#ctechtransmedia

[creativetechnologies2014-blog]

Transmedia Narratives research for assignment..

Another example is Pacific Projection Domes who works alongside Obscura Digital to create, "a visual adventure unlike anything they've ever experienced." Exhibitions by Pacific Projection Domes communicate and help the audience understand that, "the world is our canvas." They use fabric while creating the shell of the dome for exterior events, this allows for viewers from not only below the dome but above to appreciate the artwork being created. When working for private events or interiorly, blackout vinyl will be used to make sure that no light can escape the dome. Giving the viewers the full experience of the exhibition. This relates well to what we want to create in the planetarium dome purely because of aesthetics, it's one of the few educational dome projection mapping exhibitions we both found appealing. Pacific Projection Domes and Obscura Digital's approach too their exhibitions have also helped us to understand that we can push our ideas even further, not limiting ourselves to just projection mapping. Having a dome to work with will allow us toallow us to experiment with holograms etc.

Lastly looking into the technical/interactive side of our project and different ways we could bring in interactivity.  I found, Toy Fair 2012 where people had their smartphones scan the jigsaw puzzles to, "create a unique experience." [6] The point of this app developed by Ravensburger was that people would start being rewarded for puzzles they completed. Once a puzzle is completed you scan it with your smart phone, this will then unlock new games, locations etc. When scanning the puzzle pieces an animation appears. This use of AR could be put into our project, adding more interaction. Doing something along the same lines as this, would then allow more than 2-3 people interacting at one time which is exactly what we need to have happening after getting feedback from our presentation. Although this would help us to involve more people at one particular time we need to take into consideration our target audience. We have a target audience of 8 years and under which most children that fall into that ages group wont even have smart phones of their own. This idea is definitely a big influence on our work but we still need to figure out how we can have it so that it fits in with our particular target audience for the project.

[levellounge-blog]

Bethell’s and O’neills Beach

I took out to Bethell’s and O’neills beach where I was able to experiment with the different scene selections and settings available on the Sony HXR mc1500p. Night scenes are a no go for me.. I’m unable to acquire the resources in such a short amount of time and they aren’t necessary at this point.

Here are some of the shots I was able to capture...

Shot in HD fx mode capturing the coastlines with different scene selections. From this I decided that the auto selection was the best option. It allows me to have the flexibility of doing what I want with it in post as opposed to a sunset scene setting which filters too many colours of orange..

[levellounge-blog]

New Scene | Experimentation

The settings on the Sony HXR MC1500 don’t present common video options. It’s a little strange.. You’ve basically got your normal white balance, exposure and scene selection. The ISO and Shutter speed options aren’t displayed despite the Sony documentation saying so.. 

With this in mind, I started thinking about the scenes that I could create that would allow me to learn something and also deliver results. I decided to storyboard a scene of Logan at West coast beaches that help to appeal to emotion. I’ve seen a few of these documentaries. One in particular, is Denali from Felt Soul Media. The doco is tragic but really well done. It consists of various slow shots, shots with a long durations, ambient sound and a voice-over walking the viewer through the experience. This combination tied in with the narrators trip down memory lane while exploring issues in the present begs the audience to consider the important things.. a very successful documentary in terms of building on viewer emotion.. 

Anyway.. I wanted try see if I could try create a similar scene. So I decided to take the HXR out to Bethells & O’Neills beach to get an idea of what locations I could utilize while experimenting with different lighting options. This was important because I didn’t want to experience another Ellen Melville Hall disaster... 

[levellounge-blog]

Felt Soul Media created this short documentary. They have quite a few..  I’ve noticed that their concepts are extremely simple in terms of storytelling and theme, which makes for a very clean documentary. 

This doco for example, profiles two rowers of the gran canyon. Amber Shannon boats a baggage boat in hope that she’ll one day row a Dori like John Shocklee does, down the Canyon. It features the beautiful nature of the job, Shannon’s ambition and John’s leadership conveyed through the extensiveness of how long it takes to be able to row a Dori - somewhat 20 years. 

What’s really impressive about Felt Soul Media Documentaries are the visuals. I went through their website in hope to find some information on this and found this image.. 

Shot on Red of course.. cameras with 4k Red resolution sensor, a hugge framerate option of up to 120fps or alternatively in RAW 2k at 240fps... Fantastic for high perfect cinematic shots with motion options at your disposal. Of course I can’t use these cameras, as they come with hefty price tag, valuing from as little as $5000, but it’s good to see what’s available out there. 

[levellounge-blog]

Lighting

I was hoping to spend more time practicing film shots and less time on overall film techniques. But it seems, it’s hard to learn one technique without integrating the other. As a result, my film shooting at the the Ellen Melville Hall resulted in noisy visuals from poor lighting. So I decided to investigate basic lighting techniques do that I could spend more time on practice. Here’s a few videos I’ve found that demonstrate this..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15tYFWR4cvA

Highlights - The lower the ISO, the more quality in the picture but less light gets in.  - The higher the ISO, the more grain and noise but more light gets in - Bouncing Light  - requires an LED board.  - Dial lighting in camera first before post-production.

Most of the LED boards I’ve viewed online are costly. It’s not something I’m willing to invest in for this particular project where I have no planned dark room scenes. I’ve noticed while videoing, Sony cameras have a really dull blue shade. I think lighting in camera deals with this but it might not necessarily be what you want..

[levellounge-blog]

Ellen Melville Hall

Over the weekend, the third planned scene of this doco took place at Ellen Melville Hall. Gaia’s gig (Logan) was up first and fortunately, his performance pulled in a large crowd. His movements around the stage and the crowd engagement made for a good closure to this developing Transmedia story. 

But this didn’t come at no cost. Unfortunately, the lights blew and the bass on the speakers had to be turned towards the end as the sound engineer had concerns about the speakers popping. This translated to poor footage with no available flash and inconsistent sound. I thought maybe that the best thing I could do was try to post-edit the footage and try to increase the exposure around each clip. The result was a highly grainy and extremely noisy frame around the shots that were really important. In the end, I was unable to use the camera footage from the camera I set up as low angle shots looking at Logan in the crowd and a camera on stage that was taking a side medium close-up of Logan performing. This lead to my next investigation.. Lighting. Of course this is a huge aspect of video recording which is something I need to integrate while recording in future scenes. I’ll also need to find a work-around for this project which might change the direction of the documentary in terms of narrative and scenes filmed.

[levellounge-blog]

Exporting Scenes

wThe first scene I worked with was an experimental scene recorded using the Sony HXR-MC1500P. I used a 1920 x 1080 progressive format at 25ps and used the storyboard I built as a sort-of guideline because we had moved scenes and the atmosphere was different. 

Once I had the stack of footage, I imported the clips into Adobe Premiere. I read through the Adobe Docs and learnt shortcuts and editing techniques which was enough for me, to begin organising and cutting clips. The storyboard had already given me an idea of what I wanted so I began mix and matching clips. What the visual side of things told, was a in introduction to Logan’s environment, followed by his mixing and performance. This was obviously too confusing as a story and even more devalued without a voiceover to guide the viewer. But this was perfect for me to understand how I could refine my work and plan something that makes more sense. That is what the film paradigm is for. It keeps this in process in check. With that in mind, I have to reshoot the first scene with only Logan writing lyrics and playing around with the mixer. That shows his ambition to be more creative.

In addition to the filming side of things, the environmental sound needs more focus on it and will serve as the backdrop to the documentary. I’ll post more about this later in a dedicated audio post. 

After working with the first scene. I exported it using the Quicktime format and I think I might have used the HD1080i preset - an interlaced codec. BAD MISTAKE! It came out compressed and the video itself looked a little warped. Here’s a screenshot. If you zoom in a bit, it looks bad. 

I fixed this by watching some more adobe docs. It explained, the uncompressed H.264. A very common and high format option. Use an HD 1080p preset and we’re off....