Collage (Edit Three) and Where to From Here

Edit Three

Unfortunately due to continuous technical failures I was unable to make this film as long as I wanted.  I therefore have much that I want to achieve with the next phase of editing.

 Title and Credit Sequences

I spent a lot of time photoshopping the font for the title sequence as the feedback from the class was that it needed to be more original and this font was not available for download so I had to adapt it.  I like the screwed up paper imagery because it contributes to the scrapbook/collage aesthetic of the whole film.  I also think it stands out more and is more memorable now.  I chose the chalkduster font for the rest of the writing because to me it appeared school-like and had a hand-drawn feel which again complimented the aesthetic of the film and contributes to the metaphor of multiple layers of meaning and multiple layers to people and to life itself.  The names of the interviewees appear quite quickly initially as I wanted them to contribute to a sense of chaos before the rip away transition.  I chose to include a tea/coffee stain and child's drawing to contrast between adulthood and childhood and contrasting worldviews.  I thought these images were symbolic of the different perspectives.  I decided to make some of the fonts black to add to the sense of chaos at the beginning.  The title sequence builds up into a mes of layered voices and then cuts to silence as the title appears.  I used silence intentionally here to provide the viewer a thinking break to prepare for what might come next.  

The end credits again utilise the child's drawing imagery and includes some visual and audio material from Oliver.  I wanted to end with Oliver because his perspective on the world is so simple yet complex.  He captures the mystery of life with certainty when talking about magic and tinkerbell.  I also thought it was funny to have him explaining how hard life is at the age of 3 after all the heavy discussion from the adults.  The illustration helps bring the film back to an innocence and concludes with someone who is still developing their view of the world, which is reflective of the how I want the viewers to feel.

Imagery

 I tried to incorporate a lot of metaphor into the imagery where I could.  I tried to always have the images layered and leaving traces behind.  Creating the imagery for the torn cardboard was completely new to me and more involved than it initially seemed which presented a bit of a challenge for me.  Also the limitations of Finalcut in editing the shape of objects, and the malfunctioning of the after effects programme created added difficulties.  Initially, although the faces are laid out side by side and the voices are still audible I wanted to bring the images forward and backward through opacity - this also helped control the intended focal point which I think will be less overwhelming for the audience.  I also wanted the traces that remained on the frame outer to be subtle and to not be too obvious when they change - so that after a while you realise there is something there but it hasn't distracted you from the main focus of the film.  I used after effects to create moving points of light in the landscape to convey the existence and exchange of energy that the subjects discuss.  

I followed the discussion of a 'higher power' with Oliver talking about Superman - he is simultaneously talking about the existence of a higher power and his own identity which was a good bridge to transition into ideas around identity.  Ideally I would like to make all of these segments more fleshed out with more depth and subtlety of images, so this may be a task for the next phase.  I transitioned with Oliver flying across the screen as Superman because it seemed a light, fun and innocent way to move from a focus on him back to more serious material.

The discussion around water and identity utilises an image of a hand print underwater.  Here I again used after effects in a way that I wasn't familiar.  I am very happy with the end result.  The hand print of course representing identity which exists under the veil of language.  

I used the repeated picture of Bev that goes from colour to black and white and slightly decreases in time to convey the shattering nature of questioning ones own identity and to reflect the questioning of 'who' that appears above so frequently in relation to whats being said.  

I wanted to focus on the eyes in this segment because to me the eyes are the most expressionate and emotionally revealing feature of someone - the windows to the soul if you will.  I put Bev in black and white to play with the idea of distance while discussing intimacy.

The final rip away happens mid sentence after Natalie says "I guess humanity is-" to show how humanity can be ripped away at any moment, life can be ripped away, existence and even the changeable nature of our own perceptions.  It conveys a fragility and the temporary nature of ideas and the world.  This then transitions into Oliver talking about how its all just too hard which is amusing because he is so young and is mimicking adults which seemed a poignant place to leave the audience to think.

Where to From Here

1. Lessen the talking heads - add multiple perspectives like Hockney, animations and more graphic elements concerning whats being talked about
    
2. Make it much longer with more interesting variation in images
    
3. Play with other kinds of transitions - putting pieces of paper on like paper mache
    
4. Make the ending smoother, and more logically connected?
    
5. Make the depth more obvious so that the layers are more pronounced
    
6. Experiment and take more risks - have more examples of failures to learn from and build upon

Inspirations and Research

'Doubled Up' by Samantha Moore

I saw this film as part of SMST306 The Documentary Screen this semester and was immediately inspired by its abstraction and use of animation and repition.  I liked that the depth of meaning took a while to be revealed.  Although I would like to incorporate more of this style into my own work, I am aware that others in the class really didn't enjoy watching this and as my assignment should appeal to students I chose not to go to this level of abstraction yet.  The layers of meaning and imagery really appeal to me though.

'Ryan' by Chris Landreth

We were shown this film as part of SMST318 Animation Studies last semester and this was only the second abstract animated documentary I had seen up until then.  Again the layers of meaning in the animation and the metaphors really appealed to me.  I liked the active and busy screen that makes you unsure what, where and when you should be looking at.  Although this film has ethical issues around representation, the idea that someones character can be shown more through animation than reality is really interesting.

'Waking Life' by Richard Linklater

This is the first animated documentary I ever saw.  I saw it several years ago and have always wanted to create something as fluid with as much depth.  The rotoscoping technique fascinates me and eventually I would like to experiment with other forms of animating over the top of reality.  However for this assignment it was made clear through class feedback that this was not an aesthetic or idea that appealed to most as they found the animation distracting and overwhelming.  The ideas within this film - lucid dreaming and existentialism were going to be topics for this film until my relevant subjects pulled out and I had to reshuffle what the theme of my film would be.

'Mum' by Adelheid Roosen 

This clip inspired me because of the theatrical and unconventional style.  The idea that a documentary could be filmed in this way helped me to think outside the box and inspired me to want to take more risks.  Unfortunately due to technological problems and time restraints I was not able to experiment as much as I would have liked so this may be an area I try to push in the next stage of this assignment.

'Invisible Empire' by Jason Bermas

This film was interesting for its use of framing.  This film made me try to think of interesting alternative ways to try to frame.

'Kymatica' by Ben Stewart

I found the imagery of this film really interesting because it is clear that a lot of after effects have been used.  The effects help to bring the material to life somewhat but also create an interesting sense of distance which is made more interesting when reflected in the dialogue - matters of depth presented in a distanced manner.

This video also demonstrated what I should be careful to avoid as it is laden with effects but they all occur on a similar plane of space and in darkness.  I want my images to be more layered to reflect the depth of the topic.

'Life in a Day' directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott 

This film inspired me greatly because it takes the perspectives and lives of people from all over the world and meshes them together to form the fabric of humanity.  I also wanted to create some kind of snapshot of life and people - obviously on a much smaller scale.  Originally I was going to include a variety of perspectives that clashed and complimented but in the end I found more interest in the subtlety of difference of beliefs in the people around me in my life.  It fascinated me how people could be so individual with very specific and unique views on the world, yet have a layer of common understanding and respect for how their views differed.  This film has been shot by different people all over the world and as such has a very artistic and ecclectic style which I found charming.  I would like to include more variety of imagery and perspective in the next phase.

 David Hockney
Originally I wanted to interview people and have their faces appear like this as a collage of images rather than one simple talking head.  This might be an idea that I explore in the next phase

Collage Tutorials and Project Failures

After Effects Tutorials

This is a template I used for the imagery as Carl talks about the relationship of the self to water.  I used an image of a hand to represent the self instead of the text and tiled background in this video

This is the tutorial that helped me create the imagery for the frame for most of my film.  By adding more layers I made the process much more complicated and pushed the boundary of what I learned in this tutorial

This is the page turn tutorial that helped me with the ripped paper imagery http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXDp1349ulQ

Project Failures

With this image I tried to overlay a leaf texture to Oliver's face to try to show half nature half nurture but it ended up looking awful.  The pink would have been chroma keyed out in final cut but was just a guide for the frame.

Most of my failures were technical - things kept crashing and not exporting, or taking over 21 hours to export from after effects.  Due to these failures I have been unable to export constructive failures and add them to this blog.  I did have many struggles with the cardboard effect and getting the peel away right.  It was also difficult to overlay images and create depth because the after effects programme kept malfunctioning - this meant that often I ended up with square images in my wavey frame.  

I also stuggled with the amount of interview material that I had collected - I had hours of footage that took me some time to distill down to 15 minutes worth of usable snippets.  This was an interesting process in itself - trying to distill the important meanings and soundbites to get the full impact of what is being said and trying to compliment segments together so they have some sort of flow.   I really want to make this film much longer and include all the interesting material I have but I ran out of time for this second assignment so look forward to making the next version much longer.

Originally I wanted to animate what was being talked about and steer away from too many talking heads segments but due to time factors I had no choice but to go with what I could.  I would like to attempt more graphically interesting work in the next segment.

The ending was a bit abrupt for me - mainly due to lack of time and wanting to make it much longer.  It doesnt flow with the same level of complexity in imagery or subtlety.