we'll fix it in post

Now we have to make this film come to life. We are still nervous that we don't have enough footage to realise our original idea. We want to give these items a new meaning, bring them back in a new light. That's why we used the blue gloves, to give them a delicate touch, almost like a museum curator preserving precious treasures. 

We also want the sound to match the objects, not necessarily literally, but possibly a link to where we found them, or to what they were used as in their previous life. For an example: We found a lot of our items in the park, and that's why we want to have nature sounds (birds chirping, wind etc) to match those. But we also found piano notes made by a composer called Wilfred Sanderson, so we found another piece by him that we wanna use in our sound track as well. 

i love going item scavenging

So everything wasn't as simple as we thought. In Surrey you're not allowed to take objects from landfills, and lost and found boxes are also off-limits. This greatly limited our search radius, and we now had way less chances to find objects than what we originally hoped to have. 

On the first day we went to charity shops and looked for items we could use. We found some good postcards which all of us agreed nicely fit the aesthetic of the film we envisioned, and we also asked around if they had some items in the back that they might not be able to sell. This further led to some items we could use. 

On the second day of item finding Preston, Arturs, and I went to Farnham Park to see if there where any objects there that we might be able to use. We also picked some flowers and leaves. These will look really nice after we film them. 

Ah, I forgot to mention! We might be scanning the postcards, but for the rest of the items we had to figure out a different approach. That's why set up this intricate recording studio: 

As you can see it consists of a sheet of glass, held up by two tables, with a camera underneath and a white screen above. This worked really well with most of the items - some of the denser items look too dark, but the more delicate ones like plants, and a cassette tape look really nice because they're almost translucent.

We are struggling with having enough footage though. We might have to rely on found footage as well. 

the idea, and how we thought we could make it reality

So Natalie's original idea was this: 

"The main concept for my film is a moving photomontage under the theme of lost and found objects. Everything in the film must be found be the filmmakers. Even the camera has to be one found in a charity shop or second-hand shop. This includes archive footage and pieces of fabric that are found outside shops, or interesting textured nature found on the ground. 

All these things complied into a montage will create a beautiful concept with an interesting and unpredictable aesthetic. The film will begin with simplicity. A montage of  clips from archive footage will play. The layering will become more complex during the climax."

Our group consists of Natalie, Preston, Arturs, and myself. During our first meeting we discussed the idea and how we could do it. We all agreed that finding enough objects might pose a challenge if we wanted to have it as fast-paced as Natalie described in her pitch. We decided to give landfills, and places where they might have a lost and found box a call, and visit charity shops in person. We also set up a calendar with a schedule for which days we are going item hunting in the streets, in Farnham park, landfills, and lost and found boxes. 

Sound is different from music. The same components are used, yes, 

but sound can make you see so much more.

Hello hello hello, testing testing, 1 2 3. 

So today I set out to record my sounds, and here are the sounds I've decided I want: 

-Tapping that increases in intensity and power.

-Tapping with slightly different sound (made by tapping microphone) -I didn't use this one, too noisy-

-Tapping that resembles a heart beat

-Bomb explosion sound effect, made with voice 

-Bomb dropping sound effect, made by whistling 

-Plane sound effect, made with a fan

I recorded all of them, and most of them sound relatively good. I will absolutely have to edit them slightly, maybe distort some (the whistling for one as the pitch is too inconsistent). 

I also played around with some synth on Garage Band because James and I discussed an earlier piece he had made, were the synth sounded like artillery fire. I tried it out and I got some interesting results, but I also felt like it didn't fit my piece. I will definitely incorporate it in future projects though!

Here's my final piece: 

Final Sound Piece

Now that you've listened to it, I'll tell you what I did to make it sound like that. 

First of all I had to do noise reduction on all of them as my mic records a lot of the buzz around it. (I recorded by my computer, and the whirring from it was on the tracks.) I used the Heavy Reduction preset, as I wanted all of the noise to be removed. 

As I wanted the tapping to be quite loud, and the other sounds to come in naturally and not abruptly, I had to play around with the amplifier. Some tracks, like the tapping and the heart beat I had to amplify, while other tracks like the explosion and the bomb dropping I had to quiet down a bit. In the beginning of the piece I turned them down to about -25db, while later in the clip when I wanted the bombs to be "closer" I turned them to -5db. 

As I mentioned just now, I wanted the bombs and planes to seem far away in the beginning and then come closer. I did this by using an FFT-filter, and putting it to a low pass frequency, so that only the lower frequencies pass through. I curved it, instead of shelving it, as to make it sound like it was coming closer.

And that's about it. I'm quite pleased with my final result. 

-TJ

Can you hear that? Sounds like a sound project. So fresh and audible.

First things first, this is the second time I've ever played around with sound. The first time I was convinced I could create the next big party tune, but alas, Adobe costs money, also, creating a Billboard Top 10 hit takes a lot of time. (Needless to say I benched the project. Watch out though.) 

But this also means that I'm excited to get back to it and play around with actual, professional sound editing software magic. 

Nothing like some fun photoshopping to procrastinating making a blog post. 

Experimental sound project, let's go! 

In our first lesson with James we were told that our piece should be based of an image. We were presented with 8 (I think it was 8, oh well) different images, and among the herd there was one that I recognised. 

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso 

HISTORY LESSON 

In the spring of 1937 the Spanish Civil War was raging. And long story short, the Republicans, supporting the left-leaning government, fought against the Nationalist forces led by Fransisco Franco. If you know anything about history, then you know that Franco isn't necessarily known as a nice guy. If you need any convincing of why he isn't a nice guy, then you should know that he was supported by both Mussolini and Hitler, two of Europe's least nice guys.  Anyway, Hitler and Mussolini, who both were very right-winged in their political ideologies figured it'd a good idea to have Spain as a ally, but also that this civil war was a great way to test out their weapons, as to show the rest of Europe that they packed some real fire power - essentially one big scare tactic. 

Well, in 1937 Guernica was the next target. Italian and German air-forces bombed the poor city to rubble. It was completely unnecessary. History lesson over. 

I guess I have a certain soft spot for this part of history, as a town were I have roots, Dresden, also was bombed without reason not a mere 10 years later. Anyway, let's get to recording. 

What I want

I have a very clear idea for what I want to create. I want the piece to start out quiet with a steady beat. I then want it to come more and more chaotic, with planes and bombs whizzing by. It's a simple project, but I feel that this is what I hear when I look at this painting. 

-TJ

After effects is enough to drive any sane man to the brink

So the filming went swimmingly, with the help of my girlfriend, a tripod and a camera held upside down. I did this to easily film my feet without having to crouch. I then cut it all together in Premiere Pro, and of course rotated the footage. I'm not showing the step for step of this because I'm assuming that you're strictly interested in what I did in After Effects and not Premiere Pro, as that was last term. 

(I also transported my Premiere Pro sequence to After Effects using dynamic link. Very useful. 10/10 would use again)

So the first thing I had to do was stabalise the footage as it was rather shaky. I wanted to do this though without having to crop too much. I used a tool called Warp Stabilizer VFX, and these settings: 

I had to change these settings slightly after this screenshot to ensure that it also cropped, not only stabilised. I kept all the other settings like this. 

And boy does this take ages. I'm not even sure how long I watched this screen: 

Good thing I've got nice feet.

After I was happy with the stabilisation, I went on to add text, and to make it appear. I chose the point where I wanted the text to exist, and then I added a mask so that I could control when it would appear. 

To make it swipe from left to right I selected Mask Path, and then selected where in the time line the entire text would appear. I used the same effect during the entire film, so that it would have disappeared again by the end. 

These are all the effects I used in my project, because it's all I needed to create my vision, but as I want you to know that I know about them, there are other effects I could've used. For an example the whole concept of Keying, and how to use a green screen, or get the green screen effect without there actually being a green screen. I made a blog post about it right after the lesson because I found it so fascinating. I will most likely use it in future projects. There are also an immense selection of different effects one can add to whatever project. Most of these helpful tools can be found under the window tab, and after that on the right hand side of the screen. 

Sidenote: I wanted to add music to this project. Some tribal drums that would increase in volume, but as I didn't have that idea until the end of the project, (The day before the deadline) I encountered a problem when using the dynamic link and the file was unusable in After Effects. 

This has been my first time using After Effects, and I must say I found it rather difficult at first. It's time consuming, complex, and the possibilities are endless. I've found out that the best way of working with it is to try different things - some work, others don't. There is simply too much stuff you can do for being told all of it, most of it you will discover by accident :) 

Have a wonderful Easter! 

-TJ

being reunited with Phil was absolutely lovely

So when we were first assigned this project, not gonna lie, I thought it sounded like a piece of cake. Walk in the park. Like stealing sweets from a baby. (Theft is bad. Don't steal kids.) But would you look at that, after effects are kinda difficult and complicated! 

Now the theme in itself wasn't very difficult, and that in itself might've been one of the reasons for why I postponed it for so long, and focused on other projects. But I still had this idea swimming around in the back of my mind, I wanted to make a statement about how we as digital artists show you a world that in no way is real. I think that's easy to forget sometimes. I mean, just have a look at our course - Digital Film and Screen Arts. 

What I'm saying is this, humans and technology has come very far. So far in fact, that it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. And I think that we, film makers, show that as well as any other group of people. Even when we made a documentary we edited, colour corrected, added sound, cropped, and changed what we would then portray as a piece of real life. 

But it's not is it? I keep hearing people say stuff like "We'll fix it in post", "Don't worry about the lighting, I'll colour correct it." "Just pretend you're saying your lines, we can record the actual lines in the studio later, and then overlay them." Are people aware of this? 

So I had my concept, now how would I portray that, and how can I make two screens, and after effects work for me? 

As any good artist I started researching, and I came across loads of artists discussing whether digital art was real art. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for, and after hours of looking I couldn't actually find anything to inspire me for my own statement. After all what I want to achieve is to show people that we we show them as the final product in no way is real. 

I decided that whatever video I ended up making it should be very simple, as to show that even the simplest videos, the ones that look raw and organic, aren't. This is wha t I settled on:

The left video is a video of legs walking around, exploring nature, and in general enjoying life. Something easy, away from machines and computers.

The right video however I have decided will be a screen capture of some of the editing process. This will show how this simple clip has been remastered, and added to. I also want the right video to add to my statement about digital content not necessarily being a true adaptation of life. 

I know this is a text heavy post, but the next one will have pictures of the process. 

-TJ