Day: February 25, 2008

Rotoscoping

After reading Brian’s response to the Smith reading “Shaping The Maxx,” in which he referenced Sin City, I immediately thought of a movie I saw recently called “Renaissance.” It stars Daniel Craig (the new James Bond) and takes place in a futuristic Paris dominated a massive corporation whose main product is eternal youth and beauty. The story itself kinda sucks, but it’s look is totally awesome (like a B&W version of sin city). Here’s a link to some screen shots – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386741/mediaindex. After doing a couple google searches, I found out that this look is done with a technique called Rotoscoping. Here’s the jist of the wikipedia article: Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

Final Cut Glory

So yesterday, I was editing in Final Cut for a project I’ve been working on which requires a lot of various special effects, photoshop, etc.

It never ceases to astound me just how versatile this program is. I remember when I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to use the darn program. One day, a friend of mine challenged me to a film competition. We each had 24 hours to shoot and edit a two minute special effects short paying homage to Japanese shows like Power Rangers etc. Fortunately, I could only do so much in Imovie, and I was forced to leap to Final Cut in order to make the edits and visuals I wanted. After about 24 hours straight of slaving over this project, I got it done. Afterwards, it dawned upon me just how much I was able to do with this one program. To think that not too long ago, we were all editing on vhs players stacked on one another.

When I was a kid, and I used to make my short movies, I’d always have to put the machines on top of each other and time things perfectly, otherwise I’d accidentally erase too much and have to start over. Now, with all the digital programs and hardware available, it’s only getting more user friendly. It’s astounding whenever I think about it.

-E.

Coworking

So I was browsing Google News one day when I stumbled upon this article about something called “coworking” (note the lack of a hyphen).

Evidently in big cities like New York, entrepreneurs have been collaborating to rent office space to use together. Sounds normal, right? Here’s the thing: none of them are actually working together. They’re all starting their own businesses and working on their own projects independently while sharing the workspace.

They do this for various reasons. For one thing, it’s cheap. Instead of buying a workspace for yourself when you’re trying to start a company, you can just rent a small part of this communal work area. Secondly, the people working in this shared space give each other motivation, support, and allow for the exchange of free ideas. Sound familiar? It’s just like the internet, but in real life! People can get together to get things done, but not necessarily the same thing. It’s like the internet but even better because instead of coldly communicating through typed words, they can actually speak to each other in person.

I thought this was a really great article, and I really wanted to share it with the class. If you have time, please read it!

Snap Z and Audacity

Snap Z and Audacity are two very powerful programs that I want to continue to understand better. It appears that they are great for copying copyrighted material for yourself. I’m sure that’s what distributors argue goes on at colleges, but it is an amazing luxury to be able to make my own mp3s from streaming audio.
While this will help me enjoy video and music from online sources, I do believe that there are lots of ways these programs can help traditional forms of media. For a different film class, we were encouraged to use Snap Z to show stills from the movies or scenes we were writing about. Not only did having a picture there make it easier for the reader, it kept the author honest because we were no longer able to fudge details about a movie that may have not been there. When there is physical evidence on the subject you are discussing, it allows you to write more precisely and descriptively than not having the screen cap there.

iPhone podcast

I came across this podcast reviewing the iPhone and its features. I thought it tied into our project because the video demonstration is really important for the viewers understanding of the phone. Had this just been an article in the newspaper, it would have been difficult to follow.
[youtube ERyQ21BEC6s]

Locksley vs. Ole Moon-Eye

Let’s get the fact that I’m a little bit of a Locksley fangirl out of the way. Most of the guys went to my high school, seniors while I was a freshman, one of them was an Abercrombie model (or something like that), etc. etc., you get the picture. It helps that they’re pretty darn fun to listen to.

This is an animated music video made to go with one of their newer singles, “Start All Over Again.” I find that the cohesion between image and sound is more like Fantasia than an image-lyric correlation. This is also just slightly bizarre, fairly unique, and generally humorous.

[youtube 4bdRp9auXOw]