Practice Post

Great to be back(at least to BOCES).

The Art and Anxiety of Filmmaking

     Film4(whom I don't know enough about to go into an overview about) gathered up many amazing directors, such as Quentin Tarantino, David Cronenberg, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Ben Wheatley, Steve McQueen, Joe Carnahan and Lone Scherfig to talk about their starts, the art of film-making and their fears.
     Some of the things they touch on are the importance of opening-up to change when directing, how action and acting can blend to allow for a humanized element, and how important responsibility is. Some of them also talked about basic fears like making a movie adaptation of preexisting material , in which you're always thinking that you don't want to "mess it up" for those who love the book or whatever other media the source material comes from. Or how (and this is a commonly shared one) you never know if what you're making is going to work, you could produce it without a hitch, exactly the way you see it in your head, no compromise, but it can still crash-and-burn in the market if the audience doesn't like it. But even knowing that people still go on and create movies because they want to. Some see it as art, and some use movie-making to explore what it means to be human. For some of them, their passion and eventual career started with things as simple as drawing comic strips or playing with a parents' camera All-in-all, with all the fears these people have, it really is wonderful they still decide to do this for a living, because we wouldn't have good or bad movies if there weren't anyone making them at all.

Do's and Don'ts for Demos

     The first step to getting into an actual career in animation getting your abilities and work out there. What better way to do that than by putting together a demo reel. Since this is such a pivotal step in t hiring process, everyone's going to be putting one together, and someone's going to have to sit through and review all of them. Knowing this, senior animation mentor Don Kim put together a little list of ways to make your reel more professional and make more of an impression in the form of some do's and don'ts.
     What you should do includes:
           -Only include your best work in the reel
           -Start and end the reel with the most amazing shots you have available
           -Be mindful of the shots you string together, try to have some form of semblance and rhythm                to your cuts
           -Include a portfolio with your other various, non-animation work

     And, what you shouldn't do:
          -Don't have a 5-10 min reel, the people reviewing the demo reels have a lot more than just                    yours to review.
          -Don't include over the top titles, transitions, and underscore. The point of your reel is to show              off your animation, so don't wash over that fact with unnecessary edits.
   
    So, with all this information in hand, use it to make the best possible demo reel you can. Hopefully it'll outshine most of the others being reviewed.

   

6 Reasons

   If you intend to revolve your life(or at least a decent part of it) around video, then you should be shooting video often right? Well often may not even be good enough, you should be shooting some video everyday. There are more than likely many reasons to do this, but the article which discusses this opinion brings 6 specific reasons into light.

    1.Become very familiar with your equipment:
         Usually when you use equipment like a camera, the first thing you do is read the manual to familiarize or to remind yourself with it. However, if you use your equipment everyday, you're eliminating the need for that first step, as the knowledge of what each button does or how to do something specific become embedded into your memory.

    2.Practice:
          Practice can make perfect(unless you're practicing the wrong thing to do). Even if the footage you're recording isn't the best or even useable, you're still getting experience that will help you improve your work.

    3.Experiment:
          If you're recording everyday, why not mix it up?  This also ties in with practice, everyday try something different, make different kinds of videos, or try working with things such as: Camera angles, framing, shot duration, etc.

    4.Strengths and Weaknesses:
          Pretty self-explanatory, if you record everyday you'll eventually get comfortable with what you're good with. You'll also get a good understanding of what you're not so good at.

    5.Habits:
          When you do something daily enough times, it will eventually become a habit right? Once you manage to make a habit out of shooting videos, it'll become second nature so you wont have to even think about it.

    6.Inspiration:
          Finally, searching everyday for something new to to make a video of, you're sure to be inspired.
         

     

Super Bowl commercial

     During this years Super Bowl(you know, that thing that almost no one in our class watched?), one of the commercials was an animated Mercedes-Benz advertisement directed by Robert Stromberg. This commercial was a new spin on The Tortoise and the Hare featuring 3D animation and live action. When accepting this job he stated that he likes new challenges and that this a departure from his usual work. This was a well animated commercial featuring many different, characterized woodland animals such as a card-dealing weasel and a referee fox. However, I don't know why for a sports car commercial used a fable with the lesson "slow and steady wins the race," even going as far as to say that after the turtle wins driving the sports car; Apparently, calling your sports car slow is good advertising. All in all, it was an enjoyable take on the classic fable.

A Lesson From Lecter

 

    Since I've never been the best at drawing consistent eyes, I've always used other subtile touches to establish things like power struggles in my off-time drawings, so this article was a hit and a miss for me.
    My general opinion aside,  Silence of the Lambs does an amazing job convey the "fight" for power between Starling and Lecter using only the intensity of the eye contact.  It's interesting how well things like tension and struggle are conveyed through only simple touches like eyeline and point of view.  While a lower camera angle is used to show a character has power, and a high angle takes said power away.  The scene in question not only switches between that principle, it also has the characters speaking and looking directly into the camera, adding to the intensity.  To palpable examples of the power struggle are Starling sitting down vs. Lecter standing up, and Starling in a medium shot while Lecter is close up.  Finally it conveys all of this without using lengthy dialog.

Weekly Comments

  What I learned: I learned that the US didn't actually declare independence on July 4.
  What I want to learn: How to fix my computer...
  Something that made me happy this week: Learning that Samus got buffed in SSB4
  Something that made me mad this week: Tripping over my cat and landing on my face.......

    Link of interest: Here's a fun game of lies and deceit( its free ) that I think you should check out!
                               http://www.blankmediagames.com/TownOfSalem/