Gary Coleman (Blog 8a)

This American Life 178: Super Powers
Listen to that.

Look at this:

Listen to this:

The Dog is Forever in the Pushup Position (mdia8b)

Here are the animations that my partner and I had to create in MDIA203

Matt Brody Created T-Storm:


I created ThunderThighs:


Yes I will admit, I cheated with the fire, however the rest was created in pencil. Frame by frame at 24p. The separate shapes were created in photoshop and then dragged into pencil as jpeg files and later animated. Here's the photoshop sketch of thunderthighs:

The first person’s hero/villain characters I will be critiquing will be Eric Eaton’s “radio man” and his partner’s villain who shall not be named… because he has no name to my knowledge.  Just to clarify any mistakes I make towards the creation of these characters… the blog only shows three pictures of what looks like three different sketches of characters with very little descriptive detail.  I will be comparing and contrasting these two characters in terms of their distinct color schemes.

This is the hero:

His name is Radio Man.  He has a very bright color scheme that really pops out to the audience.  This is because of his clothing and accessories that vary in highly saturated as well as higher valued colors that consist of a generally split complementary color scheme with either various reds, oranges, and contrasting hues of blues, or greens, blue-greens, and contrasting bright reds.  Because both of these color schemes are so bright and vivid with generally primary colors, the viewer sees the character as pleasant and safe: the qualities of someone one would associate with a hero.  These colors contrast with this villain who I will name Bryan. 

Bryan’s colors consist of low saturated browns, and extremely high valued and low saturated purples and bright blues.  These colors don’t necessarily contrast with Radioman’s colors, however they are very dull, boring, and drab colors that are very “blown out” as colorists and light experts would call it, meaning they are so bright (just the purple), so saturated with white coloring that it looks like a strange shade of white.  Usually this is very unappealing, such as for the case of this character: poop brown and very light purple are indeed very unappealing.  At this point, the affinity within the bright blues and reds don’t even matter; they just make the ugly colors uglier.  The fact that these faded out purples that I’m talking about are the character’s flesh makes all of this description worse.  This may be somewhat subjective but to me, the skin color gives somewhat of an undead, creepy sort of feeling, and the characters skin looks like something you don’t want to be touched by, which is perfect considering this is the villain and it really helped me easily contrast between the two color schemes.

Next up is Chris Faust’s Villain.  

There won’t be must contrasting here because there is no hero that I can see here.  However I am going to deeply analyze this character’s rather interesting and well-portrayed movement.  This villain, also nameless, not only displays the movement of a person, but also the movement of a skateboarder, as well as a villain… but mostly, a skateboarder.  There are a lot of instances within this animation where the character performs an “ollie” or a type of “flip-trick,” the act of jumping on a skateboard that gives the animator the opportunity to demonstrate weight as well as squash and stretch.  Within the instant of an ollie, a skateboarder must thrust down force with his back foot onto the tail of the skateboard in order to generate enough force to lift his body and himself off of the ground.  As this is happening the skateboarder’s front foot should be using the skateboard’s grip tape to drag or pull the skateboard up even further as he bends his knees closer to his chest.  After the skateboard and the skater’s body has reached its maximum height, the skater must make sure to continue to keep his back leg ever so slightly higher than his front leg so that he may clear anything that he is jumping over without catching the back wheels of the skateboard on the gapped (cleared) object.  Within this animation, Johnny Hammersticks performs four or five different variations of this squash and stretch/weighted movement.  There are also a lot of overlapping movements within the frame that follow through when Mr. Hammersticks either knocks a person over or blows their brains out, as he leaves them they continue to fall or bleed.  Also as he falls his arms fold back, and his legs extend and his body follows through until he lands, at which point his motion changes, but continues to overlap with previous actions.  All of these objective observations actively show the audience how fast and how skilled this villain is.

Currently, Jason Flood has nothing posted.  I really don't feel like doing another one of these.  It is Monday February 28th and there is nothing posted.  If I should still be doing something let me know.

That is all.

The Dog is Forever in the Pushup Position

Here are the animations that my partner and I had to create in MDIA203

Matt Brody Created T-Storm:


I created ThunderThighs:


Yes I will admit, I cheated with the fire, however the rest was created in pencil. Frame by frame at 24p. The separate shapes were created in photoshop and then dragged into pencil as jpeg files and later animated. Here's the photoshop sketch of thunderthighs:

Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus? Or a really cool opotamus? (Blog 7a)

RIP Mitch Hedberg.

            Here are the two short films we made in MDIA203.  We weren’t allowed to use synchronous audio, anything better than a camera that shot 720p, camera movements, depth of field, or anything that an arrogant video production major like myself would love to be using.  Well our groups ended up with two films as a result:

The first one where we took the 20’s silent film approach:

And the second one where we took a regular, nothing-special short film approach just with separately recorded audio:

The two are obviously extremely different in so many different ways I could quadruple the amount of required words for this assignment and still have things to talk about.  Which is usually what I do anyway, so we’ll see how that goes.  For the silent video we purposely incorporated a lot of subconscious lines, rhythms, and shapes by using precise lighting and art direction.  Whereas in the second film, we didn’t really consider half as many lines and shapes, but concentrated more on space and movement within the frame.  Within the very first frame of the silent film you may notice a mass amount of lines with a very staccato-oriented rhythm.  Immediately your attention is quickly directed towards the main character through the diagonal lines within the woodwork of the bar, pointing directly at his head.  Also within the same frame you may notice that a light was placed exactly where his head was, making this very bright and vibrant halo around his head, directing your attention towards him even further.  I do realize that the light looks very dumb without a lampshade and it actually blows out that area of the screen due to the ISO settings of the camera, however it gets the point across.  The very close, horizontal lines that the innumerable amount of liquor bottles display create a lot of rhythm enhancing the sped-up feel of an old silent film, as well as created many harsh dividing lines between the circular and hunched over protagonist and his straight-line hair, square shaped target that is nowhere near his reach, as if there is a giant wall between them.  Not only do the contrast between their body and head shapes and all of these lines separate them, the line of the bar and the balance and symmetry of the frame tell the audience that they have something in common with each other; despite all of these subliminal dividers, perhaps they are on the exact same playing field.  Really, the rest of the film barely concentrates on line and shape other than the establishment shot, other than perhaps the style of the clothes that the characters seamlessly change in and out of.  When the protagonist imagines himself as a more confident self, he also seems to imagine his female accomplice as more attractive and in different clothes.  The clothes she wears turns her into a round shaped person: well at least her hair, face, and accessories become more round-shaped.  She is now the vulnerable one, and his clothing is more “geometric” I guess.  It has more shape to it, it isn’t exactly square, but there are hard, rigid lines in triangles, pentagons, and squares throughout his vest and neck-tie garments.  In his imagination he stands up taller and his body shape is much straighter and “square-er,” causing the viewer to understand even further that he wants to be this confident man, and that he wants to picture this lady as a timid, shy, and vulnerable female. 

            All of this that I just said highly contrasts with what we did within the second film where shapes and lines are barely intentionally acknowledged.  We were geared more towards using movement and space within the frame.  Throughout this entire film, we show the two characters on complete opposite sides of the screen (within reason regarding the rule of thirds).  He was generally on the left, as she was on the right.  At one point when he is eyeing her across from the coffee shop you see him lean out of the screen, accidentally too far out of the OTS shot, which I’ll turn into something valuable and say that he is so far away from her when he thinks about hitting on her that he is out of his mind, he is no where close to having any chance with this girl.  At this point the viewer has subconsciously didactically accepted the fact that there is no way this guy is going to have a chance with this girl.  The walking patterns that the two characters follow are very diagonal, creating virtual lines within the frame that subconsciously cause viewer tension, as if something is going to happen.  I’ve heard and said multiple times within this blog that diagonal lines cause tension and strange feelings within the human mind subconsciously, it is the most action-oriented line.  They weren’t very harsh lines, however if they were that would create more tension, which would be unnecessary.  After this tension is built up, it is released with the girl throwing her book down with much faster movement than that of the rest of the film, which quickly allows the viewer to calm back down from this built up tension.

Blog Assignment 6a

Blog Assignment 6a
Yes, I do realize I went overboard.

Here's the article I'm talking about.
http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/6.HowToBeCreative

Let's do the fork in the garbage disposal, let's do the fork in the garbage disposal. (Assignments 5B and 6B)

Ding ding ding di-ding ding di-ding-ding.

Here's the first critique I did for blog assignment 5B.  It's just analyzing the first scene of one of my personal favorite short films: The Last Three Minutes, directed by Po Chan and filmed by Shane Hurlburt, one of my favorite independent cinematographers.

And here's the second critique i did for blog assignment 6B featuring the video game Little Big Planet 2.  I pretty much just highly analyzed the vibrant colors of this game.  I had to dumb down the quality of the video in order for it to be put onto blogger so the colors aren't as strong as I say they are in the video.  My apologies.  Also the sound quality of my voice sucks because my mic cable broke and I couldn't use the studio mic because it was broken as well for some strange reason.  I did the best I could with my mac mic.


That is all.

I did not hit her, it's not true! Blog Assignment 5A

Oh, hi Mark.

A lot of my photography and cinematography derives from other artists’ framing and lighting techniques.  

Usually that’s the case for any creative work for most people: picking and “stealing” off of a bunch of other artists and combining the techniques and styles with what you knew before them to make your own style.  One of the people I have picked off of in terms of both framing and lighting within my work is in fact Ben Goossens.  I would say that nearly every shot I take in a film or in a photograph, without hesitance I think of rule of thirds and how it should be incorporated within my shot.  That includes whether it shouldn’t be that heavily used as well.  Ben Goossens has a very unique, yet continuous style in that, many of his pictures are very surreal.  A lot of the surrealism usually is incorporated within human characteristics he has drawn and painted out.  

One reoccurring theme that Goossens seems to enjoy touching base on is the face.  In at least one out of every six pictures, there is a painting of a man without a face, or a painting of a man with his face in a cage, or a painting of a lot of facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) placed in places they aren’t normally seen.  Drawing the human face well is a difficult task to pull off, however, making someone draw the human face in their head is an even greater feat.  Before I go on about that I’m going to talk a little more about his style.  In most every single one of his pictures, Goossens loves to make use of great depth and extremely noticeable use of the rule of thirds within his photos.  If you see here, a few photos that I have taken use the same technique, with one object in the foreground to one side of the frame, kind of pointing to a much smaller or further away object near the background on the near opposite side of the frame.  It’s a style that a few of my friends and myself back at home just seem to find very aesthetically pleasing (no, we don’t like to overuse this, but when we use it, it makes us happy.  Just don’t ask.)

Now that those three hundred and eighty words are taken care of, I will begin to talk about what I’m actually supposed to talk about.  This photo Ben Goossens took.  It’s called I think, I’m a Dreamer.  

It uses all of the techniques I was talking about just a second ago but I will heavily examine all the little details right now.  First of all the center of attention right here is nothing.  It’s supposed to be something, but Goossens tricks our eyes into paying the most attention to nothing.  Using the rule of thirds, color value, surrealism, lines, and shapes: Goossens tells his audience to look at an invisible man wearing a tuxedo and a classy hat.  The piece shows a clean single shot of a man who is all dressed up but has no face.  He has no head.  He just isn’t.  First, our attention is subconsciously thrown into that area of the screen due to the rule of thirds.  The place where this man’s head should be is placed in the exact area most people look when they first examine a frame: a diagonal inch away from the top left corner.  In this exact same spot, the picture is the brightest and whitest and it pops out the most.  It is not just a plain white, it contrasts with the rest of the somewhat dark painting and the area is kind of feathered out, giving it a kind of bright-white glow, which would attract anyone to that point looking at this picture.  After examining this picture the next thing you may notice is a tree.  The tree is very far away, this you can tell because of its size and placement in relation to the horizon line.  This gives this picture a large sense of deep space.  An even greater effect that adds to this deep space are the birds in this picture, directing the invisible man’s line of eyesight to this tree, connecting a perspective line of depth between the two objects.  Also the background and the foreground are very high in contrast as the man and the sky are in a monochromatic black and white scheme while the tree and the field are in a green and yellow (god damn packers) analogous scheme.  I know that doesn’t have to do with line and shape and more with lighting but I felt like putting that in there anyway.  This is why I was so drawn to his image.  To summarize it was because of the surrealism, intriguing depth, and interesting color scheme, and the way I framed it was just to frame it, there was really no reason as to why I did it in this certain way.  

Well to get a good grade I have to tell you that I did for a certain reason, so now that I think about it, I actually framed this just so you could see a clean single of this invisible man just centered in the screen.  This is to show you how much more boring and cramped you feel looking at this picture rather than the original: there is no more depth, the picture is pretty flat; the brightest spot of the picture is now his shirt and that really doesn’t stand out or matter, the surrealism is still there but it’s just much less intriguing because the good use of the rule of thirds as been taken away.  Yes, still his “head” is not centered, at least he is above the top line of the rule of thirds, but he is almost dead center and that’s very boring to the viewer.  There is no more tree, so there isn’t much depth.  There is a line connecting his eyes to nothing so that’s boring.  The reframing of this picture is to prove a point, to show that all the techniques he used to create interest were there for a reason, without them this picture is terribly boring.

48 Hour Shootout Winners!

We only won amongst sophomore and freshmen division.  Some amazing stuff came out of that competition... I've attached some of my absolute favorites.  I was extremely amazed with some of the films these people cranked out in 2 days.  However, we also won the Audience Choice Award.  Also, after the screening, Justin Kohn, the man who animated various famous scenes from Nightmare Before Christmas, Ants, and Coraline, came up to our main crew (he was a judge) and talked to us about how he fought for us to win overall best film.  He talked to us for a good ten minutes about our film, film in general, animation, his career, and the media business.  He said "if this is what you guys are doing now, I don't know what to tell you about where you'll be in five years."  I'm surprised he talked to us over some of these films though....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkYNpg9z4A

My absolute favorite... so beautifully done in so many ways... I thought for sure this was going to win.

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

This made me crack up.  Absolutely hilarious and also very well done.  (Note their genre.. very clever)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic0nqrdnkkc

Also made me laugh a lot.  Very well filmed once again.  I lost it at the shot at 2:34.  Smoothest jib I've seen here yet, and the dialogue is hilarious.  This one's quality surprised me.

and finally...

Don't understand how it got audience choice over some of these...

http://vimeo.com/19730741

Our genre:

Soap Opera

Prop:

Lamp

Line:

I need you to back me up on this.

I edited, DIT-ed, designed graphics, as well as was the Camera Grip (assistant camera) to: Greg Mezey the director of photography.

What's worse than a worm in your apple? [Songs/SongCritiques 4B]

....The holocaust

Here is my song, my partner Chelsea's song and my critiques of Emily Zink, Chad Vasquez, and Sam Binnig's songs. All in one convenient little package, isn't that nice?

Because Podsnack is stupid you have to click this link to hear the full version of my critiques:
Critiques