Tom Pearson's Multimedia

Erg. Where to start, I'm generally a happy person. But when you stick a program such as Frame Forge 3D in front of me I seem to just turn into the green hulky thing. However I don't really get green and I don't go around trashing the place, I just sit there in my chair getting upset at how annoying the program is.

We were asked to use frame forge to visualise the main shots that we will be using in our fictional work. Basically they wanted us to use it like a story board. While this program suits people who can't draw to save their life, it is a pain in the ass to use. It is very time consuming and in my personal opinion it looks rubbish when you see the final result. I would much rather have just shown my storyboards as they are so much easier to do and give you the option of drawing much more detail. So yeah, that’s all that I had to say. I don't like frame forge :( ha

I recently did some portfolio work for a PR company called BCS. We were asked to create a 3-4 minute piece on Arnold Town Football Club just outside of Nottingham. I've uploaded a good version to Vimeo (woot, I have Vimeo plus now so no more suffering with YouTube) which I will embed below. Any comments are appreciated. Thanks.

Recently had a seminar on sound design and how important & integral to AV production it really is. A film is 50% video and 50% Audio. Any unequal mix of these will result in a weird quality of production. I was asked to find an example I liked depending on it's sound design. My example would have to be the intro to Apocalypse Now.



It’s non-diagetic sound overlays the napalming of jungles from the Vietnam War. It gives the viewer a dream like state, an out of body experience. This is emphasised by the transparent images that are over-layed on top of the helicopters. However if the sound of the helicopters were to play, you would be much more focus on what was happening and have a much more selected focus on what you want to view. I think it’s a good example of sound design in film. This scene could be made so many other ways but the sound really makes it what it is.

Ok I've got some beef with YouTube. As everyone knows YouTube is a free video viral site which you can host your lovely homemade videos. I personally have a YouTube account (hence the nature of my course) but unfortunately every time I upload a piece of work, the quality gets ripped out of it and I’m left with a tiny tear-ridden screen with poor images. Vimeo on the other hand is brilliant. You can also get a free account on this but it limits your upload to 500 mb a week. Compared to YouTube’s unlimited upload amounts, it's quite poor. Anyway... Vimeo's quality is far superior to that of YouTube's. Have a look for yourself. Two identical clips: 1 from YouTube and 1 from Vimeo, I’ll let you decide which is better.

VIMEO



YOUTUBE


The clips are from a band called Fall Of Troy (awesome!) anywho. As you can see YouTube is far worse in quality compared to Vimeo.

So conclusion - Time to get Vimeo Pro!

I thought it would be a good idea to organise my time well this term. I made a Gantt chart for this reason. It’s missing quite a few points but I've picked out points which I could remember off the top of my head. There are other things I will be doing that aren’t mentioned in this Gantt chart hence why I have put a sort of overall timeline over the top of it all with Pre-Production / Production / Post-Production and contingency time. I hope to be done by early March, that’s the goal. ^_^


Click to make bigger

EDIT: I had another look at this the other day. I realised that there are some errors which should be ignored. Such as editing and Digitizing should be switched round with their duration!

Sorry for the lack of posting, been a little bit busy with things recently. Here is a character study of my 2 main roles from my script. Will upload the script a bit later.

Sam Smith is a 21 year old male with high ambitions. However small these ambitions are, he is eager to achieve them by any means possible. Sam is an overweight student at university who has indulged in greasy fast foods for too long. Upon reaching university with a higher rule of independent and social control, he realises that he must change his lifestyle in order to be healthy and to gain a wider acceptance in his social standing. Sam likes to be sociable and have friends around him. But only when he has the confidence to do so. Others perceive Sam to be a nice person but someone who shy’s away too much when really he has a lot to contribute. On observing the world around him, himself and his best friend, Sam’s motivation is that of improvement for himself. He is willing to make sacrifices for the greater good as long as he can be happy and achieve what he wants in the end: To be fit and healthy with better social control.

Tim Jenkins is also a 21 year old male at the same university as Sam. Tim is a slender man who is unfit, weak and scrawny compared to his counterpart Sam. Tim has managed to attain this by the same methods as Sam via the lack of control of his diet: Eating little food that is bad for him, which does not give him enough daily nourishment and in turn causes him to look pale and unhealthy. Tim is Sam’s best friend. They live very near each other and have attended secondary school together since they were young. The two get on well with a similar sense of humour. However when they disagree, talks continue with stalemate with both believing they are correct. Tim like Sam does not have many friends but does not care for improvement in one’s self. This causes confliction between the two friends.