COSMIC ZOOMS

For Gaia's Army Louis and I decided we should clearly establish our special effects skills. So I created a zoom - Beginning in outer space, we view the planet earth hanging in the sky, before rapidly zooming into the northern hemisphere, Europe, England, London, Pancras Station. We decided Pancras station would be the location for the beginning of the narrative.

 Above is a screenshot of aligning the Britain photo to the Europe Photo. To the left is the final zoom rendering out, at a point where the zoom passes through some CGI clouds made with fractal noise.

 The zoom was created with a series of stills. To get the HQ stills which I needed to be bird's eye, ranging in distances between just above the station to a view in outer space, I went to Google Earth.

 Here I took eight screenshots - some of which are shown here. In AE I stitched the screenshots together (after masking out the Google logo) to create an image the size of the Earth, which - if you zoomed in specifically on the station - had incredible detail.

 The screenshots from Google Earth reach out as far as viewing the whole of central london, because on that program one tends to loose photo-realism after zooming out to a certain point.

 To fix the photo-realistic problem I had to Google images of Britain, Europe and that entire side of the globe from space. Stitching these images together was slightly trickier as they had slightly different perspectives.
 Below is an image of the screenshots in a folder along with some of the Google Image results I pulled.

EVERNOTE - COLLABORTATIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR NOTE MAKING

My partner Louis and I have found a program named Evernote, which essentially is a shared network of notes, which you can access through an account anywhere anytime. We have found it very usefull, and will find it increasingly usefull in the months to come as filming comes closer. If one of us had an idea or produced a test of something, we would be able to post it on Evernote and upon syncing, the other would recieve it instantly. How cool is that?

Idents and Titles

The plan here is to go onto cooltext, and using the 'Wizards' template to get a metalic look to the title, type in the name of the film - Gaia's Army - and try out different fonts. The first three images are different ideas, with blue backgrounds which would be keyed out in AE (After Effects). In the program I animated them to fade in at a distance, and float towards the camera before blurring out. Afte Louis stated he felt the title should have a link to Earth because of the name 'Gaia', I duplicated the titles, colour corrected to make the second layer blue, and then masked out a random shape to make the title green and blue. After feathering, I animated the mask to make the blue swirl around over the green, just like actual water.

When this was done I put over an adjustment layer and keyframed a colour correction, so the title starts off blue and green and fades steadily into a swirling browny/grey colour.

Bear in mind these are just ideas, by the way. Here's one of the tests, rendered out and uploaded to my youtube. I'll upload a few different versions and use a 'Ask Your Audience (Respond and Vote)' module to vote on a favourite style, and advance from there.

The Coursework - early ideas

In the last double lesson, and over the previous weekend, I have established a group - composed of another media classmate, Louis, and myself. Together we have produced a basic plotline; a setting, characters, a treatment/synopsis of the events of the whole plot, and what the opening sequence will reveal. We also decided to include a smooth transistion from the narrative into a flashy, complex title sequence which fills the gaps in the storyline and features the original footage shot during my time on the battleship HMS Daring.

The working title has been decided upon: however it is currently classifed.

Above is a screenshot from After Effects, re-rendering out the Venturay Ident in slow motion, with reduced saturation to fit the mood of the film. As it turned out, I ended up making a completely different Venturay Ident to better suit the feel. It's simpler, and yet more effective. And I'll probally use it for everthing else too. Here it is

Art of the title

Casino Royale

Daniel Craig’s first Bond film, Casino Royal (2006) features an opening sequence which begins with the end of a fight in a bathroom – Bond is picking up a gun, when his enemy, having pretended to drown, turns with a start and aims a gun at bond. However Bond turns and shoots first, with the camera tracking backwards down the barrel of his enemie’s gun, making the single most iconic Bond image with the vivid blood dripping down the screen. This transitions into the GCI world of the title sequence.

The rest of the sequence is a montage of GCI world in which everything is made of cards, including Bond’s enemies here who disintegrate into cards when fatally hurt. Guns, spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs are seen constantly throughout the sequence, referring to the name of the film and the main plotline, which is focused around a key game of gambolling in a casino, in which Bond must win back stolen money from the antagonist. The music is an up-beat track by Chris Cornell called You know My name. Noticeably this is the first Bond sequence to have no silhouetted women, and is instead filled with silhouettes of Bond and his opponents engaged in combat, reflecting the typical Bond theme of fighting spies. Bond is shown as victorious throughout the sequence, proving to the audience his skills and ability as strong and powerful, undefeatable protagonist.

From time to time Bond appears as normal rather than silhouetted, such as when starring actors are listed – however Daniel Craig’s name is not accompanied by a shot of the actor himself. Similarly, Eva Green’s mention is accompanied with a shot of Craig preparing to shoot the first shot from his silenced pistol in the title sequence. The Silencer represents the stealth of the spy, again supporting the idea of a spy film.

LOST

The second title sequence is from the TV Drama LOST, which features a very different kind of opening sequence. Lasting around 15 seconds, the word ‘LOST’ appears, low opacity and blurred, however flies slowly toward the camera – although in the edit, the 3D camera almost certainly flew towards the text – becoming more opaque and less blurred until it is totally sharp, before blurring as the Camera’s depth of field fails to keep it in focus and the camera moves on past the text to a black screen.

I chose to look at this sequence because it is so unusual, and possibly completely original in style to any other existing title sequence. The sound which overlays it is mysterious, a series of synths and other soft, tense and suspenseful electric noises. It depicts mystery, horror, and suspense. – which basically sums up the show, . It's perfectly fitting - a mysterious title sequence to go with a show about a mysterious island moving, time traveling island, a mysterious island-guru/entity named Jacob and a monster made of Black smoke.

Se7en

 

The opening sequence to Se7en is constructed very much like a thriller or horror. Dark, sepia colours, full of shadow and ghost trails, time lapses, fast cuts, clips of fingers making noted, grotesque drawings. Extreme close ups and camera work seems to be favoured here; the shots, having been taken into editing, have been cut very fast paced and in an (organised) chaotic, confused manner. The final look and style is difficult to make sense of, however derived can be the facts that someone, who's identity is hidden, is studying something possibly inhuman (as can be seen from the image of humanoid hands). This links to the rest of the film - possibly the studies are those of a lunatic looking to murder, or perhaps they are the studies of a scientific experiment or analysis.

Text and titles appears as graffiti, white graffiti which twitches and quivers, sometimes with a larger low-opacity duplicate of the title over itself, like a GCI echo. The sequence has a very large, long list of names to credit - which completely contrasts with the number of credits in the LOST title sequence - which means the sequence is a very long one, also contrasting to the LOST opening. Even so this number of credits in an opening sequence is highly unusual, and I rest assured when the time comes to edit in the credits and names to the thriller opening we will be shooting (hopefully very soon) our number will not even come close to the amount of names within the Se7en sequence. 

The music of this sequence is tuneless; it could be more accurately described as an artistic combination of obscure and abstract noises. Very much like lost, although more classically recognised instruments such as electric guitar and percussion are heard in the series of sounds. Squeaks and scratches within the music, almost as if emitted from a faulty record player,  are consistent throughout the sequence.The sound builds a tensefull feeling, uncertain and alien due to the unnerving style of the 'music' - this too links with the visual effects, both looking and sounding like chaos when both are in fact highly planned and performed to the last detail.

HMS Daring Footage

About a month ago I had the privilage to embark upon Britain's new Type 45 Destoryer, HMS Daring, for about four hours. We were given a tour around the ship, and having brought my camera, I captured some spectacular footage which I plan on working into the thriller film we'll later be making.  






(As of the second of April 2012, the montage on Youtube has 17,458 views)

GoPro and Other Kit

Ready to roll ahead with the thriller film, a small preview of some of the kit I'll probably be using

Right in the centre is the Canon 550D which will be the main camera - mounted on a jib, surrounded by two rigs with four lights, and to finish it off a white and multicoloured acrylic clapperboard. The picture is taken with a GoPro camera, a small invincible everything-proof camera which can suction to anything and has a fish-eye lens.