casual-stuff « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Writer's Room

millagony — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:21:49 +0000

I found this site on the BBC website, it looks pretty useful and a great way to get my work out there, so in a few weeks I’ll be sending some work to them even if to be knocked back.

The Writer’s Room.

So True

millagony — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:52:38 +0000

Little White Lies Magazine Covers

millagony — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:21:17 +0000

This is a competition for covers to the Where The Wild Things Are magazine cover for a independent film magazine called Little White Lies, which is bi monthly and do focus on a certain film and has numerous non film articles relating to the subject of the featured film. Very impressive.

Urban Gaming

millagony — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:12:29 +0000

I came across the link on the micro blogging site Twitter. It’s about Urban gaming in which gaming moves away from computer screens to the real world, with things like Pac Manhattan. It’s quite exciting imaging being able to physically interact with other players, rather than just their voices over a headphone.

Urban Gaming.

I Met The Walrus

millagony — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:21:52 +0000

More monster munch

millagony — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:30:50 +0000

Mr. W

millagony — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:01:35 +0000

I was sent a link to this video today and it is just amazing, it’s an advert for wind power and the main character is a human form of the wind, and he interacts with everyone by doing things that the does like blowing sand around and messing up peoples hair. I just think this is genius.

Sunday Night Project

millagony — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:18:34 +0000

Tow videos from channel 4’s Sunday Night Project, the videos are spoofs of Lady GaGa’s music video and they use the same grading techniques to achieve a very stylised piece. The second is another parody of the cadbury’s advert with the two children with their dancing eye brows, again its the attention to detail as they drained the colour to match the original advert.

Fleet Foxes

millagony — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:33:51 +0000

This is a stop frame animation I found on Vimeo. It’s a music video for the band Fleet Foxes and is amazing to look at it’s mostly done with sugar paper as the making off shows with it.

Mykonos from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

La Revolution Des Crabes

millagony — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:33:55 +0000

Animation I saw last year and it suddenly came up on my youtube page so I thought I would share it with the good folks who go on my blog. Its a grand animation using really stylized black and white and has a nice fast moving narrative.

Lighting the forth episode. Just casual

millagony — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:01:27 +0000

Today I did a little practice with the lighting equipment which was very enjoyable, because the forth episode is in black and white I had to find the perfect balance of lighting to be able to get a nice clear shot of the characters face. As its mostly static it’s more simple to do. So we recorded the footage and hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be able to post it up on her to discuss the way I went about it. I did a lot of bouncing of the light and also I’m thinking that for the other scenes I’ll need to get some diffusers for the lights and also some reflective boards so create decent worthwhile effects.

Mad Men

millagony — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:26:42 +0000

Opening credits to Mad Men

Monster Munch

millagony — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:19:29 +0000

A & E

millagony — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:23:31 +0000

You Drive Me Crazy

millagony — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:23:40 +0000

Right o, so this is the over all footage of driving me crazy, its about 8 minutes long, but it shows the different ways I approached all. The dialogue was quite basic set around and argument between the mother and the son, it was mostly add lib but I wanted it to veer towards the climax with the mother being dressed as a clown With clowns I love the idea that the characters expressions are hidden behind the make that’s appears to be happy.

So after getting my mother to dress up as the clown, which she volunteered to do probably so she can have some leverage over me in future disagreements, we drove around the local area just trying different approaches and takes. It was filmed in first person perspective, because it seemed like the best way of doing it, due to the lack of space and that it was only me doing it, I didn’t want to make the mood and atmosphere of it all by doing jump cuts. I think that though it is quite funny and to the point, it’s lacking something I think it may be the framing of the final part as I don’t fully get the clown in the whole shot, though that can add to realism side.

Below is a link to the original photographs the face paint looks brilliant is very simple and there’s a look of melancholy in her expressions.
Click me up

Above are 6 test’s I did with the rotoscoping technique that I’ve been working with for the last few weeks. Each ones are different bring something a little different to the look of my video, my idea is to take one of those examples and filter it over the top of my footage and hopefully create a stylized effect in the process.

1st version of the film with no effects added on yet, it’s just the template of the film, but shows the idea and phrase clearly.

This the ‘cut out’ effect filter I used, it works really well to a certain level but it’s finding the balance and clarity that is the hardest art and I don’t feel that this conveys that as it goes extremely dark towards the end.

Dry brush effect, looks very clear but it just looks as if the footage is very poor quality.

Paint daubs, is the best that I’ve used for the trails though I may need to tweak it slightly to enhance the visual style I after.

The first full version edited and effected

The video above is the one I was going to show at the crit but I’ve decided not to because it looks a bit bland, I feel that I’ve let the concept down slightly with the overall finished piece because it resembles the original unfiltered footage to much and if I were to redo it I would spend a lot more time and care ensuring that I is of a quality that I am pleased with. So like before I edited the footage in final cut then moved it into after effects turned that footage into a filmstrip film then dropped it into photoshop to add the filters then back into after effect for a little render then final cut again to sync the sound.

Tune

millagony — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:38:34 +0000

Take Me Out

millagony — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:08:50 +0000

London trip 2008

millagony — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:41:59 +0000

today was the day of another trip to the glorious capital London, we hit the Hayward and tate modern. The Hayward featured a Andy Warhol exhibition and was extremely interesting, it showed may of his films like Sleep, Blow Job and Horse most of which I was familiar with because of film studies and watching the screen test piece was breathtaking as they were projected onto screens. The screen test’s were 2 3/4 minute video in which Warhol got people to sit in front of the camera and stare into it. On some occasions Warhol left the room leaving only the person and camera in the proximity. The footage was shot on 16mm and played at 16 frames per second instead of the usual 24,this obviously drew out the length of each film and Warhol had made over 600 of them all the same length of time.

This is the Salvador Dali screen test, and its so strange to watch the master surrealism put into front of a camera and just seeing him lose his persona of the mad artist and slowing step back from his mask. Though this is just a short version of it the sorrow in his expression is plain to see and for a Film maker to use a camera to depict emotion in this way is just beautiful.

“I’m interested in audience reaction to my films: my films now will be experiments, in a certain way, on testing their reactions.” –Andy Warhol

Another film there was ‘Horse” which focused on the homosexual undertones of the western film genre, the piece used basic western iconography such as a horse that they brought into the factory and with four young actors dressed as cowboy playing cards. The film is in 3 parts the film is of the cowboys petting the horse and so on, then the 2nd part is of just the horse and finally the 3rd shows the cowboys partake in gambling and sadomasochist undertaking on one another all in front of the horse as the strip down to the under wear.

We also went to the Tate Modern and looked round the exhibitions I found this piece very interesting by Ellen Gallagher, I thought the texture on it was fascinating and very different things I’ve seen before.

Fleet Foxes

millagony — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:43:19 +0000

Cloud Installations

millagony — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:03:24 +0000

Rotoscoping

millagony — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:56:03 +0000

This is my first attempted at Rotoscoping. I used footage from my film final screening and drop it into a new composition in After Effects then selected the length of the footage I wanted. I then turned it into a movie clip (flm file) importing this file into Photoshop it came up with all the separate stills from the footage, by putting a filter over the top I was then able to edit the stills. The outcome is only 4 seconds and it flashes slightly and another down side I the size of the file.

A Scanner Darkly

Waking Life

These are two films that used the rotoscoping effect.

Final Screening

millagony — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:44:18 +0000

This is the final film I made last year for the foundation course in film. The quality is very poor but it shows the scope of my ideas.

Finished Edited

millagony — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:44:14 +0000

Final cut of our viral video project for the Resistance 2 advertising campaign.

A quick conversation and little screening of it, we’re going to add in a radio DJ style at the beginning to establish the world that the character is in. So tomorrow the team and I are going to record the voice for it, in a Good Morning Vietnam approach to it.

Production Diary.
This is little video we made along side the first day of filming to document the way that we went about the project, its very basic but does show insight to our style of working together.

You talkin' to me?

millagony — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:55:51 +0000

Yesterday I had a little talk with Liam about the course and such with was really good because I feel a little more at ease now than I have this year. I told him my original flash idea which has changed but it was based around the phrase “Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” which featured a small boy in a glass house throwing a ball against the wall and catching it as it bounces back, he then swaps the ball for a stone and then in turn throws that at the wall shattering the glass house. A bit shit really. So Liam asked what is it I want to do when I’m older and I said a screenwriter, obviously I’ve got a lot to do in terms of developing my ideas but I told him two of them and they seemed to go down quite well so over he next few weeks I’m going to begin writing a few little scripts to help myself improve.

So now for the flash unit I’m now recreating the scene from Taxi Driver with the classic “Who talking to me?” dialogue but doing it with the character dressed as a Clown, I’m thinking that it could well be the best thing ever well straightlaced acting to make it seemed ver funny. So today I did shot for shot storyboards of the scene so I can reference it very closely.

Motion Capturing.

millagony — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:49:22 +0000

Geez Louise, I’m in love!
I loved the mo-cap talk I’m very interested in all of it and plan to learn about it over length of the course. I have a (very) basic understanding of how it works with infra-red signals being transmitting signals to the ‘cage’ that they person with the suit is in and it maps the movements that they make that around that you can build around that basic wire-frame person.

This is a film trailer below that uses Motion Capturing, this isn’t a live action piece but is an animation but the effect nearer the less looks very effective.