May 29, 2008

Oops! I Did It Again!

Oh, bugger!

Once again I've managed to get myself in a mess by not planning ahead (or planing ahead but not coming up with a contingency plan!). In my rush to create the 'Nude' preview I decided I couldn't be bothered callibrating the Sims 2 game to give me a 16:9 ratio (the 1024x576 resolution) and just stayed with the 4:3 (640x480).

I orginally passed on the 16:9 because it is an absolute pain to get the game to record in 16:9 when I'm using a 4:3 monitor, the game just hates it so it usually cuts a few pixel of the specified custom resolution, but only one side so, 1280x720 would become 1268x720 which is not 16:9.

I also passed on the 16:9 because I thought that since this was a tester, I would just come back and film it all again. That was until I discovered how well it works right now. So, my latest challenge is to manipulate the 4:3 footage in 16:9 without anyone noticing. It is at this point I'm glad these shots have a rather large white glow for a special effect 'cos this will help cover up any alising from resizing or stetching or moving the orginal footage.

My other challenge is to try and get the library to let me borrow a camera over the holidays!

May 19, 2008

Evidence Of Work...

Here is my proof that I've been using 43Things. I've highlighted (in green) some of the more obscure things people are doing in the world. I'll leave all moral judgements to you, but if I were an alien apecies looking into our culture before landing on our wonderful green Earth, I'd head straight back on home after viewing this.
Or bring out the nuclear weapons...

May 18, 2008

So, Who Is This Eve Chick?


Eve is the most important character out of all the storylines below. So, in order to get a grasp of how awsome she really is, here are two concept images from her storyline The Chronicles oF Eve. And yes, that lady in the (soon to be) white coat and skirt is Eve; once again doing her damnedness not to die. The image below that is a concept of the first story arc from CoE called Black Sister which explores the idea of what would change if humanity knew it was alone in the universe as the only sentient species. While this will not be made into any form of DP work this year, I posted them just so people could start to get a feel for this character.
And, concept art is important because it shows evidence of work. :P

"It All Begins With The End."


Yes, the above comment does make sense. It's all explained in the picture above. What you have there isn't a project outline, it's an endstory timeflow chart. Confused? I hope not, because it was designed to make things simpler! Mayhaps, it IS better to start at the start.
Once upon a time there was a film idea called Chrono Dash. After about a year, Chrono Dash (CD) got a bit lonely so it decided to have another saga tacked on the end (Terra Artus). Then a new idea came along called Cold World (CW). After seeing how happy CD was CW decided it needed a sequel and along came CW: Beta Attacks. Then Rising Lights and Infinity Remix entered the mix as well. By this time CD had expanded into a five arc storyline. Then The Enigmartist, decided that they could all connect together; somehow...
After several more months The Future Is Us Saga was born with ten different story arcs separated into a serial, a trilogy and a Saga. Rising Lights was feeling very lonely all by itself, so it got it's own sequel and they went off as a couple, away from The Future Is Us Saga.
Then came along a new exciting and separate story; Hunters. From Hunters came the character of Eve and from both these influences Hellsong was born, a continuation of Hunters. By now The Future Is Us was feeling rather un-epic compared to Hunetrs/Hellsong, so it got a new storyline called Omega Frame to wrap the entire Saga up (It also has a half-sister called Origins of the End, but it's easier not to mention her).
Finally, The Enigmartist decided that Eve (from Hunters/Hellsong) was so epic, she had to make an appearance in The Future Is Us Saga. Thus, these two separate universes had a connection. Since Rising/Risen Lights was still all on it's lonesome, Eve was added to that storyline too!
Then, all hell broke lose when Eve got her own storyline The Chronicles oF Eve!
Even more confused? I don't blame you. To put it simply, the entire storyline begins at Cold World, travels through all the other storylines and ends up The Chronicles oF Eve.
But, what does all this have to do with DP? You'll notice that there is a white box around one of the storylines; Hellsong Prologue. This Prologue is my major piece of work for this year. And while I did say it all begins with Cold World, timeline wise it really all begins in that white box. So, in order to make this short film, I need to make sure that the rest of the story works as a whole. This is equally important because the ONE AND ONLY character to appear in EVERY single story also appears in Hellsong Prologue. Therefore, in order to see who this character will act in this prologue I need to know what she'll be doing in the future. And she'll be doing quite a lot in the future.
It all begins, and it all ends, with Eve.

May 7, 2008

Metautomationatics...

Or, thinking about automated processors such as breathing.

Do you think you could document every breath you took? I can tell you now that you can't. The human brain just can't function with that sort of data. Don't believe me? Next time you're walking along the road try counting the amount of steps you take while ALSO counting the number of time your breathe in and out.
Not easy? Now also factor in that you're also trying to find that song you like on your iPod and avoiding all those older drivers who can't actually drive.
Women say they can multitask; try saying that to the lady whose arm was found severed 100 metres away from her crashed car. The important part here is the mobile phone clasped in her hand.
People can't drive and do other things; generally. While some people can drink their coffee, switch into fourth to overtake that P plater while not spilling a single drop on their morning paper, they most certainly would have had several near misses previously. Practice makes perfect.
The overall idea is that once something becomes automated, we generally tend not to think about it. The problem with multitasking is that if you try to do two tasks that you're NOT VERY GOOD AT you are sure to fail at least one. Or in the lady drivers case, both.
However, most people can breathe and walk so long as they don't think about it too much!
The point that I'm slowly getting to is; If your learning and problem solving has gotten to these levels of proficiency, would that make it difficult to monitor there two activities?
YES!
Granted, there will always be massive problems that smack you into the pavement, and that's just natural, but most people get to a point in certain subjects (art, rock-climbing, dodging traffic) that any small problems pretty much go completely unnoticed. One doesn't even pick it up as a problem.
You're rock climbing and the rock your holding onto breaks off, so if you're good enough you grab another one without even thinking and continue on your way. While computer, film and media problems may be more time consuming than 0.5 of a second, the principle remains that same.
Just say the computer crashes, I'm going to spend a while working out what happened and get pretty pissed off by the end of it. Then I will come one here and rant about all the stuff I had to slog through to get the computer to work. However, if I'm going on my movie editing ways and I want to do some chroma-keying (i.e. bluescreen/greenscreen but covers all colours) and I want to know which would be the best for a night scene. I'd either press F1 to get the Vegas help files or zip over to the internet and find the answer in about two minutes. That's not even going to register as a problem (BTW: Pure green is pretty good at night).
So, what's the problem? I can't help but feel as though this course EXPECTS you to detail all these problems. But by now, solving most of my digital problems is automatic. So, if it doesn't register as a problem it ain't going to get a mention. So if all runs smoothly, we lose an entire criterion JUST BECAUSE WE ARE USED TO TEACHING OURSELVES.
We don't have to think about what we don't know, we just autonomously have that running in the background. I'm not going to sit there at the start of a project and list all the stuff I have to learn or might have to learn. I won't do it during the learning process either. Gathering knowledge in this area (film/media) is automatic now. I do it constantly in little bursts.
It's like all those soccer mums. They've gotten so good at checking out the saturated fat content of their food they probably don't even though they do it anymore. Working in a supermarket, I've seen this first hand.
My point here is that there is no point to the mums thinking about their dietary habits, just like there is no point me thinking about my breathing. If something goes wrong, I'll notice, but until then we'll all just go on out knowledge harvesting ways.
Oh, and don't be a soccor mum, their cars are massive!