Group iMovie Project (Individual Work)

As an update on our in-class iMovie project, our individual portions are nearly completed.  We will have completed portions done and submitted to our group leader, Adam, by Sunday.  On Sunday Adam is combining our work on Sunday and adding the overarching background music.

Early on, we considered doing a movie relating to working at an office.  I made the suggestion that it should be a 1950s style "How To" video.  Since then we've changed our minds about the office environment and changed it to Driving.  We decided to keep the 1950s instructional video feel.

Below are my individual contributions.

I was assigned the "Road Rage" segment.  This was the only footage that was not filmed by the team.  One of our group members was taking a weekend trip to Chicago with a significant other.  The group member thought that to be the perfect opportunity to film heavy traffic and road rage gestures.  (Whoever was in the passenger seat would be doing the filming).  The Chicago plan seemed to have been scrapped by unknown and unforeseen circumstances.

I created my Road Rage footage based on the available footage I was given.

Keeping in mind the 1950s theme, we wanted to keep the video black and white.  I had a bit of knowledge with film from my time working at a local movie theater (before the age of digital projectors).  While I didn't work with the film directly, I knew how dust and scratches to the film would give the film a certain look.  Individually, another group member and I discovered the "Silent Film Era" filter which the group decided to use for the entirety of the film.

For the transitions between shots I used the "Open Circle" transition because it was reminiscent of what was used during that time period.  Adam had recorded the voice overs at home with his sound equipment and shared them with the group.  I tried to line up the frames of the film with the audio to make it appear as though gestures were a direct response to the audio.

I had approached the group leader (and director), Adam, about an idea I had about creating a set of fake credits for the film before we showed the real credits.  Adam really liked the idea and assigned the task of doing both the real and fake credits to me.  At our last filming session, we decided to take a group photo of our team.  Adam wanted this photo to be used as the backdrop of the real credits.  

In addition to just using the still image, Adam wanted to photo to look like it had been thrown onto a flat surface like a table.  I approached my instructor about how to do this in iMovie, but was told that was not within iMovie's capabilities.  I wondered if it could be done in Adobe Animate and then imported to iMovie.  My instructed said it could be done that way.  Since the photo would be in motion, I didn't know what to do with the background.  Originally, I thought we'd be using additional footage or "bloopers" behind the photo.  I had the idea to make the stage (background color) of Adobe Animate the same color green used in green screens.  iMovie would hopefully recognize that and remove it.

Admittedly, I struggled with smoothing out the forward movement and spinning motion of the photo.  For some reason as I created the clockwise motion, it wanted to make quick counter-clockwise spins between my keyframes.  I spent time removing the motion (I used the motion tween tool) and recreating the path and keyframe spin.  Perhaps I should have used classic tween and focused more on frame by frame movement.  While I'm not overly pleased with the result, it will work for the intended purposes.

I first created the fake credits and the real credits as two individual clips and then combined them.  For the fake credits, I tried to find a title screen in iMovie and font that would fit the 1950s theme.  I added some out of focus footage of the road that I thought would have been scrapped, but I found a use for it!  The out of focus footage encourages the audience to focus on the in-focus text.  I figured out on my own to have an iMovie title screen followed by another iMovie title screen to get the appearance of old fashioned credits.  I wanted to play with the background music to the 50s style credits.  My intention was to slow the music down for a faction of a second to mimic the effect of old film being stretched, warped or otherwise distorted (which happens over time to film).  I was unable to add this effect since it would be Adam's job to add the background music to our film.

For the real credits, the green screen trick worked perfectly, although it did turn the green screen curtain in the background of our photo black (interesting...).  I decided not to use footage in the background of the photo as it would probably be too busy and it would confuse the audience with too much information to focus on.  I used a title screen with all text removed as the background to our photo.  I predict that our audience will be focusing on the group photo during the credits rather than the text.  The text for the "real" ending credits I used the "scrolling text" option form iMovie's selection of title screens.  Additional lines in the title screen were used (and needed to make extra room) to give credit to the borrowed film footage.

I had suggested the "real" credits should be in color to help differentiate between the credits that went with the film and our credits.  Adam decided that the film should be black and white all the way through for consistency.  A few extra frames of black were added between the two sets of credits to help the audience see the separation between the credits by the imaginary people at Right Way Driving School (we created), and the credits for the film we created as students.

Digital Artist Spotlight: Justin Young

Justin Young: "INFINITE FRAME: P0RTRA1TS 016"

ArtPrize 2016 Grand Rapids, Michigan

Back in October we visited Grand Rapids for the annual ArtPrize art competition.  At the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA) we came across a submission by Justin Young. 

This interactive artwork invited visitors to enter a small room much like a telephone booth.  While inside, the guest would be prompted to answer a set of directions or questions, "Say a greeting in your native language," "Say a greeting in an alien language," and so on.  The guest responses were recorded without audio.

After leaving the booth, the guest would come to a station, where they could choose the recorded image of themselves.  A large projection of the video recording was displayed.  Knobs and buttons at the station would create visual effects to go with the recorded video displayed.

Still Image of the Control Station

I enjoyed Young's interactive piece.  The use of color and movement was appealing.  Also, the use of guest's images appeal to their ego and desire to investigate and explore Young's work further while getting to see new perspectives of themselves.  

Video of Interaction with Young's Piece

More about ArtPrize

More About Young's Entry at ArtPrize

Justin Young's Website

Adobe Animate Project 

(Formerly Adobe Flash)

Our Adobe Animate project has been completed and presented to the class.  Unfortunately, the file is too large to post in its entirety - I hope to eventually find a way to do so though.

Here I will post and discuss the sections of the project I completed.  A link to my partner's blog can be found under links on the left of the screen.

The Sea Sheep Scene

In this scene sea sheep enter the mermaid's garden.  They are a threat to the seed the mermaid planted as they trample the ground.  The mermaid notices the threat and swims off to collect a large stick to shoo them away.

Miranda was the illustrator of both the mermaid and sea sheep.  She drew them both in Photoshop with pieces of their body in separate layers.  I imported all the bits into Adobe Animate and animated the front view of the sheep layer by layer.  Miranda had already done a bit of work on the mermaid - the bone tool was already set up in her arms and fin. The side view of the sheep (also illustrated by Miranda) is one piece (no individual layers to animate).  To make the sheep seem more alive from the side view, I gave the sheep a bit of a back-and-forth wabble when they walk.   

In the sheep's initial approach, I wanted to show them coming up over the horizon.  One of the difficulties was to continue the approach after they had come up.  I needed to find a way to swap the sheep from behind the ocean floor to in front of it.  I couldn't find a way to this in Animate, so I created two separate ocean floors.  The first would be in a layer in front of them, and the second would be in a layer behind them.  As they move forward, the ocean floor in front of them disappeared, and the ocean floor behind them appeared.

The Storm Scene

In this scene there is a strong current sweeping through the mermaid's garden.  It threatens to sweep away the soil on the mound where the seed is buried.  To save the seed, the mermaid fetches a large stone to create a barrier between the strong current and the seed mound.

In this scene I animated the mermaid "puppet" that was illustrated by Miranda, and the sea slug bunny that was also illustrated by Miranda.  (Miranda is a fantastic illustrator folks!)  

One of the difficulties I encountered were how to get the audience to understand the concept of a strong wind (or current I guess) under the water?  The answer was to use another perspective of the mermaid.  Thankfully, when Miranda created the mermaid, she created the body parts in pieces.  Miranda created the mermaid's hair in several layers (later on, I combined the head and hair layers as a single animated symbol we could play on a loop - and save us a good deal of animating time!).  I went back to Miranda's original head with all the hair layers and used them for the close up clip.  Bits of the mermaid's hair were moved, enlarged, moved more, and shrunk to give the audience a concept of wind.  Leaves (seaweed) and debris were added to the background and the foreground kelp plants were animated to show violent winds.

Another difficulty of this scene was timing.  When swimming with the current, the mermaid and bunny should look like they are being carried away, but they also need to appear to struggle when trying to swim against the current.  The solution was timing.  I needed to time things right to get the appearance of the mermaid swimming against the current.  To get the timing right was really just a matter of trial and error.  In one part of this scene I made the little bunny appear to be swimming backwards, giving the illusion it was not keeping up with the strength of the current.

The final difficulty was side effect of using the mermaid as a puppet.  Since the arms and tail of the mermaid had been outfitted with the bone tool, Adobe Animate would not let me use any transform tools (enlarge, rotate, flip, etc.).  When the mermaid comes back from offscreen to the right (and swims to the left), her tail is upside-down, and her arms are on backwards because I could not flip them to be shown from her other side.  Angling the tail believably and hiding the hands under the stone were the solutions to this issue. 

In both of the previous scenes, the different animated objects were repeatedly inspected to make sure the different pieces of a character fit together correctly.  Sometimes the upper portion of the tail was not connected to the torso.  It was a bit time consuming, but we strived for perfection.

Transitions and Credits

The above is one of the three transition scenes that I created for our video.  Since they are all similar, I'm not posting the other two.  The only difference between them is that the first one says, "Time Passes..", the second says, "More Time Passes..." and the last says, "A Month Passes."  I'm sure you get the idea.

I created the watery background in photoshop.  I tried to get a watercolor appearance and even watched a few tutorials on YouTube on how to do so.  I think the water background could have been better.  This background appears throughout the film with the exception of Miranda's opening tree sequences.  The watercolor background use in those cases was borrowed from a third party.

I also illustrated and animated the bubbles.

I was also in charge of creating the final credits.  I used the water background and the ocean floor I had already created.  The animated plant I illustrated and created as an animated symbol shortly after I created my previous plant animated with the bone tool.  Since this plant hadn't made it into previous scenes, I felt it should be incorporated somewhere.

The difficulties here were the timing or pacing of the words as they scroll by.  I had reduced the speed (really it was a decrease in movement per frame - motion tween was used) a few times.  I do feel that the words still scroll by too fast for the average person to read.

I had wanted to add the mermaid and bunny swimming back and forth and even have animated figures of Miranda and myself in snorkeling gear meeting up with the mermaid or have us waving to the viewer.  Because of its low priority and the approaching deadline, it was never created.

Odds and Ends

I created the ocean floor, water background, and kelp that are seen throughout the film. 

While I did not illustrate the sea slug bunny, I did add little "feet" and convert him to an animated symbol to give the illusion of him constantly swimming through the water.  

I did not illustrate the mermaid, but I converted the illustration of her hair to an animated symbol to show it moving in the water.

I illustrated a tree to use in the opening sequences, but overall I was unhappy with its appearance.  Miranda created a second one we both liked better which was used.

Final Thoughts

Miranda and I had some lofty goals for our story.  We had a shared vision of what we wanted.  We had our struggles with the software to accomplish what we wanted and some sacrifices were made.  At one point I had spent 15 hours in one day working on this project (it was a long day) and Miranda worked one night until 4am!

When we presented to the class, we were asked if we were happy with the final product.  I stated that had we had the rest of the semester to continue to work on this project, I probably wouldn't be happy with it, but I am satisfied with what we had created despite our limited knowledge and experience with the software.  Our professor commented on the perfectionist nature of Miranda and myself.

Given another opportunity, I would enjoy working with the Adobe Animate software again.

Using iMovie...

Today in class, we were introduced to the iMovie software.  We learned about importing videos, using green screen clips, creating introductions, filters, and a few other things.

This is the short video I made based on a bit of our footage and a green screen explosion found on youtube.com  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMvMYYRDpKM)

Digital Creativity Discussion

This discussion comes from "Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community," by Joe Lambert - Chapter 10 "Distribution, Ethics and the Politics of Engagement"

Chapter Summary

Ethics (general)
Lambert opens the chapter with the quote, "Do no harm."

He goes on to say, "what starts as well-meaning intention becomes a minefiled of unintended consequences" (117).  Lambert explains that some social groups were created with good intentions - to protect people, but become power struggles have emerged and have created a vulnerability.

Ethics (in art)
Lambert brings up the idea of "first voice"
"First Voice" - In artistic collaborations with local communities, we should strive that people should speak for themselves, and as often as possible that gatherings of storytellers should be facilitated within the community, by community members, for the general benefit of the community (as opposed to an outside audience)" (117).  Lambert continues, "... the act of appropriating someone else's voice diminishes the person who appropriated the story, in much the same way it diminishes the person's for whom the story belongs." Basically what Lambert is saying is that the person who wrote the story (or created the artwork) is the best person to explain that story.  If that person is not available, the next best person to tell that story is someone within that community.

Artistic Control and Expression
Lambert recalls at the end of one of his three-week workshops, one of his students wanted to make sure her work was completely deleted.  Not understanding why his student would want to do this, he asked her why.  The student explained that the artwork was for herself.  Lambert, as an instructor, was used to encouraging students to publish their work, and struggled with the idea of a student wanting to erase all evidence of the work that was crated.  After some consideration, Lambert came to the conclusion, that as an artist, his student (or any artist) should be in control of where, when, and the audience as part of the artistic expression.  This control includes whether or not the work is ever publicly displayed.

Ethics in a Digital World
With easy access to the internet, the distribution, sharing and downloading of digital media on many platforms, ethical treatment has been lost.  Lambert says, "Those partaking in [social media use] may have little experience in medial engagement, and little familiarity with approaches to ethics" (120).

Lambert reminds readers that ethical guidelines were based on a professional expectation that they would not abuse power.  This include using cuts and edits to skew quotes, or take them out of context.  Media does not have the right to put words into people's mouths.

Today, social media users have become a psudo-news reporters.  Without professional ethics training, blogs, posts and videos can quickly become "propaganda, rumor, and slander" (122), without proper fact checking.

Mind Map
(www.mindmup.com software used)

Thoughts and Questions

In the communication era, images, books, and music are popular forms of media that social media users historically have ethically abused.  From personal experience working at a copy shop, there isn't a widespread understanding of copyright (which is part of the ethical treatment of artwork, artists and intellectual property rights).  The majority I've encountered believe anything found through a google search is free game to use.  With the boom of social media, how can we find a way to better police ourselves to use ethical judgement when posting, using, or reposting digital content?  How can we enforce the "Do No Harm" principle of Ethics in a world of social media, when anonymity in various online mediums allows for such harm?

References

Lambert, J. (2013). Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. New York, NY: Routledge.

Digital Creativity Discussion

This discussion comes from "Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community," by Joe Lambert - Chapter 9 "Designing in Digital: Working with Digital Imaging, Audio, and Video."

Summary of the Chapter

Lambert uses two pieces of work in this chapter as examples.  The first video is "Camaro Boy" by Robert Kershaw.  

In this video, Lambert brings attention to -

• Cropping of the Photos
• Use of the Frame
• Visual Pacing
• Panning and Zooming

Cropping of the Photos

During the video, Kershaw wants to spend a good amount of time discussing the first photo.  To keep his audience interested, he uses a method of cropping the visual areas of the photo for the viewer to focus.  Lambert believes this slow reveal of "One Picture Becomes Many Pictures," much like a puzzle being reassembled, is a way for the audience to engage in the visual aspect of the story.

Use of the Frame

Lambert brings attention to the restrictive frame that is the computer (or television) monitor.  He invites readers to challenge this limitation.  Lambert cites the example of Kershaw's work of the image of the photo being slightly skewed resembling a photo that has been tossed on a coffee table.

Visual Pacing

During the video, Kershaw uses a handful of photographs to tell his story, however he gives only two a good amount of screen time --  the first photo of Kershaw and the Camaro and the last photo of Kershaw as a child and his grandfather.  Lambert explains that these photos, while most important to the story, are viewed while the narrator wants us to pause during a moment of time.  These two photos are viewed when the pacing of time is slowed or stopped to consider a significant moment of life.  The other photos are shown in rapid succession to aid in the rapid movement of time in the story.

Panning and Zooming

Lambert brings attention to the last image Kershaw uses in his work - the image of the children and the grandfather.  Kershaw slowly zooms in on his grandfather and himself as a child.  Lambert explains that this is done to bring the viewer's attention to the two figures.  This zooming action reinforces the story of Kershaw and his grandfather, but also "zooms in" on the relationship Kershaw had with his grandfather.

The second work that Lambert uses is "Barcelona Marathon" by Roberto Gerli.

For this Lambert discusses "The Visual Treatment."

Visual Treatment

Lambert explains in "Barcelona Marathon" Roberto uses both still images and video.  Still images are used to introduce people.  Moving images are used for exploration and shift in perspective.  Roberto also uses dots - dots on the map, or dots formed by objects in the images.  Dots are used for connectivity of both people and places.

Mind Map

(www.mindmup.com software used)

Thoughts and Questions

In the beginning of the chapter, Lambert asks, "What makes good design in a digital story?" (105).  He brings up "defamiliarizing the ordinary" VS "cliche" which really stuck with me.  How do we start the process of taking something ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary?  The concept reminded me of time spent in our Photoshop lessons at the beginning of the semester.  Something simple as changing scale, color or environment can transform the ordinary into something less so.  Lambert says, "you simply need to think about how in the choices you are making, you are challenging yourself to not go with what is blindingly obvious" (106).

At the end of the chapter, Lambert offers advice from what he has observed in his workshops: Deadlines are helpful to the creative process.  "We have found in our process, as well as in considering the processes of other artists, that often what is finished, polished and refined becomes over-polished and over-refined and lacks the directness and spontaneity of the initial drafts" (116).

Lambert also advises, that "intuition is the largest part of experimentation" (116).  

References 

Lambert, J. (2013). Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. New York, NY:                      Routledge.

iMovie Discussion 11/15

Team leader will not be in class next Tuesday
Office Documentary (comedy) genre (1950's style)
- maybe sexual harassment theme?
-Workplace safety (do's and don'ts)


Brainstorming locations

Decided to change theme to Driver's Education comic video
-stop signs
-traffic circle
-Michigan Left
-Road Rage
-Chicago (city) Traffic
   - get overhead and sidewalk views
-Distracting Driving
-Proper placement of hands on wheels

(Name of all Drivers is, "Pat")


Should we do Black & White?

Delegating Tasks
Collaboration in doing filming, acting, scripting and concept

Thursday 11/17
-Script Writing (finish)
-Meeting in front of Kirkoff for Filming

Tuesday 11/22
-Finish Filming

Movie Opening
Narrator - "Excuse me" or "Jeepers!" in response to driver not placing hands on wheel incorrectly

- Creating a Google Doc for collaboration of script outside of class time (keep language clean)


Meeting on Black Friday (only 2 people can attend)

Shooting 1080

direct - leader/co-leader
everyone writing script & dialog 
concept development - everyone
illustration - ???
prop setter - ??? (will we have this?)
cameraman/filming - everyone

Need to Brainstorm Green Screen Usage!