Port 6: Ambrelsmat (After Effects)

Following the manual I wrote up for Pro Tools, I've thrown my self straight into doing the same for Adobe After Effects. The difficulty is that I'm starting to learn the program from scratch and according to my housemate Liam, it has similarities to Photoshop (I'm not too hot on Photoshop).

I was also advised by Colin who does our craft sessions that it really wasn't worth my while. Regardless of this I ventured onward determined to make this and After Effects and Pro Tools collaboration.

Getting RAW quality photo's into After Effects has just been confirmed a success, but that isn't all. The manner in which it has been imported for After Effects to really do it's magic and give some really cool perspective changes. It's basically making the photo a flat 3D image, but one step at a time, I'll indulge the findings that have led to this interesting and challenging workflow.

The story so far: From the test shoot with James and Paddy, the conclusion was to take stills and track along the pipes in post rather than film the pipes by lugging around a big camera and jib. The best quality still is a RAW still, so I could zoom in without too much quality loss. I was determined to get to know what I could make of the project in After Effects, but RAW stills cannot be imported directly into After Effects.

Laura Fletcher contacted me informing me of a program called

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom which allows RAW images to be imported into Photoshop. From Photoshop, I would then be able to transfer them into After Effects. It's sounds like an unnecessarily long process, but I found that each stage has it's part to play. After advice I got from a guy called Dan Lusby who's a professional After Effects user I met whilst on work experience at Centre Screen in Manchester, I realised that a the Photoshop stage is very significant.

I had seen some work Dan had done for Centre Screen where he had done post production rostrum, but made it look like it was tracking from left to right across a 3D image. I really wanted to know how he did it so I could apply a similar effect on the pipes.

So I picked his brains for a while and got some great After Effects advice.

Here's an image from the tutorial he gave me. It was the same image I'd seen that intrigued me to the technique in the first place.

What he did was draw round the part of the image he wanted to cut out using the pen tool in Photoshop. He then cut it out of the image. He did this for each layer of the perspective (foreground pile of rubble, the each of the soldiers etc.) Once he'd done this, he opened the Photoshop project in After Effects. Then, with all the cut out layers, he used the camera mode to make each layer like actual standing objects where a camera can move around freely. The best way I can explain it, is if you walked into a village where all the buildings and people are actually

cardboard cut outs, but you don't notice because you never see them side on. He also gave me advice on what resolution to use. RAW photo's are very big, so I could still use a fairly high resolution and zoom in and retain much of the quality of the photo. He recommended at the highest 720p is about as high as I'll want to push it, with even the consideration of standard definition. I wanted to push it as far as I could, so I went for 720p and it looks to be just right. As you can see from the images below, when I imported the image into 720p work space into After Effects, it was just as I hoped, a lot larger than the window.

Here's the original RAW photo and what it looks like at 720p in After Effects.

I won't need to move in much closer than this, so I'm happy to work at these settings. I just hope my computer is. After Effects is very demanding and when you get the camera settings involved, I'm going to be putting some pressure on the performance. My processor is 2.66GHz Intel Dual Core and my memory is 4 GB 800MHz, so it's not bad for a home based suite and I hope it's cut out for the techniques I end up undertaking.

Additionally, the photo's above are from another test shoot I'd done with Jack Tew. I'd not worked with him much recently, so I bought him breakfast and got him to bring along his Canon 5D mkII to get some high quality stills. The weather was beautiful and got some good images from around Stoke.

As you can see, this is the first blog with small images rather than my standard make everything big images attitude. Purely out of preference.

I may have got all I want out of Stoke for images. I'm considering other places to walk around looking for pipes and using shoot days as opportunities to catch up with friends out of town. I had a nice lengthy chat with my mate Sam Sharland and I'm looking forward to catching up with him and getting him to come out with me to get some images and sounds. I then look to contact my friend Ross Thomas in Liverpool. If he has a day free sometime, I'll go up to see if I can do the same. I should have a fair bit of material by then.

Another thing to mention is that the film now has a target length. 2 minutes and 30 seconds long. The reason for this is due to the target festivals I'm going for (Virgin Media Shorts as the main aim) as well as the fact that the idea lends itself well to that length and the potential difficult post production process I've got myself into.

It's been a lot to catch up with, but I'm finally on the blogging game again.

Keep the suggestions coming, the journey isn't definite until it's done.

A lot of 'Zero 7's album 'Simple Things' being played around the house at the moment. Very easy music to work to. I'm also loving the last dregs of tracks on my itunes list which mostly consists of unused music composed for films, foley, atmos tracks :)

Port 5: Eichoe - (Research Mainly)

Ohhhhh!! Just straight hell for leathering the Ohhhh!!

I've had a nightmare logging in to this blasted thing, which is a stark reminder I have to update more often (trouble in paradise). Anyway, things have progressed somewhat slowly with this as I've had to turn my attention to other projects, but a couple of good days have sprouted and I'm going to regail thee...

First and foremost, thank you very much to Roberta Spain who gave me a page of fantastic links to inspire me on this. I had a good look through them all (apart from the ones that wouldn't open) and they're great!

This is an image from a film called 'Artikulation' by someone called Ligeti. What you see is patterns which are pretty much waveforms on a timeline. As the line scrolls

past each one, a relevant sound is made. A simple concept and basically a pretty pro tools timeline, but engrossing all the same. You are forced to think about and predict sounds from what the image is displaying.

I can imagine this could be used as some kind of psychology test, but not sure to what end it would serve.

Bertie also sent me some incredible smoke images...

What's been done by the looks of things is smoke has been lit in a dark room with a spectrum of different coloured lights then reflected and colour inverted in post.

Nice :). I want to experiment with smoke like this in the future and see what I can conjure. Reflection effects are definitely going to be considered for this film.

The colourful image is of a film called 'Jack the Tripper' It's based on the experience of taking Salvia.

An apparently legal drug I can't say I've experienced, but it's makes you go like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyv21qW7SQo

The other black and white image is a film simply called 'Kaleidoscope Film' I've been thinking of making a version of the film or at least creating a template in Final Cut Pro that will create a kaleidoscope effect. Two issues with that: 1. Cropping a triangle shape may be an issue. FCP doesn't crop anything apart

from right angles as I recall. 2. Time. I've got

a lot to do, so I'd be better off thinking about getting a film done first and play more after graduation.

Speaking of time, I've gotta get on with some other stuff as I'm going to be on work experience in Manchester for the next two weeks (which I'm excited/nervous about).

I have more to say about another test shoot I've done and entering the world of Adobe After Effects, but I'll save that for the next update.

Many thanks to Lizzy for her audio suggestion. Please, anyone who reads this, fill me in with suggestions regarding ideas for sound, visuals or films/art/photography to look at. I take everything on board.

So far the main inspiration for the film is 'Without You' by Tal Rosner. It's based on a poem by Josef Albers. (I've been looking into quotations and proverbs for inspiration too)

I plan on contacting him once I get a further grasp of After Effects. Hopefully he won't be too busy to get back to me with some tips. For those of you who've not seen it, check it out:

http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/films_2008/without_you

Currently listening to: Kimberley Austin by Porno For Pyros

(nearly done Mega Man 3 w/o continuing, but not had a chance to play it in a while)

Port 4: Opralea (Test 2 and other stuff)

Right, so the first test didn't go to plan, but the next stage of action went to my brains almost instantaneously.

The far far easier way to do this (quite possibly) is to take high quality stills which show the whole pipe and then zoom in and track across it in post.

On a 'we've not got much else to do at this very moment in time' situation, Andy Parker, Nathan Hill and I milled around for 30 minutes or so taking pipe photo's of the highest quality. The highest quality being RAW in this case, which led to a problem I kind of knew I was letting myself in for:

Trying to open the bloody thing! It won't. Even my Photoshop CS4 doesn't even get on with it, so I need some kind of plug in for it. Still I managed to get a screen grab of it on the preview window for you to admire:

Th' yar! Pipes in the fast lane baby!

(at least it will be when I'm done with it)

The problem then spreads on to how I'm going work with it within Final Cut Pro and After Effects.

I contacted Colin Mottram (Lenzflare & Teaches Craft Sessions) to get his advice on it and seeing as Andy Parker's film 'Nocturne' was completely comprised from photo's, he should be able to advise me too.

With regards to After Effects, John Rosie (Maclagen Men and Lecturer) said it would be good to speak to Ross from his office. I've seen some of the work he's done on After Effects and he knows his stuff alright.

In addition to all these malarkies, my sister (who has sound design very much in her ball park) has checked out these very pages and had this to mention:

'Bang on about how you applied EQ'

I'm sure I'll be 'banging' on about plenty of stuff EQ related. I finished a 14 page Pro Tools research document I've been working on for

a fair while now and Richard Allan at the media centre is happy to have it as a training document on the macs in the edit suites. Here's a peek at half of a random page:

Whilst on the subject of sound, what I'm looking to do is something along the lines of what Tal Rosner did in his film 'Without you'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74DXPV4R6wo&feature=related

Bertie (Roberta Spain) has done a great job of getting me some great research material and I'll be going more into that shortly.

Finally, thanks to Laura Fletcher for this piece of knowledge/advice:

Ciao for now peeps. Thanks and keep the suggestions and support

coming :)

Tim Oh

Port 3: Miltigit (Test Shoot 1)

Literally a couple of days after coming up with the idea I was ready to do a test.

I booked out some sound recording equipment, a camera, a monitor and a jib.

I only had an hour and a half to play with so I filmed what I found close to the media centre.

Half of that time went on setting up the jib. My cameraman James and my sound man Paddy werent trained on it and seeing as I was pretty inexperienced on it, the instruction manual came into play.

Here's what I came out with in the end:

Yep, only three shots and they didn't come out great.

Besides from being a bitch to lug around shot after shot, the jib was also not steady enough for what I wanted. It also meant when I was editing them together, each pipe would start as a slow movement, get faster, then slow at the end. I want a consistent speed.

I also made the mistake of shooting in 720p with 25 shutter speed, so the movement was blurry as hell.

An alternative method is required.

Port 2: Clueson (Where I'm up to)

First and foremost, look how wank the picture came out with the title and description. I'm peering through the writing like a cheeky ninja though, which is ace, it stays. I also went for the dot design in the background, which is... fine (in a stern manner).

Secondly, I guess I have to apologise to myself for setting this up after quite a few things have developed. Here's the run down:

In shower, washing hair... "I know, my film will be based on pipes"

I had been thinking about the theme of lines for a while, but wanted something consistent within the theme which gives it the 'unseen aspects of the commonly seen'. In kind of the same way a guy filmed people whilst waiting at traffic lights. I want a film that is something that is simple, everywhere, but artistically presented in a way that's mesmerising and shows something in a beautiful new light.

I wrote down a mission statement for this film as to how I'm going create a film that is simple to shoot, cheap, doesn't require cast or massive crews, yet challenges me in ways I haven't been challenged before in previous films and target weaknesses. One weakness I still have in my film making ability, is technical post production sound and vision skills. I want this film to sound great and for people to say "how did he do that?"

The idea in very simple low development stages is to follow a journey along a pipe.

Sound design wise, I had the idea of running a pound coin down the pipes. No brain ache really, I just thought it would sound good.

The background sound and foreground being as prevalent to the sound design as it is to the image.

Music may also accompany, not sure about that yet.

(Currently listening to Quasimoto - The Unseen. I've not touched Mega Man 2 today)

Port 1: Pontakins (Intro)

This is my first ever entry for my first ever blog. It feels like I'm presenting a meeting that nobody's turned up to yet, but I'm still running my mouth about gangster run industrial plants, peculiarly shaped pepper pots and quiche.

The sole purpose of the is to show the development process of an experimental film I'm currently making. It's all about creative and technical evolution of the film and myself as a film maker.

It won't be taken too seriously, so I may go off tangents and spelling my go astray and I make up words from time to time.

None of this matters in the slightest, I can assure you of that now (with gusto).

I hope you enjoy dipping in and out of the experience and wish you all the merriest!