And (almost) finally

I had to revisit the soundtrack yesterday. A few tweaks here and there mostly but I did manage to get a super-wet pouring sound at the end. The original sound was too literal for the project so I passed it through a granulator and tweaked it to make it more “impressionistic”. Unfortunately the computer crashed an hour in to the tweaking and I lost it all. I was so carried away with it that I forgot to save. Anyway, I started again. It was a bit like the fish that got away though. I’m pretty sure the original was a bit better than this version.
I’ve been exploring the delights of “non-additive dissolve” to move from one clip to another. It’s hard to predict quite what the effect will be but it can be quite beautiful. I have a colour melting moment from 2 views of a cafetierre about 32 seconds in.
The whole piece is finished now. I’ll post up a link on You Tube soon.

If you have been, thanks for listening.

Out

G

Fly Through

I’ve discovered Proxy! My workload has sped up considerably. Still spent a very long day editing yesterday but the end is in sight. Hours were spent on my little fly through sequence made in after effects. Basically a camera flythrough a cafetierre with a 180 degree spin, picking Emma’s jacket on the back of a kitchen chair as a blue screen the next sequence,(sugar crystals in flight). All 3 seconds worth... It still needs tweaking but another thing I’ve discovered is key framing chromakey parameters. Just setting them doesn’t work most of the time. One more day’s work should do it… G

Mystery object

Hello again!

Got a mystery object for you today. Just tried to export it from cs4 – it’s a long story but it didn’t work so I’ve had to use a converter program. Anyway, I’ve just about got all the footage I need for the film. I’ve done some editing in Premiere but need to go to After Effects for some more complex stuff next. The problem is – After Effects runs even slower than premiere on my laptop so I’m sticking to very short sections. I suppose that’ll keep it snappy which is a good thing…

I won’t have the internet tomorrow since I have to go back to the cottage for a few days. I might jack into McD’s wifi or pop back into Uni to post another blog instead.

G

Coffee Blender

I’ve been working on the soundtrack. Using only the sounds of making coffee. I’ve made a drone from the sound of the fridge in the kitchen and timestretched other sounds, (kettle, pouring etc) out of all proportion. I’m cutting the images to the soundtrack - though they may not coincide. i.e. a pouring sound might be accompanied by an empty cup - non-aeasthesia if you will...
Since the assignment specifies that a narrative be followed I’ll provide that through the visual element of the piece. Again I can play with it to a limited extent – sugar can be added before or after the cup is poured for example. The soundtrack itself is quite atmospheric to my mind. I’ll add it to this blog though it’s subject to change if something visual really works, I’ll adapt that.
Later dudes
ps can't attach sound files here so I've made a film noir

pps no sound on these machines so I hope you can hear it..

Vortex

Ok, Hello,
I've finally got time to concentrate on this project.
As usual, Computers are playing hell with my creativity - one of them starts at normal speed and grinds to a halt after 10 minutes, the other is too slow to work with in adobe premiere or after effects without the patience of buddha so I've had to come in to university to work on this today where the computers run a bit faster.
Anyway, I've got some of what I call interesting footage, (short example included). This is the view from underneath a cafetierre as I'm adding water to coffer granules. You can see more when its slowed down. I've started to use a new camera, a Sony Z7 - It's got a really good lens though I'm happy with the results with the little cannon handheld HD cam.
It's recently occurred to me that since I've chosen to film and record the act of coffee, my colour pallette is pretty much limited to brown and white... I'll see if I can to turn that to my advantage.

I've Been filming in the cottage kitchen, Trying to film steam, (not easy) got a couple of happy accidents, Like a stray mote of dust falling in front of the cafetierre, which I shall keep, (the footage, not the dust). I'm varying the speed of my film clips as well as exploring the chromakey function, not in the traditional sense but just picking a colour to allow another clip to show thorough. For example, I have some footage taken from beneath a cafetierre as I'm adding coffe granules. I'm using the colour of the granules to key another image so as the granules fall from the spoon, it looks a bit like I'm pouring the other picture into the cafetierre. I'll include that when I get it right....

Coffee Morning

Another early start. I've decided to film and record the act of making a cup of coffee rather than a full breakfast. This not only simplifies the project but has less calories :-)
I've been recording boiling, pouring and stirring noises and getting some nice, close up sugary noises too - sweet! I may have enough sounds to make a cool soundtrack, probably using some form of sampling, looping and time-stretching.
I'll try to make it groovy but uplifting.. but who knows? I'm happy to go with the flow..hehe.

5am start

5am seems like a good time of the day to start this blog off..
Today, I will attempt to make a breakfast look and sound spectacular. I shall be filming the whole gastronomic event in high definintion. Or rather, filming reflections and distortions of the whole thing in HD.
It seems to me that pretty everything in this amazing universe of ours is spectacular. You just need to look at it anew, so to speak.
I'm off to watch the dawn now.
Later dudes...