Storyboarding in 'The Incredibles'

In this clip the director Brad Bird and others are talking about the process of making/ coming up with the story, once the script is written or whilst its beeing written, there thinking about the storyboards. I like how they throw ideas at eachother, seeing if anything will work, becasue there starting from scratch so everything has to be thought up and the more ideas they come up with, the easer it is to choose a composition that works.
Also quite interesting (and scary) how Mark Andrews (story supervisor) talks about how they get a scene that stands alone really well, then they remember that no scene stands alone in a film, goes to show that they have to consider every scene whilst doing one scene to make sure everything fits into place nicely.

Lighting in 'The Incredibles'

I'm not too keen on lighting, i don't get it. But this clip from disc 2 of The Incredible's shows this person who worked on the lighting on the animated film, which is making my understand light a bit better and how it can make a scene look good.

Whats nice about this clip is that she shows us the scene with white light and the light they actually used, i can really see the difference.

A film using white light through out the whole film (no film dose) looks really crap, what lighting dose is make a scene look jolly, scary ect.

I like the way she showed us a sinister scene (where the main character has been captured) with the lighting which was used in the final film, then showed us the same scene with a more golden tint to the scene which made the scene look less sinister, which convinces my that lighting is quite important in film!

Sound in 'The Incredibles'

Quite interesting how the Foley people look at the designs of the objects which they have to make up noises for and think of what objects will be good at conveying that noise.
In this clip, they talk about the flying hover things which have blade like spinny things, they used knifes for the sound. they tried sharpening them to make a good sound then they enhanced it to make it work.

In the Foley exercise we did, are team had an unknown sound which we had to think of a noise for, we had no idea what to do for it.
The unknown sound was a chemical reaction in a test tube where the light in the reaction glows, so we thought of a light humming as it glowed. I brought in my harmonica which makes the same sound we were looking for and it worked well, so we used it in the final clip.

Act on CO2

This is a pretty cool advert from 'act on CO2', we think its a picture of a industrial facility with smoke coming out of it, but by the end of the advert we see its actually a car exhaust with the background being a lady's dress and a bush!
I got really confused at first and started to quess what it was, but whats nice about it is that you can get to totally different scenes be changing the angle of a camera and getting closer or further back from the subject.

Chiaroscuro Effect

Definition
'treatment of light and shade in drawings and paintings, an effect of contrasted light and shadows created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something'

Before this effect was 'discovered?' paintings looked very flat because lighting wasn't considered as much, this effect added depth to paintings.

Still don't fully understand how it works, i keep finding images and i don't know if its using the effect or not.


This image (Above) claims it uses the effect, it says the main light is on the girl whilst the background stays pretty dark. don't know if its a good example or not.

Studio Pictures

Bohemian Rhapsody
We tried to replicate the start of the video of Queen's bohemian rhapsody in the studio.

Looking at this image (above) we had to decide were the light was coming from, the shadows on Fredi Mercury face shows us that the light is coming from above, but we thought there might be a spotlight on each singer and we only had one so we had to make do.


Are first attempt (above) looked really good until we did the second attempt, the first just had the light shining on to the subjects. It was too light, and everyones face was bleached out. Editing the white in photoshop would be imposable as it will just stay white, so we had to change something to make it better.


This image (above) was the final shot, the light is much softer and not so bright, also the clothes are lost in the black background unlike the first attempt.
We put a defuser on the light to soften it, then changed the exposure on the camera to let less light through.
Could have done with being a bit lighter and having some smoke round them, but over all im pleased with the image.

Story boarding

Few notes from a book i've got which has a section on storyboards.

. All different aspects of making any film/animation like; sound, lighting, colour, story etc can't be considered alone which is why storyboard are so essential. which means storyboards make all the elements flow together by trial & error

. Rough guide lines to story boarding;
Film - 100 storyboards per minuet (more if the scene is complex
T.V - More than 100 because there shorter, have more action and scene changes

. Originated from the 1920's when artists would pin up gag ideas on their wall, this expanded into the job we see today which is called, gag man or storyboard artist

. Today the industry seems to do storyboards directaly on the computer through touch screen monitors and tablets (think initial storyboards are done with pencil and paper)

Lighting in Amateur Play Production

Went to see a Play in early November called 'Are Country Good', never really thought about it till now, but the lighting in these amateur productions is quite important .
There was scenes where there was just one spotlight on two characters, this helped the scene a lot as it meant the viewer was fixed on these two people and were not getting distracted by the person picking their nose on the other side of the theater. As well as not being distracted it also helps the illusion that your not in a theater and that you are in the time period the play was set in.

There was another scene where there was an actor in each corner of the stage with a spotlight on each one, it reminds me of this image.......

...........so you have a hat, a man sitting, and a man standing, your eye should go from one to the other. Good technique as it makes you look at the whole picture.
Going back to the play, it had four people in the scene, all you could see was the four people, nothing in the middle of the set & you couldn't see the audience on the other side. Your eyes went from one to the other as they spoke. The scene was enhanced by the lighting because it gave you places to look at.

There were scenes where it was all lit and there was about Six or Seven People on the stage and you didn't know where to look, sometimes it was ok because it was suppose to be a busy scene, but it didn't work in others because it was a tenser scene and you didn't know who to look at, lighting certain people might have helped out those scenes.

Lighting Image

This image shows off good lighting (War of the Worlds - Spielberg), emphasis is on the eyes because everywhere else is dark, and they say that 'its all in the eyes' so this image works well for that.
Although i think maybe too much light is in this composition because this guy looks like a murderer when actual he is scared, so for me maybe less light on the subject or maybe no so much light on the eyes alone/

Lighting

Although i realize (sort of) why lighting is important i don't think that its as big a deal as things like Sound & Colour.

With sound and colour you can change a scene, and now, while watching films I see how they come in useful. Colour can be used to help the story along by having certain colors for certain things like in 'Saving Private Ryan' i found that warm colours like yellow, orange & red were used to symbolize home.

'The Dark Knight' used a violin (I think its a violin) in any scene the joker was in or was going to be in, to show hes near.

Lighting is obviously good for getting a certain shot (found that out today, when recreating Bohemian Rhapsody) also get across certain moods (mostly Scary)

I will probably find it very useful later on in life, but for now i feel its just not a big deal in comparison to elements like Colour, Sound, Composition........