oops...

I just realized that I forgot to post my title sequence on here... my bad.
(obviously... it's only a half-resolution version)

New Media Award nominations

Best Overall Sequence

- Luis Puga - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Best Use of Typography

- Veronica Hoch-Anderson - Alice in Wonderland

Best Use of Sound

- Luis Puga - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Best Motion-Graphics

- Juli Simek - Vertigo

Most Audience Appropriate

- Andrea Houk - Alice in Wonderland

Progress & "Finalization"

So here we are - end of the term. I finally made it all the way through Art328!
Differences made to my title sequence are a mix of subtle and blatant. First off, after working in Audacity for a few hours trying to get the song editing correct, I decided to just drop it and find a new song that could still fit the emotive qualities inherent in my imagery, and could be edited with greater ease. I spent about 5 hours running through all the music I own, and narrowed the field down to three new choices:
"Company Town" by Painted Saints
"The Lament" by Painted Saints
"Mr. Goodnight" by The Kelley Deal 6000
I ended up settling on "Company Town," and it was much easier to get it edited down.
Unfortunately, I was planning to re-shoot my footage on Saturday, however when I arrived at Fairbanks, it was completely locked up. As a result, I had to time stretch some of the footage that I was already using to make things fit, however the result of slowing down some of the footage made things a bit choppy towards the middle of the sequence. Overall though, I'm fairly pleased with the end result.

title sequence: draft 2

So here's the same thing with just a few slight changes. Nothing too drastic yet, such as the pacing for the latter portion of the video.
"Trainspotting" rough draft 2

title sequence: draft1

Here is my rough draft for the "Trainspotting" title sequence. I think it's a decent start, but I feel that the end is pretty rushed, so I'll have to look more into the pacing. Other than that, it seems like a pretty good point to leave off at for the weekend.

storyboards

Upon thinking about how I would need to set up my previous idea for filming, it was just too much work outside of the software we're supposed to be learning, and difficult to arrange a model and work around weather conditions. So I decided to instead use a primary and somewhat constant/consistent filmed background to establish an "arena" on the screen with depth and perceived space/dimensionality that assumes the role of providing a sense of being trapped within oneself. In the long run, I feel that this approach will yield a much more fluid and dynamic return, owing to the idea of setting a mood rather than filming a somewhat relevant narrative as a precursor to the film. The stills in the storyboard are obviously chronological, with some content gaps, but the background is always in motion, moving around in sync with the music - some slower segments, some faster - that correlate with the in-focus linework and intermittent blurred imagery.

So it took me pretty much the entire weekend to settle on an appropriate song that I feel encapsulates the feeling of being cradled by a drug in both the melody and lyrics (stemming from my own similar experiences a couple years ago). I at first looked up blatant heroin based songs, but they all seemed a bit too obvious.

"Object" by Ween
This song's lyrics are somewhat ambiguous in meaning, as the song is generally considered to have one of two possible narrations:
1) It is a murderer singing to/about a recent woman he killed.
2) It is a first person dialogue in which a man is talking to his penis with intent to circumcise himself.
In either case, I don't imagine that those narratives would be conveyed when meshed with visuals of a drug-related nature - the major emphasis being placed on the repetition of the word "object."

Other possible song choices I generated include:
"Walk on the Wilde Side" - Lou Reed
"Symphony No.7" - Beethoven
"Most of the Time" - Bob Dylan
"Garlands" - Cocteau Twins
"Alone" - Colin Newman
"Atlantis" - Donovan
"Needle in the Hay" - Elliot Smith
"Time to Pretend" - MGMT

Inspiration for this mood, feeling, etc, is from a particular scene from "Trainspotting," in which the main character and narrator, Renton, experiences his first heroin overdose - left completely helpless and at the mercy of his habit. I couldn't find this clip in English, but this dubbed version should suffice. And here are a few stills from this scene of inspiration for the sequence/color palette.

initial film stuff

Here are my initial draft of the creative brief and a summary analysis of the film.
creative brief
film analysis

project 3

Here are my "finished" files for the latest project. Unfortunately, I ran out of time on it, due to other classwork, so it seems almost like an updated version of the interactive gallery/site critiques project. *shrugs* However I do rather like the overall look especially combined with the intro song.
Project 2 site (.swf)
song on the site
early version 1
early version 2
video/audio from the space

weekend work

So I was finally able to get the actionscript figured out, for the most part, but I'm still not quite sure about how to simplify/package/etc the code for all the buttons.
new screenshot gallery (.fla)
new screenshot gallery (.swf)

Here are my site map and study guide as well:
project 2 site map
flash study guide (.pdf)

Project 2: 5 Metaphors

So the location I decided to "mine" on Monday's class was the basement "commons" room of the Hovland building. Metaphors to describe/organize the space include:
- Tone (audial)
- frequency changes of tones (may relate to texture)
- Texture
- soft to hard, smooth to rough, etc.
- Age
- organized in a timeline of the objects/fixtures located in the space
- Color
- organize with the color wheel as the guide. (does it even need to be in color? organize in a
grayscale fashion?)
- Chance
- "happenstance" of the random nature of placement of discarded items in the room
- Temperature
- temperature increases the further one gets from the door (organize objects/aspects of the
room by their proximity to temperature increase?)
- Transition
- looking at juxtaposition of the objects in the room, focusing on difference (soft couch / hard floor, skeleton key door hardware / incandescent lights, etc.)

Notes on observations and organization of the space:
- texture: fuzzy sofa, ugly tile floor, rusty metal, clean metal
- colors: yellows, faded green, brown, rust, white, "melting pot of colors," mostly neutral and faded greens

Observations:
- 2 men in a nearby office talking softly about the Bible - slight laughter, woman walking through room with quick, decisive steps

"interactive gallery"

So here is a pretty sad little "interactive" gallery of some screen shots from the websites last week. For the life of me I could not get the URL button linkage things to work, even though I put in all the script exactly like in the tutorial. oh well. They're just dead buttons at the bottom of it.

Interactive Gallery.swf

Gallery.fla

3 Site Critiques

here are my 3 website critiques...

critique for "ventilate.ca"

critique for "volumeone.com"

critique for "designflood.com"

... and some screen shots of the three sites:

ventilate: 01 02 03

volumeone: 01 02 03

designflood: 01 02 03

ideation/sketches for project 1

project parameters

sander mind map

whale mind map

plane crash mind map

animation 3 ideation

storyboard brief

In looking for pictures from last term of my drawn out ideas on the studio whiteboard, all images were not backed up, so these notes/sketches are sadly all that I have left, besides the original flash files that I had turned in last term.

updated project 1:

animation 1 .swf

animation 1 .fla

animation 2 .swf

animation 2 .fla

animation 3 .swf

animation 3 .fla

6 sounds

inkjet printer

rotary phone

water droplets

bag zipper

wind chime

cell phone vibrating