Conversation Project

Week 2-Week 7

 

Timeline 

 

 

Group activities/ individual research or tasks 

 

28th of September- Introduction to Conversation Project 

29th of September - Group Discussion- Which conversations we should pick, Why, What kind of format should we do, Opinions, thoughts, feelings, 

October 1st- Discussion, creating the background and characters, Editing, 

October 2nd- Editing, First Draft, Presenting First Draft was delayed 

October 7th- Initiating Second Draft, Using copy stand, retaking scenes 

October 20th- Alexandra Teacher Critique 

October 24th- Presentation, Critique by tutor, Developing different ideas- Background, Emphasis on characters, Narrative, Framerates, 

October 27th- Location scouting, Storyboarding, Alternative outcomes, live action/animation hybrid genre, Camera angles and shots,

October 28th- Third Draft, filming, 

October 29th- Sending footage of text bubbles 

November 1st- Editing 

November 4th- Feedback from students 

November 5th - Final edits 

November 7th- Deadline 

 

Part 1- Introduction to new group and conversation project 

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Part 2- Draft 1 https://youtu.be/URE4jqq9KEI

Part 3- Draft 2 https://youtu.be/yWwiTu5qVIU

Part 4- Draft 3  https://youtu.be/oJsXM2hdtXc

Part 5- Draft 

https://youtu.be/OqNN69yUZYQ

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Introduction

 

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The conversation project tasks me to work a group of 3 to 4 students to explore an environment within close vicinity of LCC and discretely document peoples conversations that we may find interesting. Then, using these conversation recordings, to create a visualised outcome of how the group interprets the conversation. 

 

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Day 1 September 28th - Introduction to new group, scouting elephant and castle, Conversation Project workshop, Group Discussion 

 

Introducing myself to the group

Reflecting on how you did it, why you did it and what would you do differently 

 

 

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When beginning this task, I was grouped up with 4 other people, Blanca Liu, Ning Qin, Xin Yue Shen and Yang Li. My mindset going into a new group was that I had to gathered information about everyone in the group such as, their names, what they specialise in and their contact information. I was taught in BTEC Media that having contact information and a good method of communication was  important to know your group mates personalities, background, experience, skills sets, strengths and weaknesses in order for me to manage, communicate my ideas clearly and utilise everyones skills properly to create an effective outcome for the project. In addition, their contact information is required for the group to have quick communication with each other, even at long distances. This makes it easier for each other to update each other on our work  progress when we are not working together in the same location and in case of any uncalled accidents, cancellations or being late for a meeting. There is always a risk of something going wrong in a group project hence why it’s important to have a good method to communicate with each other. I made a contact list on my pre production document to ensure I know how to contact them incase of emergencies or updates I want to do. For example, our group used We Chat as our gateway to communicating with each other, we are able to text each other in an instant through our phones and everyone in the group is able to see it. This was especially important for our project because this project encourages us to record different locations, so our group would eventually be split up around a specific area, and it’s important for us to keep in close contact to regroup or discuss about ideas frequently. It can also be considered as an health and safety procedure in film practice because in case of emergencies, we can be quickly notified and able to receive instant communication with each other. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, of the set backs was the language barrier between me and the other group members. Since my first language is English and their first language is Chinese, I thought it was quite difficult introducing ourselves and communicating my ideas of what I wanted to do for our group. Sometimes I would have to repeat my ideas or let them discuss what I was “trying” to say with each other.In addition to how these girls personalities are reserved in nature, it was difficult explaining my plans for exploring around Elephant and Castle. I was left feeling excluded from the group to some extent, which is fine in this sort of foundation project, however it’s unacceptable in a professional setting. I believe it’s important for every single person in the group to cooperating and communicating with each other for maximum efficiency in progressing to the final outcome. For the time being, it might take a week or two for my group to get comfortable with our differences, especially our language barrier. 

 

Our differences in culture and background has it’s benefits where I was able to gather very different perspectives on what types of outcomes to create. Most of them provided me ideas consisting of characters and artworks inspired by Chinese culture. All these artworks were very illustration based, but I was very drawn to it’s intricate and detailed drawings and how it’s animated based on Chinese culture. I find this more valuable than simply working with someone who’s similar with me or have a similar skill set as me, because I’m able to gather a far different perspective on the same project. It’s my practice as a film student to encourage myself in learning other opinions and perspectives in life in order to improve my own films. In the future, I would want to research more into mainland Chinese culture and possibly make a film based around it because of this group experience. Working with other members that don’t do film, allows me to think outside the box of how to visualise the final outcome using illustration aspects while maintaining aspects of my filming experience in film. It’s common practice for film to consist of paid employees that specialise in different fields such as: make up artists, directors, production designer, costume designer, music composer, etc. Most creative specialties can be contributed or interconnected to the final outcome, hence I was more curious about what our group could create with these members. Not only would I be able to have a better understanding of illustration and methods of utilising both illustration and film. It was enjoyable getting to know different types of people and getting to know them well.

Drawbacks of this group was obviously the language barrier between us, where I spoke English and they mostly spoke in Chinese. In addition, their reserved nature held back most of their confidence when contributing to the group. Some members were too shy to express their ideas because of their lack of confidence or the language barrier. I had to lead many of the conversations, encouraging them to question our own ideas, the project and expressing ideas on how we could approach scouting elephant and castle or creating our final outcome. I thought taking the leadership role was a natural instinct of mine as I often had to be in that position when I was working with other group members during previous projects in high school. 

 

 

Scouting the area

 

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Once we got to know each other we went out of LCC to search for some conversations that might interest us. I suggested that we could separate into two groups and go to two different locations since it’s a lot more efficient to gather more unique conversations rather than sticking together in one location. My group went to the elephant and castle shopping mall while the other group went to Sainsbury’s. My group did spread out to search for different conversations in different sections of elephant and castle. It was an interesting experience recording random strangers conversations because we usually listen to conversations that are related to ourselves or people we know as It’s very interesting to hear other peoples stories and perspectives on topics that aren’t related to myself. In addition, just by the way they talk, their mannerisms, expressions and tone of voice also widely differs as we record each different conversation. Some conversations were friendly, funny and even serious. I think it’s also very important as a filmmaker to pursue looking for different stories and perspectives on life and how people react with these situations, and this exercise perfectly stimulates that want of curiosity within me and creating an outcome that conveys that message clearly. In addition, although it’s not the main focus of the project, I considered where we recorded the situations, what time it was recorded, what they looked like and where exactly they were recorded at. I feel considering and Noting down this type of information is a good guideline of creating an outcome more authentic to the original recordings. We can assume so much information if someone created a product based on the recording only, however I wanted to think a step a head of the other groups and gather more information. Scouting around the area, was similar to how I usually location scout when planning to make films. Analysing the terrain, such as; sound, location, people, risks, etc. In total I gathered around 4-5 recordings using my I phone. Later we went back to class and had a small conversation workshop with Alexandra. I also think this activity was a sort of experimentation to what I’m used to, as I was recording conversation by overhearing them instead of directly asking questions to an interviewee. I was able to gather more interesting and genuine conversations than I would normally would in a normal interview. In addition, My Filmmaking ethics requires me to always ask my actors or people I record for permission to use their information or appearance for my films. Hence why it was quite exhilarating or even liberating to doing something I wasn’t suppose to do. 

 

 

Alexandra Conversation Project Workshop

 

After gathering all the footage, the entire class had a 1 hour workshop on outlining the main contents required for the project and example of how other artists visualised their conversation differently. Alexandra showed many BBC videos of short video that use pre recording to create interesting and visuals. This workshop was insightful for me because it did inspire me to think of ideas outside the box. There was two examples that caught my eye, the first example was Harvard referencing, (Jonathan Barnbrook: Foggie Bummer for BBC Radio Scotland: (1995)). This video utilises a variety of different fonts, fast editing cuts and a variety of colours…..

 

The second example, was Harvard reference (Aardman: Creature Comforts, 2007). This example caught my eye because of how simple and effective the video was able to convey it’s message. It was a stop motion animation made to advertise an electricity company. For example, in the first scene of the video, the conversation is visualised in the form of a turtle. The turtle moves it’s body and face exactly to how the audio sounds, for when it’s talking , it moves it’s eyes and mouth to show expression, or even subtle sounds such as pressing on the floor is expressed. In addition, it perfectly blends in with the realistic background shown on the video. I believe this video was interesting and fun to watch because how it integrates realism and 3D models together into an entire advertisement. The idea of integrating two different types of art forms is something that I thought was extremely important for my group because I will be working with illustration students, I need to find a way to create something that both I as a film student and my group mates could create as a final outcome. Most likely when discussing our idea, the final outcome would likely be a stop motion animation of some sort just because stop motion integrates both film and animated illustrations together. 

 

 

Group Discussion

 

After the workshop, all recoding were shared and those considered to be the best were selected.

However while we had some good recordings it was difficult to distinguish which recording was better for the project because choosing a preferred conversation while thinking of what kind of outcome we wanted is subjective. Each person can have their own take and opinion on what is good and what’s not and that can sometimes completely differ from the other members. Hence, we decided to have a group meeting on Saturday to discuss the recordings again. We had the aim of uploading all our recordings on a single google drive so everyone could listen to during their spare time hoping it would give each person a better idea of which conversation would be the best. We had also decided what type of format we wanted to show our final outcome which was in digital form. This gives me the opportunity and flexibility to use my filmmaking and editing skills to the test and contribute to the group greatly. At the end of the day, the ideal outcome for our project was undecided, hence why the group planned out a group meeting on a Saturday during week 3. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Part 1- First Draft

 

Day 2- 29th of December 

 

Group meeting on weekend

 

• Discussing which recordings was the best 

• The struggles of deciding on which idea was the best

• How I contributed to the development of the idea and directing the group into deciding on the right ideas 

• What types of methods have we thought of 

• What was the final decision 

• How is it related to my course in the future 

• What were the advantages and disadvantages 

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We met up for a group meeting on a Saturday with the objective on finally deciding what conversation recording to use and brainstorm ideas of how we can create a final outcome with the collaboration of all five of us. I suggested to the group that we should choose the top 3 recordings we liked the most and justify why. So we did, and later we all discussed which idea was most appropriate. Everyone had a different idea however, it was a struggle deciding on one because some of the ideas strayed out of the main purpose of the conversation project and the fact everyone had a different opinion on what conversation was good and why it was good. Ultimately we just decided on one of the conversations based on how interesting it was such as: their accents, the topic they were talking about, the background sound effects and their tone of voice. The conversation we primary used was the of two men talking near Sainsbury because both of them had a strong British African Accent and the were talking in a very casual manner. The fluidity of communication between two people is what I thought was the key decision to choosing this recording. There could be a lot of potential in describing or interpreting this visually. 

 

Later I suggested an idea that I thought could be pretty practical that all of us could do, which was translate the conversation recordings through animated animal characters. This was inspired by one of examples Alexandra showed us which I thought not only easily to make during a week but also something we could all do together.I found this idea especially favourable as I tend to watch a lot of cartoons or animations during my childhood and spacetime as an adult, and found a lot of similar concepts to what Alexandra showed such as; (Madagascar, 2005) and (The Amazing World of Gumball, 2008). This example is a (Creatures Comfort, 2007)

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My justification of choosing this idea was because without knowing what the actual person looks like and only hearing their voice, we create our own mental image or assumption of what they might look like or seem like. And for us it could be animals. For example is one of the people talking had a deep voice and was speaking in low voice with a rough accent, I would associate this type of sound with a gorilla. When I hear a low and rough voice I would associate it with an animal with a large stature and strong features such as a Gorilla or an Elephant. How we association what we hear with a visual image is something I wanted to look into further in order to understand it’s psychology and possibly use it to visualise our interpretation of the conversation more accurately. However, because I want to incorporate both the illustration students skills and my filmmaking skills in order to create a final product, I explained that It will most likely be a stop motion animation. The challenges behind stop motion animation is how gruelling the process is. Stop motion animation requires the artist to create a variety of props for a setup location, characters, body and facial movements, lighting and multiple photos. While I’m more familiar with this process of video making, my illustration group mates may not be as well equipped with the knowledge or skills to do this. Hence why when filming and managing the production and editing the outcome of this project, I will have to rely on my leadership skills and knowledge in film to direct my other group mates. 

 

I had also listened to my other group mates ideas which were also interesting, while my ideas came more from western culture, most of the girls ideas came from Chinese artists which made something similar.

 

When It came to communication I heavily relied on Blanc to translate what the other members were talking about. Because some of the members had difficulty convey their ideas and thoughts clearly during our conversations in English. I believe when it came to our group conversation, I was the one leading and directing the conversations leading to more productivity and a possible outcome. Although I did lack in ideas of how to create the outcome just because of how limited of time I had on the project, most of my group mates had a lot of great ideas however it was difficult for them to decide which one was most appropriate.

 

I think trying to contribute to the team by asking more questions and suggesting more ways and methods was a good way to improve my leadership skills and communication skills while working with others. I think it’s an important asset when it comes to working with other people in the creative industry especially in the film industry because an entire film consists of several or more people working on different aspects, so it’s important as a film director to take control and direct the ideas and the members to the right direction.  

The final decision was that we were planning to make an outcome based on the animal instincts .

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Day 3 

 

 

Planning/ production 

In order to plan out ideally how we wanted to film the entire conversation project, I first made a quick sketch of what the set might look like based on all the information my group mates gave me about the characters and background. Most of the character designs and interpretations of the words were reliant on them and I had no decision in changing it. I believe that my group mates are more suited to creating the illustrations in their image than I am, As far as my influence goes, I attempted to give small advice on how we want the characters to look like and how should the text pop out in a certain way. I prefer to be part of the creative process by effectively creating a narrative through my editing skills, assembling the footage and manipulating with the colours and effects during post production. They had told me they would be handling taking photos of the designs and creating the illustrations by themselves before next week, so I insisted on them doing so. 

 

 

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Post Production 

Once they sent me the footage, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings while editing it all together. Most of them were negative and less positive. 

 

The main issue with the first attempt of recordings when they sent me was how they set up the film set at a kitchen with an I phone. The first reason why the kitchen isn’t an appropriate place to take photos was because of how inconsistent the light is around, it will cause uneven lighting around the paper and shadowing. Second, the camera quality on an I phone is not as good, in addition, my group mates did not use any time of tripod or equipment holder, which made each camera shot very inconsistent for each frame. Lastly, my group mates freely took photos of each frame without a specific amount of frames per second. It’s crucial for stop motion animators to have consistent frame rates, such as: 12 fps, 24 fps and 30 fps. Each frames per seconds can change how smooth the movements are in stop motion. The higher the frames the more smoother the movements are, the lower the frames are the more choppy the movements are. There are times where stop motion animators used 12 frames per second intentionally to create a certain type of feel and expression through their characters or visuals, however it’s mainly used for amateur stop motion project because of lack of resources and it’s generally time consuming compared to 24 frames per second which is around 960 pictures in total. For this project, It would have been ideal to aim for at max 12 frames per second because of how little time we have on this project, in addition to handling the zine project, we don't have the time to spend to take enough photos. Our conversation is around 30-40 seconds which means we would have to take around 360-480 photos per second. In addition, the copy stand at the photograph workshop can only be booked for 1 hour, which is not enough time to set up all the characters and take enough photos. My group did not consider how many movements should be done per photo, it made assembling all the footage extremely difficult as I had to constantly figure out where which photo would fit with the sound. Visually, it was quite messy. Some of the characters movements were too fast or slow, it lacked consistency and didn’t not make a lot of sense with the narrative and conversation.  This gives off an amateurish production level outcome, which I can’t easily accept as a film student. Hence why I suggested to the group that we should  book the photography copy stand down at the photography workshop. Lastly, a lot of the characters movements were improvised, which worked out quite well as they knew, however my group members only contributed to taking photos of sections where there was a conversation, the rest of the pauses in the animation had no movement, taking away the characters energy and liveliness. 

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Although I greatly contributed to the pre-production of our project, which was mainly brainstorming and developing the idea, my group mates were the ones that manifested the conversation visually. Creating small paper sized animal characters and fonts which manifested what their depiction of the conversation. My job was to assemble all the footage they provided me and create a short stop motion video. Usually in stop motion animation, the average frame rates per second should be around 12-15 frames per second, however, my group mates did not consider the frame rates before taking photos and sending me the footage. This not only made it a tedious process to align the footage but very time consuming. There sometimes would be blank spaces because there weren’t enough footage, etc. I feel as If we had properly animated the 15 frames per second, the movement of the characters would have been a lot more consistent and alive instead it felt choppy and still at times. I believe the main point of stop-motion animation to create motion from still images. Once all the footage was assembled accordingly to the recordings we had, I also cropped out any unnecessary things such as the grey table they used to place the images on the side. There were also a few inconsistencies with how fast the frame rates were in some areas off the conversation, as I needed to put that in together to avoid any other issues on other shots. 

However there was some positive aspects about the overall outcome. I did appreciate how colourful the characters were, using a blue backdrop makes the character colors pop out even more. It’s colourfulness is visually appealing as we associate that with energy and other positive associations. Expressing the characters using bright colours is often used in many cartoons, especially when targeting a demographic audience of children, mainly because psychologically, it’s one of the easiest ways to communicate information before children can learn how to speak or write properly. Not only does it make these characters more visually recognisable as each character has it’s own unique color but also because a lot of these bright colours can be associated with more positive aspects in life. For example, the reason the color blue was used as the background was because it associated with calmness of the sky or sea. Or even the color of the lion is yellow can be associated with brightness, energy and the sun, which perfectly reflects the characters talkative an exciting personality. A lot of the colors used were intentional to communicate the personalities of the characters visually, without using words. In addition, the character designs reflects the personalities of the characters quite well, for example with the male conversations, the two men were personified into a chameleon and a bear. I believe it suits them quite well because both animals exhibit quite round and large statues which reflects the masculinity and body shape of how men are stereotypically represented in the media. Which clearly communicates their masculinity visually in the form of animals. In addition, the female characters such as the cat and bird also show signs of femininity, with their eye lashes drawn longer compared to their male counterparts. Although it’s a subtle detail, its a effective detail in communicating to the audience that they're female characters. When I think through the conversation project, It was a good choice implementing two different conversations as one conversation was in the perspective of women and another in the perspective of a man. Two different perspective in the same location but at the same time not interacting with each other, does not spark any argument but the concept of living experiencing different things and having a different while being in the same place. This train of thought was inspired by a youtube SHORT VIDEO I watched called (Split Love | Rudy Mancuso & Maia Mitchell, 2017). This entire short shows how both characters are living very similar lifestyles, but there are subtle changes such as: what they eat, wear and express. The binary opposition between masculinity and femininity is such an interesting and contrasting concept, I would hope to capitalise on that narrative when editing future drafts of the conversation project. 

 

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Final outcome: 

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I thought our outcome was quite colourful compared to most people in my opinion, I believe that it’s important to go through a lot. Although I believe we made a successful outcome which clearly interpreted I had wish I had more creative influence into creating the characters or the fonts visually. Next time if we were to improve on this project, I would want to add my own effects or experiment with different camera shots that might invoke my interpretation of this project. 

 

 

Part 3- Draft 2 

 

Preproduction- Planning/ Improvements and Changes/ Thoughts and feelings/ 

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After being introduced to the photography workshop this week, I decided to book the copy stand for one hour since that’s the maximum limit of how long one can book the spot per session. I thought this was perfect arrangement as it filled in many of the mistakes we had in the first draft, such as: lack of equipment, inconsistent lighting, unstable cameras and a fast way to take photos. Due to some complications with the final outcome of our video, we decided to take advantage of this chance and improve our project further. What we lacked the last time was because my group mates took the photos handheld, a lot of the photos were very inconsistent with the background and composition misaligned in each shot. This not only made the editing process more difficult for me but seem like an amateurish video. Another issue we had was inconsistent lighting. The lighting they took it with was with a kitchen light bulb, which did not spread out on the background and characters properly, leaving very heavy shadows on the edges off the corner. This breaks the authenticity and immersion of the video. The copy stand provides a proper DSLR camera which sticks perfectly on top of the background, uses two professional lighting set up to perfectly lit the background, creaseless background and a laptop to transfer all the footage and take photos quickly and efficiently. In addition, the copy stand provides an external computer that allows anyone to take photos from the camera instantly through the computer. It’s quick, easy and efficient way to take multiple photos in the limited amount of time the group has. The copy stand was the perfect setup for the type of video we were planning to do. Not only does this improve the professional quality of our work overall, but I’m also able to demonstrate my management skills and capabilities as a film student as I am capable of using all the equipment provided at the copy stand. I also suggested them to create a timeline of where and when the characters start talking so when I’m editing the footage, I have a good idea of which photos should be aligned with the audio. It also gives them more focus and aware of what types of movements they want to create within those specific time frames. 

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After taking all the footage, I started using the LCC Mac books to start editing the footage. I did the same process again with assembling all the footage and matching it with the sounds and changing the camera shots to emphasise on particular words. I had also started to play al little with how long or short each from could be. In one example I used. 

 

Production/ Post Production- Filming, complications 

On the day we needed to do our recording, my group mates presented a lot more character designs, consisting of different expressions for the characters. This was a huge improvement from the first draft, as what we were lacking was expression seen during the conversation. They also suggested to change the background to grey because it “looked better” compared to the blue background. I wasn’t too sure about this creative decision however I allowed them to see what the outcome might be like. This time, the other group members were a lot more aware of how they wanted the characters to be animated and moved the characters bit by bit accordingly mainly because they wrote up a timeline on paper. 

 

I was in charge of managing all the equipment, taking photos and checking if all the footage was taken photos of clearly. During our photoshoot, I would have to micro manage and direct small aspects of the photos because sometimes their hands would be in frame while I was taking the photo or the way the characters moved in each frame was far too different in terms of positioning. Small mistakes here and there were aspects that I had to keep an eye on in order for the photoshoot to go well. All of this managing is to ensure I’m able to observe any faults and retake any shots that had mistakes in them. It’s natural for a film production not come across issues, therefore retaking footage due to mistakes or change of plans is crucial as part of my practice as a film student because it’s my goal to produce and capture the best possible moment for any project. 

 

However, due to having 1 hour in the copy stand, we didn’t have enough time to take enough photos for 12 frames per-second in 30-40 seconds of recorded audio.

 

Although we have revamped the project and improved on the quality, I believe there’s so much potential or creative influence I could be contributing to the project instead of just editing and taking photos. I had started some research and wanted to delve into the world of stop motion animation and how I could create something that would contribute.

 

 

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FINALOUTCOME 

 

 

 

 

 

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Feedback for draft 2- Tutorial number 1    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Due to my sickness, I wasn’t able to attend one of the tutorials that were hosted by Alexandra, however, the conversation project did gain some feedback and her comments were redirected a message from one of my classmates. Alexandra had mentioned that the audience cannot tell which character is speaking one at a time because of how fast the text appearing and disappearing in the video. Alexandra also mentioned how we should think of a way to make our story clear, it will be better if others can understand it even without looking at the words. She suggested that we could think more about the storyboard. In addition, we could also do a little introduction about each character.

 

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My opinions and improvements 

 

I highly agree with what Alexandra said about how our project makes it difficult for audiences to understand, and I believe a lot of it was contributed to the lack of clarity in the audio, how fast the conversation was but also the way it was presented on screen. From a film direction perspective, because we only used one type of shot showcasing the entire location and characters, it makes it difficulty for audiences to prioritize what information to see. Should they see the moving text or should they be seeing the characters? In addition, the audio was not as clear as it sounds hence making it a lot more difficult to understand.

I believe our group hasn’t considered how the audience will see our product and content because we were focused too much on how we wanted to make it that, we assumed audiences will understand. From this mistake and failure, I understood that it’s crucial to provide context to the audience instead of simply providing an idea to them out of nowhere.

 

In terms of making improvements to the project, first setting the context by creating a background for the characters. Audiences would understand the context of the conversation more easily If we created a background for the characters compared to a plain grey background. The audience will subconsciously acknowledge where the conversation took place and how it played out. Another improvement to consider is using different camera shots for certain sections of the project, such as: two shot, close up shot, mid-shot, wide shot. The importance of these camera shots is to first, focus on particular characters who are talking, 2nd, emphasise on emotion or movement and lastly. Another improvement I wanted to consider was how to make the introductions. There are a variety of aspects that we could priorities 

 

 

 

Part 3- Third Draft 

 

Second Tutorial Feedback 

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Day 5-Group discussion

 

Detail/ analysis 

For the third draft we discussed about different priorities, such as; what type of background should we use, how should we move the text in a certain way, how many frames we should do per second etc. Yang and I first addressed how we could change the background for our film. We wanted to make the background more than just a plain sheet of paper, I wanted to create a background that shows context of what the conversation is about, and I think idea is important because in each film or even in stop motion animation, there’s always a type of background behinds the characters to show context of where the characters are at or what type of situation they are in. Taking in what Alexandra said about our conversation project, the text and characters aren’t clear enough to communicate what the conversation is about and where it took place. Hence why this idea is most suitable. One of my ideas was to take a live photo of the inside of Sainsbury. The reason for this is because that’s where the conversations we recorded originally took place, and if added as the background for our characters, the audience can clearly tell the conversations took place in that particular location. In addition, adding a realistic background in contrast of the cartoonish characters is a type of hybrid genre of live action/ animation I was inspired by from films such as: (Space Jam, 1997)  where they integrate both cartoon characters and live humans together into one film. Another inspiration came from a suggestion one of the students made in our class group presentations, where she explains how her project was inspired by a cartoon series called (The Amazing World of Gumball, 2008) because of how they used more realistic looking backgrounds in contrast of their cartoonish characters. I genuinely found it suitable for our project as I am able to use both my photography skills for the background and my group mates using their self made illustrated animals as the characters. 

 

Another inspiration for considering this background was coming across a short animation series called (African Salary Worker, 2018). This series shows the daily working life styles of specific characters. All of these characters are your stereotypical working class people that are often represented in a Japanese office working environment, however these characters are drawn in the form of animals. I believe the reason behind this is because, the despite how generic the concept of viewing the story of a typical office worker, the artist drew the character as animals to exaggerate their personality traits, also contributing to more comedic parts of the series. This series perfectly captures what I want to convey in the conversation project which exaggerating the characters personalities and conversation in contrast of how typical where the narrative took place in Sainsbury. As a film student, I could see the conversation project potential as a short stop motion animated film if developed on further into something similar to (African Salary Worker, 2018)

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As for the way the text should move, instead of the text appearing and moving from right to left, I suggested the text could appear when someone is talking and disappear when the lines of conversation is over. However, one of my group mates suggested we could do it in an alternative way where it’s both more creative and interesting to watch. She said the text should appear when a character is speaking and each letter should bounce up slightly as the character is speaking a word in a letter. I thought this was a great idea since it does give the conversation more flare to it’s text rather than plain simple appearances and disappearances. The one thing I was worried about this idea if the audience can read the text if this effect was applied. Mainly because the people speaking in the conversation, spoke their sentences in a very fast pace, it might be more difficult to read if the words had movement during the conversation project. This was something we had to experiment and see for ourselves during our photoshoot later on. I also suggested we could incorporate more movements or expressions for our characters, especially in sections where there’s pauses in between conversations. This gives the characters a more life like appeal instead of breaking the immersion that they’re plain cut outs of illustrations. They agreed with what I had to say however, because of the lack of time we had on the conversation project, it’s difficult to create more illustrated expressions of the characters face, and wanted to focus more on re-illustrating the text so it’s easier to read. My group members told me that if we wanted to create movement during empty scenes, they could move the characters around each frame. Another aspect of the project we discussed about was applying visuals of the sound effects from the recording. Because this was recorded in busy area, there’s a lot of other ambient sounds that could be heard from the recordings. One of the girls, Xin Yue wanted to capitalise on that and create short illustrations that reflect that those might look like. One example she explained using the sound effect of scanning a barcode and visualise it into an animation of a heart beat monitor because it sounded very similar to the sound of a barcode being scanned. This way of thinking also reinforces my research on how we associate sounds with other visuals we see in our daily lives. 

 

Opening sequences and establishing the characters 

Another improvement Alexandra mentioned was trying to establish or introduced the characters to the audience. Our group thought of trying to make an introduction for these characters. One of our ideas by yang was similar to (Tom and Jerry, 1940) or (Skyfall, 2017) use a specific type of effect to introduce and focus on particular characters. The main concept of this effect is using another black layer on top of the existing layer and crop out the area where the character is at so it looks like the character is in the circle. I believe this is an effective way of establishing a character as it intentional subverts our gaze to the character, in addition, to it being a circle, 

 

 

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After this discussion I decided to book the copy stand again for another production video shoot and planned when to location scout Sainbury and take photos. 

 

 

Thoughts/ feelings/ emotions/ benefits/ Drawbacks 

I thought this group discussion was very productive and beneficial to our progression for the conversation project because of how many issues we addressed after reviewing our second draft and gaining feedback from Alexandra. We saw many mistakes in our conversation project and found alternative ways to improve upon it, for example with the background issue. Even taking advantage of aspects of the conversation project we did not realise until recently.

sound effects of the conversation. This improving the aesthetics of the conversation project. There weren’t any drawbacks to this discussion because the group was reflecting on the progress we made so there isn’t any right or wrong answer with it.

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Location scouting 

 

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Details/ analysis/ thoughts and feelings

 

Location scouting is one of the few fundamental practices I’m required to do as a film student. This is mainly to scout out what the location may look like, what the lighting is like, what kind of objects or things there are and the potential risks they might have if I were to film there. However, for this project I’m focusing on scouting the area to see where I could take a suitable photo. I took photos located in the mega Sainsbury market near Vauxhall station, where there’s a lot of spaces and options off where to take photos. I took photos of different lanes, 

 

FeedBack 

Jung Ting Yang , University Arts Of London Wimbledon, Studying BA Production Arts for Screen  . 

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I had requested my friend, JT, who does Production Arts For Screen in Wimbledon for her thoughts and feelings on the conversation project at this stage. The reason is her experience with stop motion animation, and her experience with making set designs for films. I might be able to gain feedback from a set designer perspective but also a stop motion animator. Most of the drawbacks she mentioned about the conversation was quite similar to what Alexandra explained, about changing the background and the text moving too fast. As for the issue with speeding up and slowing down the photo 

 

JT emphasised on how fast the conversations were, which was why it’s so difficult for the audience to read the text shown in the conversation project. She suggested to slow down the audio, so the text can stay on screen long enough for the audience to process. Although according to an MIT article 13-80 milliseconds to process 12 images, I can argue that it takes longer to process moving text and visual images at the same time. 

 

JT did agree with my idea for the background being Sainsbury, however the picture that I showed and selected to her was not to her liking. Mainly because of how plain the background looked, consisting of monotone colors such as white and grey in contrast to the color selection of characters. In addition, the background shows too much detail, which takes away the focus of the characters and text. Basically, there’s too much information shown in one screen. So both of us tried changing the colors or effects of the background using photoshop, attempting to change it’s details using color grading and other presets. Our best option was making the background blurring the background, taking away the details but enough information to know it’s located in Sainsbury. We had also come up with other locations in Sainbruy that showed more colors that might intergrade better with the characters and text.  

 

Another suggestion she recommended was implementing more facial expression and mouth expressions for the characters. Mainly because it will make the characters look more life like and the mouth expression can match up with the audio more accurately as if the characters are actually talking. This can often seen in any type of animation that uses drawn characters to express the characters thoughts, feelings and speech. JT lent me an example of how an artist created multiple mouth expressions for certain syllables in the word, 

 

Explain examples 

 

JT recommended me to use a stop motion animated program called Dragon Frame, it’s a professional stop motion application that provides tools and functions which are extremely useful when taking photos during production and post production. She highly recommends is as it’s often used in many professional stop motion shorts. 

In addition, she said this programme could connect directly to most DSLR cameras, which the copy stand uses. I thought it could be very useful when taking photos, possibly speeding up the process of taking photos and improving the overall quality of our work. However, I would need to do more research on Dragon Frame before using it at the copy stand

 

Lastly, a detail she mentioned to strictly follow a certain amount of frames per second because she noticed how inconsistent the movement of  characters and text were in the project, such as how choppy the movements were and how text or characters would move too fast or stand still. This also caused some of the mouth expression to be sightly delayed to conversations audio file. In general, she said the inconsistent frame rates breaks the immersion of these characters. 

She suggested 12fps-24fps is the most ideal frames for a stop motion animated project, however she understood the limited amount of time my group had working on this project and how little time we could use the copy stand. Therefore, we both negotiated on choosing 8-6 frames per second at the very least.

 

 

Reflection- Thoughts and feelings 

Overall, I thought my conversation with my friend was very productive as I was able to realise subtle issues with the conversation project and look for more ways to improve upon it considering this feedback is from someone with experience in stop motion animation. In a sense we did collaborate slightly on developing the background ideas as we thought of different ways of taking photos and experimenting with the look of the background in general. 

 

 

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Production/Filming

 

 

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During filming at the copy stand, I had told them beforehand to consider taking 8 frames per second out of 40 seconds of the video. This is to ensure they aren’t moving the characters without any purpose and avoid the issue with inconsistent movement after editing. At the beginning of filming, we initially wanted to use an A2 printed version of Sainbury as background however, we did not have any time to print it mainly because the university isn’t open during weekdays. Hence, why as a split decision, I went to buy an A2 sheet of green screen paper as a background, hoping we can key out the green and replace it with the Sainbruy photo during post production. However, when testing the background with the characters on set, the issue with the green screen was a few of the text were green too. So  I had to buy another blue coloured A2 piece of paper as a second alternative background mainly because blue is the second common colour that’s easy to key out during post production prior to green screen. 

 

Midway through the photoshoot I decided to ask the photography workshop leaders to change the computer program to Dragon frame, because I thought it would help taking photos a lot quicker and use some of the tools to help and guide and make them more conscious of how accurately they want to move their characters and expressions in each frame. Dragon frame allowed us to take multiple photos and play all of them together after each scene. This helped oversea how all the photos would be animated, whether we thought it ideally looked how we wanted to be or not. Another tool called the onion tool shows a low opacity of the before image as it’s live on the camera. This encourages our my group members to move the character with move precision and thought. For example, if they wanted the character to look like it’s running faster, they would place the characters further away from where it was originally stood in each photo, so when it’s animated, it seems as if it was running or if the illustrators wanted to make the characters jump subtly. The illustrators would move the character up slightly away from the before image and in reverse. However, after using dragon frame for an hour, I had come to realise the program had a watermark each time we took a photo. This was because I was using the free trial instead of the paid version. In addition, the files size and quality completely change compared to the 30-40 photos I took before switching to dragon frame. The watermark and quality of the file can be adjusted through post production, however it might be time consuming because it’s very difficult to take away the water mark or adjust the quality on every single photo. Another issue we came across was using the copy stand longer than we initial thought. Initially I was only allowed to book the copy stand for one hour, however after an hour, we were only around 30% from taking all the photos. Hence why each of us booked individually booked an extra 2 hours for enough time to take photos. These two hours also helped make up for transitioning programmes from the default photography programme to dragon frame and back to the default again. 

 

Overall I thought the production stage was quite successful. I was happy with the outcome as the entire team was familiar with what they’re tasks needed to be get done and avoid mistakes made during our last few photoshoots at the copy stand. It was stressful making last minute changes to the background however. As once I found out some of our hand drawn text was coloured in green, it wasn’t remotely possible to key out the green background exclusively, hence why I had to buy blue paper from the art store.

 

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Post Production 

 

Improvements made

Once assembling all the footage together, I could immediately see many of the improvements I’ve made. While editing during post production, it was much easier aligning the footage together with the audio, since this time, my group mates stayed consistent with moving the characters within 8 frames per second. Once animating all the footage together, I’ve noticed the movements to be more precise with the characters speech, movement recreating almost a replication of body language. This made the characters feel more lifelike, fun and playful compared to the last draft. Implementing the background of Sainsbury I found was a successful creative decision, as it gives context to the audience as of where the conversation is taking place compared to the last draft with just a plain background with no context. The background is blurred enough to recreating a Bokeh effect, recreating the the effect of a small aperture, having a clear image of the characters in the foreground and a blurred background. In addition, the background didn’t feel out of place despite it being a Live Photo in contest to the hand drawn characters, mainly due to blurring out the background which softened the detail and quality of the original photo to look less noticeable in contrast the the characters. The hybridity of realism and fictional characters was integrated successfully, especially since I was able to key out the green screen using ultra key on Adobe Premiere pro to accurately place the image as the background in it’s highest quality. Another aspect that was improved was making the text pop out and look more animated. To do this, two of my group mates were tasked to making speech bubbles. What my group mates did was create 4 different templates for each character. Not only does this make the text more noticeable to the characters but also it’s easier for audiences to identify which character is speaking, which was an issue we had during our 1st and 2nd draft.

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However the issue was the quality change in some photos and other photos. This was due to my decision to change programs in between the photoshoot. It was difficult to figure out how to match the quality of all the footage together, however, tinkering and experimenting with aspects of colour correction I managed to align all the photos to look near similar with each other compared to what it was. 

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Part 4- Fourth Draft 

Post production 

Main points and description

• I had asked group 3 tutor for feedback on our conversation project during one of our classes. I knew she had experience with animation, hence why she might be Able to give some suitable feedback. She reviewed the conversation project and thought it was quite good. She did not have much to say about the 3rd draft apart from the background. She suggested to change the background from the blue color to the picture of Sainbury. I agreed with her because without a proper background, it would look plain and boring. 

• I had edited the background further using photoshop. I blurred the background even further and colorgraded the background colors to pop out more using curves and hues . The end result, gave us a more colorful look Sainbury, which I believe willl intergrade well with colorful cast of characters as a background.

• I went to the digital space at LCC and started keying out the blue background using the Ultra Key effect on Adobe premier pro. Surprisingly, it helped resolve the issue with the watermarks and resolution issues because keying the blue background decreased the opacity of the pictures post production. 

• I created a short introduction to the characters adding a title and end scene. The title screen consists of the project name, transitioning to a fade out of the characters around a black background. The reason behind this creative decision was inspired by an experimental exhibition called (Dialogue In The Dark, 2019), gives audiences the experience of being blind in Hong Kong. The exhibition shuts all the lights incentivising the audience to focus on listen to the ambient sounds in the room, stimulating different locations such as super markets, traffic streets a park, etc. My intentions of blackening out the background is for the audience to visualise what the location might look like before revealing it to the audience by listening to the ambient background sound. It also reinforces the entire point of the conversation project which finding a way to visualise the conversation with just recording their voices. 

• In addition, we added more frames to sections where there wasn’t any conversation, to keep the the sense of life in the characters. 

 

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Reflection

- Overall I thought the final outcome was quite successful. I believe we all made a lot of progress with this project starting with a very amateurish outcome to a more professional stop motion animated outcome. Making many iterations and changes to each draft through trial and error allowed us to create a satisfying outcome. I was quite proud of this project as I spent hours working on managing and producing the work finally completing the entire project.

 

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Outcome 

 

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Reference list 

- Online videos 

Split love, Rudy Mancuso and Maiaia Mitchell (2017) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Jh7WwqdQ0, Accessed: November 4th 2019)

Nick.P, Aarman Creature Comfort (1989) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNymPocKro, Accessed: October 30th 2019) 

Jonathan Barnbrook: Foggie Bummber for BBC radio scotland

 

Films and animated series 

 Tom and Jerry. (1940). Ben Washham. Untited States: Warner Bros, (Viewed: November 5th 2019)

Sky fall (2012). Directed by Sam Mendes. United States: Columbus pictures,  (Viewed: November 4th 2019)

 The Amazing World Of Gumball (2008), Directed By: Mic Graves. United States: Cartoon Network, (Viewed: October 28th)

Malagascgar (2005). Directed by: Eric Darnell and Tom Mc Grath, United States: Columbus Pictures (Viewed: November 4th 2019)

African Salary Worker (2019) Directed by Tetsuya Tatamitani, Japan: Hotzipang.(Accessed: November 1st, 2019)

Space Jam (1996), Directed by Joe Pytka. Untied States: Warner Bros, (Viewed November 1st 2019)

 

Exhibition

Dialogue in the dark (1998) Hong Kong, Lai Chi Kok. 2012-13