Final: “Why We Love”

Before I get into the technical side of my process, I just want to explain that this was my first time working in After Effects. I had briefly dabbled in it before, but had never created a project from scratched. That now disclaimed, I’ll continue.

I know this is odd, but I didn’t have storyboards. A lot of what I do isn’t hard to conceptualize and I am a person that often times doesn’t need to have storyboards. I knew how I wanted my piece to look and how I wanted it to feel already. So I went ahead and started building.

Once I found the all the necessary footage that I needed, which is all royalty free, I began to build a very rough back ground for my text. After that, I went ahead and recorded the audio and some video of my own lips speaking the poem. Once that was complete, I imported both the audio and footage, but after I tried to use the RotoBrush in After Effects, I didn’t like the way it was looking. So I scraped the footage and just used audio. I edited the audio in Final Cut Pro, because this is a software that I am very familiar with and knew that it would be easy for me to edit the audio on this platform. I know that AE is not really used for audio editing at all. So once I had all the audio taken care of, I finished my project in AE by fine tuning the visual cues and audio cues. Once that was all completed, I took the project back into final cut and added the text.

I’ll add the piece later once I upload it to youtube.

Production Outline for Rest of Semester

Rest of  November:

15th- continuing testing on rotoscoping

20th- have footage and sound ready for project

22th- begin editing footage

29th- have a 1st cut of project ready, without sound and text

 

December:

4th- have complete project ready, sound and all.

No Places for Names response

So after experiencing the augmented reality around campus and listening to developer Teri Rueb, I found the whole experience pretty amazing. I think that its going to be really useful for people who are visiting campus and to motivate them to come to IAIA. I know that a lot of people question why IAIA? Why come to this school? Well this is a perfect example of what IAIA is doing and the advances they are making with technology available to us. It shows the amount of opportunity that students are given at the school. Being a senior I’m almost a little jealous of the freshman that are going to be coming in because they will have so many chances to express themselves in ways that are so unique.

The way the experience works is rather simple. You download the free app called “No Places With Names” and once you have it downloaded all you have to do is follow piles of ceramic cans that have been placed around campus. There is a nature trail surrounding the school that many students may not know existed. Even I would spot random piles of these cans and wonder what they were for. Other students may question a faculty member or staff about the cans and thus be lead to the equipment room where they can be directed on how to use the app. I find this really unique because this has the student question things and it also motivates them to gather information from the teachers. The app only applies to IAIA campus it will not work any where else because it uses GPS to augment the user into a nice storytelling environment.

One thing I asked about the program is if it had the capabilities to use the mic on the device and add it to the already playing sound. Kind of like how the Inception app works. It takes sounds around the user and adds them to the already playing sound. It also adds different filters to the sound to change it. Teri mentioned that with the software they have now, it’s not possible, but it’s definitely something she is working on.

I really like the idea of sound from around you in the environment being incorporated into the already playing sound because I think that makes the augmentation more real feeling.

MIDTERM

For the project I’d like to do an abstract project for the dome using images and kinetic typography techniques. I’d like to do this for the dome, because it will be the first time I have done anything for the dome personally. I really want to create for the dome because I have tried to conceptualize working and producing projects for the dome in the past and couldn’t wrap my head around it. Now though, I have a good grasp of how things can fit on the dome and what it can be used for. I am able to conceptualize better than I had before. After watching a few abstract examples of dome work, I could produce something similar. It wouldn’t be a good, because my skills aren’t advanced in any means, but I think that once I start working it will be able to create something very enjoyable.

Using Kinetic Typography and some images I could create something simple to show on the dome. I want to spend special attention to the sound of the piece as well as the simple imagery I would use. I plan to have the dome stationed in the kiva position because I want the audience to have to look around them. I like to turn heads, so that’s what I plan to do with my piece. I also want the sound to travel with the type around the dome as well so I will be utilizing the surround sound of the dome. I know that not a lot of people here have taken advantage of that particular opportunity. So I will be able to involve the audience more using the sound and traveling it around the viewers.

Some examples of my past kinetic typography work include a short one minute piece called “Happy Holidays, You Bastard” which is a song by Blink-182. I’ve also worked with an excerpt from a comedy piece that Pablo Francisco preformed. The later is more advanced and uses more techniques then the previous. Both were made learning Motion and learning more about key frames in Final Cut Pro.

To create my piece, I’ve chosen a short love poem, located below, to turn into a kinetic typography piece. I would include imagery to enhance the poem as it is being read as well as various sounds to enhance the experience. Since the audio that I have found of the poem being read is a little fast, I will either take that audio and cut it to extend it or I will have someone else read it at a slower pace and record it myself.

If I decide to change my mind about the poem, I also have a short zombie audio reading I could do instead. I haven’t quite made my decision on whether to do the love poem or the zombie piece. The zombie one has lots of sound effects that could be fun to manipulate on the dome with the surround sound.

 

Poem:

 

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you

Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you

Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you

Consumed by fire with my love for you

I remember what you said to me

I am thinking of your love for me

I am torn by your love for me

Pain and more pain

Where are you going with my love

I am told you will go from here

I am told you will leave me here

My body is numb with grief

Remember what I said my love

Goodbye, my love, goodbye

 

 

Emily Dickinson:

Parting is all we need to know of hell.

 

Here is the link to my prezi presentation for my pitch. Enjoy.

 

Examples that reflect my interests

For the assignment, we are to research and find 5 different examples of other peoples’ work that we find interesting and that reflect our personal interests. I found several different examples that I find really captivating.

Something that I want to explain before I show the examples is the idea I had for my midterm assignment. I really like the idea of how the dome could be used to completely submerse someone into an environment and I wanted to create an abstract environment that people could feel a part of.

Okay so here are several examples that I may or may not want to emulate.

I love the way that sound was used and I think that to make my piece successful I will really have to devote a large chunk of work to the sound.

Unleash the Power of the Mind – Storyboard

Here is the storyboarding for a short 30 second movie called Unleash the Power of the Mind. It’s a film I worked on with Brian Fleetwood and Tyler Tarpalechee.

Here is the film:

And here is the storyboarding:

storyboard pg.1

storyboard pg.2

 

 

 

 

 

The Taurus Factor

The Taurus Factor is a storyboard animatic based on the graphic novel Crisis, which was illustrated and written by Matt Busch.

What I like about this is that it it more then just a normal story board where the panels depict the action in the scene. I like that the animatic is also used as a trailer for the upcoming movie. One thing I dislike is that to me is that I would have like to see more color. Maybe even if just one color was included, such as red. Then the trailer would mimic a graphic novel more in style.

Another thing I like about the storyboard being an animatic is that you can really get the feel for how the film is going to turn out. The drama is really there. That’s something you can’t really display in a regular story board.

 

Time lapse of cook out.

Here me and my comrade, Sadie Red Wing, used the Rebel-TI with a Sinnex 180 degree lens.

Enjoy.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/49285169″>Time lapse of a cook out. DOME STYLE</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user2346304″>Socorro Gonzales</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

And to check out pictures of the cook out, visit Sadie Red Wing’s Page.

3 Methods of Storytelling

For this assignment, I found it easiest to reference 3 of my favorite movies that have really stuck with me. No matter how many times I’ve watched these movies, I can’t get enough of them.

The first movie is Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone).

This film follows the lives of Micky and Mallory Knox as these semi-star crossed lovers discover and decide their own fate. I enjoy this film because the techniques used in it were very different then anything I had seen before in a film. The way the story was told, how each scene was set up, the angle of the camera, the lighting and the framing, the editing everything this in this movie is just amazing to me. Every time I watch it I find something new I like about it and I’ve watched it many times. What I think is so effective about this movie, in the way it captures attention, is the way that is almost erratically shot. It’s almost as if you are along on their crazy murderous ride along with them. The way that a person can submerge themselves into the film and feel apart of it is what I love about this film. Not only that, but even though Micky and Mallory are murdering people left and right, you don’t view them in a negative way. You find yourself rooting for them to win in the end and you don’t perceive them as “the bad guys.” It really is Mickey and Mallory against the world.

The next I’d like to discuss is Black Swan (2010, Darron Aronofsky).

I love this movie because of how beautifully it is shot. I really like how Aronofsky used different kinds of cinematography techniques to enhance the eerie, mind bending tricks only movie making can provide to make the viewers question even their own sanity. “Wait, what was that?” “Did you see that too?” One definitely has to watch this movie carefully so you don’t leave the theaters wondering if you’re okay. Not that this movie in particular is as trippy as some other movies, (like Momento for example) but I love that it makes you question things. Another great technique that I love that’s used in this movie is how Aronofsky uses simple tricks to almost put you into the shoes of the main character Nina as she slowly plummets to her demise by her own hands. The fact that you can peer into the mind of Nina and see what she sees makes you feel for her in a way that you wouldn’t normally be able to relate to a character. Plus, the scenes alone are so beautifully framed that you want to keep watching.

The last movie is one of my absolute favorites. It’s called The Tracey Fragments (2007, Bruce McDonald).

The great thing about indie movies is that because they are not paid by big movie studios they don’t have to follow the rules, and The Tracey Fragments is an exceptional example of that. Because they were able to create a movie using their own standards, they succeeded immensely in creating a masterpiece using the most unconventional editing techniques I’ve ever seen. Being a film student who loves editing and wants to make a career as a professional editor in the future, this film is a feast for the eyes. It literally goes out of the box with it’s technique with tricky cuts, insane split screens and fragments of shots sprinkled over the entire frame. What’s more is that the editing doesn’t hinder or distract the viewer from the main plot of the story. It helps forward the story in a very unique way by showing more then telling. On top of that, the story is so compelling that there is no way a person can only watch a few minutes of this film and walk away from it. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to watch a spectacular new take on storytelling. I would like for my work to be as surprising as this movie was to me.

Here’s a scene from the movie. Enjoy.

River of Shadows Response

So when I first heard about Muybridge, I was in a film history class. What I gathered about the information I learned about him was that he was trying to win a bet. In that bet, he was to prove that a horse, when it galloped, lifted all four of it’s legs off the ground. This was never witnessed before, I guess, because the horse moved so swiftly and fluidly that the naked eye couldn’t process the information fast enough. So, what I learned that Muybridge did, was set up a series of cameras  along a racetrack and had a horse run around. SOME HOW, the cameras were triggered as the horse ran by and took a photo of it as it ran. One of the pictures, showed that the horse did in fact lift all four legs off the ground as it galloped, proving Muybridge right. Not only did he win the bet, but he became one of the first to develop the concept of moving images, something I, myself, am very interested in.

So this to me, was very pivotal to learn as a young film maker. It was then that most of the innovative things done in film were discovered or created by chance or by some kind of competitive edge. Even in my experience, happy mistakes are a great and lucky thing that happen. Where something that wasn’t supposed to go that way ended up being something spectacular. Whether it was a print that can out disfigured by a printer which ultimately enhanced the idea behind the project or if it was an ad-libbed line in a movie that changed the entire feel of the scene to make it that much more compelling.

I really like that Muybridge decided to continue with his work, taking picture of other animals and dancers while they were moving. I feel like the moving images he created just blew peoples minds and changed their way of thinking forever. They are now living in a world where moving images were going to start becoming an every day thing and every child born after that point in human history would never know a time without moving images. I feel I can really relate to this fact because I was born in a time before the internet, which as we all know is such an incredible advancement in human communication and research sharing. I can tell my little sisters and my grandkids that I knew what it was like before the internet was invented. This is something that is going to be very incredible to them because they won’t ever know what it’s like to live without the kind of technology that they were born into. I love blowing minds of all kinds and generations and I hope that with my work and projects and films that I am also able to blow the minds and change the perspectives of every person that experiences my work.