Christmas Project: Marks and Traces

One of the projects we had to do over christmas was called ‘marks and traces’. Our brief was to study areas that had been left with the marks and traces of human activity and photograph them. This is only the first section of the project however, more will be done with the images when I get back to UCA.

When I was brainstorming ideas about where I could possibly photograph one area sprang into my mind straight away: My desk. More importantly, the tools that I have at my desk, which I have spent a considerable amount of time using. I chose to use my desk as my focus point as it is where I spend most of my time, either working or relaxing and has most definitely been impacted by my presence.

Armed with only my iPad (I’m an animator, not a photographer! It was the best thing I had) I set about trying to take some decent and meaningful photographs. Overall I think I succeeded, ending up with 9 images. My pictures are supposed to act as a sort of storyboard for a days worth of work – It starts off with the computer turning on, then the sharpening of pencils and using tools like the tablet, mouse and keyboard. The final shot is of the desk again in the same position, this time with everything switched off.

I’m somewhat pleased with how the project went. I must admit that I found it quite challenging as photography isn’t my strong point, but I did manage to produce some pretty good images.

Interview Reflection

I have mixed feelings about how this week went. On the one hand, I’m very pleased with the end model and our set, as well as the footage that we shot. However, I can’t help but be disappointed in myself that I didn’t get anything animated, at all.

We shot our footage before the end of the first week, last thursday. This should have left us with loads of time to build all of our assets and animate them. However, due to my computer at home not having a FireWire port, the footage just sat there on the tape until Monday, which was really annoying.

Then when it came to taking the footage off the camera, we lost a whole day fiddling around in Premiere, watching it back and editing the sound levels, as well as selecting that audio clip we wanted to use. It didn’t help that we had to switch computers several times as other people needed specific software that was only installed on the computer we were using.

Creating all of the assets for the set also took a lot longer than I thought, just due to the nature of how they’re made. This bit really couldn’t have been helped, but I could have managed my time around it a whole lot better. Also Narika made the character out of a high quality clay, which had to be left overnight to set and ended up cracking when we tried to animate it.

In the end we decided to leave the animation and continue to refine our set instead, as we couldn’t have possibly animated anything in the time that we had left. Over the christmas break I have decided that I will be animating my own version of the audio clip in Flash, so that I have something to show for this week and to put it in my showreel for University.

Interview Finished Model and Set

Week Reflection 2nd – 6th December

Overall I think It’s been another successful week! We got our interview shot quite early on without any major hiccups and we’re all ready to begin planning out animation next week.

We were really on the ball at the start of the week, choosing a subject to do pretty quickly and organising a time for shooting the very next day. This allowed us to be highly organised when it came to the actual shoot, with all of our equipment tested in the morning before so that we all knew how to properly record our footage. All of our questions had also been pre-planned and sent off to our interview subject the previous day so that he had time to prepare some answers for us. This meant that when we showed up on Thursday to shoot he was more than ready for us.

The only downside to this week is that my home computer doesn’t have a Firewire port. This means that, unfortunately, I can’t actually watch back through any of the footage we shot until Monday. The camera is just going to be sitting in the corner of my room over the entire weekend, taunting me. It’s really annoying, as I could have gotten a big head start with the animation and actually gotten some done over the weekend.

Interview recording

A still from the Sony HDV camera as we were watching back our footage from the interview.

Interview Project Development

Project Brief – Interview

“This is a collaborative project. You are to work in groups of three and, depending
on the composition of the pathway cohort, animators and filmmakers are
encouraged to work on the same project.

You are to begin by filming an interview with your chosen subject. This material
may reveal a wide variety of narratives, personal stories, accounts of events,
explanations of facts, historical data, etc. However, while the starting place for
this project is a common moving image form (the interview) you are asked not to
develop this material into a conventional documentary format. Instead, you
should employ animation, film and photography creatively to visualise your
material. You do not have to use the original film footage in your piece unless
you choose to do so. The important thing to keep in mind as you develop your
project is that, while you must stick to the facts that you are using as a basis,
the piece that you are make should be an imaginative and creative response
to them.”