Never having done 360 film before, this was a very new and exciting experience for me. Our tutor went through how to work a go pro and how to use the 360 rig which was tricky as it was very different to anything I had used before.
It was a simple enough design. It's cube shaped, and has six go pro cameras that fit into a slot of each side. These create a 360 view of their surroundings. When you have completed your filming you import the footage into a specialist software called Omni Importer. We also use Auto Pano Giga and Auto Pano Video.
We decided to do a practice shoot to see what we could do with the technology, and get a feel for the sort of thing we would be doing, with the advantage of having a tutor around to assist us. We used a handle to attach the 360 rig securely to a BMX bike and did a quick film where the bike was ridden down the road and filmed as it went. We then used the quick stitch that the Omni Importer allows and exported it. This was the final result.
If we had uploaded it to youtube we would have been able to click and drag to view it as if it was 360 rather than just look at it like this which is quite disorientating, and there were also some stitching problems as the subject was quite close up to the cameras.
I sort of began to know what I wanted to do for my piece so I decided to go straight in and start to experiment and see what happened. I began with the idea of ADD and ADHD so my initial thought process was to use distractions and changes of focus on the film.
I began to scratch into the film and added parts to each individual frame. I was trying to look at it from the cameras perspective, as if it was a point of view shot. I used scratching and colour to take attention away from what you are supposed to focus on to somewhere else.
For example I sometimes scratched away the frame and left just the computer or a window as that was where the attention was taken to and now the viewer is not focusing on the person who is talking anymore. This happens at many random points throughout the conversations that take place.
I also used scratches to show eye line and where people were looking and added decorations around the characters faces to depict the overly active imagination of the subject who is viewing these people. I scratched some words in as I wanted the idea that whatever the two people are saying, the viewer is lost in their own world and whatever is being said is going completely over their head.
Brakhage was a key influence in my ideas development. His piece 'Eye Myth' was a favourite of mine. I used Brakhage as a reference because of the nature of his work. It was really similar to the sort of thing I had in mind for my own work, and he really inspired me with the way he worked into the film so much, really testing the limits of how far he could go.
What I liked about his piece Eye Myth was the way that it was different to his other work. In this piece you could make out the outlines of people and characters moving around the frame which I loved. He had worked into it so much you could barely see what was going on but then every now and then you'd see someone moving in the frame and then they'd be gone again. I really liked that part of his work.
I really love his use of colour in the film, it really brings another tone into play. It brings the film to life and adds depth, making it more engaging to observe and get involved with.
Brakhage was really experimental with his work and I really liked that there weren't a lot of other filmmakers like him out there at the time, other experimental film workers mostly just made scratch films etc. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what he used on his film to get the effects that he did as I knew that I wanted to try to do something similar with my own piece.
The intensity of the piece is something else I admired, its so erratic and chaotic which is another aspect that drew me to his work.
This is another example of his work that I enjoyed, although not as much. I mostly really liked the techniques he used to work into the film and take away different layers show the figures as silhouettes. I also thought that the way he edited it was clever, with the jumpy cuts and transitions and I thought that may be useful in my piece. I don't like the grainy quality of the film, it gives me a bit of a headache and I find it unpleasant to keep watching. I do appreciate the variety of the different film clips and how experimental he has made the piece but I'm not sure it's something I will draw on too heavily.
This was the first piece I found that inspired my work, it was shown to me by an animation student friend. I loved the way he drew over the his outline in the shadow and thought that it had a really interesting effect. The way this man looks at the world makes it much more interesting and imaginative which is something that would link to ADD and ADHD and the way that people who have either one, look at the world and get distracted by thoughts processes like this. The handheld quality adds to the perspective quality of the film. The sound design is also quite interesting, adding in the sounds of the objects the character walks past with the added continuous sound of hie footsteps.
In preparation for our upcoming unit, we did
multiple workshops on old film techniques. One of the ones we did was with
Peter Renn, who specialises in film photography and spoke to us about lots of
different types of cameras. We spent some time making our own cameras out of
cardboard boxes and a lens, and shining light through to make an image.
We then used photo sensitive paper and large format
cameras to take our own photos.
The first
image we took got pulled out of the _____ too early and fogged half of the
image, as well as it being out of focus.
The second image we took was more successful. It
was however, still a bit out of focus and we left it in the developer fluid a
bit too long and it went too dark.
Our third attempt went well overall but was still a
bit too dark. This one did end up being one of my favourites though as we also
spent some time composing the shot, with the long table protruding into the
foreground and the subject positioned in the dead centre, and at the opposite end.
We then decided to experiment, and took a double
exposure image. We did this by setting the exposure time on the camera to half
a second, and then swapping the first subject with someone else and exposing
the image again for another half second. This turned out very dark, but you can
still see the two faces in the image if you look closely and it make for a
quite interesting photograph to look at.
We then had some other workshops with Nicky Hamlyn,
working with 16mm film. This was my favourite of the workshops, as we were
given old used film and clear film and film that was covered in black enamel
and told to draw on it.
When I say draw I also mean scratch and colour and
sew and do whatever we wanted and see what we create. Nicky had a projector in
the room and so we were able to look at everyone’s films as they made them.They
were all only a few seconds long as we had to draw on every frame, at a frame
rate of 25 frames per second.
I found this
workshop inspired me for what I wanted to do for my project. I had done a
scratch film once before during my foundation and I had forgotten how much I
liked it. It was also a really nice opportunity to get to work with my hands
again.
I have
always loved drawing and painting and have dabbled in hand drawn animation, and
so being able to do this work without computers was something I really enjoyed.
For my short film I chose to use the blacked out
film, as this was what I had used before. This time however I decided to make
more of an animation than I had last time. I used a lot of shapes and even some
small animals through the film, which in total lasts maybe 5-6 seconds. I used
markers to colour in parts of the film to add a bit more dimension to the piece
and make it more pleasurable to watch.
