Professional Development
May 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Professional Development
During my third year studying on the BA(Honors) Digital Media Production course at Level 6 I created and was part of four projects that spanned across the digital media landscape. Using my skills I have acquired and developed such as cinematography, 3D animation, editing, sound design, colour grading, projection and music production.
The Specialist project was the first project of the year and I wanted to produce a film incorporating elements that I’m interested in such as filmmaking, projection, compositing audio visualizations and music production.
To film this project I wanted to get some experience using the Canon 5D Mk II, the new camera available for the course. This high performance Digital SLR camera made it possible to achieve professional standard shooting in low level environments. I decided to really test the camera using it at night with only the street lights for lighting. The quality of footage was an important part of this project as I wanted to composite visuals onto the footage with the use of Adobe After Effects and Trapcode Particular.
Something I go into at the start of the year was Trapcode a set of plug ins for after effects that allow you to create an infinite array of 3D particle animations. Using parameters such as particle size, colour, audio reaction, disperse, displace and evolution to create interesting visualizations.
Projection is an area I looked into during my second year on the course and I decided I wanted to carry it on for the Specialist project. Using visuals created in after effects I set up the projector to project onto glass windows to illuminate the subject from behind. I found the effect to be visually appealing. Using power packs was the only problem however, I only had power for 30 minutes so this part of the shoot was rushed and I could have shot a lot more if power was not an issue.
I really wanted this film to have no copyright infringement and so decided upon making my own music. I’ve been making music for a while now but have never really taken it seriously but for this project I appreciated having the time and freedom to produce a piece of music that I could tailer to the mood of my film.
This project allowed me to have complete creative control and the freedom to experiment with different techniques. With the industry in mind the piece would need to be revisited and tweaked but my aims for this project were to experiment and learn different techniques that would benefit me and give me more creative options in later projects, mainly with the Extended Major Project in mind.
The main goal of this project was to develop upon and learn a new skill set that would prepare me for post production job roles within the industry and give me an inside knowledge of the process and techniques that go into creating high end professional video work. With the skills I have acquired while working on this project I feel I would be able to produce many different styles and ideas either in music video’s, short films and advertisements. The process of using high quality footage filmed with DSLR cameras and using one desktop computer or even a laptop makes the workflow very streamlined and portable creating projects on the go. Animating a 3D object or objects that can then be composited to create a video project means that the need for whole teams of animators and project managers becomes less and less necessary resulting in low budget professional productions. This workflow however can become time consuming but with applied organisational skills this can be overcome and factored into the process.
Starting this project was slow and confusing as I was unsure whether to produce a music video with standard filming or take the opportunity to expand my knowledge of digital media and take a gamble on learning, implementing and completing a four to five minute computer generated short film, I chose the latter. Teaming up with another member of my course was a great choice as we were able to utilise each others strengths and work through any issues along the way. With double the man hours however we had to step up to the plate and produce a narrative around an animated character. This brought up many implications of emotion and how the audience would react to a computer generated robot. We focused on two of the most guttural of human emotions, love and loss. To then anchor these to a robot without the ability of speech we had to look towards other reference points such as Wall-E and i-Robot. The shoot went really well and we used two actors and a band to star in the film and provide the music.
Before the Extended Major Project I had very little knowledge of Autodesk Maya. Previous projects included modeling a face and animating a ball bounce up and down, not exactly the best experience. With the help of a third year animator I designed the robot from reference material I had collected and begun the process of rigging the model so that every element was ready for animation including the head, antennas, eyelids, arms, hands, legs and feet. Learning how to rig the model took a lot longer than we had anticipated and we were already half way through the project before we had animated a walk and run cycle and shot the footage for compositing. This left us with very little time to shoot, prepare the footage and storyboard and block out the animation, nevertheless we began animating and slowly but surely started getting through the shot list which consisted of thirty-five individually animated, tracked, textured and rendered shots. One shot from the project took on average two working days to complete, thats seventy working days just making the film without taking the robot interface (created in After Effects using Trapcode), editing, sound design and colour correction into account. I also personally conceptualised and created a set of adverts, graphics and the robot interface design that I for the film.
Another process to mention is that of sound design. Sound was an important factor for this film and was another learning curve for me but after going out and recording sounds to dub over our film I feel I’m a lot more confident with sound recording and sound editing using Sound Track Pro.
For two first time animators this seemed like a huge undertaking that would either pay off dividends or flop due to the substantial work load we gave ourselves. I feel the project was a huge success not only in the final video but also in what I learnt along the way, with the added confidence I gained in using this process to hopefully create productions for clients, work within a team and produce work and develop individually in the future.
Filming this project was a fun and interesting experience, I was asked to film a third year piece for an illustrator I teamed up with Alastair Hyde-Tetley to help film. We had no studio and the director had to make do with hanging material to the wall to create a big enough space. The room we were filming in was just the right size and we started filming. The idea was to have a model in this case Cadi Thomas and have her completely covered in stickers from head to toe, throughout the film these stickers would be flung off into the air and fall to the ground.
The editing process was relatively simple, especially as a song was provided by ‘Benny Sensus’, an up and coming band from Bristol. The track had certain musical queues to edit by and being around three minutes long the song wasn’t too long. Ellie had no experience with editing so the responsibility fell on me finish the video to a high standard ready for projection at an exhibition being held in London. She was very happy with the final result and the band are going to use this piece as a music video for their song which was an added bonus and will hopefully lead to producing another music video when they release a single later on this year.
‘Pinball Wizzard’ is a project I completed after the Extended Major Project hand in. Myself and a couple of friends hired the Canon 5D Mark II and along with a Go Pro HD camera set up a video shoot for a teaser trailer based around a pinball machine. The idea was to produce a thirty second teaser for a documentary I am planning to make in mid June about the U.K’s biggest collector of pinball machine’s ‘Nick Regan’. With hundreds of machines located at his home in Farham Nick is sure to be a great focus for a documentary and the aesthetic of pinball machines really lends itself to my way of filming, from the teaser I feel that we will be able to produce a great documentary that we can enter into online competitions and send to multiple T.V channels such as Current T.V and Channel Four Docs.
Now that I have finished the course and will be graduating I will no longer have access the camera’s supplied by the university, seeing as I would be not be able pursue any of my planned ventures I have decided to invest in a Canon 5D Mark II or a Canon 7D. Owning a camera of this quality will give me ultimate freedom to film what I want when I want without having to rely on others for filming equipment. I will be able to freelance of my own back in spare time and collaborate with other graduates within this field opening up many possibilities to get my work produced and seen. During the next year my aims are to produce as much video based work as I can working with as many people as I can to create a portfolio of work that will allow me to get work with internships around London.
One main goal of mine is to travel around America with the intention of making documentary films. Along with the a friend of mine who studied on the Graphic Design course we have already built up some contacts such as the captain of a Roller Derby team in Orange County California, I have kept in contact with her and her friends who we met a few months ago. We also have contacts in Chicago where we can stay and then a friends holiday home in Florida with plans to travel along the bible belt and possibly east coast. This kind of trip is a once in a life time and is what I will be working towards.
Throughout the year studying on this course I feel my skill set has grown experientially from when I first started. With this skill set I know I can go out into the world of digital media and produce a high level of work and with more projects in the pipeline I know I will only get better, I’m not saying I know everything but I at least have an understanding of how most video work is produced within the media today. I hope to explore other avenues of digital media such as interactivity and projection and continue to produce short film, music video’s and travel the world creating documentaries and doing anything to get my work seen and noticed, I have a very optimistic view of the future and going out with the manifesto “A journey to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary of settings.”
