http://vimeo.com/37569486
Again, the above linked video is protected by my old password. All my recent updates about my grad film production videos are kept private.
Anyway, the progress for this week is just some more images and very few seconds of animation and special effects done. I have calculated my speed of doing work, and figured out that I need minimum 8 full working days, around 100 hours, to be able to finish my animation. Then I can go to post sound production, which I am really eager to do!!! I am quite behind on my sound track work for my grad film, but the good thing is I am on schedule with my visual animation production. And there are still 17 days left before the animation deadline I set for myself. After March 15th, I am going full time work on sound track. The positive side of the story is I am both the sound designer and animator for my own film, so I do have more flexibility for editing even at the post sound production stage. Yet it bothered me when I listened to my current scattered sound track each time while working in premier. I am thinking about working on some background sound effects collection for tomorrow, to give myself a bit relaxing time.
For people who have my password on vimeo, hope you enjoy my progress of the week.
2012-02-21
Energy Charts for Editing Revisions Assignment (Grad Film Production120221)
Here are three energy charts for the editing revisions assignment, depicting my practice in editing of my story.
The first chart is a reversed energy chart created for my reversed editing cut. The exercise, as I mentioned in my earlier blog post, aims to create a different look at the story in order to inspire more insights. The second chart demonstrates my second WIP reel created from the insights I gained from the first reversed cut. The third chart is another attempt for editing.
Along the exercise, I found myself more sensitive towards the timing of editing, and how to respect its time-based quality. How time has been unfolded in my story? Why one cut needed to be longer than the other, what has been the reason for the cut, how important one scene is for the whole story, and how much time should I leave this shot on screen, such questions and thoughts kept jumping in through the process. From this exercise, I found a deeper connection with my story than ever before. I start to keep a real close eye on every single shot for its purpose, meaning, function, the way it is represented, length, color, camera angles, and sound. I feel more confident despite the story has been broadly altered for its representation each week.
Anyway, here are the charts. For those who have my vimeo video link password, you can compare the energy charts with my editing revisions videos on vimeo. Cheers!
The first chart is a reversed energy chart created for my reversed editing cut. The exercise, as I mentioned in my earlier blog post, aims to create a different look at the story in order to inspire more insights. The second chart demonstrates my second WIP reel created from the insights I gained from the first reversed cut. The third chart is another attempt for editing.
Along the exercise, I found myself more sensitive towards the timing of editing, and how to respect its time-based quality. How time has been unfolded in my story? Why one cut needed to be longer than the other, what has been the reason for the cut, how important one scene is for the whole story, and how much time should I leave this shot on screen, such questions and thoughts kept jumping in through the process. From this exercise, I found a deeper connection with my story than ever before. I start to keep a real close eye on every single shot for its purpose, meaning, function, the way it is represented, length, color, camera angles, and sound. I feel more confident despite the story has been broadly altered for its representation each week.
Anyway, here are the charts. For those who have my vimeo video link password, you can compare the energy charts with my editing revisions videos on vimeo. Cheers!
2012-02-09
Guest editor critque session
http://vimeo.com/36521732
The above link is my latest video of my grad film project. It is protected by my old password again. For this week we have guest editor Chritine Stewart visiting our class and provided insightful critiques. Chritstine viewed my work (the above link) and said apparently there are a lot of themes in this complex story. It has comments on classes, polictics, culture differences, races, and youth. Fluid is one obvious visual motif to pick up, like scenes with rainining and pouring tea. And my drawings have the painterly, liquidy look, which goes with the motif. Christine recommanded me to use this motif more for editing.
She also suggested me to consider carve out certain parts of the story to strength the whole. Scenes with food and rain seemed to work typically well for the story. She asked questions about the dinner scene happened in Larry's family and asked me why I wanted to show the speech of both Larry and Lily. She also recommanded to consider show certain compassion from Larry, instead of depicting him as a flat character, so that Larry's friendship with Ethan can be indicated more clearly. Christine said one thing that was really important to me. She pointed out that the audience would only care about the later struggle between Ethan and Larry, if I show their friendship, otherwise the audience would not care about their fight at all. This is one aspect I have never thought about. I think I may do someting with the dinner scene for this week to make the story stronger. Christine also suggested that every cut must have a clear aim and it must make clear sense to me in the first place. I may need to arrange a further meeting with her when I came up with a more refined version of the story.
The above link is my latest video of my grad film project. It is protected by my old password again. For this week we have guest editor Chritine Stewart visiting our class and provided insightful critiques. Chritstine viewed my work (the above link) and said apparently there are a lot of themes in this complex story. It has comments on classes, polictics, culture differences, races, and youth. Fluid is one obvious visual motif to pick up, like scenes with rainining and pouring tea. And my drawings have the painterly, liquidy look, which goes with the motif. Christine recommanded me to use this motif more for editing.
She also suggested me to consider carve out certain parts of the story to strength the whole. Scenes with food and rain seemed to work typically well for the story. She asked questions about the dinner scene happened in Larry's family and asked me why I wanted to show the speech of both Larry and Lily. She also recommanded to consider show certain compassion from Larry, instead of depicting him as a flat character, so that Larry's friendship with Ethan can be indicated more clearly. Christine said one thing that was really important to me. She pointed out that the audience would only care about the later struggle between Ethan and Larry, if I show their friendship, otherwise the audience would not care about their fight at all. This is one aspect I have never thought about. I think I may do someting with the dinner scene for this week to make the story stronger. Christine also suggested that every cut must have a clear aim and it must make clear sense to me in the first place. I may need to arrange a further meeting with her when I came up with a more refined version of the story.
2012-02-01
Revised edit 2
http://vimeo.com/36053425
So this time there are more changes with the story, scenes and script. Since I had the animatic viewed by my sound professor, who pointed out that voice-over makes the story less interesting to watch, as the story is already explained everything and leaves no space for audience to think. Also, Leslie has given me much more ideas and suggestions to work on based on my last revised edit. The process for editing my story has been a very, very long and struggled journey. And I feel grateful for the critiques and different opinions my professors and classmates provided to me.
The story was originally twelve minutes in length with a painfully straight forward dialogue. Leslie tried to persuade me to change the story boldly when I was in 3rd year. But I was not able to touch the story at all because the story was based on real event with my friends and family, and it happened not long before I decided to make an animated version out of the story. It took me a whole summer vacation at China in year 2011, to fresh my mind and to be able to introduce new characters and new perspectives into the story. The beginning of 4th year, Marilyn and Martin suggested me to try narration for the story. I soon found out how useful narration was for organizing and constructing a short story. With narration, I was able to tell the whole story in a short time. The story was then cut down to seven minutes. Marilyn helped me a lot with cutting the story further and made it more concise. Many unimportant details were thrown out, and new storyline was formed.
Marilyn liked my voice-actor's performance and recommended me to have one man voice-over. Yet the problem was my voice-actor could not perform the perfect Mandarin sentences, and there were many scenes required Mandarin speaking, the dialogue track then become a weird combination of my voice for mandarin speaking scenes and the voice-actor's voice for other scenes.
Then it came to Leslie again at the second semester of my 4th year at ECU. The first editing project assignment was something I have complete no idea about. The editing assignment for my grad film is like tear down all the flesh and body of my story. Every single scene became something waited to be knocked down and either destroyed to dust, or re-sculpted in another form. I was of course shocked by the amount of changes required and new possibliteds of new scenes and new storylines, yet I understood this was a precious chance to create a solid bone structure for my story, and it could be a last chance before I go into full production. Thus, I was all opened to accept opinions from people to alter my film. One biggest change I made through the assignment is the choice of using dialougues instead of voice-over. As the fact that both Lesilie and Dennis have pointed out that there were secnes felt redundant with voice-over explaining things.
Originally I was scared about bringing dialogues back to the story, that I thought I may drag the story to ten minutes or longer again. But it came out just fine. I guess main reason for that is working under my previous concise narration structure. This second revised edit has some shots that should be held longer, yet it will still be under 5 minutes when I finished the editing. I am now working full time on layouts and minor animation of my film. Next week will have Christine looking at my edit. Need to go back to do more drawings so she would understand my rough sketches.
So this time there are more changes with the story, scenes and script. Since I had the animatic viewed by my sound professor, who pointed out that voice-over makes the story less interesting to watch, as the story is already explained everything and leaves no space for audience to think. Also, Leslie has given me much more ideas and suggestions to work on based on my last revised edit. The process for editing my story has been a very, very long and struggled journey. And I feel grateful for the critiques and different opinions my professors and classmates provided to me.
The story was originally twelve minutes in length with a painfully straight forward dialogue. Leslie tried to persuade me to change the story boldly when I was in 3rd year. But I was not able to touch the story at all because the story was based on real event with my friends and family, and it happened not long before I decided to make an animated version out of the story. It took me a whole summer vacation at China in year 2011, to fresh my mind and to be able to introduce new characters and new perspectives into the story. The beginning of 4th year, Marilyn and Martin suggested me to try narration for the story. I soon found out how useful narration was for organizing and constructing a short story. With narration, I was able to tell the whole story in a short time. The story was then cut down to seven minutes. Marilyn helped me a lot with cutting the story further and made it more concise. Many unimportant details were thrown out, and new storyline was formed.
Marilyn liked my voice-actor's performance and recommended me to have one man voice-over. Yet the problem was my voice-actor could not perform the perfect Mandarin sentences, and there were many scenes required Mandarin speaking, the dialogue track then become a weird combination of my voice for mandarin speaking scenes and the voice-actor's voice for other scenes.
Then it came to Leslie again at the second semester of my 4th year at ECU. The first editing project assignment was something I have complete no idea about. The editing assignment for my grad film is like tear down all the flesh and body of my story. Every single scene became something waited to be knocked down and either destroyed to dust, or re-sculpted in another form. I was of course shocked by the amount of changes required and new possibliteds of new scenes and new storylines, yet I understood this was a precious chance to create a solid bone structure for my story, and it could be a last chance before I go into full production. Thus, I was all opened to accept opinions from people to alter my film. One biggest change I made through the assignment is the choice of using dialougues instead of voice-over. As the fact that both Lesilie and Dennis have pointed out that there were secnes felt redundant with voice-over explaining things.
Originally I was scared about bringing dialogues back to the story, that I thought I may drag the story to ten minutes or longer again. But it came out just fine. I guess main reason for that is working under my previous concise narration structure. This second revised edit has some shots that should be held longer, yet it will still be under 5 minutes when I finished the editing. I am now working full time on layouts and minor animation of my film. Next week will have Christine looking at my edit. Need to go back to do more drawings so she would understand my rough sketches.
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