Animation Storyboard
Working with Neilson on this one. Storyboard for as-yet untitled animation.
The photograph of Alan Alda that we plan to use is here. It's just a really good photograph of Alan Alda.
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November 29, 2006
November 16, 2006
ICM Final Project
Here's the Processing applet so far. The five gauges along the bottom of the screen represent the applet's current state, and can be controlled using the following keys:
| Increment | Decrement | Effect | |
| Gauge 1 | q | a | Word order randomness |
| Gauge 2 | w | s | Randomness of letters within words |
| Gauge 3 | e | d | Causes words to randomly disappear |
| Gauge 4 | r | f | Causes letters to randomly disappear |
| Gauge 5 | t | y | All vowels progressively replaced with 'e' |
(These five dimensions are only the first of ten to twelve that I plan to implement.)
The program allows the user to make incremental adjustments to the level of randomness applied to certain features of a text. These features include:
- visibility: whether a unit appears or not;
- order in sequence, such as the order of letters within a word;
- identity: whether a unit is expressed by itself or by a related stand-in, such as a synonym or a letter that represents a sound similar to the original.
The units of text susceptible to these changes are letters, words, and lines.
The program is primarily a creative vehicle for uncovering, by random juxtaposition, previously unseen relationships between elements in a text. The use of analog controls facilitates the fine-grained adjustment of randomness, allowing the user to explore the line between meaning and unintelligibility. The program is, in essence, a means of exploring the following question: Is there a "perceptual threshold" for meaning in written texts? At what point does a text stop being unintelligible and start being meaningful?
(It should also be kind of fun to play with.)
In its final form, the program will be controlled not by the keyboard but by a control panel. I believe that this will be a more seamless and intuitive interface for the program. The panel will consist of ten to twelve potentiometers hooked up through a multiplexer and an Arduino, whose values are routed to Processing over a serial connection. My current idea for the panel's interface design is after the jump.
Click the image to see the full-size version.
The interface design reflects one of the original ideas behind this project, which was to create a "mixer" for text ("mixer" in the music production sense). I'm not sure what's going to go in that lower-right hand square. I'm considering a button for "save" that saves the current text and uploads it to a website for all to see, or sends the current text to a printer.
November 15, 2006
STFU: A Film.
I'll link here to the Quicktime file when I get a link from Adam or Scott. (Not sure who ended up with the final edit.)
So, making a movie thing. Some things were easier than I expected.
1. Getting into the library with our equipment was a breeze. The security guard didn't blink when we came in, and we were able to get our shots in both the quiet study room and the stacks without raising any eyebrows. Or, at least, we didn't raise them too high. (The light kit did trigger the theft alarm on the way out, but the guard waved us through, saying, "It's just all those wires.")
2. Actually, the entire shooting process was relatively easy. We were done in 6 hours or so, and that includes leisurely brunch at Dojo. Some of the shots had lengthy set-ups, mostly those we did early in the day before we ran out of energy (the final whimpering scene, the shot of Tom running that leads up to that, etc.).
3. Tom was a great actor. He shed his nervousness after one or two takes and really dug in thereafter. I know I would have required about twice as much time to get over my self-consciousness and inhibitions and general unwillingness to make a fool out of myself in public. You can see that even my turn as the pen tapper was pretty stilted.
4. We ended up with a lot of good material for editing, mainly thanks to the fact that Scott brought a second camera. Having two angles for every shot made it easier to stitch things together when we were editing.
5. When we added the buzzing insect sound effect to the rough edit, it was magical—it was as if a fly appeared out of nowhere. Tom did a good job of selling it, yes, but after we added the sound effect you could swear that there was actually a bug in the room with him.
Some things were a lot more difficult than I expected.
1. Editing. Adam did most of the heavy lifting here (including logging the clips) and we were all thankful for his deft Final Cut Pro skills. But what an exhausting process! Even just ordering and cutting the clips would have been a load of work, but throw in color correction, mixing and synching audio, cropping unwanted cameramen/mics out of scenes, adding titles, etc. and you're looking at a baffling amount of work. You'd figure it would take more time to shoot than to edit, but you'd be wrong (at least in our case).
2. Despite our best efforts, we didn't get all the shots we needed. Adam made a shot list, and we had the storyboard on hand, but for some reason we didn't get Tom pulling his hair out in the quiet study room, or some similar shot that shows building anger and annoyance that might lead to his eventual breakdown. Our solution was to cut back and forth between the stairs scene and close-ups of the annoyances (pen, gum, bug), all while a heartbeat sound effect plays, getting louder and faster. I think this solution succeeds, by and large.
November 01, 2006
Storyboarding
I'm working with Tom, Scott and other Adam. Our storyboard details the plight of a man in search of silence. This silence proves elusive, driving the man to a rather dramatic conclusion! (Scott said he'd scan and post the storyboard; I'll put a link here when he does.)
Actually we're not sure what the conclusion is going to be. The story is Adam S.'s brainchild; in his original conception, the short's protagonist ends up in the middle of the desert, jamming his ears with an ice pick. (Or something.) As it stands, we're unlikely to be able to film in the middle of the desert, so we'll have to find some other solution. (I suggested sneaking into the desert diorama at the Museum of Natural History but couldn't get sign-off from the rest of the group.)
The reading this week spurred my interest in storyboarding as an art in itself. It's mercurial. It inhabits an uneasy place between concept and execution. I like that its role can vary according to the project, the director, the studio, even the current phase of the production process. A storyboard can be purely visual, illustrating only mood, sets, costumes, etc., or it can be purely technical, giving shot-by-shot staging and camera directions, or it can be both of these things, or anything in between. I like the idea that there might exist any number of ad-hoc, formal languages for moving images that exist somewhere between the screenplay and the screen.
The other handout (In Search of Composition) was heavy. Not in the sense of dense, really, more just that it laid the truth bare. It was brutally honest about how film is essentially a deception, that our conventions for understanding film are learned and yet secretive and kind of manipulative. (There are lots of helpful hints in there, though, that I'm sure will be great for next week's assignment.)