Shoe Done It

This is close to the final edit of my short film, i may make some small changes over the next few weeks, and perhaps add some music to the film.

Femme Fatale

One of the main characters in our film is a 'Female Fatale.'

A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations.

During the film noir era of the 1940s and 1950s, the femme fatale flourished in American cinema. Examples include the overly possessive and narcissistic wife Ellen Brent Harland, portrayed by Gene Tierney, in Leave Her to Heaven which was released in 1945, who will stop at nothing to

keep her husband's affections.

A more modern example of a female fatale can be seen in the movie 'Basic Instinct.' The film centers on police detective Nick Curran, who is investigating the brutal murder of a wealthy rock star. During the investigation Curran becomes involved in a torrid and intense relationship with the prime suspect, the beautiful, mysterious Catherine Tramell who is the female fatale of this film.

However my personal favorite, and in my opinion the most stereotypical femme fatale has to be 'Jessica' from who framed Rodger rabbit.
Jessica Rabbit is without doubt the most lush and the femme fatale of the cartoons female characters. The wife of Roger Rabbit noted for her wide hips, his gait and his voluptuous white heat.
Jessica is considered the sexiest female character in the history of animation, ahead of Betty Boop.


Her figure is based on previous femmes fatales of cinema: Veronica Late, Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacall. Considered a landmark in the world of animation and an erotic myth for many, Jessica simply says: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way"

Film Noir

Today we pitched our ideas to the group, my original idea was based around a girl that had passed out in a local park in the early hours of the morning after a night out in the city, the girl would them have her own version of events that she would tell people to avoid embarrasment of what really happened. however we decided to go with another member of our groups idea.

This plot that we decided to go with was based around a diamond robbery.

For this project we have decided to do a modern take on Film noir, Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.

We will be using the Panasonic 151 Film camera through out this project.

Sound in Film.

In our film making project we were all given different roles, i chose to be in charge of sound, this ment it was down to me to make sure that the sound was of the best quality and there were no interference, it was also down to me to consider which locations might not be viable due to background noise, for instance if we were doing a film set in the 1920's, we couldn't film next to a road with modern cars going past. 

Although many people consider film to be a essentially visual experience, we really cannot afford to underestimate the importance of film sound. A meaningful sound track is often as complicated as the

image on the screen. The entire sound track is comprised of three essential ingredients: 

• the human voice 
• sound effects 
• music 

Final Animation

This is my final animation, i am very pleased how it turned out, considering i have never used After Effects before in my life.
This is my third video, i had produced 2 videos before this both 30 seconds long. after creating two 30 second videos i decided i would create my final animation, this ended up turning out a lot better then my previous two, such as this one has a background that when moving, gives the impression that the subjects are moving, or flying in this case.
I have also used the scale, rotation and blur tools in this animation to help create movement and depth.

Some amazing after effects work!

Today i was looking around at work of other animators that used Adobe after effects, and one video really stood out from the crowed, created and directed by Pierre Michel it really is an amazing sort animation! Although i have only been using the software for 2 weeks now, i am able to start to notice how these animators animate these films, even when it is only small things like blurring out a woman's eye in the back ground.
But this is a must see animation!

Alex.

More creative stop motion.

We have all seen the stop motion videos on youtube with the coloured post it notes or with pieces or lego, and while they are entertaining, when watching them they didn't seem 'fresh' the idea's seemed to have been used over and over again, so i tried to see how much original stop motions videos are out there.

This first video i found hilarious, anybody from the Corpes Bride animation team will tell you how hard it is to make small clay figures look so realistic in stop motion, while this animation is incredibly entertaining it is also very professional, i found my self thinking "how the hell did he manage that?" for example one part of the video the two clay men start throwing clay balls at each other, really impressive stuff, really inspiring.

While i feel this stop motion film was alot easier to achieve than the previous, i think is is a lot more original than any other stop motion film i have seen so far, also very inspiring stuff.

Alex.

Tim Burton and the Corpes Bride Animation team - Design Process.

To make a short film using stop motion animation, it takes an awful lot of time, including a lot of wasted time. To do a full length film is stop motion animation is truly amazing, after doing some research on Tim Burton's films 'A nightmare before christmas' and a 'Corpes Bride' in particular, i came across this video, which shows part of the Design Process for the team of animators working on the film 'Corpes Bride' 
Really inspiring stuff.




Alex.

My Design Process

The last design project i did was the last unit of my Photography A level. 
The subject i chose for my last unit was Abstract images.

After looking up the definition of what an Abstract image was i reached the following definition, An abstract image may be difficult to understand and create ambiguity.

After doing a little bit more researching I understood that I wanted to create images for this project contain ambiguity, I wanted to create image where the person viewing them would not be able to recognise what they are looking at instantly, I wanted to make the person looking at my art wonder what the image could be, this was my starting point for my project.

Now that i knew what to look for in a photograph, i went to a local library to find books on my favorite photographers that i thought might have doing some work with abstract photography.

In the end it turned out there were two clear photographers that would be my starting point. 

      The first Photographer was a man called Paul Strand who was born in the 1800's, Paul Strand helped turn early photography into an art form. In particular is was his work in the 1920's which influenced me in this project, he photographed many images with very harsh shadows, which would almost feel like your eye was playing tricks on you when looking at it, his photographs were also very tightly cropped, making it even harder to figure out what we were actually looking at.

      To the left i have placed an example photograph of his work.

 The second photographer that i started my project on was, unsurprisingly Mario Tesino, a photographer that has seem to have done everything and could accomplish anything.  However is was his book titled 'Alive' which he published in 2001, that helped me a lot with this project, he did some really interesting and intriguing work with fireworks and slow shutter speed, this created amazing streaks of fire across a black sky, this then inspired me to do a section of work on slow shutter speeds and the manipulation of light, this also lead me onto photographers such as; Michael Bosanko, Eric Staller and Valentin Gavan. 

After doing all of this research i would end up taking hundrads and hundrads of photographs, trying to use the insperation that all of the previous artis and Photographers gave me. These would then be edited in photograph editing software, my personal favorite programs were Adobe Photoshop CS5 and HDR Darkroom Pro. I have placed a few of the many images that i took below. 

Alex.

First Practical lesson.

In our first practical group session we created our own Pin hole cameras from scratch, we created these cameras witha 500ml drinks can.  

A pinhole camera is a simple camera  without a lens and with a single small aperture, which in this case as a 500ml drinks can with a small hole in one side. 
Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the can and onto the blank film paper that i placed inside the can. 

To the right is the finished image. 
The large dark area was due to it been a really bright day and the light focusing on this area alone, if i were to redo this project, i would try and find an area where the light is evenly dispersed so avoid part of the image been over concentrated with light.


Alex. 

So, my journey starts here..

So my journey into Multimedia at Nottingham Trent University starts now.

While looking through the journals of older students that studied here i came across some very interesting people, such as Alex Luong, James Woods and Ryan Boyle.
The image to the left was a piece of work created by Alex Luong.

I hope that in a few years after i have graduated i will be able to see my name on the very same wall, but until then i have three years of hard work ahead of me..

Lets do this.

Alex.