theOven

Sitting here and writing my last blog that have to be submitted in 15 minutes, I can’t find anything to write about, except how this last semester have been and what I have learned. I think this semester have been much better than the first one, because it has been more workshops and more projects in the course. I’m one of those who need to have a reason for learning and working, and when I’m able to spend time and effort on big projects, that’s when I learn heaps.

The first thing that I think of from this semester is the module we had with the Producer. She has produced The Bank and Romper Stomper, and she know what she was talking about. I really loved the kits that she handed out, with information leaflets, call sheets and storyboards. She was a very big fan of Movie magic, which is a program for Producers/filmmakers that makes your job easier. I’m did think that the Movie Magic was that relevant for us, as it is too expensive to use for a low budget film, and it doesn’t really save that much time when you only have a small crew.

The kits that Eliza (think that was her name) gave us, was very helpful for me when working as 1st AD on Old Man Time. Old man Time was a great experience for me as, this was the first time I have been part of a film shoot/production. Not everything went smooth, but that is when you learned, and I learned heaps. Number one is organization!!

Another good module was the camera and lighting sessions with Matt Blackwood. It is really great having a person that is so passionate and involved with what he is teaching. We had a session, where he pulled out all the cameras that RMIT have and, we got to “play” with them, just what I like doing. He also recommended one of the best movies I have seen this year; Dog Day Afternoon.

Last thing I want to mention is the After Effects lessons with Leo. As I’m editing in two of my projects, this was very helpful. I will probably use after Effects to correct the image more that actual effects, which it was good to go through all the basics. I might also use After Effects for my web page project, just as a little experiment.

All I’m looking for now is some work experience, so if you have a job for me, leave a comment or email me

Butch and I are doing a launch for the whole class next semester as our collaborative project. To be able to do this we need people to help us. The launch is suppose to be a reflection of the class and our course and therefore we need input from everyone. We have had a look at a couple of places to have the event:

Kaleidoscope Theatre
Astor Theatre
George Cinema
Greater Union Cinema
Capitol Theatre
Nova Cinema

If any one has a preference to any of these places, or any other suggestions, please let us know. Also interested in any other ideas and input. Have read a Butch Blog, so you can get to know some more about our concept.

I totally agree with Eun Mi on her blog when she says that AE (After Effects) is a program you can play with, and always discover something new or learn new techniques all the time. I guess it’s like that with most programs; there is nothing that can stop you as long as you are innovative. Eun Mi mentioned that she used to do 2D animation and mix them with Adobe Premiere and AE. Something I found very exciting is the new and improved possibility to integrate 3D into AE. AE as been limited to working in 3 dimensions, but only with 2 dimensional objects. This is now changed and you can add your own effects to you 3D object. This makes AE a much more powerful program.

I was watching Lord of the Rings Two Towers tonight on television and I had a totally new experience of the movie. I have seen it before on both a Cinema screen and on dvd, but it is a while ago. I have to admit that the special effects and cgi did not impress me at all any more. I’m not saying that they aren’t any good; cause the Lord of the rings trilogy is still one of the most amazing work within the field of CGI (Computer-generated imagery) and digital effects. However it is not yet 100% realistic. I specially saw that Gollum was not always lighted properly, which made him stand out a little bit from the rest of the scene, we are talking only 2% imperfect and 98% excellent work. However, those 2% is important and for me it’s not good enough any more, I want more.

The problem with using cgi and other effects in movies is that they get old fast. I have spoken about the new Star Wars movies before in this blog, and the amazing graphics, and did also then touch the subject of movies with lots of effects are going to get old news fast. However a film like Dog Day Afternoon, will sustain for a long time. Look at Films like Tron, Final Fantasy and even Fantasia, which were all celebrated as brilliant when they were released. Today they are just history of what the effect technology was, and we get less and less impressed.

I just had a module on After Effects, a program I have used a little bit previously. After Effects is mainly to do post production work on films and put in effects here and there. I haven’t used the last 3 versions I think, and was amazed how developed it has become. After Effects is becoming more and more similar to Photoshop and you can today manipulate your film as easy as you can ad effects to your photos. After Effects have a lot of pre set effects that looks ok and are easy to use. However this are the effects that are going to be old fast. I think when using After Effects and other programs to ad effects, it is important that you are innovative and creative and don’t use the pre sets all the time, because it will get cheesy and out of fashion very soon. Creativity will always win over technology when it comes to art… that’s my opinion.

As one of my projects that I’m working on during my degree is a web page for RMIT Handball. As I’m most comfortable with designing in Photoshop, I normally do my “pre-designing” or “drawings” in Photoshop before I go into Dreamweaver, GoLive or Flash to actually start making the website. The only problem so far is that it is hard to recreate what you do in Photoshop in these programs. Yes it is possible to save your Photoshop work picture by picture and then import them to let say Flash. However, there are some concerns when using this technique. First of all it is time-consuming and not very effective, second you may have to compromise some of the picture quality. And the biggest problem, gif and jpeg format.

Gif (Graphics Interchange Format) and jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are the two most used picture formats for web, because they can be compressed down to minimal file sizes (as in kilobytes) which is important when making a website, so you don’t have to wait forever for it to download and because not everyone have broadband yet (believe it or not). The problem with gif is that it doesn’t support gradient colours, and when you have a part of the picture that you want to be transparent, it creates a line around the area. It does support transparency, but not really well. Then you use jpeg, it does support gradient, and do it well. However, it does not support transparency, and therefore you can get problems when you are using gif and jpeg for web design.

But during my project, I have discovered a new and very useable format called png (Portable Network Graphics. Png support both gradient colours and to transparency perfectly. It is a little bigger in file size than gif and jpeg, but not so much that it matters. Png is now compatible in most new design and web software like the Adobe Creative Suit and Macromedia MX. I used it to transfer my Photoshop design into Flash and it worked like a dream.

What I did was; save all my individual layers in Photoshop as png’s, by hiding all the other layers first and then saving the visible layer as an png. Then I just import my png’s into the flash library and made the document background the same size as my Photoshop document. Then I placed the files in where I had them in Photoshop, in the same order on the same spot. No worries!!

I just found DVD-Jon’s blog and thought I would share it. For everyone that haven’t read too much in my blog, so have I been blogging a little about a guy called DVD-Jon or his real name; Jon Lech Johansen. Jon became famous all over the world after he cracked the copyright systems and made it possible to copy DVD’s and files from iTunes Music store.

His blog is called; “So sue me” which is funny, since he have been to court two times for breaking the copyright law, and won both times. The blog has a lot on the topic of copyright, DRM, movies and softwares in general. The only thing that I found very strange or ironic if you like, is that the picture of him self as a kid on the first page on his blog, has a text under it clearly stating that only a mr Per Johan Johansen (which I assume is his dad) has the copyright…..(!?)

When I’m talking about getting sued, I just have to mentioned that the Producing module I had in the start of the semester helped me heaps during my role as 1st AD on Old Man Time. During the module we got handed out a folder with all the phone number to all council, hospital and everything else you need to contact during a film shoot in Melbourne, and a kit with everything you needed when filming in public places. In the kit was a liability note, that says that we are covered by RMIT’ insurance if something should go wrong (or something like that).

As I thought all this was good value I took it with me on set, and on the 4th day at Northcote Plaza, we got in a little bit of trouble . However, because of the kit and the liability notice we were safe. If it had not been for our good producers module, we would have been in much more trouble…I do not think it is fun to be sued, even if you are DVD-Jon.

In one of my best lecture this semester we were shown footage from the film Dog Day Afternoon from 1975, as an example on great cinematograhpy. It was simple and effective. We were shown the intro of the movie, that are showing New York in a summers afternoon. This clip made my courius, because I didn’t find it that brilliant. To find out why our lecturer picked this film as an example, I went to the libary and got the film on DVD so I could see what it was all about.

I have to admitt, it supprised me big time. The film is brilliant shot, directed and acted. It is totally without digital effects or fancy camera movment. It is good old fashion filmmaking. And it also helps having a young brilliant Al Pacino in the leading role. The story is about two guys that ends up taking hostages and barricating them selves in a bank, after a robbery attempt gone terrible wrong. I won’t give away more about the story, but it is a good one.

After the movie I did some thinking and aksed my self why I liked it so much. I came to the conclution that it was because the film is timeless. When I in 2005 can sit and watch it and still think it’s good film making 30 years after it was made, makes it timeless. The film is so well done, so it doesn’t matter when it was produced or in which time periode the film is set in.
I have previously mentioned Amelie as one of my favourite film because of the cinematography, and I still think it is one of the best. However Amelie’s creators decided to use more effects, smooth camera movements and post production animation and retouching, which is totally acceptable, now that the technology is available. In 1975, that wasn’t an option, but that doesn’t mean that you still couldn’t get the same feelings and motions captured on film. There is something about the way Dog Day Afternoon is filmed, that makes it very real, sometimes almost like a doco. Which exactly what you want to see from movies that are based on a true story.

If you want to see good film making from the 70’s and at the same time enjoy a good movie and story, see Dog Day Afternoon. However it might be a little bit of a boys movie…

Not that I think that the world need one, but it is here; the iPod Mobile Phone. Apple have this time got help from Motorola to create this phone that will take over the growing market of mobile phones combined mp3 players.

My biggest concern with this new invention is that Apple and the iPod is growig into a monopoly like Microsoft and that’s bad. Especially when you think of the all the software that Apple use to restrict you from using the hardware and the media that they sell to their costumers. The mp3 market is turning into something that is 100% controlled by Apple, and that is bad, no matter what the product is or who the company is. I hope that the iPod “hype” soon will pass, and that several other players can give Apple some real competition.

It’s not that the other players are any less in quality to iPod, it’s just that iPod is the coolest and nothing else goes. I have a creative nomad Mp3 player, and I’ve had it for two year. Every time I use it and someone sees it, they ask me why I didn’t buy an iPod instead. When I ask why I should have an iPod, I never get any good answer, only; because it’s cool…

The good thing about this development is that when integrating iPod into Mobile phones, you get biggest possibilities for media content on your phone. This then leads to a bigger focus on designing mobiles for media content and this is a needed development, as film, pictures etc on mobile phones is a fast growing and developing industry. Making content for mobile phones is easy and an easy way to launch and get you production to the viewers. There are still limitation, but I have gone from hating all mobile content to now see the possibilities and need for it, as the technology has become better and better.

I wouldn’t mind using mobiles as a promotional tool, when I do my collaborative project, which is a screening of the Master of Media Production class 2006 at RMIT. How good is it to just make a little animation and 3 minutes later you have sent it out to 100 people. Cheap and effective.

If you will put your film/video on your mobile phone, it’s not that difficult. This is what we did with our mobile phone doco:

After we finished editing we exported the film as a Mpeg4 with the dimentions 172 - 144, wich is a ok standard for most mobile phone screens. Mpeg4 don’t give the smallest size when it is compressed, but that can be fixed if you import it into Quicktime player and then export it again in a 3gp format. Important thing is to remember that most mobile phones has limtied space in their memory and that a movie shouldn’t be much bigger than 100kb. with isn’t much and therefore also limits the quality and the length of the movie. I’m confident that we in the future will get mobile phones with much bigger memory space, but untill then we have to compress the file size as much as possible.

The best way to get the movie out of your computer and onto your mobile phone, is by bluetooth Most of the newest computers and mobile phones have possibilites for bluetooth transfering. Then when it’s on you mobile you can send the movie to all your friends and family, if they have a phone that can play video and if they have enough memory on their phone.

I just had my first proper experience as a part of a film crew. I was 1st assistant director on the production of the short film Old Man Time, that is a low budget student production. The crew contained 8 persons, the director, the DOP, two producers, make up, sound, runner, and me.

You can find some film crew definitions here if you not sure what they mean.

It was a good experience and I enjoyed, but there is one big issue that other student or low budget shorts should think about before they begin.

YOU CAN NEVER DO TOO MUCH PLANING!!

On student productions, or any other production with people working out of their good will and not for money, I think it is crucial that the production is on schedule. People that work for someone for 8-9 hours a day over a short period is doing a huge favour and that should not be exploit. To be sure that the production is on schedule it is important that every shot is planned and that there are no doubt about what is happening on the set at all times. It might sound strange but the worse thing with film production is waiting and you would like to keep people waiting a little as possible. When people wait they get impatient and grumpy. Therefore the core of the crew should have done rehearsing before actor, extras, make up etc comes to the set. However, I do understand that this isn’t always possible with a low budget and limited time, but it should be done when it is possible. The if the planing is good you’ll have a better shot, get better performance and better result, guarantied

On my production we didn’t do too bad in this area, even if we had limited time for planing. However from time to time there was too much waiting and not much happening, which easily could have been prevented. As 1st AD it is my job to prevent this from happening, but at the same time I have to let the Director and DOP have their space to be creative. So therefore to all of you 1st ADs out there: make sure that the Director and DOP have decided on all their shots, angles, lighting and framing before you start shooting. It takes time t set all this up and it takes even longer if it isn’t decided before the shooting or have to be changed in the middle of a shoot.

As 1st AD I also had to deal with the crew and cast when we went on overtime, and it is understand able that people wants to finish on time. Since people didn’t get payed, I understand why people lose patient and things gets pushed to finish when they have worked for free for 9 hours, and sometimes the quality of the work is compensated. This is something that has to be prevented at all costs, and it should be clarified with the whole crew before the production goes into overtime.

But it all comes down to having fun. To make a film is much more fun when things are going smooth and everything is working. My motto is why do it if you don’t enjoy it? I did have fun my first time, and I did enjoy it alot.

You can find out more about Old Man Time and see pictures from the production here