Ennui

When editing we felt that the message in our film was getting lost. Although visually I feel our film looks amazing, the focus seems to be on the bright exciting part, as that is the longest section. However, the concept of our film is about people falling into a state of ennui. We needed to reinforce this cycle of the mundane life that people get trapped in, and the only way to do this was with the use of looping the ennui section until the film gave the audience that emotion!

Understandably it could backfire as people could not understand the message and become bored of our film, however, what better way to portray an emotion than to make the audience feel it, and with this module, now is a time more than ever to experiment.

I have done some more visual research into films that use the looping effect and to see how we can draw similarities to ours.

https://vimeo.com/32037303

This animated film is called Revolver, and it was one that came to mind when talking about loops and cycles. The concept of the film is rather strange and I am not fully sure of what it is, but for some reason I find it so interesting to watch. Even though it is just a repetition and the same animated sequences, the timings and sound design makes it so interesting to watch. I feel as though we will have a similar effect with the music that will be added onto our film.

I picked this film because of the loop that is portrayed at the end. I feel that it really emphasises the message of a circle of life feel. This again reinforces the message of looping the ending of our film to make sure the audience completely understand the message. 

Time Lapse

On the day James and I filmed a time-lapse of us creating the pixilation, sadly it was filmed on my phone, and becasue I had used tape to prop it up, over time it began to slip down without us realising. Hence the weird camera movement in the video. I then send them James and he composited them into a video on youtube. It was really interesting to see the progression of the piece. Although a lot of the time was spend discussion our next move!

Vertical Cinema

We decided that our film needed to be shot vertical rather than horizontal, as the space needed to shoot our films meant that when the actress was standing part of her body would be cut off. An idea we had was to add graphics onto the side of the piece, or maybe even a kaleidoscope effect.

(an example done by James as he experimented with ways to create the horizontal film, before we had the idea of Vertical Cinema)

I partly feel that this will look like an after thought and could look like a rushed job added to our piece and that it is unnecessary. I have done some research into Vertical cinema and feel that perhaps this will work to our advantage.

A special effect expert called Tim Webber who has worked on films such as Children of Men, Gravity, and Where the Wild Things Are, was asked his artistic opinion on the effects vertical cinema has and he was quoted saying

The artistic and aesthetic differences are really where vertical cinema is interesting. Landscape filmmaking automatically lends itself to having more people in the frame at once. How people interact, and the relationships they have with one another, are a key narrative point to the majority of films we see today. With a portrait frame, however, it’s much more suited to having one person dominate the screen. As a result, the type of film we’d see with this technique would be different to the norm.

Considering we have only on actor on set at the entire time, and the focus of out film is on their life and their experience it makes sense to keep the film vertical to include this effect. Similar to my previous post about the fish eye lens camera adding the intensity, as that was not a possibility to do any more I feel as though this would be a good alternative.

In the article he was further quoted saying

'...in vertical cinema the environment tends to have a far greater effect on the character. So, if the sky plays a big role in your film thematically or through the narrative, a vertical frame would be the perfect fit.

Another thing that is massively importing in our film, is the environment as it  expresses her mood, and is also a metaphor for her mental age. Something very important to us is that the environment to be bold and noticeable, and I feel this will be done better by the use and experimentation of vertical cinema.

Here is the rest of the article I have researched my information from
http://cinefex.com/blog/vertical-cinema/

Filming!

On the first day of filming we encountered many problems. We set the camera up on a C-stand and the FTU set up a light on the rig above the set. Originally we tried to use many of the smaller lights but found they cast too many shadows in different directions so we decided to settle with the one. While taking test photos, we found that the camera lens would not focus properly, however, as this was only the half day we booked we had only planned to set up ready for the next day so it wasn't too much of a big deal. This day was more about the preparation, and practise shots than the actual full shoot, so a lot of the time was spent dressing the set.

Once we got the new camera and began properly animating we realised that animating in 12fps would not work, as the speed of the piece was far too fast, so we decided that 8fps would work better.

As we progress with the filming of our piece, it all began to take form and visually looks amazing! Although some scenes seem to be animated a little fast, this is due to us all animating together, sometimes we had to make sure we each had an individual objects to animate or the next person might do it different to the previous, but over all we where happy with the progress.

After James put the film together for us the Sunday night, we did notice that the end scene with Imogen walking looked wrong in the loop. We decided that the following day we would re film that part.

We struggled to correctly animate that final walk as we wanted it to express Imogen's emotion, or lack of emotion. Finally we decided that as the start of our piece already included a walk cycle that perhaps it would be more interesting to include something different. So we came up with the idea of hanging Imogen from the cloud above her, and that would be the section for the adult loop.
I am really happy with the change as it created a much more exciting effect than just returning back to the original walk cycle.

These videos are the unedited format, we have yet to edit the colours and images in the pixilation.

Video research- Colour and excitement

When the final stage of adulthood is present, we really needed something to break the cycle that was full of colour and excitement, to break from her daily norms. Here are some video we found that express that feeling.

This is the commercial called 'Balls' shot for Sony. The reason I feel this is good research is as at first it seems as though it is just a normal mundane setting as we see a normal city. However, it is suddenly immersed with colours and excitement as thousands of bouncy balls fall down the streets. As bouncy balls are toys for children, while watching this film we get a feeling of nostalgia, as well as the amazing visual excitement, and this is something we want to recreate when the actor breaks free from the mundane routine in our film.

Their intention of this film was to sell their product by 'connecting with the consumers at an emotional level'. Which again is something we want to achieve with our film.

Another piece of research that has influenced the mood for our piece is this Cadbury's advert 'Unwrap Joy'. We really liked the natural excitment that is shown on the children's face as they unwrap the houses, and it is that kind of natural emotion that we wanted our actress to express at the end of the piece as she is covered in paint. Like this advert does, we wanted the audience to understand that joy and also feel connected to the emotion in our piece. 

No more bike!

When doing a test run the week before shooting, we encountered a problem with the angle of the bike and the camera. We could not get the bike to sit in the right position, so we made the drastic decision to cut the bike from the film, and re work the story. We wanted to keep the concept the same, a child loosing excitement and imagination as it ages and reaches the adult stages of life. However, without the bike it allowed us to create much more movement in the piece, as the actor was not restricted by the bike being on top of her. After making some minor changes a quick story board was drafted up, instead of the flip on the bike, she would now fly up into the clouds and when she reaches the adult stages of life her wings would fall off and she would fall back to earth, which would now be all gray and boring. The cycle of adulthood would still remain, and at the end it would rain, and as the rain drops touched her, they would create splotches of bright paint on her plain white clothes, explaining that you can still find the excitement of youth in your life, you just need to break from the cycle.

8fps vs 12fps

For our film we spent a while deciding on whether or not we wanted to film in 12 fps or 8 fps. We felt that perhaps we should start in 8 fps and then alter to 12 fps so the audience is aware of the change to feel confused and disjointed by the pixilation at the start of the film where the audience is viewing the children's point of view. This uncomfortable feeling will challenge the audience's views of childhood being uneasy, however, it is still a more exciting option that adulthood because of the bright colours, expressing that this vibrant lifestyle is more rewarding is the more difficult path than the boring adulthood circle.

When we practised putting this idea into action we realised that it partly looks as though we made a mistake while filming, but also it was difficult for us as animator to alter our brains into animating on a different frame rate, and would repeatedly make mistakes while animating after we swapped over the frame rate.

So after we decided to pick one frame rate to animate in throughout the entire film, to decided which to pick we did some quick test shoots in both frame rates.

We felt that 8 fps, although it had a nice pixilated effect it was too jiggered, so we decided on 12 fps, as it is also what us as animators normally animate in so we understand the timings and speed.