sandr093

Basically a gloryfied family home movie, filmed on a clear day at the Elvaston Castle Public Estate In Derbyshire. Main purposes served were to test out the Canon 7D, try colour correction, sequence clips to music and test various other effects. Photographs taken on the day and later Photoshopped can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56511472@N08/sets/72157628969060289/ Derbyshire County Council plan to lease the estate to a private owner who plans to turn the estate into a hotel and golf complex. Please pledge your support to keep the beauty and rich history of Elvaston Castle alive to the public below: http://www.elvastoncastle.org.uk/index.htm Music: "Silverspoon" by Meanwhileproject.ltd ( http://www.myspace.com/meanwhileprojectltd )

Now that my Influence search is over I brainstormed what it was that I actually wanted to do, these ideas are far and wide and completely preliminary. It is to be noted that I have selected my music track, the track I have chosen to accompany my visuals is track 8, mainly for its slower pace and sadder tone, which believe will match my visuals betters. Brainstorm ideas include: Time lapse streets/cars and people, time lapses with stills, sky changes colour, travelling through 3d corridors, travelling through 3d with stills, travelling through 3D with green screen person, particle effects, energy effects ,3d earth, spinning stars, mirrors, running from mirror, surrounded by mirror, alive in mirror, ambiguous light, ipod style movement, static on a tv, cloning objects, white stripes style scaling, ink blotches and primitive shapes. Obviously they wont all be included but I have some good ideas to go on. Here is a mock up video for some of my ideas including mirrors...

I have watched a considerable amount of live concert videos to gather up some inspiration for this project, a noticeable contributor has been T4 on the beach, they have a whole array of interest projected visuals, sometimes standing out more than the actual artists performance. Here's one that uses falling fruit for the entire performance: Another recommended to me was Beyonce Run The World, this one is spectacular, it uses a mixture of 3D models, primitive shapes, particle effects, cloning and other effects perfectly synchronised to the performance. Another one that instantly came to mind was that off Gnarls Barkley - Crazy, that uses a sort of ink blotch effect throughout, this is the style: A pre existing idea I had in mind for this project before it started was manipulating and using mirrors for abstract effects, mainly influenced by the abstract use of mirrors in The Shining

Will the briefs never end?! No but seriously it's that time of year again, the time I have to make the awkward transition from relax mode to work mode. There's nothing more motivating to shake off the old dust then the brief post, It's the beginning of a new chapter, a fresh starting point to develop from. This brief is entitled 'projected visuals' and is the result of a partnership between Nottingham Trent and Urban Angel, we are to produce a set of visuals (6-8 minutes long) to accompany one of fourteen hip/hop, these visuals will later be preformed to live, projected on stage behind the artists. The main outlining requirement is that these visuals have no recognisable narrative, they must be abstract and deviate away from genre conventions (e.g., girls on car bonnets, clubbing, fast cars). The overall tone I received from the opening lecture was that of total creative freedom, the whole exercise has no right or wrongs, it's completely open...

Ahhh my weakest point, camera technicality. I do have a very basic overview of how to operate a camera, I know about focus and the iris and also what format to record in, yet the finer points still allude me. As I don't come from a photography background and have never really been exposed to high end photography cameras such as SLR's and DLRS' I  decided it was about time I learnt some basic skill and understood some of the terminology. I hired out a Canon D7 for the weekend to try and get to grips with how it works, this way when I film for real I'll not waste a load of time. I learnt three invaluable lessons. 1) Exposure is a mixture of  ISO (the sensitivity at which your camera reacts to light, like volume on a radio) The Aperture (The amount of light let into the lens) and Shutter speed (The amount of time the shutter stays open to capture the light), You use all three settings to attain Good Exposure, adjusting for required scenes and situations....

Carrying on from part one, the next space element identified is Flat Space . This type of space is opposite to that of Deep Space, it is the actual 2D space of an object or scene, no depth illusion is created. To achieve this effects the camera must be kept frontal and objects must all be positioned parallel to the camera to avoid size difference. Other way to achieve flat space are to avoid object movement perpendicular to the camera, keep all movement parallel. You can also use Pan's, zooms and tilts , these don't create any depth cues as all the objects move in unison, there is no relative movement, with a zoom for example everything gets larger simultaneously. Other ways to maintain flat space are to: have a detailed background , overwhelming ariel diffusion , no difference in tone ,  singular colours , same height in objects, no overlapping and blurred objects . It is also noted that reversing the deep space depths cues will often create ...

Just had a little play around with photoshop, contrary to what most lecturers at Nottingham Trent think, not all student on the multi-media course have come from a strong photoshop background or even a I.T technical background for that matter. Last year when asked to make a title card for my short film noir film Shift I was left feeling pretty intimidated and useless, I could'nt do it. Now days I feel that I have naturally built up some photoshop illiteracy through general use over the years, I'm no expert by far but have at least squirmed out from the oblivious category. I recently watched the film noir classic A Touch of Evil by Orson Wells (which was fantastic by the way) and was reminded of my own film nori short S hift,  I was inspired to revisit the old title card situation and create a fresh new one. With the film noir excitement still rushing through my veins, I created this: Now I ...

I have advanced onto chapter three of Bruce Blocks: The Visual Chapter , this chapter makes up about 30% of the book and concentrates on the complex nature of space in cinematography, both in terms of the space in the screen world (which will be discussed in this post) and the space in the real world, aka aspect ratios and the picture frame, which will be discussed in part two. Deep Space is the first space element we learn. Deep space is the illusion of depth through specific depth cues. Think of it this way, if your viewing a flat plane such as a wall straight on it has no depth, however if you move the camera to the side you reveal depth, a One Point Perspective is created when the verges of an object appear to disappear into the distance, a classic example of this would be looking at a railroad track. A Two Point Perspective uses two vanishing points, this can be created by lifting or lowering the camera so an object appears unparallelled, or simply ...