Weekly Life

• Learned

I don't think I learned much this week in class. Outside of class however, I learned a bit about charcoal pencil drawing and drawing on black paper. It's turning out to be quite fun, though I'm still a bit nervous.

• Want to learn

Green screen stuff? I was going to be working with them soon  and I want to make sure that I'm using them to their fullest potential.

• Frustrated you

Massive workload? Economics class? College stuff? You name it. Nothing I can't deal with, but not something I enjoy either, just to be fair.

• Made you happy

Sleeping. Oh my gosh, I haven't been sleeping that well for the past week or so. When I actually do get a good night's sleep, that's really amazing. I also like it when I'm not constantly grumpy or when I can maintain a good mood throughout the day, but that doesn't usually happen.

I also like when I get to have chocolate. I know it's a little thing, but it makes me happy none the less.

• Link of interest

http://youtu.be/hxy1fkrXmCI

• It's a stop-motion film about painting with legos. I was skeptical before I watched it to the end, but this film appeals to the childish side of me that would love legos and the artist side of me that enjoys the painting (or perhaps lack thereof). The video was as smooth as one might expect a stop-motion film to be and it really looks fantastic. I would definitely recommend giving it a watch.

The Benz and the Hare

In an interview with Robert Stromberg, director of Maleficent, he discussed some of his creative processes while working on a commercial that was aired on Super Bowl Sunday. His mission was to retell the story of the Tortoise and the Hare for the purpose of advertising the new Mercedes Benz. He said that the most difficult part of the project was designing each of the animal characters and giving them human-like personalities. The characters were created with on paper and sent through a series of other programs before finally being modeled in Maya. During the animation process, the characters had to have expressive faces and do expressive human actions. In addition to the animation, live action shots were captured. This proved to be a challenge in itself because the weather was non-compliant for the most part, but the waiting proved to be worth it because the foggy misty shots were a nice addition to the commercial.

I can't say that I learned too much from this article. I enjoyed the new twist on the tale, but that's about it. I learned that the commercial used both animation and live action. How did the director come up with the idea to crossover the Tortoise and the Hare and the Mercedes Benz? Be creative and take inspiration from past successes and stories. An old story could become your next big success.

Fooling the Eye Yet Again

This time we're analyzing a brief tutorial on how to fool the viewers of a film into believing that five or more people can make up an entire crowd. This can be done in a few different ways. By having a small group of five or so people standing in the background and having the actor closer to the camera with a wide lens. When the actors are moving around in the background, the scene feels crowded and heavily populated. For less crowded scenes, simply having a person walk in front of or behind the actor(s) can make the area look more populated than it actually is. Using computer editing and composition, a group of walkers can appear to be an entire army of people by shooting the same people in different places and editing them into the same scene. Using these techniques can save a filmmaker a lot of money, but they may not work as well for some scenes as well as others.

I thought that this was a very useful article to read. I may try to use it in a film if ever given a chance. I learned how to make a not-so-crowded scene look like a crowded scene: few actors required. How does the wide angle lens make a difference? What are the differences between the different types of lenses. This is a cost effective method of filling up a shot. Every filmmaker should know how to do these things.