Problems

Last night my colour grading render was cut short when my computer informed me i had completely ran out on room on it.......

Nice

Masking in Motion

After about a week of none-stop problem solving or attempted problem solving i think i have finally got my head round masking in Motion. Building up these layers and masking them off is not the easiest thing to do and it's certainly not the fastest flowing technique. I bought some RAM for my computer before i started this project and these clips still slow it down when i'm working on them. God knows what it'd have been like if i hadn't of bought any......

Anyway, this is me doing my moody magician thing........

Green Screen Progress

This is how far i've got with this whole green screen malarky. I've come to realise that the lighting was the best for the green screen as the left hand side is more lit than the right hand side. This makes for a lot of shadows and completely messes up the keying in Motion.

My first attempts looked shocking, quite frankly. The movement from the cards and the shadows that they cast when moving through the air caused a lot of problems. So this morning i sat through the whole scene, going through it frame by frame and taking out the movement of the cards leaving the cards appearing on the table. So the footage you see below is from stop motion, if you can't tell.

So, this is how far i've got with it. I think it looks awful and it's going no-where near the final edit at this stage. However, maybe putting it back into Final Cut and putting a filter on it or something, i don't know.....

Once again, if anybody reading this knows anything let me know. Infact, i should start by asking is anyone reading this full stop.

Excited & Flustrated in equal measures

Today, i went into the TV studio to film some tiny little bits of ideas that i've had over the last week having looked at my rough final edit. I needed something else. So i filmed some cards stuff infront of a green screen and then some close up stuff on a green table. I threw cards down onto the green table so that every cm of the shot was covered with cards by the end of it in the hope i could key out the green table and replace it with some of the live magic footage. Once the full shot was covered with cards i could reverse the footage to show a new shot underneath. On paper this sounds very do-able but in practice, or more specifically in motion, this is not the case.

These are the stills.....





And this is the best i can come up with at the moment......



On the plus side, i've spent the last three or four days trying to master masking in Motion. I'd say i've been semi-successful. It is very hard and time consuming though.



Updatate: This is how far i have got with it.... there are still a few green spots i can see.

DVD Printing

These websites might be of use to anyone making a DVD. They print an image onto a CD then post it to you to burn. Looks better than one being printed off a printer.

www.DuplicationCentre.co.uk

www.mediacopy.co.uk

ps: £70 for 50 DVD's from duplication centre.......

Chasing the Sun

Having thought about filming after two hours staring at the sun on Thursday, i got down to outside the playhouse only for it to start raining. I turned round to see the biggest rain cloud behind me. I wasn't do the same today so when i awoke to sunshine coming through my window i quickly ran round to outside the Playhouse, Broadway and Pitcher& Piano to film some stuff outside in the sunshine. About an hour after getting home it started to rain. April showers, eh ?

Look at the sun.......

They might even have to be taken down in brightness!

Flat

At present my DVD is feeling and looking very flat. It's pretty linear at the moment of magic, interview, ident. Just feels a bit boring to me. So have a camera for this weekend and, weather permitting, i shall be filming some footage in and around my locations to try and add a little more dimention. I've got a lot of ideas floating round of what to do, i just need some sunshine!!

ps: the more and more i look at this edit, the less and less happy i am with it. It goes nowhere and really needs sproosing up. I'm thinking about re-editing it in location by location with a nice little location ident before each section.

New Trailer & End of Filming

This post should mark the end of my filming schedule. I have stuck to it and probably for the first time in my life have kept on top of a schedule i set myself. I am happy with the footage (i should do there is a LOT of it). Seven different nights. Four different locations. Some unusable footage. Some absolute gold (like spending 20 minutes on Wednesday evening trying to hit the lens with a card..... it does look the bollocks though). Now it's my job to go through all of it and find the best stuff. Hopefully, should have a rough edit of the final version by Monday, leaving next week for possible pick up shots of anything i feel is missing. I have a few ideas in mind but want to see after the rough edit just what might be needed......

In my hours today spent searching through the footage i thought it would be nice to make this little trailer. There was one point i thought i'd lost the whole thing. Which would have been rather upsetting. But as you can see now, i did not. So here it is.....

Enjoy !!

Pitcher & Piano and Broadway Shoots

Yesterday i filmed in the Pitcher & Piano and The Broadway. Got some good footage. There were a few problems, Like the lighting in both locations being so strong the boom pole shadow is visable a few times. Is this a problem do you think ? it doesn't look too good but then again, this is street magic and it is quite 'raw'. Am i right ? is anybody listening ? no ? didn't think so......



Other than that, pretty good day's work. I feel sorry for Tom and Ridgely watching the same tripe over the over..... Filming in the library for moody ident shots tomorrow and have decided to want some footage from outside the locations for the masking intros.

Three weeks left.

Shit laugh.

On the plus side, maybe not this take, but this is the trick i am going to open the DVD with.....

Rough Edit

So tonight i put together the first rough edit of illusions of grandeur and i hit twenty minutes easily. I watched each set (five in total) and jotted down each trick i done and scored myself with a percentage. A few got 100% and are without a doubt going to be on the final edit. This was 20 minutes without the majority of the interview (maybe people would rather me shut up and just carry on with the magic !) or the ident shots. So for the first time i'm really thinking about the length of the main piece. I can always stick extra footage i don't want to bin on the special features i suppose. But pace is going to be very important in the edit and i'm just wondering if i should just edit the footage in the loose order i do them live.

If i could have two more nights like The Playhouse in The Malt Cross and Pitcher Piano i will be laughing......

Ident Shots

Also, Danny suggested using this place, Bromley House Library, for my ident shots. Which i think would work really well...... Don't know how it would look with the interview location but i could always film the interview again.

Playhouse. Success !

So with two trips to Muse and one to Broadway and no footage i was happy using in the final piece we hit the Playhouse last night. I was starting to panic that the film wasn't turning out how i'd pictured it but i'm ecstatic to say last night was a rip roaring success ! Brilliantly lit, great camera work, great people out enjoying themselves on a Saturday night. I think i got five strong 15 minute scenes from last night. Stills of which are below, the first two scenes can be tweeked in Apple Colour later on, and maybe take some of the harsh light from the three men scene but it looks good. Infact, it looks better than good. Roll on the rough edit......

The only problem is my barnet is out of control.......

Filming & DVD Sleeve....

So after the absolute madness that is renting equipment this week i had a minor set back which has put me back two days but i've got a camera ready and waiting for me tomorrow so i can film at the Broadway tomorrow lunch time. This means i've got the camera all weekend, so i'm gonna try and blitz out a lot of the magic footage. Anyway, after not being able to get my hands on a camera on wednesday it gave me a few days to knock these up. A few rough drafts for my DVD sleeve. I look like faaaar too moody on the front page but as Andy Love said this morning, it's not who you are it's what you're trying to say, and in the hit and miss world of magic you've got to pull this sort of nonsense. There are two ways to go when posing for magician photographs, wacky or moody. I am firmly in the moody camp and would rather sell my soul than look like this tit.........



So these are my moody sleeve drafts, with the working title "illusions of grandeur". If anyone even looks at this thing then let me know what you think.......

Click to make bigger......

Sleeve One :




Sleeve Two :



Sleeve Three :


Sleeve Four :

Today was a good day.....

Well, today was a good day. First i went to Broadway cinema about the possibility of filming in there one day this week. I spoke to the arts director who was more than happy to help and let me film and she also suggested screening in the Broadway when it's finished, which would be immense ! Thankyou very much Broadway......



Then i went down to the Playhouse and asked about using one of their stages, the woman on the stage door told me to put it in writing, so i went away and wrote a letter explaining my intentions, printed if off, went back down to find a new woman on the stage door reception who told me there would be no way because there are sets on the stage at all times and they're running until June sometime. Thankyou very much the first woman on reception !

That was a waste of an hour. You have no idea what it feels like to print out a letter, put it in an envelope, then ask someone to put it in the bin for you before it's even been opened ! It's great i can tell you that.....

But the trip wasn't completely wasted as i managed to lift my gloomy head to notice the Playhouse bar ! went in there and spoke to the manager who was, once again, more than happy to let me film. That's three locations confirmed with a possible fourth waiting in the wings.

I wish it was summer so i could just film people outside. But i don't think Derren Brown himself could get people to stand in this freezing cold and watch magic !!

Hopefully, i should have a real good understanding of what i'm working with by this time next week......

Apple Colour

This week we went out filming again but i have spent most of my time trying to tweek the footage..... It's really quite hard to get it looking really good. I've been in talks with the Broadway who might be letting me film in there some time next week. I really want to get all the filming done so i can step back and really look what i've got and start putting it together for the final cut. Might have an intense week next week and get a good percentage of it done.

Anyway, this is my progress so far on apple colour. The footage still looks a bit washed out and if the rest is done in HD this sort of footage could look really cheap. I don't think this is at an acceptable standard but this is the compressed version for youtube, the HD version does look a lot better. Also i've completely ballsed up the compression. If anyone knows how to use Apple Colour well any tips would be a god-send ! I'm still only in the very early stages of using it.....

Interview & Photoshop.....

I was looking at my itunes the other day and noticed this little mirrored album sleeve sort of thing so i spent an hour last night trying to copy it..... i duplicated the layer, flipped it horizontally, distored it slightly then dragged one of the corners down. Finally, i used the black to white gradient tool and dragged from the middle to the far corner..... I think it looks alright but i could probably improve it.



Now this on the other hand is more important. This is the interview for my client DVD. YES i am aware the microphone is in shot ! this was due to a) forgetting the pistol grip and b) a certain Oli N. no, thats' too obvious errr o. Nodwell, not noticing ! clown ! shouldn't be too hard to get rid off..... This is the last bit of the interview. Obviously not going to use this, just wanted to show people the location. The interview went quite well i thought. Tom asked me questions and then we done 15 minutes easily so i decided to do it again but this time i would know where i was going with my answers and cut out a lot of the nonsense i spoke the 1st time round. Although i didn't iron out all out it.....



i'm not so rude or arrogant in the real interview part.....

ps : i've just played about with some filters to try and get this footage looking better. I've added some soft edges to hide the microphone and i've also added the desaturate filter while playing around with the contrast and brightness...... Early doors yet but i think it looks so much better already....

Third Artifact......

With my previous artifacts I felt I have concentrated on the first part of my question and neglected the second part somewhat. How the relationship between reality and narrative effect the audience’s understanding of the art form, I feel I have gained some knowledge on the subject with my previous artifacts but I wanted to use this artifact to explore how important the value of narrativity is in the representation of reality.

I decided to write two short stories, both very different from one another. I would leave the stories by starting a sentence and leaving a …….. for the participator to complete. For example, the first story finishes with “straightens his tie and steps into…..” as the second story ends “David turns around and….” These prompt the participants to dive straight into the story instead of thinking of a whole new sentence to carry the narrative on with.


The first story is a dream-like narrative, which jumps from both first person story telling to third person story telling. Giving the participants free-reign to continue with the narrative in any way they saw fit. The first paragraph is from the third person, describing the location and sights whereas the second paragraph I jumped to the first person and described emotions, feels and a “reality check” as the character looks at the clock. Within the borderless world I was sure to put details of a house and a dead father, in order for there to be some connection with the character.
The second story is about a man in the toilets of a restaurant as he composes himself before asking his girlfriend to marry him. The narrative in very linear and is set in one location. I used a lot of inner-monologue and flash back-story telling. There is lots of speech in this narrative with conversations between the characters.

The results show that when offered a reality in which anything can take place, 80% of the participants chose to take the story back to reality by referencing details of the narrative from previous chapters and placing the character back in a familiar place (home/bed…etc…). With the second story 90% continued the narrative in the reality in which was set.

These results add even more fuel to the theory that the value of narrativity is important in the representation of reality. If we look back over the last three artifacts now, in a short summary :

1.) The participants arranged the film stills in the correct order and the results show they had a better understanding of the narrative the further from reality it was based. The realistic narratives scored poorly and the fantasy narratives scored the best.

So from these results i wanted to test if the understanding of narrative would continue in moving images. So i made the obvious progression to films......

2.) The films, Malcolm and Barabara, Downfall & eXistenZ, showed a steady increase in the understanding of the narrative as the representation of reality decreases. A fair understanding of the narrative was present throughout but eXistenZ scored the highest and the audience were keen on expanding on their answers and using much more imagination in the questionnaire.

So from these results i wanted to test the audience's imagination and see what representation of reality they would come up with themselves when given the brief story with hints of narrative.

3.) And as shown above the results were that 80% of the participants chose to pull the narrative back from a boarderless reality and 90% chose to continue with the linear narrative presented to them.

Location Sorted.....

After a week or two of trying to bag this i've just got off the phone with the Royal Centre who have agreed to let me film the interview section of the DVD in their dressing room. They're dressing rooms are nice and look like this......



minus the girls....

Messing around with Colour

This is my first attempt on apple colour. I'm not gonna call it 'color' on general principle. This is very early doors, all i did was play about with the shadows, mid-tones and highlights. It's not at an acceptable standard yet but hopefully if i get to grips with the FX panel i can change the contrast and grain and all sorts..... i need to learn it very quickly though.

Motion & Colour

This week i've been trying to get my head around motion and colour.....

i wish i lived in the matrix where i could just ask for the knowledge of something and have it five seconds later.......

pain in the arse !