Example » Watch the Sun Come Up

Another example of mixing rotoscoping and live-action, especially as it relates to daydreaming.

© Watch the Sun Come Up by Example

———
♥ md

Hitchcock loves Bikinis » the Kuleshov Effect

I wrote an article in Verso (YSDN Design Annual) last year about how juxtaposing two images, or an image with text can create different meanings. Our brains work hard to make sense of what we read, hear and watch so designers and film makers have to be very careful with the placement of various elements on a page, or within a timeline. This short interview with Hitchcock likewise talks about how juxtaposing pieces of film together can create different situations based on our brains need to link them together. We can’t really see the girl in the bikini and a close-up of Hitchcock’s face as two separate and disconnected pieces of film, because our brains reason that tey were placed together for a reason, so they must be connected. This leads us to imagine Hitchcock as a “dirty old man”.

———
♥ md

Project 3, Loop » Dreaming is Better

Finally finished! (although I plan to revisit this and fix it up at a later date)

———————————

My idea for this piece centered around the spontaneity of daydreams, and monotony of a scheduled routine. The idea of monotony seemed very relevant considering the project was to be based on a loop; although there are many exceptions, a loop by nature suggests the repetition of the same thing over and over again.

My biggest fixation is dreaming. I’m an avid dreamer, and i found that the contrast between the routine of my normal schedule and the exciting & unexpected breaks that come when i begin to daydream was good material to talk about in this project. On a larger sense, I wanted to talk about the importance of dreaming, especially to fellow creatives. We usually come up with our best ideas while asleep, and so it’s a shame that we’re not really taught how to dream, or how to make the most of our dreams.

The various shades of grey used in my rotoscoping helped to keep the loop consistent, and also provided greater contrast when the colourful drawings were added on top. I chose to begin the loop with seemingly “boring”, yet indescript sounds so the viewer could experience the emotion, without being told what is literally happening in the frame. A happier melody accompanies the playful drawings in the second part of the loop which i thinks works well to give the viewer a sense of easy-goingness.

Although I’ve had copious amounts of trouble with practically every stage of this project, i’m fairly happy with the way it turned out…especially the rotoscoped movie. I think the pride i feel when looking at the raw rotoscoped file is well worth the effort it took to produce it (in retrospect of course!)

more about “Project 3, Loop » Dreaming is Better“, posted with vodpod

———
♥ md

Movies from class (Nov. 19)

Take On Me — A-ha
This was always one of my favourite songs/videos, even before we watched it in class. I love the combination of rotoscoped imagery and video. I found that it does a really great job of establishing eyeline, keeping continuity and breaking the axis from time to time.  In the shots where the man and woman are string at each other in the coffee shop (through the comic book), their eyes are always lined up when the camera switches between them. Also during the mirror scene, the guy is always on the right, whereas the girl is on the left, and eventhough the camera does move around them, it stays on the same side of the 180º axis. During the chase sequence, the runners all travel from the right side of the screen to the left, keeping the motion fluid. As well, as the woman is running home she keeps a constant speed and runs from the right side to the left side of the screen, thereby making the transition between running out of the coffee shop to running into her bedroom hardly noticeable. Considering how much planning went into everyshot, it still comes across as effortless and fun, and that makes me appreciate the video even more.

——————————

Meshes of the Afternoon — Maya Deren
I really liked how the film played with the idea of a loop, but something changed each time. I planned to do something like this with my loop, where i’d be walking down a hallway and something would change each time. Using layering, i would be able to walk down the hallway with many instances of myself to add more dimension to the basic loop.

Although originally a silent film, the sound added to the emotion of the film and did not distract, or take away from what was happening on screen.
For many nights after i watched this, i kept dreaming about Mirror-Face

——————————

The Girl from Moush — Garine Torossien
I felt the use of layering and looping worked really well in this piece to convey a sense of emotion. The soundtrack also worked well. The fluidity and colours were reminiscient of dancing which is of great importance in the Middle East. Being from the Middle East myself, a lot of the imagery and sound effects (especially about 1 minute in) brought back a lot of memories. The rich blues and purples that Garine used conflict with the traditional imagery of what one associates with that part of the world, but i think that helps to remove some of the familiarity of the scenes and instead focus on experiencing what is happening on screen with a sense of wonderment.

——————————

She Puppet — Awesh
I didn’t really deel like this film was so effective as the narration consisted of many different voices, so instead of tying the voice to “Lara Croft”, it just seemed like outside narration. Also, i think our generation, having grown up on video games, was more concerned with the actual game footage than trying to link it to what was happening in the narration.

———
♥ md

Project 3, Loop » Rotoscoping Test (sneak peak)

Unfortunately i didn’t get to rotoscope everything that i wanted due to lack of time. I only managed to get through 200 of the potential 657 frames, but as the project calls for a loop, I will still be able to put something together. I have kept all my printed frames because i still want to come back to it and rotoscope the whole thing. It’s a lot of work, but i think the outcome of rotoscoping by hand is really neat!

more about “rotoscoping test (sneak peak) on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

———
♥ md

Project 3, Loop » Rough Cuts

My idea for the fixation / loop project, my idea centered around my two conflicting personalities, specifically my dreamer and obsessive / organized personalities. With Elaine’s help, I shot a bunch of quick shorts on my ipod (all the cameras were signed out) and put them together in FinalCut Express, then exported the result as stills at 10 fps.

——————————————

After isolating the looped elements, I printed the remaining 657 images. I then began the long and laborious process of tracing each frame. I had to use the photo studio as a giant light table, but after about a few hours, i had drawn 32 frames. I’ve probably killed so many trees in the process of printing and rotoscoping my images, that i may go do some planting after i finish third year. Anyway, while rescanning in my images, the paper got crumpled around the bottom, but i didn’t bother rescanning since it was just a motion test. I actually ended up liking the result, so i may try to do something like that for the final video.

I’m kind of excited for the finished piece, but i’m also regretting all the time it’s going to take me, especially considering all the other projects i have due.

———
♥ md

Dan Deacon » The Paddling Ghost

I saw this video in the summer, but had completely forgotten about until I re-stumbled upon it the other day…It’s shot & directed by Natalie van den Dungen with help from Karl Siemon and Don Brooker.

———
♥ MD

Unrelated, But Cool » a few short vids

WOLF AND PIG
We watched this short stop-motion movie during one of the first classes, and I keep coming back to it. I think we watched this before we attempted any real stop motion projects, so at the time I couldn’t grasp how hard it must have been to film, or how long it probably took. It seemed really simple, but now that I understand the time needed not only to film, but to edit (working one frame at a time) I’m even more impressed by the outcome. Aside from the technical aspect, I really enjoy how 2D space around the wolf and pig transform into the 3d space of the room it was filled in. I especially love the part when the sink becomes a swimming pool, and the photograph of the wolf swimming floats across the water.

——————————————

DEERHUNTER — FAMOUS LAST WORDS
This is a music video that Greig and I stumbled upon while brainstorming for stop-motion ideas. Like the wolf and pig video, I’m forever impressed at how much work must have gone into making this, but it really pays off. This video goes the extra mile and has the 2D photograph interacting with the 3D space (again, much like the Wolf and Pig), but in a more direct way. Whereas the wolf and pig photographs were laid on top of related 3D spaces, the 2D figure in the this music video is actually interacting with the normal 3D elements of the room.

——————————————

WESTERN SPAGHETTI
I’m a huge fan of PES! I love how they always use Bressant’s principles of not duplicating sound and visuals. What you see relates to the sound in some manner, but out of the context of the video, would have no actual relationship to the subject matter. If you were to watch a lot of their videos on mute (this one being an exception, I suppose), you would have no idea what was going on. In that way, the sounds and the visuals work together to send a message instead of competing for dominance. Another thing that amazed me and those I showed it to, was how perfectly registered everything was. Like Franci mentioned to us, it’s a real shame when registration issues take away from your video and all the hard work you’ve out into it. While filming the countdown, and even to some extent Project 1, a lot of the class still experienced shifting despite using tripods and tape. For some of was easier to fix than others (and certainly mine was quite hard) but that just made me wonder how PES was able to achieve such stability (or how long it took them to re-register everything if there was some shifting). Either way, this video is really sweet and I’d definitely like to do something this ambitious in the future…once i master the tripod, or get a team of minions to align everything in Photoshop for me ;D

———
♥ MD

Project 3, Ideas » Fixation

I’ve discovered I’m a mesh of two very strong, very different personalities…my fixations and obsessions are proof of this.

——————————————

1. DRAWING/DOODLING
I don’t think I’m alone with this one, but if you ever set a piece of paper in front of me, regardless of what it is, it will be covered with doodles the next time you see it. I draw when I’m bored or when I’m thinking. In elementary school, I used to draw large colourful pictures on the backs of my tests and around each question (especially math tests because they’d give you a lot of room to show your work). They’d take up the whole back page! They’d amuse some teachers and annoy others. Even now, I tend to draw on the test papers, and my lecture notes are always filled with more drawings than actual notes.

2. MUSIC
I need music and lots of it. Wherever I go, and whatever I do, I need to have it with me. My music collection is probably my most prized possession, and in a fire, that would be the first thing I’d grab. In relation to my daydreaming, music helps me concentrate…not necessarily on my work, but I tend to focus on one or two things max, as opposed to the millions that fight for my brain space. My mind tends to wander unless I have my headphones on and one of my favourite songs is blasting full volume. A friend who used to supply me with music once attributed himself to my dealer, and me to a junkie looking for her next fix. Not an ideal picture, but it’s true in some respects. I lost quite a large bit in The Great Move of 07 (from PC to Mac…the CDs i burned them on got corrupted), and I haven’t been able to recover a lot of it, but I’ve been extremely overprotective of what I have amassed since then. I listen to quite the variety, and each genre has a different effect on me.  Classical & Meditative music help me to focus, Oldies & Indie Rock put me in a really good mood, Soca & Reggae/Dancehall get me moving wherever I am, but Electronic music is by far the genre that I connect with the most. It’s sort of an out of body experience—with the right track, I can close my eyes and be “gone” for hours. My current obsession (and has been for a while)…there’s just something about this part

 

3. DAYDREAMING
I’m a very quiet and private person; I tend to be “in my head” a lot. Because I don’t talk very much, there’s always 50 things going on in my head and it’s really hard to focus my thoughts (which I assume is the reason I sometimes forget what I’m taking about mid sentence). The only time I’m ever focused on one thing is when I’m dreaming, and I do that a lot. There’s the regular dreams that happen when I’m sleeping and the daydreams that plague me during the day. They come out of nowhere and remove me from reality for a significant portion of time. My dreams are always vivid, full colour and in third-person; they play out like movies (and pretty awesome movies, I might add). They start the second my head touches the pillow, before I’m even asleep, and they end while I’m eating breakfast, or walking to school. I saw a movie about a month or so ago called Waking Life. It was a completely rotoscoped movie, but the messages in it were so big. It really spoke to me about the importance of dreams, and how real they can seem sometimes.

These three are all connected, and stem form my inability to focus. I think that rotoscoping or loose illustration is something that would fit with the surreal and looseness of my mind.

——————————————

Conversely, I’m also compulsively organized or structured.

4. CHECKING THE TIME
I’m not sure why, but I have this sort of “obsession” with time. I’ve always worn a watch since I was two years old, but last year, my watch broke and I didn’t have the time (no pun intended) to replace it. I soon forgot about getting a watch, but I’m now attached to my cell phone because of the built-in clock. I absolutely have to have a clock wherever I go. At home, I have a bedside clock. When I stay over at anybody’s house however, I tend to sleep with my cell phone in hand or under my pillow so when I do inevitably check the time, I don’t have to fumble around looking for a clock. Every little while, sometimes multiple times per minute, I feel compelled to check the time. It’s more so the action of it though because sometimes, I “check the time” but I don’t actually look at the numbers. I often wake up in the middle of the night, half-asleep, check the time and go back to bed. You’d think this fixation with time would make me a punctual person, but unfortunately not. (ugghh, I think this is the 4th time i’ve checked the clock while writing just this paragraph)

5. COLOUR COORDINATION
This is a big one…I’m not sure how it started, but since I can remember, I’ve been very anal about having everything organized by colour, size or number; the biggest one was colour. I used to get furious with classmates who borrowed my crayons, only to return them out of order. I don’t have an excessive amount of clothes, but take a look in my closet, and you’ll see it organized by colour too. My pens and markers are all organized based on colour, my collection of Post-It notes…even the files on my computer have little coloured labels based on subject, term and status (not to mention my dock)…

 

It’s a little weird that I can be both obsessively organized, and yet so unfocused. I guess it creates a very interesting dynamic in terms of personality, and it’ll be interesting to see how I can tie these together in project 3. I’m thinking loose drawings and concept, but structured loop?

———
♥ MD

Project 2 » Fleeting

My inspiration for this countdown project was the passage of time and how fleeting moments can be. I chose to focus on birthdays as they were recognizable and important milestones of a person’s life, and something that could be represented numerically and passed at regular intervals. I wanted it to be eerie and uncomfortable, instead of the traditional happy imagery associated with birthdays. The traditional imagery of birthdays suggest a celebration of getting older, though conversely, birthdays can be seen as a countdown to our death. Just the imagery of a candle burning seemed to go hand-in-hand with the aspect of a countdown; a whole candles burns down to a puddle of wax, nothing, just as 10 counts down to 0. In essence, it’s a metaphor for how we can be there one minute, and gone the next. I’m not a very dark/brooding person, so this was very much out of my comfort zone to portray these feelings (and talking about this now is actually making me really sad).

For the sound, I chose to get rid of the singing as it was getting too distracting, and focus on something less literal. I found some clips of old music boxes and record players on the freesound website, and I worked in Audacity (for the first time) to distort the naturally uplifting and friendly tune into something that got under my skin. It was still the childhood tune I remembered, but it was damaged and wrong. I felt that the music, along with the “crescendo-ing” heartbeats, was what my imagery needed to go the extra mile and create the movie that I intended.

Although I typically don’t like to make people sad, I really hope that you feel at least a little heavyhearted after you watch this…ummm, enjoy??

more about “Project 2 » Fleeting“, posted with vodpod

———
♥ MD