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[michaelrochford-blog]

Adding Motion Graphics to How To Edit

SHARED ON SLACK

changes:

audio fine tuning

audio replacement with higher quality version

title change to be more animated 

chapter title change to be more animated

[michaelrochford-blog]

My Life Story Concept

Concept

The average person has had a relatively technology free life as a child. As you age and mature, the urge and pull to use a smartphone and stay connected with all your friends becomes irresistible. The project will show aspects of social interaction and phases of growth with technology.

Treatment

The scene will open up on a cellphone on a table. Our protagonist will enter from the left and enter right in three separate occasions but the camera will not move. The scene will appear to be one long continuous take, with a surreal underlying feeling as the protagonist will just keep coming from the left. The first instance, the protagonist will pick up his phone and see a message from his friends. He will throw the phone down and leave to hang out with them. The second instance, the friends will come back and message our protagonist. He will linger this time around, contributing his two cents into the cyber world. He will put the phone down eventually and leave again. The third instance, the protagonist will stay rooted in his phone and take a seat instead of leaving. FINALLY, the protagonist will exit LEFT(inside) instead of RIGHT (outside). 

I will film this in one long continuous take. In post, I will edit out my repositioning and correct lighting to make the scene seamless. I will also prepare pre-compositions with social media icons to appear to be coming off the phone. Adding the social media notification sounds to accompany and make the surreal seem more realistic.

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SOUND PROJECT - REDO

Taking a 10 minute increment of time, sitting within my kitchen, I have sat and listened focusing on only sound. 

The blue ink were the noises that were the most prevalent, the noises I noticed first. I had noticed the steady rumbling of my fridge, indicated by the blue short jagged blue lines. The sharp blue spikes were my cats playing with toys, and the grey pencil markings around the lines are the two fighting. The rapid jagged blue line in the top left was my mom walking around and getting ready for work the next morning. 

The grey scribble toward the bottom right was the washer and dryer upstairs that filled more into the white noise or indistinguishable noises.

The red bumpy line at the very top was the ice tray in my fridge making noise and dispensing ice. 

The very bottom was a mish-mosh of all colors within very small or flat lines and dots. These noises were muffled outside noise. These included cars (doors closing, engines running or starting) and kids playing. There was also an ice cream truck and the mail man who delivered an Amazon package or two to my door. 

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Animatic / Draft with Sound

Being that I had to change my project half way through the allotted time, I had combined these two steps into one, and the Animatic was more of a draft and the draft was more of an animatic. Both of these shared images within my assets posts. The animatic video is too large to post to tumblr.

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FINAL PROGRESS -  ALL ASSETS.

Above, there are a mix of finished scenes, and photo location scouting. Within these shots, you can see the dynamic camera angles I used, as well as the different type of scenery and locations. Mainly, you can see the hologram and Smart Vision system finally brought to life. 

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FINAL PROJECT ASSET PROGRESS

As the semester is winding to an end, and we set out to work on our final project, I had high ambitions to create hand drawn frame by frame animation to incorporate into my project. However, with other projects looming over, I had to scrap the idea. While not being able to finish, I came up with an alternative solution. I was switching from a ghoul animation toward symbol animations. Above are gathered symbols that are free to use under Creative Commons 3.0 licensing. I will be using several of these for my project. Along with these icons, I have scouted locations for filming and have taken pictures of locations (location photos are not being posted, as to save privacy). Along with locations, and icons, I have also gathered my music and sound effects. 

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4D FINAL PROJECT STORYBOARDS

Concept

In a society in which we are piloting toward a fully engulfed smart phone experience, will we reach a boundary? Will we push past that boundary? My concept delves into the idea that a surgery can combine your brain and your smart phone, into “SmartVision.” With a service that connects you to theoretically everything, there are still hiccups within “perfection.” The user (protagonist) experiences fatal issues with the system, throwing the idea of complete connectivity into question. 

Treatment

The story will start with a cinematic / music accompanied montage of scenery. The scene will land on a house, in which our protagonist is ready to start his first full day back in his new and improved life. After being advised to relax for months following the surgery, this is the first time our protagonist will be driving. The accompanying cast of characters will constantly yet subtly remind our protagonist to “Drive Safe,” reassuring our hero’s safety and the project namesake. (The title is Drive Safe.) Our protagonist will inadvertently miss each warning the system tries to give. Eventually, the hero meets a tragic end and our curtain closes. We are left heartbroken, but with a message of good. “Don’t text and drive. It can wait.” Our hero inadvertently gets blinded by the system and crashes his car, showing that some people can be so blinded by their phones and can cause catastrophic events, even when “they don’t mean to.”

The execution of this project will be live action filmed accompanied by 2D or 3D animations made in After Effects / Maya. I have purchased a new “octopus” tripod and will be using drastic new angles available to me to give the project a overall better quality feeling. The lighting will be treated as happy and bright, to throw off the eventual turn of events. Same goes for the music until the very end. 

The project highlights the almost inhuman quality of being absorbed into your phone and abstractly elaborates on an increasingly common issue. Texting while you drive not only puts yourself at risk, but you are putting the lives of all those around you at risk. Be safe and careful when you drive. 

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Assignment 2 Storyboards

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SOUND TRANSCRIPTION

Spending 10 minutes outside, I had focused on ambient sounds such as wind, birds or planes. Spikes are planes passing by with spikes from my concentration and volume. Middle spike is a gust of wind. 

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Sound Project Concept

What is the meaning of life? Who are you? When are you going to die? Where will you be in five years? How will you be doing then? How are you now? Do you ever know?

 Humans in the modern era can find themselves in a cycle of repeated habits and rituals. It might often be difficult to even recognize when you are in a rut. Sometimes you need a third party observation. 

The idea for my sound project is to showcase the sounds of an average college student’s life. After the first day of sounds, the day will repeat and get faster in speed. After the second day, the third day will begin, and the fourth will over lap it. This process with continue until one day the student makes a change for the better. 

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Walter Murch - Reading 5

Never before have I seen such an intricate take and understanding of sound in film and media before. Walter Murch has done a wonderful job bringing us into the world of sound in media. He explains multiple concepts of sound, such as musical elements finding it’s way into speech, or different colored sounds. While explaining this complex ideas, he also related in personal experiences.

In 1969, Murch was working on George Lucas’ film, “THX-1138.″ His job was to make an “other-worldly” soundtrack for next to nothing. One hurdle of the job was to make the robots in the film sound massive and hulking with thunderous foot steps. Being that they were only regular sized human actors in costumes, Walter needed to think of a way to engineer the sound. Going to the Museum of Natural History in San Francisco, and after making special metal shoes, he was able to record sounds that fit the bill. This was a very excellent story to share with the readers, as it shows that sounds in film and media can be more imaginative in post and can evolve the film’s creativity. It also shows on a personal level that in the field that we as students are pursuing, we will hit road bumps in our career path. However, thinking with an open mind can wield unexpectedly positive results. 

Truly sound is a very complex and intricate process with a manifold of different approaches in delivering a scene. The choices a director needs to make over the course of filming and sound editing will truly be difficult, as the possibilities are endless. Sound is truly a mystical asset in story telling in media.

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Sonic Meditations

Through the two exercises assigned, both gave very different experiences.

With the first meditation, trying to match a noise proved very difficult at first, and depending on the noise would vary the success. With low hums and thumps, I was more successful in matching the noise, opposed to the crickets outside my window.

The second meditation was a bit more surreal. Listening to a sound until it lost its meaning and became unrecognizable was more therapeutic to me. It gave a familiar feeling of saying a word over and over until it lost its meaning. This was my favorite of the two meditations.

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Assignment 2 Progress - How To Edit

The group has gone their separate ways, at least with the editing process. Using the same footage, we all are creating different edits that portray different intentions and meanings based on our choices among cuts, tone and framing. 

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Process 2 - An Update

As we have finished our storyboard, we have begun to film most of our scenes. We have made on the fly calls concerning the cinematography and acting, but all in the name of perfecting the shots. We are continuing to film some scenes and might re-film one. We also have enough footage to start the editing process.

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Reading 3 (Chapter 5)

Cinematography is an open-ended realm of creativity that changes and evolves over time. From classic film, to digital works, cinematography is exercised differently across film.

A filmmaker has a ton of tools and methods to choose from. While setting up shots for the piece, the filmmaker makes choices concerning the tone, perspective, depth of field, focus, speed, angles and even more. With all of these choices, the filmmaker truly can set out to create something completely new, an homage to a past work, or experiment with the between. 

The choices a filmmaker makes concerning the cinematography of the film is just as important as the plot, acting or anything else. This is a key aspect of story telling, and can almost be overlooked by other aspects of film. Cinematography is an art that is truly unimaginable. 

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Reading 2 (Chapter 6)

Editing within film is not only a valuable tool, but an essential part of the story telling process. Without editing, most stories would be the same, or long continuous scenes with a lack of diversity within artistic story telling. The relation between scenes directly comes from and is influenced by editing. An editor can completely change the tone of a scene depending on their decisions. Scenes can be related by shapes, colors, rhythm, space, and many other factors. 

The editing process is essentially where the artist tells the story. Unwanted footage is removed, and the kept footage is cleaned up and organized in a more tightly appealing way, that single scene shots and lack of editing can not produce. With the choice of relations your scenes have with one another directly influences the tone and can strengthen your impact on your audience.

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Assignment 2 - Process

Admittedly, we were initially a bit stuck for an idea. As we sat in a circle wracking our brains, we eased some of the tension by playfully annoying one another. This sparked the entire idea behind our video.

From there, we thought of some of the things that would legitimately annoy each of us, and thought of playful and comedic ways to portray this while staying true with the concept of time. We then took each example or idea and manipulated the scene to convey certain tones and perceptions of time. 

After coming up with the scenes, we needed to position our camera angles to accurately portray the scene. While using very simple stick figure storyboards, Kaitlin, Matt, Marissa and myself thought of many different ways to set up our scenes. While the storyboards are not incredibly detailed, they set up our characters, flow of the scene, progression of the bit, and keep us all on the same page.