Three down, one to go!

I've been doing quite well in this, if I do say so myself :

Photography assignment = 70%
10 second movie = 68%
IPTV presentaion = 71%

By my calculations, that puts me on 54% for the unit, which means that I need 80% to get a first. Oh well, it's not the end of the world. 80% is unlikely, but I can still aim for it. The flipside is that I have actually already passed, and can take this one easy if I so desire. (I'm not gonna, though!)

The 4th and final assignment piece is to create a flash interface for a website, based on either a moive or a game. We need to show understanding of the concept of tweening, use some action scripting, and include a pre-loader. The actual animation we are to produce is to be between 10 and 20 seconds.

That's not actually a lot. (What is John's obsession with shortness? 10 second movies, and now this? There is an obvious suggestion, but I won't go there...) But, I think I shouldn't really have too much of a problem with making something good. If anything, I am more likely to have to extend my storyline than I am to compress it.

I have decided to go with one of Capcom's extensive range of Street Fighter games. The main reason for this is that I think I can make something quite interesting with just basic animation. The idea I have is of close-ups of certain characters in mid-fight stances, and some usage of anime style 'speed lines' as background. I can then also fade in M. Bison over the top, to suggest that he is the bad guy. Putting 20 seconds of this together should be a doddle.

There is absolutely ZERO shortage of animated gifs available on the web, should I choose to go down that route. Or, if I perhaps want some more detailed artwork, then I can easily find some of that, too. I even know a couple of people who can draw the stuff for me, if needs be. That's the good thing about using one of the most popular series of games of all time. Also, the fact that I have been playing the games myself since they came out in 1990 helps, as I know them inside-out.

So, the first thing I should do, I suppose, is to get my story from out of my head, and onto some paper/a notepad. Then, make the animation. The pre-loader and interactive part can be done afterwards. In fact, it's kinda pointless doing the pre-loader until there is something to pre-load!

Of success, and failure.

Tested all my files. Even the high quality one streams from the CD. YAY!

Went to hand in my assignment, but the facility office closes at 12 on Wednesdays. BOO!

So, I guess I hand the assignment in on hand-in day AGAIN. One of these days, I WILL manage to do it early.

Movie burnage.

My movie is complete! And, by complete, I mean burnt to CD more times than I could possibly need to. See, I wanted to ensure that my movie would play, so I ended up choosing 5 different export settings for the version to be played from CD. These are three different WMV standards, one Real Media standard, and an MPEG1 VCD standard. All stream faultlessly on my PC, and I can therefore only assume that at least one of them will work in the Games Lab and/or Architecture building theatre.

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome here was in choosing what to export as, as Premiere Pro has more WMV presets than you can shake a stick at! I thought about just choosing one and praying, but decided that discretion was the better part of valour in this instance, and instead opted for overkill. From a tiny version at 15 frames per second, to a smooth and large version that worked perfectly here, I think my samples are representative of 5 stages of quality. I plan to test all 5 in the Games lab tomorrow, and will make my selection as to which one I will attempt to play during the presentation based on the quality I perceive on the Games lab screen.

As for the high quality version, I have actually included 2 of these. The first is the Quick Time .mov file that I planned to submit to http://www.tensec.com The reason I didn't is that I found out that they only accept submissions on CD, that have been posted to them.

... What?

This is a website, that doesn't allow you to upload to them. Wow, I can't recall the last time I ever saw that. Odd, to say the least.

The second version of my movie is a Windows DV AVI, in full-screen PAL. With all requirements fulfilled, I can now reflect on the finished movie.

From an artistic standpoint, I am extremely happy with what I have accomplished. The look, the feel, the mood ... they are all exactly what I aimed for. The fade effect worked even better than I had pictured in my mind, and I was lucky to find a song that matched so well. I would have liked to have had a little more time to film, as in the end it was quite rushed, and I had to change the last scene to fit in with the new time constraint. Originally, I had wanted to take him to a park, and film him diving to save a football that had been kicked towards a goal. Sadly, the weather whilst I was in Winsford did NOT co-operate, and I had to improvise the shot of him running into my auntie's house.

I would also have liked longer to play with. 10 seconds is extremely limiting, and I think that I could explore this theme better with more time. Perhaps I will make another version, with more scenes. Or, something with a different actor, and some kind of shock at the end. There are possibilites to play, and if I find the time ... well, who knows?

Technically, I can not complain at all. As the movie is called 'Memories', I am glad that it is clear that it was all shot on a home camera instead of something more professional. The whole point is that it is what I am remembering, and slightly grainy home footage conveys this point so much better than some high-def polished wonder could ever hope to. If there is one fault, it is that the song ends ever so slightly too soon. This was also part of the plan, with the sudden lack of sound forcing even more focus into the 'I MISS YOU' shot, but I think I could possibly have allowed a fraction of a second longer. Still, what I have works very well, in my opinion. (An opinion that is shared by the few people I have shared my movie with, as it happens.)

I also decided against titles and credits in the end, as I feel they would diminish from the impact. To have "A film by Lee Weedall" plastered onto it would just look wrong, and I think that by not having names to put to the movie, people viewing it will draw their own conclusions. Everyone who has seen it knows that Josh is my son, so they all see the film as meaning one thing, but perhaps people who don't know might wonder what happens. Remember, the last shot is of a child running onto a road, without looking both ways first.

I did done dood it!

This screenshot shows my three sections of footage, all imported into their appropriate bins, along with the still image for the message at the end of the movie.



At this point, I have no title or credits, because I am more concerned with getting exactly 10 seconds of footage. Also, I have yet to add the audio track. For the purposes of this movie, I have unlinked the audio from the video clips. This is simply because there was a baby crying in the background when the sofa shot was filmed. Also, the music will be played along with the track, so there is little point in keeping any of the background noise.

A close look at the timeline will reveal little gaps between the individual scenes. This is intentional, in order to avoid a too sudden jump-cut. I wanted each of the scenes to feel like a seperate instance, and this is the best way I can think of to ensure that the audience feels that.



My next stage is to choose the 10 seconds worth of music from the song I chose. In order to do this, I open the song in Adobe Audition, and simply cut out the exact portion that I think best represents the mood I was aiming for. I select a bit which has the phrase "If I can dream" spoken over a slow beat, with a haunting sounding baseline, and export just that part of the track as it's own mp3 file. I can then import that track into Premiere, and store it in the Audio bin. From there, I can simply repeat what I have already done with the video, and drag it down into the timeline.



Finally, I need to export the entire movie at least twice. Once in a high quality format to burn to DVD, and once in a lower quality format that will run directly from a CD. I choose also to export it in Quicktime format, for the purposes of the Tensec site.

Now all that remains is to test the lower quality file, and to see if it does actually play direct from the CD. Whilst I am not worried, I shall test this in the games lab on Monday, but I can now have a nice relaxing weekend.

Creative Commons

I originally planned to compose my own music for the movie, but I hit a snag. The snag is that I am not really a particularly muscial person. The tune I wrote years ago just didn't feel right, so I suddenly found myself in a bit of a pickle. Since it is my plan to upload my finished piece to the the Ten Second Film Festival, I need something that I can use. Which means, nothing commercially available.

Or does it?

Suddenly, I remembered something quite important. CREATIVE COMMONS! This wonderful organisation basically allows people to share anything that has this license attached. Well, not everything, but an awful lot of it. (I first heard about this a couple of years ago, and made the decision at the time that everything I create would be available under such a license.) All you have to do in most cases is credit the creator, and they are happy for you to share, use, edit, sample ... pretty much anything. So, that solves that!

After scouring the various websites, I have settled on the track 'Discreet Homecoming' by _ghost. It has almost exactly the feel I wanted to convey. All I need to do now is to find the perfect 10 second section to use alongside my finished edit.

The After Effects bit!

I decided to do something a little different for this post. I recorded the screen as I edited the layers in After Effects, and uploaded it to Youtube.



I am also providing a link for a much clearer version of the file, since I doubt anyone can read the text in that one! Find it here!

The long, slow process...

The footage I took was for three distinct 'scenes'. The storyline is that I am remembering my son, who now lives on the other side of the country to me. In scene 1, I look at the stairs, and see him walk down them. In scene 2, I see him playing games on the sofa. And, in scene 3, I see him running towards my auntie's house. The catch is that I am just imagining this, and in each scene he fades out of existence. The fade effect will be achieved in After Effects. Before I can do that, I have to actually get the clips required for the scenes.

My footage was all shot on the one tape, and therefore I have to lift the sequences I want from it. For this, I will make heavy use of Premiere's Monitor window.



The tool that will be of the most use to me is the tool to set In and Out points.

The Monitor window has 2 screens. The left screen is the unedited video, ann the right screen is a kind of preview. If I run video in the left window, I can click the 'Set In Point' tool, or just press I, and that will mark the start of the footage I want. I can then click 'Set Out Point', or just press O, to mark the end. I need to do that several times, as I need a minimum of 6 pieces of footage for my story.



Scene 1 is of Josh walking downstairs, so I start with that one. Now, this was actually the second scene I shot, so I need to move about a third of the way through the footage. This is a simple matter of moving the pointer on the left window timeline to the appropriate position.



I choose about 4 seconds of the empty stairs, and move them down into the timeline. This allows me to export this as a movie. My reason for this is so I can then play about with it in After Effects.



I then have to repeat the above process with footage of Josh walking down the stairs, along with the other footage for all three of my scenes. So, I take some empty sofa footage, and some footage of Josh on the sofa. And then I cut out bits from outside, both with and without Josh in them. All of these are exported, so that I can open them up in After Effects, for the spooky 'fade'.

First bit of editing!

So, having transferred my footage, it is time to put it together. This requires opening Adobe Premiere, as I have decided to use this instead of Avid. The main reason for this is that Adobe stuff all works together really well, so I will be able to utilise Photoshop and After Effects alongside Premiere whilst making my movie, and will also be able to use Audition for the sounds. A rather nice package, methinks! (Also, if I were to use AVID, I would pretty much be forced to do all my editing on campus. This is far from ideal. I enjoy Half Life 2 as much as the next man, but I don't need to be hearing people shooting each other in it whilst I am trying to work. Also, I would most likely be distracted enough to join them, and do little to no actual work whilst I was there!)

So, the first choice Premiere throws at me is what format I will be working in. Well, that's fairly obvious. We live in a country that uses PAL, so it is pointless to choose NTSC. PAL, which stands for Phase Alternating Line, is a broadcast standard that updates the screen 50 times a second, giving an output of 25 frames, whereas the National Television Systems Committee standard refreshes 60 times a second, giving an output of 30 frames. This may sound like NTSC is the superior standard, but the extra updates come at the loss of 100 lines of pixels. PAL has 625, NTSC has 525. This means that PAL has the edge when it comes to providing detail. Also, since the 10 second film festival site wants submissions to be at 25 frames per second, it makes sense to start out with this!

I chose PAL, naturally :



The next thing to do is to import the video I have captured :



(Sadly, it did not occur to me to screenshot that process, as I did it on campus at University.)

At this point, because I am the kind of guy who likes to keep on top of things, I will make my 'bins'. This is what most video-editing software calls the folders where you store the unedited clips. I shall make three. One for the video, one for the audio, and one for still images. To do this, I simply click on the folder icon at the bottom of the project window, and make my new bin :





Finally, I place Untitled Clip 01.avi into the Video bin, and then double-click on it to place it in the monitor, ready to edit :



With this, all preliminary work is complete, and it is time to start chopping stuff up to put into my movie!

The countdown begins ...

With just over a week to go until we have to hand this 10 second movie in, I guess it is time I started to actually work at it!

I filmed the footage when I went to Winsford to visit my son. Sticking with the idea of fading an image in or out of the frame, I filmed him sat on the sofa playing my DS, walking down the stairs, and running into my auntie's house. Also, I filmed each background without him on it.

There was a slight problem when it came to retrieving the footage, though. Our camera uses USB, not firewire, and seemingly the USB port on the camera itself is busted. So, I had to go to University and book one of the Uni cameras in order to get the footage off the tape! Then, I copied it to my flash drive, and carried it home. Where I shall edit it in Premiere, and then use After Effects for the fade trick.

So far, so ... not quite perfect, but still pretty good.