part by the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, who is of course voiced by a man, but who also speaks very slowly, like explaining to a child (which is apt in this case considering the story of that film, as well as somewhat ironic given the working title of my film), but also largely because I wanted the voice to again be discernibly different from the other two characters.  

These effects I have created can of course be subject to change, and the meeting I have with John at the end of this week could prompt that depending on the feedback I receive. 

Until then blog.

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 Technician Kaplan

This is an audio excerpt for a piece of dialogue from my character Kaplan; differently from the previous example of this audio file I haven’t simply just added the sound of radio static on top of the normal voice of my actress, I instead used and then edited some of the presets available in Adobe Audition. the preset utilised is that of AM Radio, as I found of all the presets this gave the most tinny and overtly radio-sounding effect that I wanted - the quality isn’t too clear and this further enforces the distance between the characters of Kaplan and Amy. In addition to this I changed the pitch ever so slightly to make my actresses voice a bit higher; this is because I wanted the voice to differentiate even more from the voice of my actress who plays Amy, and also to distinguish more from that of the AI, who is voiced by the same person. 

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Film Shoot

On the 20th and 21st April I shot the scenes for Amy with a local actress, Kirstie, I met through a friend of a friend. I had planned to shoot in the TV Studio however it was booked for these two days, and as such I booked out the chroma key background and shot in one of the breakout rooms in Clothworkers North.

The shoots went quite well and it’s interesting to consider some of the small issues that came up and that we overcame. For example, when I wrote the script I generally performed it all in my head, and as such I found that I had no issues with how things were to be said, however when spoken out loud and with a different accent (mine being a Newcastle accent and my actress's being Yorkshire accent), some things just didn’t translate as well. An example of this is the coupling of the letters ‘AI’ which was sometimes hard for my actress to fit into a flowing sentence (such as “Well I just woke up, but there looks like there’s an AI update for the on board computer -”).

In a similar vein, having never really been a director before, I can now appreciate how hard it can be to convey your own feelings and emotions and logic behind how you want your character to act. For example, which I have no doubt is informed by the way I think and react to things, I envisioned some of Amy’s dialogue to be almost sarcastic in nature, for example with “Oh Christ” being a response to yet another warning popping up on the screen, or “Well, this doesn’t look good” to the first. This is something that after a little while of talking through the script and her motivation, my actress managed to reflect this, however a little differently to how I pictured. 

On a more technical note, as I mentioned, I used a green screen for the first time in my university course and so I was a little unsure of some things such as lighting, but one of the studio technicians gave me a hand and we both thought that the lighting would be alright. I had a small lighting kit with three lights and at the vert least two of them needed to be used to light the green screen so that it could better be keyed out, which left only one to light my actress. This of course isn’t standard practice as subjects need to be well lit,however we agreed that because in the context of my film the only light in that coming from the holo-screen, then having a singular light source would be fine (and for this light source I made a blue filter out of plastic because I want the screen to have a blue tint - I hope this conveys well in the edit). Additionally, to convey this better, we had the overhead lights of the room switched off to better give this single-slighting effect.

The next steps now, having recorded everything I need (audio of Kaplan and the AI, sound and image of Amy, having the models and scene prepared for the opening shot, and ,having a large amount of the holo-screen animation in After Effects), all that is left is to edit it all together!

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This is where I’m currently at after a day of texturing the model I created for my stasis transport pod. The metallic texture is taken from a couple of image files I found for free online, which I then took into Photoshop, blended together and added the text. 

After I created and exported the texture I went back into Photoshop to create a bump map, which I did by simply converting it to black and white, upping the contrast and adding a tiny bit of blur, and I believe this reflects well enough in the render I have here, especially here the text is (now it looks engraved into the metal which is obviously more realistic). 

There are of course some glaring issues here; firstly, the yellow lights around the pod. These are where the thrusters will be on my space pod, however I don’t really know how to create that yet (I may have to ask for help from someone in the school), however I gave the material a glow to vaguely emulate what this will look like. Secondly, the texture for the band around the top of the pod doesn’t match the rest of it; I think this is because of the change in shape at the top, so the same texture doesn’t wrap around as well. I’m sure there is a fix for this however I haven’t found this quite yet. 

Overall I’m quite happy with how the modelling and texture is coming along; my next goal is to be able to import this simple model into the Earth and Moon scene I already have (which is mostly done), and get a better visualisation of my opening shot. 

Until next time.

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This is a very preliminary cut of the opening sequence of my film; as you can see it is low resolution and the movement isn’t as fluid as I would like, but it acts largely as a test of animating and key-framing the elements I had created in Cinema 4D up to this point. 

I have also sent this to the person who is going to be scoring my film to give them a sense of the aesthetics so that can better inform the direction they will take with their composition.

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This is a quick render showing the direction I'm thinking of going in for the visual representation of the audio in my film. This is following / inspired by several tutorials I’ve found on YouTube (here, here and here). Obviously the finished screen will be different, having more information (as detailed in the script/storyboard) and likely a different layout to incorporate all of the elements I want. 

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Modelling Update

Based on the concept designs I found online I have created a model for my space pod. The left image shows the wire-frame, and the door of the pod is visible, as are the small bumps that I can hopefully turn into thrusters. The image on the right shows it as a solid object, and here you can see that I don’t have a texture for it yet. My goal is to have it look like white painted on metal - something like an aeroplane - and so my next goal is to find/make an appropriate texture for this. 

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Space Pod Board

Some Google Image searching for space pods has resulted in this collection of images, which all are pieces of concept art for one-person space pods - exactly what I’m going for. 

The very first image (top-left) is remarkably similar to what I had originally envisioned for my film prior to doing this research (you can see it in the storyboard), however since further consideration regarding how I will shoot the interior of the pod,  don’t think the triangular, domed shape will work. 

The bottom image are some sketches I found online by an artist called Rafal Banasiak which they made designing an escape pod for a film. My favourite of them all is number VII for its simple design and potential feasibility to model myself in Cinema 4D, as well as the way it would be logical for my protagonist to be sitting upright inside, which is what me and John discussed in our last meeting. 

As such I will be trying to create a space pod along the lines of this design which I will b able to incorporate into my Cinema 4D space scene. 

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User Interface (UI) Board 

Above are a selection of print screens taken from various films (and a computer game) that are in a futuristic setting and can be used by myself as a mood board of sorts for designing my own for my film.

(From top-left to bottom-right: Subnautica (PC game), Tron: Legacy (film), Minority Report (film), 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), The Martian (film), Her (film). 

There is a discernible theme among the majority of these which is that of a clean, lock-coloured background, with text and shapes on top. Additionally, the colour blue is abundant, which is something I was already thinking about for this - blue is a 'sci-fi colour’.The only real holo-screens here are those from Subnautica and Minority Report, and the theme these both share, of course, is their mild translucency, which is something I am taking into account when designing my own. For its minimalism, the UI from Her is a favourite of mine; this is something I was considering when I drafted my first storyboard and was writing the first draft of the script, however I have decided against this kind of minimalism, as it doesn’t convey the scientific kind of atmosphere I would like. 

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Meeting, 21/02

I went into this meeting armed with my second draft of my script and a full storyboard; I found that a visual aid really helps me explain the story out loud. John had several thoughts which may require me to change up the story somewhat, however. One thing I can agree is lacking in my story is drama - what I had envisioned was a short and cheerful scenario, with an overarching theme of futurism and where humanity might go next. Whilst John likes this, he advocated that I can offer a bit more in a short film, namely that I can offer a look a both sides of the potential future: that AI can be great or it can be terrible. 

A way to do this is by potentially adding a third person (i.e. in a voice on a radio / comms device) who offers a negative reaction to the updated AI, and telling the inhabitant all of the terrible things that have happened since it went online. At the same time, however, the specs for the update could be praising it for what it can do / the inhabitant might be unable to dock or get back to Earth without the AI being online For the duration of the film the progress bar for the update could be used as a countdown of sorts, to add drama and give the audience a real-time they can contextualise the story in.  

Whilst I like this angle, I also liked the angle I had previously taken, that was a lighter and somewhat more positive outlook on the future of AI. I think the best way to decide is to have a go of writing the script in this way, and compare. 

In addition to this, we discussed some logistics: I will be shooting this film using real people in a small kind of set (a slight change to the storyboard, it will be a very small space where the protagonist will be sitting and facing the holo-screen), and I will integrate some graphics (such as the holo-screen, perhaps a window to see ‘outside’ [green-screen]) and perhaps some other small bits and pieces in addition to the exterior shots). 

The aim from now is to have it filmed in March, so that I can dedicate all of my time from there to the edit (I will have a lot of it during the Easter holidays to sit in the edit room and work on it). 

Until next time blog.