Time Lapse Camera Setup

Last week me and Andy went down to Northampton to Unreal where the Lift is being built. With help from the guys at Unreal, we constructed a waterproof container to enclose a webcam connected to a laptop inside a container. We got the box from Maplins and drilled a hole in the top to feed through the USB cable. This was further waterproofed using a gland. We then coated this area with liquid rubber and silicone spray.



Me drying the liquid rubber with a hot air gun.



The camera stuck in place with gaffer.



Mounting the camera on top of the container. This was the trickiest part as we had to shout through the container to someone positioning the camera. It was mounted on a metal base and a hole was drilled in the side of the container for the USB cable to feed through to the laptop.



The laptop in the container.



The finished product!



The camera is now in place until the end of May when we will go back to Northampton to take it down. Fingers crossed, we should have a beautiful time lapse of the Lift being built!!! We set the software to capture an image every two minutes which should get us about seven minutes of footage which we can speed up as appropriate.

True Stories: Billy The Kid

Whilst I am on a roll posting about other practitioners, I thought I would mention a documentary that I watched last week called "True Stories: Billy The Kid".

It is about a 15 year old boy from Maine in the US who has behavioral difficulties. The documentary was unlike anything I have seen before. Billy (the kid) basically went about his day to day life whilst a crew followed him using what seemed to be mini-dv cameras (or at least it had that feel). It almost felt that you were watching raw unedited footage, which made the documentary seem very true.

Whilst watching you are constantly looking at Billy frowning, and in a way you feel bad for doing it as you are doing what everyone else in the film is doing, thinking he is just some weird kid. A major story in the film was when Billy meets a blind girl who works in a local diner. They get on, well and she becomes his girlfriend. Later, she ends the relationship which sends Billy off the rails. Apparently, he was threatening to kill himself over it. Whilst watching the film, you are always waiting for something to happen that will just flip Billy out. Perhaps this is because of the intense look that he constantly has on his face (maybe the reason why the blind girl got on so well with him, as she didn't judge him on the way he looked).

All in all I would definitely recommend watching this film. The very rough style of it really compliments the intensity of Billy, and makes you feel like the film is really really true to life. However, strangely, to watch it you would think it was made by a couple of students on a tiny budget, but when you watch the extensive credits at the end you see that it obviously had a lot of funding and a lot of people working on the project, which makes me think that this "raw footage/unedited" look that they were going for was artificial, which undermines the very premise of choosing this style for the film in the first place.

You can watch it online here.

One Hour Photo

Last night, I watched the movie "One Hour Photo" on Channel Four. I have wanted to watch this film for quite a while, as I am a fan of Mark Romanek's work with music videos (most notably with Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and also the infamous apple iTunes and iPod commercials) . Romanek wrote and directed One Hour Photo, so I was expecting to really enjoy the film, which I did.

I thought that Robin Williams gave a brilliant performance portraying the disturbed photo lab assistant. Combined with Romanek's direction, you could not help but feel for the main character, Sy, whilst at the same time cringing with disgust at the things he was doing.

I really liked the clinical feel of the supermarket achieved with blue lighting and a super-modern, super-minimal set (almost reminiscent of the Scream video that he directed years ago). This setting created a strange aura around Sy, adding to the suspense of his obsession with the family that brings their photo's to him.

There is always a risk of creating a character that is so strange that the audience don't connect or recognise with him. I feel that Romanek avoided this, for this reason, the character of Sy reminded me of Robert De Nero in Taxi Driver. He wasn't a monster, he was human. I felt that the conversations that Sy had with the kid in the film helped to achieve this. You are unsure of whether he is a threat, but somehow you know that he would never hurt the child.

The only thing that I wasn't happy with was the ambiguous ending with Sy in a photograph with the family. To me, this was in his imagination, however some may interpret this differently thinking that the family thanked him for saving them and pointing out their problems. Didn't like that. Also didn't like the fact that we never know what happens to Sy. Does he go to jail? Does he continue to stalk this family? Does he now realise that there is no such thing as the perfect family and has seen the error of his ways?

All in all this was the film that I expected it to be, but for me the ending let it down a little (not enough to put me off recommending it though!|)

Tired...

Well, it's 11.44pm, and I am finally in bed relaxing at the end of our final two day shoot. As you can probably see by the video, I am very tired, so please excuse any typos!

Me and Andy set off at 8am yesterday and went straight from Kings Cross to Shoreditch to meet Michael Pyner, a major funder of the Lift. As he was used to being interviewed, he was great. We got plenty of footage in a fraction of the time it normally takes as he was straight to the point. So a good start to the day. Next, we went over to Chiswick to meet Meena Ramen at the British Standards building where she works. She heard about the project through her friend Erica, who is participation manager at Lift and decided that it was a great project and that she was going to donate to it! She also gave a good interview, and it was interesting to get the point of view of an outsider that felt so strongly about the project that they decided to donate to it. In the evening, we went along to the building developers group meeting at the discover centre in Stratford. This is where members of the community are able to contribute and discuss the structure, ponder what it will be like and collaborate with Lift and the architects in order to form new ideas on how to improve the building. This was the final meeting, and Geoff the architect from the AOC presented the final design of the Lift to the community.

It was amazing. For the first time we saw a great representation of what the structure will look like, and this just confirmed what I thought... it is going to be one hell of a place!!!

This morning, we had a safety briefing from the London transport people about filming on the overground. This is so that we could film the journey to Stratford through the window of an overground train. As soon as we tried to film however, it began to rain! So, we decided to give it half an hour and hope that it would clear up. Luckily it did, and we managed to get the shot which should look great, possibly as an opening to the film.

In the afternoon we headed to the New Vic sixth form college to interview April Francis, who we are following throughout this process. Whilst we were there we interviewed Sid and Dawn, who were interviewing for young people to help run the Lift. They will train people up enabling young people to operate the Lift and run it effectively. The people who are trained up will gain technical theatre experience and get a certificate like a qualification saying that they have done it.

After this, we had time for a break so we headed up to the Theatre Royal for some Caribbean food, and it was very nice.

This evening, we went to the discover centre again to interview the kids from the youth forum. These are children that Lift have consulted throughout the project, so they have had a hand in creating the Lift in their own way. We got some brilliant answers from the kids and some great shots of the discover centre to put into the film too.

So, thats it for now. Next week we will start editing and possibly (if all goes well) go down to Northampton to set up a time lapse camera at the site where they are building the Lift.

Will keep you updated...

Exhibition Promo Stuff

Following our exhibition meeting last week I thought I would post an update. I ordered 400 badges, I would put a photo on here but it is difficult to get a decent picture of them as they are quite dark. I thought I had messed up and was about to come clean in the meeting when Andy said "they are brilliant". The fact that they are dark makes you get closer to it to see what it is all about. Never thought about it that way.

I also made, with thanks to Imogen Hopkins of photography (and IKEA), a lovely most wanted projector light. And may I say, it looks pretty... pretty... pretty good!



Need to see if they have any more now. Ideally would like another 2 or 3.

Fingers crossed.

The Beginning of the Edit

All of the footage so far from the Lift shoots are captured! I have tried to start throwing some ideas that I have had into action, but it's sort of sporadic random busts of sections rather than a structure for the whole piece. I am still unsure how to start it. I have a time lapse of Stratford Station that might be an impressive start. Maybe when Andy has put some sound onto it it will inspire me. Whilst we were in London, he recorded our journey on the tube from Stratford back to the Lift office.

I have also cut together little pieces of the interview and vox pops subjects, made them black and white, slowed them down and faded them in and out from black. This seems to work nicely although needs some tweaking. I think that this will work nicely towards the end of the piece to go towards showing the enormity of the project and how the people involved are reflecting on the finished structure. I got this idea from (of all things) a music video. "Snow" by Red Hot Chili Peppers

You see, I have the ending in my head but it just needs a little more thought!

The music that Andy has written has also inspired me. When the synth (I guess?) hits in repeatedly, I was thinking about again fading in and out from black in order to create almost a crescendo mirroring the final struggle to get the Lift built. Then at the end, there it is in situ.

Thought I would blog this so that I remember it all.

Bye for now.

Lift Video Blog: Hotel Editing

Here is a video blog made by me and Andy today in London reporting on our progress. We will be uploading video blogs on a regular basis from now on as reading loads of text on a blog is boring. We have also given our blog addresses to the Lift team so that they can check out our work and comment on it easily.

Anyway... opposite our hotel room are some offices with people still working (10.40pm). Unlucky! Looks like boring work too, paperwork stacked high... makes our capturing and editing look like great fun!

Actor Problems

Well, just as I had posted that things were moving along with my PRP/GroupFilm project , I got an email back from the actress that said she was interested in being involved. Turns out she misunderstood the project.

-----

Hello again,
I think I understand you wrong before.I didin't know that you don't work with an actor face to face ,as just though internet.I don't think I wanna be involved because one of the things I love about acting is working with people directy.Sorry.
Hope my feedback will e helpful in future.
Thanks
Joanna

-----

Brilliant. Back to square one. Really wanted to make this without changing the rules, but now my only option seems to be physically getting an actress "in the real world". Although this seems like I have failed, I have proven that one of the great things about film making is the interaction between crew and the actors involved. It is this interaction that makes people like directing or acting for film. Introducing this dogma like rule of using technology throughout takes away from these interactions, and makes trusting relationships harder to form.

Rubbish.

PRP Updates

After spending the last god knows how long trying to sort out my client project, I finally have some progress on the PRP front.

Firstly, I got an email back from the guy who created 'A Swarm Of Angels' which is a similar project to mine without all the restrictions. I interviewed him by email and he sent the answers to my questions back. This will form part of my third artifact.

I have also had an email back from one of the actresses who originally applied via starnow. I have sent her more details of the project and also told her to have a look at the discussion forum so that she can get a better idea of what we are going to achieve. Hopefully she will get back to me soon and agree to act out a scene for me. Still need to work out how to direct her though using the community's input. Something to think about I suppose.

For the fourth artifact, I have today used some screen capture software to record an online chat conversation between the two characters in the film. David Sexton helped me out in playing the other character, Chris. I had to change my MSN name to Sarah, my font to pink and my picture to a flower. I am sure that people on my buddy list were wondering what the hell was going on, but we got it done anyway! I am a bit concerned that this section is too long. It took about 8 minutes for the chat to take place. I may see what this looks like sped up to double or triple speed. I am also going to come up with a way of the community to evaluate this footage, probably on the discussion forum in the form of a questionnaire or something.

Vox Pop Samples

Here are the vox pop samples that me and Andy shot the other day. As you can see we got a variety of answers.

Been in touch with Lift today, no word on the specific schedule yet. They did however say that we will be starting next week. I really hope we do, otherwise there will be big, big time problems!

Also, if anyone has any good remedies for compressing HDV in FCP down to a youtube compatible format please let me know. It has been driving me crazy over the past two days. It either stretches the video and it looks rubbish or it ends up pixellated like the above video. Annoying.

Long, Long Day!!!

Today has been a long one! We started filming at around 10am with and interview with Roma Patel for the Lift project. Whilst filming, all day I have been inspired by the Channel 4 idents in which their talent are interviewed about random and personal things. I have used this style in the way that I have framed shots today, high angles and with the subject standing up. I think this seems to create a less formal atmosphere allowing the viewer to connect with the interviewee. This was one thing that was discussed with Lift in our meeting last Friday. Someone mentioned the Channel 4 idents, and had the idea of asking questions to the average Joe on the street that do not directly relate to the project. So, today me and Andy spent the afternoon doing vox pops on the market square. We asked two questions, "Where would you have your perfect conversation?" and "What type of event could bring a community together?". We had mixed results to say the least!!! Some answers were great, and really hit onto what Lift is all about, however I think in some cases... let's just say we asked the wrong people.

If that wasn't enough for one day, I went on to shoot David Sexton performing some ident shots for his upcoming DVD, illusions of grandeur! We went to a beautiful members only library which I never even knew existed. Apart from it taking about twenty minutes for him to throw a card at the camera lens from a spiral staircase everything went well. To catch up on the progress of this project that I have been involved with check out davidsexton55.blogspot.com

So, I finally got home at 7.30pm tonight and began capturing footage. I have managed to cut out the bits of the vox pops that I think will work in the project, and have identified what we need to ask next time to make it better.

Bed time now.

Lift Meeting

Today me and Andy spent the day in London for a two hour meeting with Lift. The meeting went very well and I feel that we will work well with them. We sent down an initial pitch to the director who read through it and asked us further questions at the meeting. We soon began bouncing ideas and coming up with new ones in the process. We now both feel that we have a good idea of the direction that we would like the film to go in. I had the idea of presenting personal emotions and feelings towards the project rather than just relaying facts to the viewer. The benefit of this should be a more compelling film that the viewer will be able to connect with rather than just watch in situ. Inspiration for this came from the PDP method that the BBC use in which the filmmaker immerses themselves more in the film and has an actual relationship with the subjects. I hope to use this to allow the emotions of the individual people involved with the project tell the story.

Now, after the meeting, we have to write an invitation for possible interviewees. This will be sent to Lift they will invite the people that we discussed with them and come up with a schedule for us. So we should be starting to shoot in London very soon!

The enormity of this project has really hit me and Andy, and we are excited to be a part of such a massive event.

Second Artifact: Online Auditions

For my second artifact, I am holding online auditions for the part of the main character in the short film written by the online community that I have set up. I advertised on starnow.com and so far have five applicants. Earlier, I sent them an email explaining more about the project and gave them instructions on how the casting procedure will work. I attached the audition scene to the email so that they can get straight to work on it. I chose the first scene where we are introduced to Sarah as the audition scene, as I thought it would be a good guide as to how the actresses look on camera and how well they suit the role. Here is a copy of the email.

_________

Hello,

Thank you for applying for an audition for the GroupFilm project. I am glad that you would like to be a part of this exciting project. As I wrote in the advertisement, the idea of the project is to create a short film that is written and directed by members of an online community. The one rule of the project is that the community never meet the actors in the film face to face. All production will take place with webcams and mobile video phones.

As you have applied for this position, I will assume that you have both a webcam and a mobile phone capable of taking video. This is essential for the project to work.

The next step is for the online community to decide upon the suitability of the actress for the main character, Sarah. Sarah is a 26 year old who has taken to chatting to people on the internet. Recently, she has been talking to a character called Chris online. She seems to enjoy talking to him, until he gets a little weird. It turns out that Chris is actually stalking Sarah, and turns up in the last scene of the film. Scary!

For the online community to decide upon an actress to play the character of Sarah, we are holding online auditions. The script attached to this email is the audition scene, and is the first time that Sarah decides to let Chris see her on webcam. For the audition, we need you to act out the scene to webcam, and then send us the video. The online community will then vote and decide which actor is most suitable for the role. We will then cast that actress. The script itself has some sound effects (such as a kettle boiling) and voiceover in. Please do not worry about these. On the voiceover sections, just allow enough time for the voiceover to be inserted afterwards. Same with the telephone conversation, just leave enough of a gap to allow the voice of the other character to be added in afterwards.

As for sending the video in, you have a couple of options. You can use the site http://www.megaupload.com which is a free upload service. Just upload the file, making sure that you put my email address olivertom@gmail.com in the recipient's email field. Or, if you have a youtube account, just upload it onto there and send the link to me via email, again, to this address.

I am setting the deadline for audition videos as Tuesday 12th at midday GMT, so please make sure you submit your video before this time ie. asap!!!

Again, thank you for applying, and we look forward to seeing your audition video,

Tom Oliver

GroupFilm creator.

MarsEdit

Got a new program called MarsEdit. It is (hopefully) letting me post to my blog without going onto the blogger site and logging in... seems pretty sweet! If you can see this text, it has worked!

LIFT Updates

Last week I presented our proposal for the LIFT festival documentary in the form of a PDF and a short visual animation to Jools. I still need to do a theoretical budget which will be done for Tuesday. We will be presenting the proposal, and hopefully other material to Anne Howard, the LIFT director on February 22nd. We will also be interviewing her on this date, as well as shooting a conference she is attending regarding the use of WiFi and it's uses to artists.

This will be a separate project that we will present to them, but we will also use the footage in the LIFT documentary. I hope to be able to start throwing some animation work together this week in an attempt to experiment with style for the film.

As for schedule, our NTU deadline is in April, however the LIFT is not open until June. We want to continue with the project after the deadline and see it through to the end, and hopefully we will have time to put it in the cinema for the exhibition (well, I am on the cinema team so it WILL go in!).

PRP Update: Casting Begins!

For my research via practice part of my PRP module, I have created and gathered an online community who have collaborated to write a script for a short film. None of the members of the community will ever meet the actors hired for the project, and production will take place over webcam and with mobile phone videos.

I have now placed an ad on StarNow to find an actress for the film. Auditions will take place online with the actor performing to webcam and uploading the footage for the community to judge and decide on suitability for the role.

This artifact is pretty much make or brake. If I do not find an actress willing to participate within the next week and a half, it will be very difficult to continue with the project.

Wish me look...

Exhibition Ident

On Friday, the Ident team had a meeting along with with Andy Love to discuss ideas for the branding and front end of the show. Rebecca Olesky and David Merson in particularly had some great ideas and designs. Rebecca's was based around "Most Wanted" playing cards, which was a cool idea especially when it comes to marketing the exhibition. David's designs were clean and simple logos with sans serif typefaces which would look very, very nice in the brochure and online.

Todd Gledhill also had some nice designs which would work particually well on posters and fliers promoting events to raise funds for the show. He has posted these on his blog.

The recurring theme of a fingerprint icon was something that came up in the meeting. We thought that a fingerprint would look very cool as a matte print on a gloss cover of the brochure.

We are meeting with the print and web teams on Tuesday to brief them on the ident. So things are going pretty... pretty... pretty...pretty good on the exhibition front.

David Sexton's Client Shoot

On Thursday night, I went to Muse Bar to film David Sexton perform some of his marvelous magic to drunken bar customers. My role was both camera operator and sound recordist, me and Oli Nodwell alternated roles throughout the night.

For the first time we used a Sennheiser clip radio mic which was then hooked up to a Marantz flash audio recorder. The result was pretty good considering the amount of background music and general drunken chatting. The one thing that we did find with the audio was that we clipped the mic on david too high near to his voice box. When we film next time we will get better results if it is placed further down on his shirt pocket.

Camera wise, this was a bit of an experiment too. The bar was quite dark, so we opened up the iris to 1.6. This was still not bright enough, so we increased the shutter speed a little. It was still too dark, so we wacked up the gain on the camera. The result was a very, very grainy video. It might be nice to use this if that is the aesthetic you are going for (weird/grungy) but I think we were all thinking that it would look much better with nicely shot crystal clear HDV. For part of the filming we switched the gain off, thinking that we could do something about it in post. Low and behold, we were right!!! Apple Color is absolutely amazing. It is SO powerful that we could make the footage look like there was a bright light on in the bar. The only real problem is that it is difficult for the camera operator to see what he is shooting!

David has also posted some footage that we shot last week in the TV studio experimenting with cards to create little idents and transitions for his project. Have a look on his blog.

Oh yeah, thank you Steve Jobs.

Apple Motion and Color

I have spent most of today working through "Motion: Revolutionary Motion Graphics" by Damian Allen. If anyone wants to learn Motion I would definitely recommend this book. There is a DVD that comes with it with project files that are ready for you to learn from. The problem is, I now have a newer version of Motion and it now does 3D!!! Will need to have a search online for some different tutorials.

Anyway, I managed to get through 195 pages today, about a third of the book. I am determined to finish it all within the next few days so that I can start using it properly to create some animations for the LIFT project. Once I have completed the Motion book, I will then go on to learning Color more thoroughly. I am impressed with the power of Color just from playing around with it so I think it will be very useful to know it inside out.

If you want the book, it is only $13 (£7ish) used on amazon...

or the new version (which I don't have) for Motion 3 ($31 used)

Back after Christmas

First day back tomorrow, embarking on the most important six months of my life so far! Looking forward to working with Roma and Andy on the project for LIFT in London. This will be my live client project. The brief is to create a documentary on how the London International Festival of Theatre are creating a movable "parliament" building. The documentary will be shown within the festival as it moves around the world, possibly for up to fifteen years! We are about to begin pre-production, and I will be meeting with Andy this week to discuss how we can best tell the story of the LIFT and style in which we will create the documentary. I am excited about working externally to the university, as it will give me much needed experience of working for a real client.

As for PRP, I feel that I am behind with my preparation work which should have been completed by now. I need to spend this week catching up on this so that I have a diverse online community that can create a strong film. I have created a discussion board and I am half way into creating a wiki. Things are going pretty slow on this front as I have a broken finger so I can only type with my left hand (It has taken me about ten minutes to type up to here!!!). I will have to work twice as hard to get my artifacts in on time.