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.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
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!
Sunday, February 03, 2008
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...
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.
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.
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)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)