Mr. Shortfuse - At The Post Office

I found this video after reading a book on animation companies i saw in the library. I looked up some of the companies which i found interesting (from looking at the pictures!) and watched this video on one of the websites. Its done by a director from a company called 'Tandem' (the guy who did it is called Daniel Greaves. Simone's Cat came out of one of the people who worked for this company as well.

I think its a really cool animation, its simple and very short but very creative, the change from normal person to crazy man is sooo smooth and the second time he changes is really good, the curves going back and forth whilst saying "CHANGE WHERE'S MY CHANGE!!!" is brilliant.

Its weird, its only 13 seconds long (animation, with credits its more) but its still dose what it says.

Also shaking the camera works well to emphasis the anger!

Pretty good animation

This short animation is done by a student in there last year of there coarse in America. The guy did a character animation class, so everything is in rough, the backgrounds are sketchy and its not in colour, because the focus is on the animation.

The animation is really good, but the story is just as good, its a short and sweet story that leaves you smiling.

I really like the character design of the man, looks very 1960's.

I got distracted from writing a Treament

Yer.......My hand was in a position on my desk where the shadow had eyes and a really big mouth, so i stuck a finger up and, well, it looks like the ghost from Ghostbusters.

Thats all i have to say....for now

Triumph des Willens!

This is the film about Hitler, made in 1934 and directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Not going to lie, I've not watched it all, its like 1 hour 30 minuets. I watched the start and a tiny bit in the middle and the end (where Hitler makes a speech about the 'Night of the Long Knives').

In terms of editing, its pretty good, the first like 12-15 minuets its just Hitler in a car driving to his destination with people saluting him. This would seem quite boring, but Riefenstahl cuts to the crowd and to different camera angles so we don't get bored of watching him. If it was just one full shot of the car driving through the streets it would be pretty dull, so giving the audience different viewpoints and visuals, it makes it more entertaining.

During Hitlers final speech (in the film, not EVER) Riefenstahl cuts from video of Hitler speaking to a crowd of SS Troops, to footage of the SS troops listening to him and cheering. so its like the rear window thing i put on a few weeks ago: hitler speaks, the crowds reaction.

I hadn't heard of this film before, i liked what i saw purely because i find it interesting, seeing such an infamous man speaking for 1 hour is so surreal and fascinating.

This film, Germany Calling by Charles Ridley (think thats how you spell his name) is a mock of the 'Triumph of the Will', it takes the footage and makes hitler and his troops look like idiots rather than god like.

What i like about it is the rhythm of the troops marching, He reverses the film so there going back and forth, but it also goes well with the sound thats placed onto the footage. Pretty sure someone's made beats out of footage to make music, just cant think right now.

Also its weird to think the same film that made Hitler look really cool/ god like, can also be manipulated to make him look like a complete fool.

Treatments....again

Visual Representation of writing a 'Treatment'

So, we have to do a treatment for are short film, ok, this is my first attempt and my only attempt up to now...

Try 1
...'By showing close-ups and abstract imagery of a broadcasting studio, I hope to fool the audience into thinking something else is going on and that preparation for a live broadcast isn’t happening until the end, when its reviled.'


My short film, doesn't really have a story, but dose have an ending....sort of, so i'm confused on how the treatment should look. This first try seems to describe it how i want it describing so maybe its correct?
I may need a description of what i want the audience to think is going on, but apart from that i don't know how i can elaborate on it........ and also how it will end, saying how it will conclude.


Try 2
By showing close ups and abstract imagery of a broadcasting studio, I hope to fool the audience into thinking something more serious and exciting is happening and that preparation for a live broadcast isn’t happening, until the very end when a wide shot is shown of the studio.

Is this right?!?!?!??! who knows!

The rest are in a word document (+the final) to hand in for assessment

Time Laps - Robot Chicken

This video (below) is from 'Robot Chicken Star wars', it shows the animators animating different scenes from the show. Obviously it takes so long to do, so, its all sped up, but you still see some of the ways in which they tackle some of the more complicated scenes. Also you can see how big/small the sets are, there big, but only big enough for the animators to get there hands in to move the armatures.

Life of an American Fireman?

I've been sitting here for an hour now, reading every comment on youtube and imdb.com, but still i don't know what to believe?!?!?!
Everyone's saying that 'life of an American fireman' wasn't the first film to use cross cutting, there saying that Martin Scorsese is wrong in the 'cutting edge' documentary we watched.

LINK TO THREAD

there are also arguments on youtube


(double click to go to the actuall website where people have posted opinions)

This video of 'life of an American fireman' isn't how it looks on the documentary we watched. in the Documentary they cut from the firemen traveling to the woman in the house, and say "you make the connection even though there in totally different places". But the youtube video above show something different?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?

Weather its right or wrong, i appreciate that cutting from one place to the next eg; firetruck to woman in a house full of smoke makes people put 2 & 2 together to make 35 and will take it on board when doing stuff my self.

---------

This, on the other hand (below), by D.W Griffith called 'A Corner in Wheat' made in 1909 is a good example of Cross Cutting.
It tells a story of the rich and poor and cuts between them both in different places, but you get whats happening and it evokes an emotion, just by cutting between them both. If they were separate, then it would seem like two different stories.

The Story of 'Zero and Blind Terry'

So, this is one of about three songs which i adore by Bruce Springsteen.

Listen first (or don't!)

His voice is pretty mumbled so lots of it you can't make out what he's saying, so here's the lyrics for it.... LYRICS!!!!!!

Right, so, this song didn't even make it on an album, its on a compilation of tracks which is full of b-sides, never released songs and different mixes, its called (quite appropriately) 'Tracks'! The reasons why i love it sooo much (and why it relates to what we do) is because of the story, its story telling (in music form) at its best. Bruce is telling the story in past tense to us (narrating it)

I think of it like a film, with the way its told, in fact it could be a treatment

Verse 1
You are introduced to the two main characters straight away and also one of the antagonist (Terrys dad) So in the first verse you know everyone!


Verse 2
By the second verse you know Terrys dads reasons for why he wants Zero Dead and not being with his daughter

"Now Terry's daddy understood that this Zero was no good, A child, a thief and a liar" But your still routing for Terry to get away from her dad and run away with Zero.


Verse 3
Your relived that they got away from terry's dad, and they live happy ever after, until you find out the dads hired people to kill Zero. (then there's a lovely instrumental which build up to a climax, F****g awesome!!! because you know there vulnerable, as we were told there asleep)


Verse 4
Everything explodes into a massive fight on a field whilst the Protagonists.....

"Zero and Terry they ran away, And the gang fought all through the night"


Verse 5
Were back in the future and Bruce is telling us the rumors of what happened to the Legend of Zero and Blind Terry, we all want to know what happened: did they get away? Was zero killed and terry sent back to her dad? Bruce leaves us with a fantastic ending which hints at the fact that they didn't succeed :(

"If you look hard enough, if you try, You'll catch Zero and Terry and all the Pythons, Oh just hiking them streets of the sky"


I love this song because i see it as a film/ animation, mostly animation because of its child like naivety which i think would work well with the song.

The story's so solid, everything is understood, you know who everyone is, your routing for the main characters to win and your left just distraught, knowing there up there in the sky. But in away there now free to be together so really its a happy/ bitter sweet ending.

But still Flipping Brilliant!

More Rear Window Fo' shizzle

I've talked about this film before, but i want to bring it back up again, its an Alfred Hitchcock film which follows a man, well not really follows, because he's house Bound because he's broken his leg! So the man becomes obsessed with watching the neighbors and, yer, the story unfolds.

When watching the documentary they talk about Hitchcock......way of working?... don't know is that's the right words, but anyway, on the documentary they show these clips from the film which are all the same technique, technique was the word i was looking for!.....

.....the technique shows good editing, which is what we were looking at today. If he hadn't have shown James Stewarts face to begin with, i don't think it would have been as effective because we wouldn't have know how his face had changed after seeing what he had just seen.

Also in the 'cutting edge' documentary we watched it mentioned 'vertigo' which is one of Hitchcock films. it seems as if he keeps to a strict method of editing is some of his films, like this one (Rear Window) and vertigo, maybe more as well, but i haven't see all of his films.

Seth Green Acting

This is off 'robot chicken star wars' which is a cartoon (stop motion) thing. Its part of the adult swim series on cartoon network, its got some gooood animation in the series.

I like seeing the animators (or in this case director) acting for the camera to get certain gestures. There really funny to watch because there meant to capture silly and over exaggerated poses so that they can then watch them back and animate from it. They won't take everything from watching these clips, but key bits will be coped.
The nicest thing about it is that the acting is real, and not just thought up, so you can get some good stuff to work with by chance.

New Way of Looking

This video shows us something that is invisible, by using iron shavings behind glass and putting a magnet on top of the glass we see the magnetic field.

It looks pretty cool and the movement of the iron shavings is really nice, even the shapes they make are impressive.

Its not as cool as the 'salt on sound' thing that ian showed us in his lecture because the salt was always changing, but maybe messing with the magnets, turning them ect might get sum funky pattens.

Here's another two, still the magnets are stationary though so not much happens :( but they make different pattens to the one before so :). But yer, moving the magnets might get sum different results.







Here is one where the iron shavings are in water, quite cool how they move...

By the way, these weren't done by me.

Arc

'Arc' is a third disc that came with a Neil Young live album 'Weld', I've heard some of it, but its hard to sit through the whole thing.

All the CD is, is 35 minuets of feedback from the amps used in one of his tours, whats nice about it is that its something that you would never really think of, you just hear. But when you hear about 15 minuets worth of the 'song?' you sort of appreciate it. I thought it was quite sinister when i heard it and the voices in the background make it quite scary too.

Its a weird bit of music, not too sure it needs to be 35 minuets long, but still, it evokes some emotion in you and also its something that you would never had thought to hear or wanted to hear.

There was no clip of it on you tube or a free listen to it on a website so the only way you can hear it, is if you have spotify, type in 'neil young' and scroll down to the year 1991, which is when it was made. or buy it! no don't.

On The Way Home

>>True Stories - The Bridge<<
(watch the second clip) (d'no if its on you tube!)

I watched this film/t.v program/Documentary a while ago, but thought about it whilst walking home from uni today.

We got the first brief in Applied Design and so i desided to walf home with will and jack to see what we could find to inspire us in this new brief. We went are own ways at Bramhall Park, but whilst there on a bridge with a stream underneath i thought how peaceful it was, people go to lakes/ rivers for fishing, to relax ect, but also its quite a sinister place. People dump things in rivers that they want no one else to know about, from memories to dead people!

From this Bridge which can be seen for miles and admired by everyone that goes to see it, they got a pretty moving project out of it.
were asked to look at things you might never look at till now and see if can lead to a project, but sometimes something as big as The Golden Gate bridge can have a moving story to it.

This is when i remembered to 'True Stories' Documentary, for the program, they filmed the golden gate bridge for, i don't know how long for, but they got loads of footage of people who jumped off, ending there lives.

__________________________

On the subject of Buffalo Springfield (title 'on the way home' is one of there songs!) Oriana posted this video a while back, its the first thing i thought of when told "a day in the life of somehting"
So this video shows a day in the life of a bullet with an appropriate track 'For What it's Worth' by Buffalo Springfield...

1953 Animation from the Walt Disney Company

I think this animation is so good, it really shows off the style which was developing during he 50's, its called 'Toot, Whistle Plunk & Boom', it was Directed by Ward Kimball who worked for the Disney Company.
Ward Kimball didn't like working with complicated human design in animation, not because he couldn't, but because he thought abstract structure looked visually more interesting. He designed and animated characters like 'The Crows' from Dumbo, 'Tweedledee & Tweedledum' from Alice in Wonder Land (also mad hatter and Cheshire Cat)

This cartoon is thought of as being the end of Disneys Traditional approach to its films and Television shows, thanks to the vision of Ward Kimbell. This animation 'Toot, Whistle Plunk & Boom' is from the disney television series made in 1953.


Open it in you tube, its too small on this blog.

Old Boy - Veiw Point

I watched this film a while ago, i posted something about the colour in it and was going to post veiw point the next day. That never happened!

So, i took a few screen grabs of the film which i thought were to do with view point.....



The film starts with a point of view of a police officer (above) watching the main character, i think this was a good way to start the film as you get an idea of what the main character, that you will be watching for the next 2 hours, is like. You start to judge him straight away, then as the film progresses your view might change.


This next set of images might not make that much sense, i dose to me but I've seen the film.
So, the above images show key bits within a camera movement, the camera slowly movers round the main characters friend in the phone box.
Whats nice about this bit is that your eyes are fixed on the guy in the phone booth and don't pay any attention to the main character in the background (who is only seen in the first of the four screen shots shown above).
Because the camera move was quite clever and snatches the main character away from you so sneakily, you are lead to believe that the people who kidnapped him are quick and sneaky......i think!


(above) After the main character has been kidnapped you go to a shot of the floor and a small door on the floor where food is passed to him. Someone comes to give him food and all you see is his legs. This camera angle is showing off who is the authority figure, and not being about to see this persons face is putting you in the same position as the main character.

I have more....

Generating ideas = good, treatments = bad

I find it fascinating that i managed to get any stories at all out of the combination's I had for the Ideas Generation exercise.
I managed to get from;

an Aroused old man,
curious millipede
in a chocolate factory
glued the the floor

to a story of a old man telling his grandson about his past after the grandson asked him.
I would have never thought of that if it wasn't for the process of chance.

aslo

Suicidal Robot
Pathetic fuse
Between the toes
Ear cut off

A man working at a cheese factory has his ear cut of by faulty (pathetic) machinery.

Normally i would go for more happy/colourful stories but this process pushed me to do something different.

The pitch was awful but the actual sentences i had were (i thought) good, i just didn't present them well enough and got confused.
My treatments were very weak and didn't look like treatments at all. Still don't know what a treatment is. Saying that thought, i was happy with what i did write and i think i managed to capture (in the sucidal robot one) the mood of the whole story/ ?treatment?

Some more adverts on Ideas Generation....

One of these is already on my blog, but I'll but both of them on now!
These adverts relate things that are happening thousands of miles away to objects we use everyday.

??????????probably not my best blog post but..???????????

I Hate This Advert (Metaphoric adverts)

Although i hate it, it still shows of the sort of metaphorical things we've been talking about. These chicken bites don't make you a wolf, but its the manliness/ masculinity of it which there selling.


Also, i have an advert in my head about an alarm system, and the advert uses people acting like monkeys communicating on top of there houses to scare a criminal away after he'd tried to break in to a house. Its not saying we're animals who shout on top of are houses but is just as effective, and will keep your house safe (wish i had a video, but i can't find one of the advert). Its like the hienas which were shown in uni, but using us as the metaphor and not the antagonist.