Stop Motion Production- Lesson One- 25/01/2016

The idea I have for my first stop motion animation is to create a time lapse drawing of either a Disney cartoon character or a famous person. This is the idea most likely to happen, however it seems quite simple compared to what animation can consist of.

Another idea that is a possibility is creating an animated music video, such as Taylor Swift's lyric video for eyes open.

If I were to do the lyric video idea i think I would do it on the song Runaway by The Vamps or Burn by The Vamps, as they both have quite a lot of imagery in them.

I am also considering model animation, and I am going to start looking at examples of lego animation as I am unable to use the clay due to allergies.

Stop Motion Animation assignment

Since its beginning, animation has depended on the persistence of vision. Persistence of vision fills in the gaps between pictures, therefore making it look like they move.

Animation was originally not made for large broadcasting and instead created on devices that would only allow viewing by single people at a time. 

A Zoetrope is one of several pre film animation devices and has a greek name- Zoe meaning life and Tropos meaning turning, although historians believe that it was created in 100 bc by a Chinese inventor. The device was a cylinder with vertical slits in the sides and images around the inside.

This is a Victorian Zoetrope which was recently up for sale online.

A phenakitoscope is another early animation device, the first part of the word comes from the greek- phenakizein- meaning to deceive or to cheat, as it deceived the eye into thinking the images were moving.

The device used a spinning disk that was attached vertically to a handle. the disks centre displayed drawings showing the different parts of the animation, and had a series of equally spaced slits. When the disk was spun, people could look through the slits and see the images reflection in a mirror.


This is the moving version of the phenakitoscope shown below.

The kinetoscope was made for films to be viewed by one person at a time through an eye hole window at the top of the machine in 1889 by a friend of Thomas Edison. The device created the illusion of movement by moving a strip of film with images on over a light source and a high speed shutter.




The mutoscope was similar to the kinetoscope as it didn't 
project the film onto a screen and could only be viewed one person at a time, but was cheaper than a kinetoscope. The machines were coin operated and had a series of cards resembling a flip book, however weren't bound into a booklet, and were instead attached to a circular core-  with 850 cards giving a minute of viewing time.



The thaumatrope was an animation technique that was also used as a toy in the 19th century. It is a small disk with a picture on each side that is attached to a piece of string. When the strings are twirled quickly it gives the illusion of the pictures blending together to give the persistence of vision. 



Early animation pioneers

Georges Melies was a french illusionist and film maker, starting in 1896. He discovered that he could split film to give a perception of vision.

This is one of his films which used animation and was hand painted to include colour.

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist (known for the comic Little Nemo) and animator (known for Gertie the Dinosaur). The technical level of McCay's animation was unmatched until Walt Disney's films arrived in the 1930's.

Lotte Reininger was a German film director and a pioneer of silhouette (cut out) animation, best known for the adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).

She anticipated Walt Disney by a decade, due to creating the first multi-plane camera for special effects.

Walt Disney was an American animator and film producer. His best known early animation is Steamboat Willie, which was among the first animations to include sound - which started happening in 1928. His early animations were drawn on cels and then flipped to be painted.

Animation Techniques

Cel- based animation was the technique which involved drawing each individual frame onto a clear piece of plastic film, then flipping it over to paint the colour onto it. The background would also be hand drawn but onto a seperate sheet so that when the characters moved, they did not disturb the background. The Walt Disney Studios used cel based animation until winnie the pooh (2011) and the princess and the frog(2009) , but they did not do as well as their cgi films out at that time- Bolt (2009) and Tangled (2010).
Walt Disney's first feature cel based animation film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) which took three years to produce. 

Cut Out animation is created by cutting out shapes (e.g a characters mouth) and making them move. One of the earliest full length cut out movies was Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reininger. She also produced shorts such as Cinderella.

An example of a modern use of cut out animation is Charlie and Lola. This style of animation was used to capture the collage style of the original books.

Model based animation includes building/making characters and sets out of clay, lego, etc. 
An early example of model based animation was a remake of Romeo and Juliet in 1917 by Helena Smith Dayton.

An example of modern model based animation is Wallace and Gromit. The first short film was made in 1990 by Aardman's animations.

Pixilation is a form of animation which includes taking pictures of live actors as they move slightly every time. An early example of pixilation is Monsieur Pontu (1975)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP7p7lnC7dE

A more recent pixilation animation is The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) This film used a combination of pixilation with live actors and stop motion animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddl9d-gsdBQ
  
Time based animation (time lapse) is a method of animation in which a camera takes scheduled pictures of something, and when played back you can see how it develops. This method is regularly used on sun rises/ sunsets as well as on other things in nature because of how long they take to happen when we are watching.
An example of time lapse that I found interesting was the one below created by a Dutch artist who took a picture or video of his daughter every day and then compiled them into a video to see her growth.

This next example is an example of a time lapse drawing, which I think I would like to create myself when it comes to creating our own. I find it fascinating seeing the blank page and then what is created and must have taken many hours. 

Factual Documentaries

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/ken-burns-effect-premiere-pro/ 

This is a post on how to create the ken Burns effect in adobe premier pro.

Editing Theory Assignment

The History of Editing

Pioneers of Early Editing

The Lumiere brothers were French inventors who created an early motion picture camera and projector- the Cinématographe- which was light and only used a film speed of 16 frames per second.  They went on to hold screenings of their films and charged admission prices at Salon Indien du Grande cafe in paris. They went on to open theatres of their own in London, Brussels, Belgium, and New York.

This is a picture of their cinematograph















Georges Melies was a French film maker who developed many technical and narrative effects of the early motion pictures. He tried to buy a cinematograph from the Lumiere brothers but they refused; seeing him as competition. His most famous technique was the jump cut which he came across by accident. Whilst filming a bus moving, his camera jammed, and when it started working again, the bus had been replaced by a hearse. He then tried to use this technique to make things disappear and reappear in his films, such as The Haunted Castle. Melies tried to present things that live theatre could not achieve, and also developed the techniques of Fading In and Fading Out, Overlapping Dissolves, and Stop Motion Photography.  

Edwin Porter was an American film pioneer who developed several film editing techniques which included cross cutting and dissolving. He worked as a projectionist and had the job of cutting apart some of Melies's films to combine them into a 15 minute showing. He made the film 'The Great Train Robbery' which cut without using fades or dissolves, and didn't let the scene reach its logical end. 

D.W Griffiths was an American actor and playwright in his early life, before becoming a film maker. He began creating 'two reel works' before making the 'four reel' film Judith of Bethulia (meaning the film could play for an hour.  Some of the film techniques he used were Cross Cutting, Close Ups, and Dissolves.


As for how techniques of editing have changed, editing has gone from being linear in the past to non linear presently.  

Linear Editing

Celluloid film used to be cut up with scissors to remove boring parts, then the interesting parts would be spliced back together. Machines like the Moviola and the Steenbeck Flat Bed were used for this process.

As John Hess says in 'The Journey to Modern Non-Linear Editing (Part 1), Television was "the impetus (thing that makes a process happen more quickly) for computerised editing".(YouTube, 2013)
In the 1950's TV shows were cut live in a studio using a video switcher to use several camera angles.

To record TV for a different part of the country (e.g. west coast America) a Kinescope was used to reproduce the TV program.

The first images recorded onto magnetic tape were in 1951 for Bing Crosby. Five years later, a video tape recorder was commercially available through AMPEX.

Magnetic tape could be cut, but needed to be developed first. This still did not allow you to see what image you were working on and could not link video to audio.

Kinescope film prints had audio cues which could be matched up to video- this was known as the Editors Sync Guide and became the modern Offline Editing. 

AMPEX released an Editec which allowed the user to mark in and out points on recorded video in 1963. The SMPTE Timecode created in 1967 used numbers to distinguish frames and therefore allowed editors to locate any frame that they wanted using the format of Hours:Min:Sec:Frames.
With these machines, linear editing became possible. It was an advancement that then became boring and normal.

Non- Linear Editing

This type of editing was non destructive and had no generation loss as it was more natural.
The CMX 600 was the first machine made for non linear editing and cost $250,000 when released in 1971. 
EMC2 made the first offline editor, and was followed by the AVID/1. 
In non linear editing a work cut was produced first. Lost in Yonkers was the first film produced on an AVID system in 1993. 


The Purpose Of Editing



From day one the main purposes of editing 
have been to create pace and engage the viewer, and whereas in the beginning of editing we were able to do this with a lot of new techniques, now it depends on the film maker being creative with what is available. 

There are two types of editing- continuity editing, and soviet montage editing.

Soviet montage was film which heavily relied on editing and could use images to communicate ideas whilst using music to change the audiences emotions. Soviet montage came into fashion after the russian revolution when the film stock was low and film makers wanted to experiment with found footage. Lev Kuleshov discovered that the same shots were able to create a different story if they were placed in another order. This technique became known as the Kuleshov effect when Lev showed shots of an actor, a bowl of soup, a coffin, and an attractive woman- and the audience believed that the actor had different expressions to each thing, despite the shot of the actor staying the same.
Sergei Eisenstein created propaganda for uneducated people, and wanted to use emotions and conflict ideas. This is shown in his film 'Strike' which showed a cow being slaughtered and then showed workers being killed. He also edited the famous step sequence from 'Battleship Potempkin' which lasted 7 minutes to lengthen the time that people would feel emotions. As well as this technique, he used vertical montage which relates to how the image works with the soundtrack. 
Dziga Verton was another film maker that used montage, however he used it to make film making obvious. His film 'Man With A Movie Camera' was a film on how films were made. Dziga used imagery more than explanations in his films.

Continuity Editing (also known as classical
 editing) is used ultimately to keep the continuity of time and space, and to not confuse the audience. This editing relates to the 180 degree rule as you cannot cross the line so that you are always on the same side. This is particularly important in the cases of conversation scenes, and when you are filming an object moving. 

It could be argued that there is another type of editing, which is chaos editing. Chaos editing is rapid editing which is known as intensified continuity, and is common in action films. With chaos editing, the editors aren't bothered about the audience knowing where they are, as it uses the art of confusion and a good soundtrack to compensate for the sloppy visuals which are used. Chaos editing can often make use of a shaky handheld camera to involve the audience in the action, 


The Conventions Of Editing



Continuity Editing is editing which connects 

ideas and keeps the continuity of space and

time. 


Jump Cuts  are used to "create an ellipsis in

time , and violate space."(The Art of the Guillotine, 2016) The Jump Cut first occurred when George Melies' camera jammed whilst he was filming a bus, which was replaced with a hearse once the camera was working again. Presently, the jump cut is typically used in documentaries mostly, but is still used in films.


The 180 Degree Rule is used to keep the 

continuity of time and space when filming a
 scene such as a conversation between two people or when filming the movement of something. The rule makes sure that things are on the same side of the camera as they always have been which makes it easy to see who they are talking to, or which direction the thing is moving in. 

Dissolves are gradual transitions from one image to another in filmmaking. Dissolves may be used in montage sequences but are usually used to show that some time has passed between the last scene and the next scene.  Short dissolves can sometimes be used to soften a jump cut.


Shot Reverse Shot is used during a 

conversation and can be used to show the 

audience who is speaking, or a certain reaction to what has just been said.


Cutting to a soundtrack is when the scene 

takes the pace or speed of the song into 

consideration when cutting, for example using 

slow cuts if the music is slow, and using rapid cuts if the music is fast, in for example a car chase. 

I believe that through the research made for this assignment, and the writing up that I have done, I have gained a better understanding of the history of editing and will now consider these elements when editing my own work.

References

The Art of the Guillotine, (2016). Film Editing & Jump Cut | Art of the Guillotine. [online] Available at: http://www.aotg.com/index.php?page=jumpcut [Accessed 17 Jan. 2016].

Vimeo, (2011). Chaos Cinema Part 1. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/28016047 [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].

Wikipedia, (2016). Dissolve (filmmaking). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolve_(filmmaking) [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].

YouTube, (2013). The Journey to Modern Non-Linear Editing (Part 1). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIVYeyWHajE [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016].

Optimum image quality in photoshop

There are several ways to measure a images quality on photoshop.

This is the original image that i will be using to measure quality

The first way is checking the document size which is at the bottom of the page. This means that this picture is taking up 2.3M of memory space.

The size of a photoshop screen is 72 pixels per inch, and this is the best quality for web because everyone is able to see it.

The normal size of this image means that it would be A3 when printed, so we can change the width and resolution to make the picture an A4 size. The picture breaks up a bit, but not as much as if it wasn't good quality.

When printing an image pixels are refered to as dots. The best quality for printing is 300 dots per inch

You can make something print quicker by:

• Flattening the image
• Saving the image as a jpeg
• Scale to fit option- uses the printers optical zoom.

Pre Production theory assignment

Step One- Overview
For any type of production which involves filming (a film, a tv show, a video) there is planning which needs to be done so that everything gets done in time. This blog post will focus on the documentation needed for planning a film, however following research that I carried out, I have not found there to be any different documents for a TV show or a video. The choice between productions does not affect planning.

Step Two- Time Management Managing time when creating a film is possibly the most important thing to do, especially if you are working to a deadline as things that aren't done will hold you back and will cost you extra money. Documents that you need to create which help you manage time are a script, script breakdown, schedule, and a call sheet.
 Scripts help manage time as they tell everyone what they need to be doing at what time. This is an example of part of a script from the film Pitch Perfect. We can see that this certain scene shows which actors are needed, which setting they need to show, which costume the characters need to be wearing, 

A script breakdown helps to also tell the crew what to do and when but in more detail as it is specific towards parts of the scenes, such as props. This is an example of a key for a script breakdown. It involves colour coding a version of the original script, so the colour is specific to the right department. 


A schedule helps with time management as it includes times and locations to let people know when they need to do things. This is an example of a film production schedule.

A call sheet helps with time management because it tells all crew when they need to be on set in the morning. This is important as one person being late can cost you a lot of money! This is an example of a call sheet which has contact details for the crew on.

Step Three- Resources

It is important to keep track of your resources when working on a film production to make life easier for both yourself and the other film crew.

A script would help you with resources as it shows what you need in each different part of the scene.This is another scene from Pitch Perfect showing what resources are needed.

A script breakdown would help with your resources as it colour codes the different types of resources you might have, so you can look at the key then know when they are needed in regards to the script.
Within the script breakdown example I posted earlier, I have screenshot the parts that apply to resources- with being something you need to achieve something like hair or make up, or being a resource in itself like a prop or a vehicle.

A schedule would help with resources by telling you which scene is being shot, and therefore which resources you need that day. Again, with reference to the schedule I used earlier, for this scene you would know that a resource you needed was a car.

A budget would help you with resources, especially when creating a low budget film as it would enable you to see how much you had to spend and whether you were able to get everything you needed, such as a camera, locations, props, actors, and sound equipment.  
This is a budget that I produced for my short film, however I did not need to buy any additional props.

A risk assessment would help you with resources because it would tell you if there were any problems with any of the resources prior to filming which would give you time to secure new resources. This is an example of a risk assessment which shows risks and what to do about them.

A call sheet would help you with resources as it has the phone numbers of the crew and you would know who to contact about a resource if they were running late or hadn't shown up. From the example I used earlier, here is the section which holds the contact numbers.

Step Four- Budget managing

Budget managing is important when working on producing all types of films, because of how bad it would be if you were to spend more money than you had available.

A Script and a Script Breakdown would help you with budget as they tell you exactly what you will need to produce the film scene by scene, for example costumes, props, etc. Here is another scene from Pitch Perfect, and we can assume that the script breakdown would be the same as the one I posted earlier.

A budget sheet would help with managing the budget that you were able to spend as it simply lays out the costs and in a program like Microsoft Excel, will also add them up for you, so it is easy to keep track. For a professionally funded film, the budget could look something like this, although this spreadsheet does only show the total amount for the cast and crew, so we would then have to add in cameras, audio recording equipment, as well as props and locations.

Step Five- Communication

As a film maker, communication with your cast and crew is vital to getting the result you want from the finished film. 

A script helps communicate your ideas as the cast need to gain an understanding about their characters from that, wardrobe need to know what the characters will be wearing, and set designers need to know how to decorate.The script also gives a first impression to the director. This is another scene from Pitch Perfect which shows how subtly the script communicates with the right people.

A storyboard is essential for letting the crew know how you want the film to be shot as you can be specific with shots whilst producing it and also show camera movement if it is needed, otherwise it can be written in the description.

This is part of a storyboard which I produced for my film. It has shot types, drawings depicting these shots, a description of what is happening in the drawing, and the speech that is happening in the shot.

A risk assessment communicates your film ideas to the cast and crew by letting them know which shots are important to you, as if you are putting precautions in place, the shot is too valuable to change to a safer shot.

 A call sheet helps communicate how you believe the film should be shot by letting the crew know what time every scene is being shot, especially for outdoor shoots, the time of day would have an effect on the scene's look.  This particular part of the call sheet says whether the shots are interior or exterior, and then what time the cast and crew need to be there.

Step Six- Clearances

In order to gain the right kind of permission to broadcast your film, you need a set of contracts (e.g. actors contracts) and clearances to say that everything used was legally yours.
Clearances cover the script, any brand names or logos used, stock footage, images, and music. 

You must also get a location release form. This is the one we used in college.

You must have actors contracts to cover your film if they ever decide that they do not want the film to be shown publicly.

As well as these, the clearance form for music must be sent off prior to editing as it is a request, not a cover after using it.

























Copyright protection is automatically yours, given that these forms are sent off properly and that you have not used anything still under copyright protection.

Time Lapse animation

Time lapse animation is a form of animation which involves taking a lot of pictures of something to reduce time. Time lapse is usually used to show progress in nature in seconds rather than the days or weeks it would normally take, for example here is a time lapse video of sunrises and sunsets.







As well as time lapsing natural views, people also use time lapse to show the growths of people as this dutch artist did a time lapse of his daughter from birth to 14 years.