Sigh. the last assignment was a complete and utter fail, even though i had told myself at the start that it wouldnt be, because the first one wasnt so hot either. this time will be different.
Phil spoke for a while about the brief explaining its important qualities. He then showed the group a series of highly interesting photographic fine art work, where parts of the actions implied in the picture were not fully in view as if the picture had be taken using the viewfinder on a camera. I found this honestly quite interesting in terms of the fact that is was not a photograph even though it seemed to be. he also showed us images where the design of the set, and the lighting was all manufactured around the position of the camera to give a final powerful image that suggests so many things but leaves us only guessing in the end.
Phil stated the best thing that we could produce in 5 weeks time is to have an image that is Abiguous, meaning as he puts it “its this, but its also this, but its also none of them”
very vague statement indeed, I have writen a list of things to look up and find more meaning, they are written below.
——————————————————————————–
Dictionary Terms
Online Webminister Dictionary
– Ambiguous –
My input
Ambiguity is the term that means when somthing is not easily identifyable as a specific type of somthing, Humans are ambigious at the early weeks of birth, without looking at genetalia it is very hard to distinguish between male and female in the early stages of life.)
——————————————————————————–
– Uncanny –
1 a: seeming to have a supernatural character or origin : eerie , mysterious
b: being beyond what is normal or expected : suggesting superhuman or supernatural powers <an uncanny sense of direction>
My input
things that people find uncanny can often only be found uncanny to the individual person, as our lives progress we learn and see things differently, our fears and sense of the world and how we percieve it are all different, so it is very difficult to grasp uncanny for a lot of people, without knowing everything about the people watching.
Uncanny is similar to strange and creepy but is none of the two.
——————————————————————————–
– Mese-en-scene –
mise en scene is the way things appear in a certain way deliberatley to convey a certain point of view or perspective.
My Mise-en-scene is all about constructing the room and its equipment to help push my viewer to believe that the inhabitant of the room has trouble with the outside world.
——————————————————————————–
– tableau vivant –
——————————————————————————–
– Agoraphobia –
1. abnormal fear of being helpless in an embarrassing or unescapable situation that is characterized especially by the avoidance of open or public places
Extention on Agrophobia
I have a mild fear of wide open spaces, although im not sure if the feeling is fear, or unfomfort. This is mainly because I have lived in big large citys my whole life, I have become accustom the bustle of people on trams, trains, planes, buses etc. I wish to take this slight uncomfort I have and create as my final maya product a scene depicting a small picture where sombody with abhorant Agoraphobia resides.
I watched a very interesting video on the NHS website, about agoraphoba, and about other phobia’s in general,
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Agoraphobia/Pages/Introduction.aspx?url=Pages/What-is-it.aspx
it states that people can actuall be completely handicapped by there phobia whic i s the direction I really want to push my scene. Interestingly enough it also states that all phobias are cureable with almost the minimal amount of treatment, such as it mentions spider and snake phobia are cureable with roughly 3 hours of treatment, in this time it wont be fully cured but the phobia will have retreated a considerable amount.
cognitive behavioral therapy is used o help thoughs with agoraphobia rid them selves of there phobia, it takes longer than getting rid of other more physical phobia like the snake/spider phobia, but it is curable.
learning from the NHS website i leaned that there are two types of agoraphobia. There is Panic disorder agoraphobia, and Non-panic disorder agoraphobia.
Initial Sketch and Concept
For my final scene I was working with Agrophobia and uncanny in mind, so I tried to make my ideas form around the thoughts of strange and trapped
Ive had a few ideas in my head for my uncanny scene.
The first idea I had was a attempted reproduction of a genuine uncanny moment I experiacnced when walking back to the halls of residence. What happened was, when I was crossing the road near halls a the headlights of a car in the distance and a motorcycle quite close to be overlapped at just the right moment and to make the car in the distance appear to be horrifically and impossibly streched.
I have tried to redraw the scene but I got the perspective wrong, that image is below
I decided to go out and take a photo of the scene.
To actually be stood in the middle of the road for long enough for my camera to take the picture WITHOUT me getting ran over meant I had to get up at 5am on SATURDAY morning -_-, this wasnt nice, and its was very cold.
HAHA it actually took me 22 tries to take the picture below because I was shivering so much, also for some unknown reason it takes 5 seconds AFTER you press the capture button for my camera to actually take the image.
My second Idea was a indoor scene where the scene depicts a area a agrophobiac inhabits and his state of mind, there is a desk that has a PC monitor on it, and outside the window there is the sand dunes of a desert with half buried lamp posts at random intervals, which is where the uncannyness and tabluex vivant come into play, there is also a handplrint on the window and marks on the wall next to the window where the person has been looking out into the world as he see’s it which is vastly unforgiving and frightning.
Maya Scene
For my Maya Scene I have decided to do the scene from my second idea because i can relate a lot more to it helping figure out what I need.
I started off by making the window border and surrounding wall, I did this using a Polygon Plane object, and using the edge loop tool made a series of loops which eventually gave me the frame for the window, I used 2 verticle loops first then inside the verticle loops I did 2 horizontal loops. Once I had this square for the window frame I extruded the face backwards which left me with the image below.
Next i wanted the Table I made in my concept art, however this was a standard boring old 4-verticle-legs type of table
Movies Section
Rather than simply just sitting there staring at a screen for 2 hours, going away and never thinking about the film again. I decided due to recent events that I should write notes on the films I watch, it may seem obvious, but i always over look the obvious things.
1. The Birds – Alfred hitchcock
I had never seen this film before (not suprising as i dont really enjoy zoning out for hours watching films) I was immediatly impressed by the smoothness of the film as a whole. The Frame rate was much higher than I was expecting, it was actually sort of strange to see people moving so fluently on screen.
Miss Melany Daniels, the main female leading character, seemed to charm people with her eyes and beauty, she does appear to have a sort of “Blonde Bombshell” kind of appearance. She meets “the Dude” (whats his name) and what was strange is the first conversation in the film was about events that happened outside our knowledge, so we immediatley plunged into there world as we realise that this film doesnt seem to have a start point, it appears to be just like sombody turned on a Video camera in the middle of a normal day where event in the world take place just like any other day.
It is then that “the Dude” turns the charm round on Melany as he uses his quick wits to outmanuever melay in there conversation then leaves promptly making her want more, so she goes in her car to find where he lives along with the 2 love birds that “the Dude” was asking for in the shop.
she then proceeds into the small village of “thingymbob” to ask where “The Dude” lives, she discovers he lives in a house separate from the rest of the village. When she asks what his daughter was called she got the names “Alice, and Lois”. Melany was told to go up the hill and see the teacher if she wanted to double check the name for herself, so she did.
The school Teacher seemed to be a very mysterious character, her name is “__”. she seemed to be seething and there was a mixture of jelousy and dislike for Melany when she told the teacher that she was here to visit “the dude” and that she had a present for his daughter (the 2 love birds). the teachers also seemed to be a little relieved (isnt openly suggested) when Melany states she doesnt really know the Brenners, nor will she be staying long.
Also “The Dudes” mother also appeared to be seething over Mels arival, she later explains (as does the school teacher) why she acts the way she does towadrs her. This was because she didnt want “the Dude” to run off with Mel (or anyone else) and leave her all on her own. She also had a large hand in why the school teacher and “the dude”‘s relationship fell apart. This happened because (from what i can gather) the dude’s mother didnt like her, and so the dude just eventually lost interest.
Long Weekend
This film was actually very scary…. the awful wailing sound from that sea cow was horrible (shudders) also the way that sea cow got closer and further up the beach everyfew minutes was VERY unnerving, even tho it had been shot, then buried.
3D Pre Viz Section
This section is for another part of this unit which is doing a “Pre Viz” of an existing film scene or game cutscene. I am actually quite exited about this, it should be really good to do.
Pre-Viz is like the bare bones of a film, and is rapidly becoming one of the more important stages during film production
My Pre-Viz
the Film ive decided to do my pre viz from will be from Guy Richie’s “Snatch”
The scene that i am pre vizing is right at the end of the film, the very last fight of the film, between Horace “Goodnight” Anderson and Mickey the “jipsey bare knuckle boxing champion”.
starting from around the point where Goodnight anderson delivers a stiff cuppercut to Mickey’s chin and sends him flying in the air, and the cameras FPS increases and time seems to linger around for much longer than usual, leaving mickey hanging in the air for about 11 seconds before he hits the canvas.
The thing that is specifically being pre-Vized happens just after he hits the canvas, as sort of a metaphor for being knocked out he splashes into a dark void of water,
and begins to watch himself being beaten up by Goodnight above him in the real world, as he becomes slowly more unconscious he gets deeper in the water.
before eventually snapping out of this trance and writing off “Goodnights” jaw. My Pre-Viz animation will end here.
after speaking with Alan it was said that this scene however still acceptable, is very subtle in terms of animation, so perhaps not the best choice for a Pre Viz, it is recommended that a scene with much more in terms of grandeur and excitement/action would be a more suitable choice.
Choice 2
My second choice was going to be a short clip from the movie Transformers (what a surprise ey)
the scene I wanted to previz was the initial introduction of Blackout, the Pave Low ME-53 helicopter that transforms and destroys the US Qutar operations base. AKA – Blackout
Notes:
I found myself hiding from Maya for a long time, not sure why, becuase it is very hard to use? if this is the case then using it would only benefit me surely, I have to get rid of renegade.
Personal Achievement
I managed to finally bring myself to uninstall Command and Conquer Renegade, this was absolutely necessary as it seemed to have become more important than my university work, and it was making me confined to my room for unprecedented hours, it is highly addictive and i just couldn’t do any work while I had that option, if ever i hadnt done the work it was down to this game, it was my mental escape route to nowhere, to many this may seem like a obvious minor thing, but this was a critical achievement, everyone asked if I was insane… because that was the only game i played, but i played it into the 4am’s even with uni the next morning, even when a fail was right in-front of me i would still find myself on Renegade, Online game-play is too much fun, it had become a threat to my university work, and too my future. Like how many people would spend days on World of Warcraft that would be almost me on Renegade.
I feel I my realisation and removal of the game on the Friday of week 4 was a little too late to really help me out for this project and all the projects before this one, my failure to realise that it is destroying the enjoyable first year of my university career has cost me many a panic attack, but I have found myself with so much more time to do my work without the idea of going on that cursed game, its like ive gotten rid of the rock on my shoulders.
Already the amount of referal papers i have in my room is just stiupid. Regardless of what anybody says, I feel proud that I realised and managed to take action before somthing very regretable happens.
bring on the fourth project!
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
STEDpire's Studio75 