Animation part 4

Antz (1998) made by Dreamworks Animation was the second computer-animated feature film to be released.

A Bugs Life (1998) that was made by Pixar/Disney

The Periwig Maker (1999) Made by Steffen Schaffler, the short stop-motion film is set during a seventeenth century plague epidemic, Took five years to make and was nominated for an Academy Award.

The Old Man and the Sea (1999) Oscar-winning film by Alexandr Petrov
Made in the unique style of finger painting with slow drying oil paints on multiple planes of glass, often working for days and nights without rest
An adaption of Ernest Hemingway’s story

The Old man and the sea has a very beautiful style of animation very different form other animations of the time, every frame looks like a beautiful painting. also the story and audio work very well with the Animation. However it is a little hard to watch after a while.

Run Lola Run Review

Run Lola Run (1998)
Germany
Directed by Tom Tykwer

Won: Bambi Awards 1998, Bogey Awards, Germany 1998, Bavarian Film Awards 1999, Brothers Manaki International Film Festival 2000.

The use of Split screen and black and white was effective to help tell the story and give a different feel to the film. I would recommend this film.

Pre-Production

Story/Script
Chase scene that follows the protagonist until a point where the camera spins around the protagonist who is caught between two groups of of people chasing him.

Characters
One protagonist
Two groups of people

Genre
Action

Equipment
BMC Camera, wide lens, dolly, (natural shade light)

Location
Near an industrial building

Techniques
360º circular dolly movement of a medium long shot around protagonist.

Animation 1986 - 1889

A range of animations were made from all around the world including:

UK

When the Wind Blows (1986)

An adaption of a Raymond Briggs graphic novel directed by Jimmy Murakami
About an old couple who naively follow the governments survival instructions after an nuclear war breaks out
Used photographed model sets for backgrounds
Praised by critics and presents a powerful argument against the nuclear arms race.

Brothers Quay 

Twin brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay from England made a collection of animated films including:

Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies (1988)
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
Ex-Voto (1989)

Family Dog (1987)

The first episode, Directed by Brad Bird, was part of Steven Spielburg’s TV series Amazing Stories
Had higher production standards than the low budget, mass produced TV animations of the time

Credited with having a role in the revival of quality animations –
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
The Simpsons (1990)
Ren & Stimpy (1991)

German New Wave

In 1962 New German Cinema was launched. A group of film makers declared a new agenda for German Film. The document was called the Oberhausen Manifesto

Films in Germany were in decline and were of low quality and content


Three directors led the movment:

Werner Herzog, Rainer Michael Fassbinder and Wim Wenders, German cinema began to reflect issues of the time.

New German Cinema:

Yesterday Girl (1966)

Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (1968)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975)
The Tin Drum (1979)

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

Filmed Drama Shooting

Storyborads

Schematics

Below is the lighting schematics for my short film. This was quite fun to make and I enjoy using Abobe Illustrator.

Lighting exercise HMI experements

This experiment was very interesting as this was the first time using an HMI light.

HMI: Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide...The lamp operates by creating an electrical arc between two electrodes within the bulb that excites the pressurised mercury vapour and metal halides and provides a very high light output with greater efficiency than incandescent lighting unit.

With HMI bulbs, colour temperature varies significantly with lamp age. A new bulb generally will output at a colour temperature close to 15,000 K during its first few hours. As the bulb ages, the colour temperature reaches its nominal value of around 5600 K or 6000 K. 

The HMI light is very bright and has a colour temperature of 10,000ºK when new and 5600ºK after a period of time.

The HMI we used was between 5600º and 6000ºK so that is what we set the colour temperature at.

This light produced a very artificial looking light that we had to diffuse with silks and flags. After a while, we managed to start getting setups that were looking good. but I would only use a light like this while shooting in a green screen studio to replicate sunlight or positioned outside a house window on a cloudy day (or night time). Personally, I would rather use the natural sunlight and use diffs or flags to control it.















One thing I learnt was about exposing for the face: we used spot metering for this and that is a reflective based metering system. when exposing for the face using a reflective meting system expose exactly what the exposure is telling you to. however if using incidental metering the zone that the face should be (zone 6 for caucasian) should be exposed for one stop above what is read on the light meter.

Lighting exercise - soft light

This was an experiment with a big silk over a 5Kw tungsten bulb as the Key light and the Kino Flow Diva as a fill light useing a

During this experiment, we tried placing the silk at different distances from the light and the subject to see what effect it would make on the light quality,

1:1 Hard Light 

2:1 Hard Light (a little better than 1:1 hard light)

Silk Far (creating a very soft effect to fill light)

Silk Close (This still left some shadows and was not as soft as we would have liked it)

Silk Far and Flozier Diffuser on Fill (this was one of the best setups in my opinion)

 

Lighting Exercise - Firelight

This was a very interesting exercise, to recreate a restaurant dining situation that resembled having an open fire but recreated with lights:

We used a lantern that was positioned very high above the subject to cast a very soft light over them and then a redhead on a floor stand with an orange gel in front of it to resemble firelight.

To my surprise, it actually worked and It did (in the end) resemble firelight.

We tried many different positions such as which side the camera was to be on fireside or not and also how close or far the lantern was to the subjects.



(Photos Pending)

Reservoir Dogs Review

This film, has been directed by Quentin Tarantino, in

Made in 1992

Edited by Sally Menke.

This film was followed a non linear story line which was partly effective but the film had too much talking and the overall story was boring. I thought the cinematography was very good and I liked the use of the camera movement. 

Animation 1990's part 3

Portugal 1995
Pedro Serrazina
Story of the Cat and the Moon

Japan 1995
Mamoru Oshil's
Ghost In The Shell

USA 1996
Henry Selick
James and the Giant Peach

South Africa 1995
William Kentridge
Felix in Exile

Directing

Blocking

Light

Rehearse

Shoot


TV-style shoot

• Wide
• Close-up 1
• Close-up 2

One was about shooting for TV coverage.. this is shooting a scene about three times

First, a wide shot covering all the action in the scene...

Then shooting close-ups of each character to capture their expressions.

The other way is to plan out a shot and cover all the action so there is no need for any editing.

This really inspired me when watching the end scene of Children of Men. that there was no obvious editing, and it made and it made for an amazingly immersive experience.

This really inspired me to think differently about shooting and my approach to any specific scene. both in the way to shoot quickly with TV coverage. but also trying to capture the action with one shot in a creative way.

Blair Witch Project Review

The Blair Witch Project

(1999)
Directed by Daniel Myrick

This film uses diegetic cameras to tell the story of three film students trying to document a legend of the Blair witch. The reason that this movie seems believable (Apart from a convenient story that follows conventions and unlimited battery life) is the acting is very real and the interaction between the characters.

The film used a lot of marketing techniques such as creating an online cult following, spoof police posters promoting that the actors were missing when the film was shown at festivals.

Animation History 1990's part 2

Due to the success of shows like The Simpsons, More experimental TV animation began emerging.\

The Tick 1994

The Critic 1994

Duckman 1994

The Big story 1994 shows an argument between Kirk Douglas and his older self, Quentin Tarantino liked it so much it was shown before the screening of Pulp Fiction.

The secret adventures of Tom Thumb 1995

The End of the World in four seasons 1995 Is an animation that makes use of multiple screens telling several stories at the same time yet some overlap too.

Toy Story 1995 was the first fully 3D feature filmmaking the toys come to life. It was produced in partnership with Disney and Pixar 

Film Noir self evaluation

All in all, I thought the Genre Film shooting went very well, we were efficient and fast at shooting (relatively) it only took about 4 hours all up. I thought the location was great for the film and We all did a good Job.

A couple of things I would improve on is reframing some of the shots, adding another fill light (Now I learnt how to use them properly) just to not let the shadows fall completely into black.

One thing I really learnt was how bad the crop factor is on the BMCC. The Some of the desired shots we were unable to achieve because of the narrow angle of the lens. However, I really liked shooting on the black magic apart from that and also the files size of the RAW format are unmanageable so I didn't shoot in RAW.

the other thing I learnt was to check properly the shutter angle!!!!!!!!!!! someone had left the camera set at 90º and I forgot to check until halfway through the film. (good thing there was no grain with the higher ISO)

Lighting Ratios & Inverse square law

Lighting ratios = difference between the key light and fill light

Intensity = 1/d²

These are achieved by distance, diff paper, flags, different lights, dimmer.

Through this exercise, I really felt I learnt how to manipulate light in a cinematic way to get the result I wanted.

the below example is a lighting ratio of 8:1 this was measured on a light meter using an incidental reading using a lumi disk for the key light and the fill (reflector board)

Film Noir Shooting

Here is a collection of Photos from the shoot, Self-evaluation will follow:

The bare minimum of gear

The essential hat:

Lens Mounts

Lens mounts:


EF mount: developed by cannon:

F mount: developed by Nikon, used by F3 camera at SIT

PL mount: developed by Arri PL stands for positive lock. has advantage of strength for more weight.

Frame size:

Full Frame 35mm

Super 35mm equivalent to APSC-C (crop)

Micro 4/3

ABELCINE.COM/FOV

Animation 1990's

Overview,

- The Simpsons 1990's- on wards
- Cartoon network started in 1991 with a collection of animations.
- Batman: the animated series 1992
- Barry Purves - Created Screenplay 1992 in his bedroom in one take
- Jurassic Park 1993, pushed boundary of CGI.

A Live action film where CGI has detracted from the story:

TV show: Spartacus background, bad CGI

A live action film where CGI is seamless:

The Matrix 1999

Light meters

Light metering

Reflective:

Measures reflected light from the subject from a light source.

Lumi-grid: used for reflective metering. near the camera.

IS inbuilt light meter in camera.



Incidental:

Takes a reading of light intensity.

Lumi-Sphere - used to measure light overall near the subject

Lumi-disk - Used for measuring strengths of individual lights.


Spot:

reflective metering principals but the angle of view is very narrow.


Lightmeter uses measurements of Foot Candles.


Light meter test:

For the WS I exposed from what the Incidental Lightmeter was saying exactly for the scene:

This was good overall but was not good for exposing the face.

For the MCU I over exposed by one stop so the skin tones were sitting in Zone VI. this worked really well.