Busy Weekend- Final version of "The Suspicious Birthday"

Last week, I had spend most of time working on my context 1 essay, I have finished it and send it to Jools, then I got some feedback from it.

Therefore, during the weekend, I had improved my essay and it was done now then I had finished the edited of my one shot film. 


At the start, I had added some typewriter sound effects with some digital style words, because this created the tension to make it look more serious. The texts that I added at the beginning were inspired from a HK film that I watched recently.

In addition, a suspicious music gradually increased as background music. Sound effects such as, walk steps on the snow had added on the top. I had added sound effects of the action in order make it standout and again increase the tension e.g. zipping the jacket, envelope hand over to the birthday boy etc. Once the birthday boy, open the envelope, some loud party blowers sounds added to increase in order to make the audience feel shock, then “Happy Birthday” background music played gradually to create the happy and cheerful mood.

In this edit, I had created my own sound effect. At the end, when Hollie and me said “Happy Birthday” I had cut this section from the Adobe sound booth, I made the it louder and reduced the background. Although It still contain the background noise, it was better compare to the actual one.

The title of the film, I had added this at the end, as this would not break the serious mood at the beginning, and I think this fit very well. There we go of my final edited:

The Suspicious Birthday (Seminar of Premiere Pro)

Today, the seminar was about how do we edit our film. At first, we thought we edited the film as a group. However, Deborah said that as we won’t have enough time to improve the film, so that we have to edit our own one.

In the seminar I didn’t do much, I just experiment with Premiere Pro and try to find the sound effects and back music for my final edit. It is hard to find, cause most the website I have to pay for the sounds.

One shot (unedited) Feedback from seminar

Today seminar, it didn’t last for 2 hours only 1, because most of the people haven’t do their filming yet due to the weather. However, groups that done their filming got feedback from the seminar.

The feedback that we got overall this is a good one shot film. Chris didn’t say much, the only thing was he recommended that we could put the title at the end and sound effects of the walk step.

After showing our video, we had 10 minutes group discussion; we discussed the sound effects , visual effects and the title that we can edit. Then we will edit our film in tomorrow seminar.

Lighting Seminar

In today seminar, we had taught about the use of lighting in film. It is interest, and there is a big different with light and without light. And I found out that lighting is the main element that creates the atmosphere in film.

I learnt the four main properties of lighting:

-Coherence (quality)

-Colour temperature (colour)

-Intensity (strength)

-Three point lighting

During the seminar we were given a task to do- 

create an interview in a daylight atmosphere inside a studio.

We did experiment with the position of lights and the gels in order to get the correct lighting. The problems were the face’s looked too dark or too bright, and once the video imported in a PC, the quality looked very poor.

Then we showed our practices to Deborah, she said that it was due to the wrong camera setting. So she told us to adjust the white balance by using a white paper and set the iris to 0db. And the first attempt, the background looked too obvious in the camera. Therefore, she did help us to adjust the height of the main light. The light then shine from the top, which made everything clear and the background was black with no shadows. 

Group Meeting & Final Idea

After the lecture that about the DP1 presentation, I was starting to nervous, because it seem the pressures are on the their way (Assignment 1 X DP1 presentation). However, I will try my best to produce my best work.

In the presentation that I will have on the week 20, I am thinking to present my presentation on a website, because this can show what I have learnt in the first semester. In addition, I think it is time for me to do some preparations of this presentation. E.g. Developing it, feedback, improvement etc.

The task that I would like to improve is the interactive space project; I found it was too obvious. I would like to create another on that is more exploring and abstract, and I properly will start do it after I finish my Context 1 assignment.

Anyway, let me write about what I have done in today’s group meeting.  Today, we have shared about the ideas that we thought during the weekend, and the final decision for the twist is having a mini birthday celebration at the end. So the mood of the beginning of the film will be serious, and at the end it will be a happy mood.

Before when draft out our storyboard, we have written out a plan:

Location:
-Arboretum park
   -using the bench where the canons are.

Equipment:
-Video Camera
-Tripod

Characters:
1.) One that left the envelope to the birthday boy -?
2.) Birthday boy -?
3,4.) Party guests- ?

We haven’t decide it yet.

Things that we need:
-Party poppers x2
-Party Blowouts x2
-Party Hats x3
-Birthday card x1
-Wrap present (box) x1
-Mobile phone
-Newspaper/ magazine x1

Costume:
-2- dark and dull clothing
-2- bright, colourful or party wear & hats

Camera setting:
-Zoon once- Zoom in on expression/ action at the end?

Expression:
Character 1- serious
Character 2- serious at the beginning, then unhappy, embarrassed, shocked, uncomfortable, and at the end a smile will on his face.
Character3,4- Cheerful, happy, dancing and singing.

Storyboard:

In addition, we will do our risk assessment today, and hopeful we can start some practice filming on Friday. 

2nd Seminar of One Shot Film

As I said yesterday, we have our practice filmed in today seminar. 

Before we filming, we have done a rough storyboard of what our film will look like.

In this task, we only allow to either zoom/ pan/ crab/ track once, and we decided to use, because this could built up the tension and gave a direction of what audience should focus on. In order to create a best film, we must need lots of practice and trail, so we have tried 5 different angles.

During our filming, we received some comments from Deborah; she said that we could added a twist at the end to make it more entrainment and make the audience memorable. At the weekend, in our group we have to think about some ideas and discuss it on Monday.

After an hour film, here are the best 3 that we think:

1st Seminar of One Shot Film

Today, I have my 1^st seminar of this new task was called “You Decide!”. We will working as a group of 4, my group members are Sam, Lee and Elliot. Our task is working together to shoot a one shot film- shoot in on go by without any stop and the film must be short as well 1/ 2 minutes film (maximum).

Today seminar, I have been taught about what is the task about, and we have went to the arboretum park and walked for 30 minutes to get some ideas.

During the walk, I did came up some ideas:
1. Hide and Seek
2. A group of family member taking their family album- this sounds interesting, because during my AS I went to the Tate Gallery, and inside there one of the room was showing a video that a group of people standing in a room, the video seem took forever, the setting looked like they were taken photography. But instead of having still image, they were being video. From the video, we can see the people facial expression, scratch their head, looked boredom etc. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the artist name and the title of that work, I wish I can post that video in here.

However, these weren’t use for our final decision. The main idea that arose in our group after a half hour walked was confrontation between two characters in a suspicious style, like when we watching a cops and robbers’ film when they exchange ransom.

The film will start with a character walking toward to a bench with a bag then sit on it. Another character will meet the first character, then sitting on the bench and looks strange with each other. However, when the character gets to the meeting place, a homeless person would steal the bag and run.

This is what we have discussed in our seminar today, but in tomorrow seminar, we will shoot some practice to see what the film will like then we will have some discussion and make our final decision of this task.

Finished Piece of Your Station Ident

I had spend two days to edit my animation including the timeline mistake that I made before, and also I had added some sounds track into my final piece- is super mario!.  This animation is different to the one that I made before, because I have set the time line to 900 frames, and this is exactly 30 sec. Therefore, the animation was finished as what I planned at the beginning of this task. 

However, there are lots of improvement that I can made. For example,
1. The character can looks more interest and similar to me.
2. At the end, the background music can goes off smoothly. 

Ideas...??

Here are some ideas that came up in my free time and the seminar that I had on Thursday.

Idea 1:

Jelly climbing up the stairs from the ground to the sky. When the Jelly arrives, once it looks down. The camera will zoom to the A and zoom out again. At the end, my name will appear on the ground.

Idea 2:

This is an animation that a gold fish trying to tell it’s name to it’s owner, because it is a fish, it can’t speak.  So it decide to use the bubble to create some words and tell it’s name.

Idea 3:

This is an idea that I came up in my seminar on Thursday. It will start with a spot light, then my name will gradually appear on the screen. A girl stand in front of the name. Suddenly, the girl jump on the button. Then AMANDA falls to 90 degree. Once it falls, my Chinese name will appear.

Idea 4:

This is my final idea. This is influence by Pixar is a company that develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heartwarming stories that appeal to audiences of all ages. I love to watch Disney’s film every time at the beginning of the film, we will see this and this made me memorable especially when the light jumping on the “I” and the sounds effect did very well.

First Touch of Auto desk 3D Max

The first seminar that I had with Andy, and this is my first touch of 3D Max. It is complicate to me, for my final piece I think I will need a lot of experiment before I proceed the project. And today experiment was I had made a Jumping Jelly.

Making New Maps

In this entry, I would like to update the process of interactive space project.

Since 3 weeks effort, I had finished my first project “Interactive Space”.  However, I have not submitted my work to Simon yet, because I would like to do some improvement.

Last Thursday was my last seminar with Simon, I got some feedback from my finished piece. The suggestion from Simon was there was a scene, when audiences went to the wrong route and at the end of the scene audiences needed to make a call from a telephone booth. The feedback was instead of clicking the next button; I can change the button that allow audiences more involve into my interactive space, i.e. when audiences click the insert coins area will go to next page.  

There is a feedback from myself, this was came from after Simon played with my interactive space. The node that I made seemed annoy the audiences. Therefore, this will be another improvement of my final piece.

I knew that in order to make a perfect product, this will involve many changes and this is what Jools is taking about during context 1 lecture “The design process-defining”.  During my project, I had made changes of ideas, storyboard, the tree branches- structure of my project and the photos.

Initial ideas
Cooking- Bake cake/ cook a dish
Find a key in a room
Where is my rabbits?
Where is my friends?
A visit of a friend’s house.

I had chosen “A visit of a friend’s house” cause I did looked last year example, seems no one ideas are similar to mine. However, I am wondering to create another interactive space the title is “Bake Cake”. This sound interesting to me, because I like bake cakes.

Storyboard & Tree branches

The storyboard and tree branches I did not change a lot, I just added some scene in between.

Photos
I did not change the style the ideas of the photos but I changed the orientation of the photos, because Simon did not tell us this does matter of how the audience view as they will feel disturb.

I had learnt how a webpage work including key elements of HTML and CSS, and I was enjoying when I doing this project.

Key elements of HTML

<html>- opening tag
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>- closing tag

These must nest together in order to make the webpage work.

Other key elements:

<brl> line break
<p> paragraph
alt- alternative
src- souce
url- uniform resource locate
“”- nothing
<img> image

CSS key elements:

<style></style>- CSS Cascading Style Sheet- layout

There is a unique ID of each CSS which I need to name it and this is the hotspot identify.

 In this project, I learnt something different; something that I learnt from the internet is “rollover images”. In order to make my project to look more interact, I decided to learnt this and put this in my project. However, the rollover image involved complicate section i.e JavaScript. It used JavaScript to create the effect. At the moment, I am not sure how JavaScript works. I think we will go deeply later on in the course, and all I used was Dreamweaver helped me do it.

Tomorrow will have my first seminar <Animation> with Andy and he is my tutor... 10am till 6pm....

Interactive Space- Storyboard

This is my interactive space's storyboard. The idea was from the last weekend I went to Sheffield visited my friend. Therefore, I came up with this idea by using my collection of dolls' figure as the characters of the project, they called Milky and Pinky. This project I decided to call it "A journey to Pinky's house."

HW: Visual Story Telling....1,2,3

My first lecture and seminar started on this Tuesday. Fortunately I managed to find the rooms and turn up on time. In this Tuesday, I had received many information of my course, such as I will work on my Context 1 Assignment 1 and Design Practice 1 in this term, it sounds interesting.

On Tuesday seminar, me and Sara are in the same group, we did some sequences experiments by using the images from a film called "Vertigo" and "North by Northwest". 

What we need to do are...

1. Select 3 images that we interesting from each film.

2. Drag these images into Photoshop.

3. Arrange the images to create a new sequence.

4. Once we have finished, crop the images to remove the unwanted area.

5. Final step is to save our works.

*Unfortunately, our experiments are on my school network that I would not be able to post my works now.

After the experiments, we got homework to do!! 

Our homework is...

Select 3 visual strategies that described in the seminar. Create 3 different sequences that include 3 visual strategies, each sequence has to be 5 photographs that taken by myself.  Therefore, I am going to post my practical works of the first project called "Making New Maps". 

I have combined the strategies together of each sequence. And the strategies that I have used are Rich colour, Flat colour field, Depth of field and Zoom shot. 

Cranberry Juice

Parcel in postbox

A trip that I have in this summer.