One Shot Film: Business As Usual

We filmed our One Shot film yesterday and I am really pleased with how it's turned out. We had backgrounds painted onto bed sheets which were held up, we had a camera on tracks which moved slowly through the sets along with the character who pulls them down. We used three lights, one with an orange gel and another with a blue gel. The basic idea was a guy going through a bit of his life, having arguments with his girlfriend, and wanting go out to get away from it all. We decided to bed sheets instead of creating walls, I really loved this idea as its like a solid wall that becomes weightless. The way it drops is really effective, I love all the ripples you see as it falls which I think works a lot better that using a material you could break through. The first sheet was a living room, the actor was about to light a cigarette and then hears music, he pulls down the backdrop to get to the next one which was the kitchen where the argument took place. After he pulls down the kitchen backdrop he gets to a club which we created by playing a video of a live performance on the projector, which worked really well. We orginally was going to use a black sheet and use the lights and gels to create the club but the projector was much better, he really looked like part of the crowd. There was a few problems in trying to hold up the sheets so we had to get more people in to help, if we had lots more people we could of used more sheets for the backgrounds. We decided at the end it would be quite funny to turn the projector off and turn the lights on showing he is just on his own in a room and that it wasn't real, this looked quite good but we ended up getting a box on the screen saying "Power Off". I suppose because we turn the projector off anyway it doesn't really matter, but I would prefer it if that message didn't come up on screen. Also the second sheet wasn't held high enough so you can see some of the video behind it which is a bit disappointing.
Some of the group did a quick edit adding the titles and credits with the music on top, all I would do is perhaps change the font as its very basic and see how I can cut it to make it more interesting and engaging.


Business As Usual from Chris Thorby on Vimeo.

My Design Process

The first thing I do to is to make a mind map with the theme of my project in the centre. I would then find three of the best ideas from that and research artists for more inspiration. I would look into different styles and techniques and how I can make my work unique. The internet is always a good place to start for research but lots of other things have inspired me such as adverts, films, nature, buildings, even ripping things from magazines - which I can then use that to make some drawings. Group discussions and talks with tutors helps a lot with my design process, I get to talk about my ideas and plans and if they can work or not, or when I'm completely lost.
One piece of work I've done in my art foundation was a film of me and my brother fighting with wooden Kali Escrima sticks in our back garden. I worked over the top of the frames, adding a very dark, black and white comic book style to it, removing all of the background and adding rain. 

To come up with this idea I used a small sketch book to put down lots of notes and sketches and I researched artists that had similar styles or techniques that I could use in my work. I wanted to do the fight scene the most as it's theme I wanted to work on, which was martial arts. I had to fit this around the theme I was given for this project which was urban environment, so I decided to use animation to transform me and my brother's fighting into a street fight. I sketched a lot of ideas in a small pad which included the choreography of the fight, the animation - what will be inverted, silhouettes etc. and the storyboards so I had the best selection of shots. I also keep a notebook at hand to put down any rough ideas that just come to me.


Once I had my fight scene filmed I put it into Adobe Premiere and exported a third of all the film frames, I can then use each frame 3 times and have less to edit. I used Photoshop to put on a basic black and white filter effect on all the frames and using a graphics tablet I edited out the backgrounds, drawn in the figures, created silhouettes and layered rain. 

The Process

Original Frame

Added Filter Effect

Removed background and drawn in figure as white silhouette using a graphics tablet

Created rain with and drawn dots using graphics tablet

Here is my film with the animation over the top. You will notice near the end the background hasn't been removed with the black and there is no rain, this is because I didn't manage to finish it on my course and I haven't been able to get hold of the program I used.

One Shot

08/10/10

We only had a short amount of time to come up with an idea for a 1 minute film. We had a few rough ideas, one required a pigeon suit which we couldn't get hold of so we decided to create a film of a stabbing in a graveyard. We filmed this from a low angle showing only the feet to hide the identity of the killer, only the victim (played by me) is seen as he falls to the ground with his wound. I had some fake blood on my hand which I put on my stomach to create the look of the wound, which worked really well. We had to rush this as we had a small amount of battery left in the camera so its shorter than we hoped. If we spend more time re-making this we could put markers on the ground so the actors know where to stand, I think it would also be good if the victim falls closer to the camera so he is in close up. I really enjoyed the short session we had of filming, can't wait to do more!

Induction week

Pinhole Photography

28/09/10

As part of my induction week I had two creative group exercises. The first one I did was to create a pinhole camera using a 500ml can. I cut off the top of the can and made a lid using black paper, this had to be completely sealed from any gaps using tape so no light could enter the can and ruin the photograph. I used a needle to pierce a hole and used a simple piece of black tape to cover it, for the shutter. When I was in the darkroom I removed the lid and curved the light-sensitive paper into the can, making sure the paper did not cover over the hole. I went out and attempted to capture part of the Arboretum by the Waverley building. I peeled off the tape which covered the hole and waited 8 seconds before putting it back on, but I think I must have counted it far too quickly as I ended up with just a small section of grey from the trees with the rest of the image white. This is obviously disappointing but I found it fun anyway. I've never done pinhole photography before and I would quite like to it again.

My terrible first attempt

Close up of the only thing that came out, I think it's part of the trees.

Whiteboard Animation

29/09/10

This is the second group exercise I did and enjoyed this one the most. I have done some drawn animation before but I found using a whiteboard so much easier! you don't have to keep tracing it each time or use lots of paper, you can just work on one surface and easily rub anything out. Every time something was drawn we captured it with the camera, drawing the characters in a slightly different position each time. It was really good to watch it back, seeing everything move.