Spectacle Artifact

12/10/09

We have been given 2 weeks to produce a short (up to 3mins) video or audio piece on Spectacle, we have been given an obstruction of half a second between cuts for video and 3 seconds for audio.

I have decided to do a video piece but am struggling to come up with ideas for it, the obvious  ways to go with this would be a major event like 9/11 or the JFK assassination but I want to stay away from that as there is so much footage and would be the easy choice. However I would like to do something on a world event just one that not as obvious.

13/10/09

Still struggling and don’t know how to take footage off YouTube so will have to find out, maybe I could do a montage of a lot of world events pieced together or natural disasters.

15/10/09

Ok so how to do this montage…could I use a comparison method and show people being killed in wars and compare it to a lion taking down a gazelle and an atomic explosion and a flower blooming??? This is tough I’m crap at coming up with ideas!!!!

18/10/09

Ok I’m going with a montage of 4 world events including natural disaster and I am going inter-cut them and put them to a piece of music that doesn’t fit like something lighthearted and tranquil, this is to give a kind of message that even those these things happen there are people who think that these events are nothing and they don’t give a damn. Must ask in the lecture or workshop how to get footage off YouTube. These are the pieces of footage I’ll be using.

19/10/09

Had a chat with Mez and she told me how to get the footage off YouTube, but then had a conversation with Zoe, she asked what I was doing and  through are conversation we both changed our idea. I showed her an animation I did with my nieces and she said that would be cool to do. So I said I could re-enact a world event using animation. I love animation and this would be much more challenging than doing a montage and it also won’t infringe copyright law, so I could add it to my showreel. But what to re-enact and it cant be too long, I think I’ll sleep on it.

20/10/09

Ok I’m gonna re-enact the moon landing using sweets probably smarties as they are easy to work with and have a variety of colors so it could make it quite interesting. I’ve looked at the footage and I will do the take off and landing but it needs to be simple…maybe I’ll show a basic rocket taking off and landing on top of a moon in the sky zoom in slightly so the moon is still full and you can see the rocket aswell, then have a smartie astronaut appear and bounce up and down on the moon for a bit and plant a flag.

21/10/09

Ok I’ve changed it again after a brainstorming session with a couple of friends, I am now going to re-enact King Kong’s Empire State Building climb with the smarties and use sound effects. The reason for this is that King Kong the film is in itself a spectacle, a gorilla that big would be a spectacle, a gorilla that big climbing a building would be an even bigger spectacle and to re-enact it using smarties would make it into a new kind of spectacle. I’ve brought my smarties and I’m animating on Thursday.

These animations are all done really simply using shapes or sweets but look very effective, bright and fun. This is what i want to achieve with my animation.

22/10/09

Well the pictures for my animation are done, the shoot went well but one problem I had, was no tripod, so it was difficult to keep the camera in the same place  as it was all hand-held but I think it will give the film a quirkyness. I also had to move location as at my flat I have only 2 very small windows so I went to my mum’s place as she has a conservatory with plenty of light. It took 2 hours to shoot and I took 160 pictures, I knocked background a couple of times so had to reposition the smarties a couple of times and my mum’s dog ate one to, but luckily I had a replacement smartie. The only thing I would do differently for an animation next time is have a tripod.

24/10/09

Edited my animation today and Adobe Premier was a bit tedious, I had to shorten each photo clip one at a time to half a second (wish I had tedious Avid at least it would do them all in one go) which took an hour. Just had to drop them on the timeline which was no problem and had to cut a few pictures out so it flowed better, the problem was finding downloadable sound effects…this took 3 hours and I was starting to get frustrated but in the end I got them all and the sound edit went well. Had to figure out how to put credits on as this is the first time using Premier but figured it out and the credits were done in half an hour. The big problem I had when it came to exporting the film it just wouldn’t do it at first and I tried 5 times, then I clicked one button different and it exported….but without sound so I tried it again and it worked.

I’m glad I didn’t do a YouTube montage I had much more fun and learnt a lot more by doing this animation.