Final Project Thoughts

I am not exactly sure what I have in mind for what I am going to be doing for the final project. All of the stuff we watched in class is interesting; I really liked the machinema stuff we watched amongst everything else but I haven't really settled or come up with anything concrete yet. The 4k proposal sounds interesting because I would get to use different professional equipment but to be honest I do not know how to use any of that stuff, so I don't really know what idea I could come up with because I don't really know how to use it to is maximum functional efficiency, but I will continue thinking. Is 4k the amount of information that the camera can take in (i.e. the amount of crisp, clean, I can see the hairs growing out of a mole on someone's neck from a mile away type of detail)? If it is, maybe I could do something on getting all the texture of someone eating with their mouth open. Artsy? I don't know. I will keep bloggin as I come up with new stuff.

More Thoughts on 3D

Shooting the compositions seemed to me to stay in the realm of 2D for the most part, having exemptions in the poking the camera shot and maybe the tee pee that Max was sitting in. As stated in my previous blog, it was my lack of knowledge for the functionality of 3D that I was unable to utilize it to its ultimate extent. I just don't understand how 3D can add more information to the shot. Also, the amount of time given to experiment, compose, and do these shots was really short so it made even having time to contemplate about 3D's complexities and nature very scarce. The trees seem to pop out and more of the subject matter seems to pop out, but it doesn't really do anything more to the scene and it bothers me not knowing how it can be better. Working on the laptop proved problematic as I could not really do everything I wanted since it would freeze up, lag, or not start up programs. Every time I would move a clip onto the editing bar, it would add a bunch of extra layers, eventually leaving me with like 80 layers that I didn't need. The extra little file that is created when you edit a clip in Vegas is a little annoying as it double the amount of stuff that you have to look at when you open the source folder. I think we used 5:1 sound which proved to be annoying in the editing part because there would be like 5 sound layers that are all integrated together to form one cohesive sound. This isn't bad unless you want to make adjustments to the sound; I ended up just taking the sound out of a clip altogether or muting the gain. The NVIDIA 3D player we had to use did not even play when I would try to use it, it would freeze up every time. And as we learned on Monday, the settings threw everyone off so hopefully when that gets figured out, the video should look better.

Thoughts on 3D

I had a hard time thinking of stuff to do for this project because I am not sure how 3D as an effective method of conveying information functions at the moment. All I know it does is have things popping out of the screen like the broom sticks in Happy Potter flying towards the screen, throwing a ball at the camera as Torrance did or even making a 3D porno movie (that came out right? Hmm, this has multiple entendres...) or maybe could serve to add depth to the scene by having things converge or placed in a way that adds more space between things. Other than that, I really do not have a grasp of what 3D can actually do. So, Max and I went out to the eucalyptus grove near Hopkins to see what we could come up with with nature, mirrors, and 3D. We initially tried to angle the mirrors in a way that made the reflection look crazy when 3D is added such as an image of a body of water that was taken in the Tokyo photos we saw in class. Our attempts at making the reflections interesting we're pretty much a bust as we couldn't really do anything other than show the sky and that won't make for a great video so going back to what I do know about 3D, I began poking (not actually poking, but getting close to it) the lens with the stick and in effect scaring Max when he saw how much the stick popped out of the little screen on the Handicam. Following the theme we had of rhythm, pattern, and repetition, we remembered a scene from Monte Python and the Holy Grail in which a character is watching from afar a character charging toward him. This takes a long time before he gets in close enough to kill him, so it keeps cutting back and fourth from reaction shots to landscape charging shots until the timing is perfect where he gets killed. We tried to emulate the scene as it fit the theme well, but if the laptops were better it would've been a little more spruced up.

Final Thoughts on Project 2

So what I ended up doing was having a "meta documentary" composed of a whole day worth of footage sent to me from my friends every couple hours. Initially, I was going to use split screen to play each of their edited documentaries simultaneously along the lines of what a student did in his video we watched in class where he had everyone at 2 pm take a video of whatever they were doing and then played them all at the same time. I couldn't see my work functioning the same way, so I decided to make a single documentary about the routines of college students (as most of my friends are). I edited the video first attempting to do the split screen, but then started to integrate the works together in a progressive manner in which goes morning to night to show a whole day passing for everyone. Then I starting pulling out pieces that could melt together as if it were one person taking all the clips on different means of image capturing rather than multiple people. It was shot at the discretion of my friends without having much background to the nature of the project as I wanted to capture whatever they were doing with as much authenticity as possible and the project was still evolving concurrently. The feed back that I got in class was pretty spot on, I was successful in conveying what I was trying to do so that is always a good thing. Length of the work was called into question and it is understandable; it did seem to carry on for a little while but I did not want to take away the charge that the content needed from the various clips and durations that they encompassed.