Inspirational Material & Animation

I'm just back from London, where I went mainly to attend the 'I'll be Your Mirror' ATP Festival curated by Portishead. I must say that even though this was meant to be a break for me, I couldn't help but be inspired by the visuals presented by the artists.

There was an installation by David Wilson which made used of old fashioned praxinosopes. I filmed a couple of them:

The praxinoscopes were actually used in a music video here:

Frame by frame seemed to be a popular medium. Portishead had 'The Rip''s frame by frame (although quite a low frame rate) playing in the background during the performance of the song.

On another note, Joan of Arc performed with 'The Passion of Joan of Arc - 1928' in the background. This kept everyone glued to the screen. Later on the festival booklet I read that the film consisted mainly of close-ups yet still managed to convey the story through the actors' excellent portrayal of emotion. The below video might not play correctly- click to go to the youtube link, there's the whole film on youtube in parts.

Finally, I have also been to two exhibitions - Miro at the Tate Modern, and Tracey Emin at Southbank. This is the first exhibition I have seen by Tracey Emin and I must say it truly leaves a mark of whoever views it. Her works are personal and raw. I found the video of her dancing to be very inspiring and natural. I haven't found it on youtube, so head to Southbank and watch 'Why I never became a dancer' (or something similar...)

As for Miro, I have seen his works before, however this time I was more intrigued by his drawings - the simple black on white pieces, rather than his usual primary coloured material.

As for my own work - I have been storyboarding, filming and animating. Here's my latest frame by frame experiment - which will be finalised after I finish the story's filming on Sunday (fingers crossed).

Some pictures of my storyboard sketchbook:

The growing list of stories

Red = storyboarded, a long way to go!

One of these is filmed, one will be filmed on monday

mixing animation with video - two complex stories

thinking about interaction

before I got my storyboarding sketchbook, I couldn't resist!

Storyboarded yesterday

And the research paper will be tackled on Monday - although I have made progress on the title :)

Considering interaction...

One of the most important aspect of my project is interaction - however it is also an aspect that I have been struggling to incorporate with the other media. On Saturday I posted a frame by frame Flash animation that I am currently working on, and I also included an FLV video in the 'window' of the animation.

Today I continued working on it some more, and started thinking about what the video could actually include. The animation is filmed on a very short story about a woman from Cyprus who moved to the UK years ago and spent the majority of her time crying in bed because she missed her country. I felt including any other video in the window would not add anything to the story or animation.

So I was thinking what if I included a video of another story inside the animation? Then, what if I can click on that video and be directed to another story? This would create an interesting link where the user can click through to move from one story to another. The project would be much more flowing I suppose, and more connected.

Still animating frame by frame

Youuutuuube - an interesting visualisation controlled by mouse, arrow keys and space bar

Works by Rafael Rozendaal - an interesting take on interactive visuals online

Testing, More recordings

Today I have just received a nice batch of stories from a friend in the UK, some in Cypriot others in English, and others also in English but with a south-western accent. It's great to have a mix of all these languages - I think it makes the project less restricted.

Something else I tried doing today was to import an SWF file in After Effects and a movie file in Flash, this is because I will be working mainly with frame by frame 2d animation, video and effects.

The SWF import was a success; I also chose to continuously rasterise vectors so I could scale the file up yet everything was still smooth.

The movie import in Flash failed and I realised the format has to be an FLV or an F4V so I will have to export the movies in this particular format before I can import them into Flash - something I will need to try this week.

Test drawing was still smooth after it was scaled up

*******UPDATED*******

Have just tried importing an FLV video in a frame X frame animation in Flash and it worked. 

 

Filters experiments in Premiere

Still not sure of any of them. Some look good but feel slightly forced, so will have to see which ones to use (if at all).

Sharp Levels & HLS Colour Balance

Levels, Colour Balance and a Tint mapping black and white to dark blue and pale yellow

Superimposed watercolour using Lighten mode (+ tint and some levels)

Superimposed watercolour using Soft Light mode (+ tint and some levels)

Superimposed watercolour using Soft Light mode (+ tint and some levels)

Superimposed watercolour using Soft Light mode (+ tint and some levels)

Updates / more recordings / more filming / more experiments

It has been a day of many accomplishments. It started off with an initially dull and unsuccessful frame by frame experiment in Flash. The final few frames however made it all worth it (I will explain this later).

Together with my friend Eleonora, who's my trustworthy source for technical as well as creative filming/editing advice I set off to film a story I recorded this week. We also visited her grandmother who was nice enough to tell me some stories which I recorded. We came back and have just stopped editing and discussing the project now (3 AM).

We were trying all sorts of effects and filters over the filmed footage, when Eleonora asked me what kind of footage / animation would the user be submitting. I said whatever they wanted, but then realised that if they had to film a one minute video, or a one minute recording, or a one minute music piece, the requirement is so structured and so controlling that perhaps it is not doing its purpose after all. After a long discussion I came to realise that I am going to be tackling almost two projects at once, and it would be almost impossible to get a good result from both of them.

Although I wanted to include the user as much as possible, after various late night careful considerations with Eleonora, we came to the concludion that the submission system has to go. It's painful to see it go but there is something new in store, that is, more interaction - more curiosity - and a way for the user to finally get to his/her closure.

This is what I have decided to do:

There will be the usual one minute footage, one minute recording and one minute music piece. (The amount is not important at this stage). Each footage / recording / music will be given a symbol (this can be anything - again not important at the moment). The user will be presented with three sets of symbols which he/she will need to choose from. The symbols will be ambiguous so the user will not know what to expect when he/she chooses the three symbols.

The three symbols will then play a footage with a recorded voice over and music. The user will then have a choice to go back and try three different symbols... you get the picture.

How can the user win? How can he/she find closure?

The symbol for each story will somehow be connected to its corresponding recording and music piece, although this will not be obvious at first. Finding a link between symbols will reward the user with the 'correct' recording/film/animation/music piece. 

So why have I decided to take my project onto this new route?

1. More interaction rather than just submit and click 

2. A Goal for the user

3. Project is more focused

4. There is still an element of randomisation but within a context

5. A better guideline for my film / animation style

6. The stories filmed are still something which came from a participant, rather than from the artist's mind

7. A greater potential for installation experimentation as well as distribution

8. For the user who doesn't figure out the 'game', it is still (hopefully) a thought-provoking project

9. Element of unexpectedness is still present throughout - yet it can be personalised

10. A stronger concept of the idea of closure, and continuous testing is viable

One more important note is that by including the submission system, I feel I was getting into some complications - mostly the focus of the project was becoming the programming. I wanted the user to interact and be a part of my digital art project, rather than simply using a program that I have made - I felt this was making the project itself slightly too technical, and it was risking of becoming just another attempt at social media.

I suppose a sketch would be a better way of explaining things - which is why I will be uploading one soon. 

Story Tour Day 7

Well today wasn't much of a tour, since the storyteller came over to my house. Recorded around five amusing stories, thanks Lisa!

Reflective Writing on Chat Session - 11/07/2011

Today's chat was extremely helpful. I thought it would be much harder to formulate a (decent) research question, but with all the guidelines our tutor forwarded to us, it should be quite an interesting process.

I am intrigued by the idea of planning my essay around selected works or key figures. At first I thought David Lynch, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham would be interesting to look at altogether. They have many things in common amongst themselves and also with my project. Moreover I'm a big fan of their work so it would be easier and more natural for me to write about them.

The title could tackle disengagement, surrealism, non-linear narrative, dream-like sequences etc...
I do wish to somehow include the philosophical ideas of John Cage in the picture, and also references to the Beat movement. This is something I need to think about. The Beat movement would be easy to incorporate through the essay, however John Cage's idea is more about the openness of an artist, and his works are much more minimal - although I do see a connection with the other figures somewhere.

Something else I wanted to research was the concept of closure in film and animation - not sure where this could fit into the research question - perhaps it could just be a sub-title somewhere, rather than a main focus.

Either way, these were my thoughts after today's chat - hopefully in the coming days/weeks I will be developing and finalising my research question.

Story Tour Day 6

So my summer holidays have begun, which means I have much more time to work on my project, and also some time to go to the beach :). I have just visited my grandmother to get some recordings, I will (hopefully) be filming tomorrow, and recording some more on Wednesday.

Whilst at my grandmother's house I also took some footage(mostly of the house) which could be used in the editing.

Updates

Yesterday during a BBQ near the sea :) I was happy to chat with a friend with regards to what will happen to the project after I'm done. Will it die out, or should I extend it so is available in the form of an application for people to use?

We have decided to put the project on a website using asp and jquery (something I have a very vague idea about). The project can then have two sides. One: my work through the randomisation process, two: an option for the user to upload their own videos, recordings and music - all going into a database and being mix and matched together to produce a whole.

We have also discussed the idea of having 100 stories (actually 50 pieces of work) and both agreed it is feasible and yet shouldn't be an important aspect of the project. If I don't manage to have 50 pieces of work - it's fine, but I'm sure this will motivate me to keep working and experimenting with different narratives and structures as well as media and software.