After a few weeks away from the piece or work i spent 3 months looking at there are changes i want to make. (However i will incorporate them into the current project im working on)
Firstly, Where i introduced Neo, the build up was completely flat. The shots built up no tension or showed any reaction to the noise... (such as a close up of some floor boards, the foot meets the floor center view and the camera shakes) easy in hindsight isn't it! The facial reaction in this scene was ok but inappropriate as it slowed the pace and tension rather than increase it.
One of the big mistakes in my facial expressions was that they were flat. They never went anywhere inbetween, they went from A to B or in effect the opposite in A to B to X when it should've been A to X to B. Part of this was because i simply didn't produce enough facial morphers. My current character has many more, which i will post up soon!
Anyway, there will no doubt be a more substantial critique one the feedback has been issued!
A joint project that myself and Jack Wright have been worked on in the run up to the end of term. The main focus of the this project, as opposed to others we have produced for the gallery, was to actively promote the gallery. The initial concept was to allow the audience to take a journey through the gallery, so we broke down the narrative into three areas - History, Where the gallery is in terms of growth/it's own journey and where it would like to go. The narrative visually was pretty straight forward; The location, Preparing a show, The launch and the Craft Shop. However, the actual structure was changed (There was extra footage from a previous video re-used near the beginning and the Craft Shop came before the launch!)
Being a small site in comparison to other mainstream galleries in Nottingham, we found we stretched ourselves filming and thus didn't have enough footage. It is important to note at this point that having lots of sculpture will make a cameraman happy! When an exhibition has lots of 2D work (no matter how interesting) the angles to tackle that piece of work are quite limited, we could of used different transitional techniques but an overload produces a tacky piece of work. Sculpture allows multiple angles to take a piece from, freeing up the repetitiveness that takes over the camera shots.
The title sounds a right mouth full and thats my intention! So roll back to the deadline day for our second year work, handed in final piece and finally a piece of free time to start my own ideas that had been building up in the back of my mind during the production of the second year project. PING i hear. Curiosity takes over.
An email from a PhD student asking for help producing a two minute ad for a marketing company. With the need to bump up the CV and not much work experience about what harm could it do? (None as it would turn out!) So after a few emails the group that responded met up and went through the narrative working out props, location and equipment and all important Mise En Scene. The client, Clarity Marketing, make clear the priority (after good Vis Coms) was to make it stand out from the rest of the site.
Aysha, the director of the project, was inspired by a scene from the film called 'Why Man Creates'. There is a scene where a man is fighting with props which is was the visual and narrative aim and we agreed that edging it more to the silent movie would edge it out. We literally had no budget except for a few minor expenses.
So we established what needed to be done, sourcing and producing props, hiring out the set with relevant staff and running the production. Although initially i was responsible for the production and post-production (taking a back seat from prop production) is was clear that the amount of work needed was going to require as much help as possible so i chipped in with that, using my apartment as HQ. I secured the equipment through the university as well as the set to film (Room 106B) and enlisted a good member of production team in Tobias Sample and a good camera man in Kieron Powis. This would mean i could focus on the running of the production with helping actors and setting up shots on the day.
Anyway, back to the production, we sourced an incredible amount of cardboard (44 Banana boxes and 6 or 7 big crisp boxes). The banana boxes were all wrapped in wall paper and then 42 were painted grey. The door was made out of two old portfolio folder boxes and roof tiles individually cut out of card and stuck to a cardboard roof and also painted. This process was considerably long to how long we presumed it would take - a week and 2 days at 12 hours a day between four people!
On the filming days (we had booked out 2) we wanted to get as much done as we could on the first day allowing the second and final day for any changes. However, building the physical structure took a few hours longer than we had anticipated. Thankfully the cast were patient and around 1pm we started filming. We carried right through until 7pm and surprisingly had a substantial amount of the filming complete. We tackled the most complex scenes 1st (where all the actors were involved for instance). This proved wise as the second day went very smooth and was over at 2pm. Leaving plenty of time to clear the room and get the footage set into folders ready for post production.
Post-production required a lot of patients in getting the flow of the advert right. We sped up most of the footage to give a silent era pacing and for the visuals we ramped up the levels which proved useful because it stretched the pixels and they became quite grainy and flickered from where the PC had interpreted the data change. Using the tritone i added some blue to the shadows which added a darker edge to the film and a vignette for extra impact.
My Favourite shot has to be the close up of the technician hammering the roof tiles. I think every aspect of above works and the lighting was spot on. In future in maybe useful to ad a gloss to surfaces in order to get that consistency in the light bounce. The client loved the final piece.
