Cut cut then cut again or RAM preview devine inspiration or the devils work

Every cut gets shorter and shorter, each time tightening things up, and removing shots that stand out too much. When finally happy with the cut, (or decided to stop before I cut it all), I loaded my edit up in After effects for a little colour grading (Pushed the colours and pulled down some very vibrant green grass). Also letter boxed the vision slightly to give more of a cinematic feel and to allow me to reposition a few shots slightly.

Quite happy with how things are going, so happy in fact that I even quite enjoy the footage while it rendering for ram preview, its in slow motion I can see dust and twigs bouncing after each foot fall, it looks great. (I had fun scrubbing foot falls back and forth when editing)

It looks so good I might run the whole thing slow.

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Silk or Sow

I wasn’t that confident with the shoot and so waited quite a while before reviewing the footage.

I wasn’t even so sure about the idea, the meeting in the video was going to be a very obvious looping point. A possible problem with this is any one viewing will possibly watch it only a few times then feel they have seen it and move on, losing that never ending mesmerising effect that loop working well has.

Back to the footage.

All the initial footage was pretty well unusable, but after a while the kids seemed to relax their running style and I started to work out what worked. The big issue is that although I considered footwear I didn’t consider the rest of the kids costume, my daughter was wearing baggy grey tracksuit pants that not only blended in with the bush setting it also just flopped around when she ran , giving no definition to her legs and looking very uninteresting. To make matters worse she injured her arm and its in a sling (requiring rest so re-shooting would be difficult).

The up side is there is some nice footage of Ned running, maybe enough to get something to work.

So mostly sow with a few hints of silk, maybe not enough for a full purse but enough to start weaving.

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The Shoot

My children will be the actors, running in a bush setting.

Wardrobe wise they will both be wearing similar style sand shoes, and I ensured my daughter was wearing matching laces do I could flip the shots. There are no brand names to worry about and as I’m not shooting faces then flipping the footage shouldn’t cause to many problems.

I found a location very rural away from traffic and city noise, it took a while shooting before the kids relaxed with their running and I managed to find angles that worked. The best looking shots required the camera to be practically on the ground. I hoped that holding the camera on the ground would reduce camera shake.

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Running away running towards.

The new Idea (still just shooting feet) is to have two people running towards each other they meet hold then turn and run away. I’ll flip the previous running footage so it feels like people are running away eventually the feet will come together again but this time from the opposite direction (flipped), then away again etc.

So if you come in on a running away section your first impression is that of people running away, otherwise it will be people coming together.

It makles sense in my head I’ll shoot some footage and see how it comes together.

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Loop a new concept

I spent a little bit of time looking for a site to get the shot I had in mind but nothing realy gave me that factory feel I was envisaging. Not enough people coming and going at the same time, I could possibly try overlaying many shots to achieve that but with early morning and late night light changes it wasn’t feeling good right from the start.

Anyway I had moved on the idea that the loop should be able to be able to be viewed starting from any point in time was interesting. What if when you started viewing it changed you perspective of what the piece is about.

I still like the concept of just using feet but how to tell the two stories.

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The Loop

Although the 3rd project I had been thinking about this project from when we first found out about it.

Initially inspired by the Lumiere bro’s footage of people leaving the factory, I was thinking about looping people coming in and out of an office, the endless cycle of work in the corporate life.

Visually I was considering only shooting peoples feet, visually I thought it would be interesting and and add to the sence of the faceless masses forever coming and going to work.

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Wrapping it up – automatic writing retrospective

Pretty happy with it all, like always there is more that I could do, but I thinks it works pretty well visually at least. The audio is way better than the version that I played in at the crit. In general I’m pretty happy with my ability to push to a visual aesthetic. I’m ok with this audio but obviously I will need to deal with audio earlier in future projects. I would love to be able to compose my own music, but not having a music background I’m not sure this is a realistic option, maybe I should track down someone I can collaborate with.

Automatic writing was actually fun and I think I’ll have to just grab a pen and just write more often – see what comes up.

I wonder did my sub conscience bring up some deeper ideas along with more foolish ones or, was it more a matter of me interpreting some meaning from the writings. My gut feeling is it was probably the latter a bit like finding faces in clouds. Regardless of what came from where it was still interesting.

I had all sorts of ideas about animating a series of cool or witty words on the screen. I’m glad it didn’t eventuate although I’m sure I could have made it look interesting but it would have probably been pretty hollow.

I’m sure many people won’t get what I’m trying to say, but it starts out fairly easy to interpret so maybe people will get there is some meaning to it rather than it just throwing out a few random phrases.

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Fixing the sound

Technically the sound now is much better, a few well directed pointers and the quality of the recordings have improved substantially. I tried getting Marina (my wife) to read it, I think she actually did a better job than I did but, It seemed wrong in her voice. Listening to her and directing her was beneficial though, I had always thought of it as quite and reflective so the read should match, but that seemed to come across as dull and uninterested, she put much more life into the read, and when I followed suit it did result in a better outcome.

In an ideal world I would be able to hire some voice talent to read my works. I have no aspirations of being any sort of actor, there is evidently much more to being a good voice actor than being able to put on funny voices when reading to kids.

Next time I’ll try to plan something that doesn’t involve me reading, but at least if need I have a few new recording skills.

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Crit – yes, the sound was crap

Yes it does sound crap, although no one says it outright the audio is the thing that gains the most comment. People think its better with audio than without, so I can’t toss it I will have to rework it, I did get some good advice so hopefully I can make it better.

some people didn’t like the title. I can see their point that it may not need a title but.. Its important to me, it fits it was the thing that stood out most from my initial reading of the text, it sort of sums up the whole piece, thing that I have learnt sort of a twisted wisdom, I’m not sure those that dislike the title necessarily get the rest of it either, or maybe they just think nothing is better than toast.

The title stays.
The audio needs work.

No one mentioned the timing tweaks that I would so given the time available I leave those tweaks and concentrate on Audio.

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I wonder if I dream sounds

Sound this time it should be easy, just record myself speaking the words, maybe add a bit of sound under it some moody notes or a bit a music from someone like Soma or similar really moody and I’ll be done.

Well a lecture on sound excellent, accept adding to what has been mentioned in tutes chucking a bit of your favorite music under some vision isn’t really what its about and unfortunately generating a few moody tones is pretty much as bad. Sound needs to add a dimension rather than just fill the silence.

The voice over adds, it gives extra meaning that isn’t going to be gleaned from the images alone. (I tried text on the screen but that didn’t work).

Just voice seems a bit thin everything else is so layered, The only sounds I imagined were some wind noised at the end as I dissipated over the view. Ocean noises for the first bit would work well I’ve always been impressed as to how well a little sound can add life to still images. I would have rather had video of the ocean and sky etc if i could.

It was settled narration with ocean/wind sounds to add to the mood .

Heaps of takes later and I had audio that fit, it didn’t sound how I envisigned and I possibly like it less now with audio than with out. Is it just a hating the sound of your own voice thing or is it as crap as I think it is ?

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