I decided to use this final project as a chance to do something my friends and I have been meaning to do for a while – make a short documentary about how there is actually a group of girls that play D&D in this world.  We’ve discussed the idea among ourselves for quite some time, but never really got around to doing so, most of the time simply because we’re too busy actually playing the game to worry about the camera work.  This project gave us an excuse to set all our other excuses aside and just get to filming.

When making this, we had a few difficulties pop up, but most of them were only discovered after the filming was complete.  One issue was that, while I knew I personally had shaky hands, I had little idea that the shots I had taken were quite so wobbly.  As such, a few of the shots that I took were completely unusable, and many simply don’t look as strong as they should.  Another problem was sound – upon uploading the files to a computer, my first discovery was that the volume on all of the clips was dismally low.

I found that the volume being low for the clips when we were just playing the game worked fine – inserting those clips with audio playing over them was an ideal use for those shots anyways.  The real difficulty came from the few bits of narration I did, and from the interviews.  To get around this, I put all the interviews and all the bits of narration I did into video files, cranked up their volume all the way, and then rendered them.  If the volume still was not satisfactory, I cranked up the volume all the way again and repeated the process.  This did lead to some static in the background of many of the interviews, but at least it made the girls audible.

Both of the afore-mentioned issues affected the goal of this project to me, which was to make this look as professional as possible.  Still, I’m pleased with the product, and intend to work on it more on my own time to polish it.  One technique I used to try and make the video more “professional” looking, at least in my mind, was the use of name plates at the bottom of the screen.  The professionalism is diminished a little bit by putting snide comments in the margins here and there, but if this documentary took itself too seriously it would simply fall flat.  What I did aim to do, though, was be consistent.  I made sure that the “terminology” slides all had the same font and that the “terminology” label was placed in the same location each time, and I did the same for the name plate images.  These images were made in adobe fireworks, and in order to insert them into the video, I put a light blue background in the images with name plates and what not, and then used the chroma key option to remove the light blue (because I couldn’t simply save the name plates and put them into the video without them having a colored border around them otherwise).

In order to make sure that no one was on screen for too long, and thus making the shot dull, I also edited the audio in such a way that the people on screen would often continue talking for a few seconds after they went off screen.  I used this technique as a wedge between topics in the video – the girls would talk about one thing in their interviews, then I’d show a clip of them playing, and the video moves onto another topic.  Over all, I thought it worked rather well.

I’m pleased with this project.  It’s not the be all, end all of video making, I realize, but it’s my first attempt to make a video based off reality, rather than a script, and I found I liked the process quite a bit.  I intend to do more of this in the future.

Well, I thought about going with a trailer for this one, since that technically counts as a commercial in my mind, but… I ended up going with this instead.  This commercial depicts a woman kissing a delivery man, and then that delivery man delivering the kiss faithfully to what could be termed a somewhat unwilling reciepient.

I like this commerical for the humor, first and formost.  But the way that humor is set up in such a short period of time is worth looking at in more detail.  The commercial starts out with chirping birds, introuduces touching piano music, and sets up shots as though this would be a typical romance.  Then, after a fade, we see a wide shot of the delivery guy and a man that he then begins to kiss – the music, at that point, abruptly stops.  I think the amount of cuts used in the scene with the woman, as opposed to the single shot in the scene detailing interaction between the two guys, can be seen as the key to the funniness of this commercial.  Also, let’s face it, the sound of the dude as he gets kissed is amusing.

Honestly, there’s not much bad to say about this commerical.  If I had to say something, I’d say it may be a bit longer than the average American’s attention span when watching commericals – but, even though this commercial uses english text, I think it’s fairly obvious that it’s meant to be viewed in Korea.

I choose this video almost right off the back for using rather original animation.  For the most part, music videos these days seem to just be people singing with a story going on in the background.  I like that this video didn’t need to show the band members rocking out or anything.

The animation in this video seems reminiscent of the animation used in a video game, Final Fantasy Tactics for the PSP, so I was actually pleased to see it used again.  It took a second to grow on me, but much like the song, the music video didn’t immediately appeal to me.  It wasn’t until the end of the video that I really liked it.  The changing color tones really makes it feel right, as it starts off bright and sunny, turns gray, and eventually dark… Then finally to light again when the main character dies.

If I had to change this video, I’d make the cuts a little bit faster at the beginning, and I’d also make the main characters age a bit more.  They stay the same age throughout the video, and I really feel like it’d be more effective if it showed the characters as children at the beginning.

I chose to do Disney’s “The Lion King” for nostalgia’s sake.  It’s been ages since I’ve seen it, however, and so I decided to focus on what remains to be one of my favorite Disney songs, “Be Prepared.”  It’s a fun sequence that made no sense to me as a child, because the words were all too big.

I like that this sequence, and this movie, doesn’t really hold back on the idea of death and killing.  Scar saying that he’s going to kill the king and all that stuff is not something that you could get away with in a children’s movie today.  As such, I applaud this movie for finding ways to be entertaining to children and tolerable to adults.  The animation and mise en scene in the movie is also well done.  There are many very well composed shots throughout the “Be Prepared” song, for instance.

If had to pick something that I’d say is problematic with this movie, is that it’s aimed at children and yet uses words that are simply beyond their age range.  It took me years to figure out more than that Scar is a bad guy from this song, due to the use of the words and phrases like “coup,” “quid pro quo,” and “meticulous.”  I had no idea what those sorts of things meant when I was five.  However, for what it’s worth, the movie makes up for this lack of understanding by providing a clear atmosphere for each scene, so even if children might not understand all the logistics of what’s going on, they’ll at least catch whether or not something good is goin’ on.

I wish more movies like this were made for children these days.  Too many of them are simplistic and stupid, taking out the ideas of death and many elements of real story telling.  Movies like this, that have reasonably complex ideas and death within the movie, are probably better for children to be seeing, rather than things like, oh, say, “Kung Fu Panda.”

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people

This is one of the movie posters used to promote the movie “V for Vendetta,” directed by the Wachowski brothers.  The poster features a rather muted color scheme with bright orange and red for emphasis in certain places and faded beige and green as background colors.  The green and bright orange is on the inside of a large V shape, following a theme in both the title of the movie and the letter within it.  The “V” in the title is written in the style that the character V writes his name in the movie.  The words “Freedom!  Forever!” are written in black, separated by the V that takes up the majority of the poster.

This poster uses colors to attract people’s attention well enough.  The bright orange leads people to focus on Evey, the woman illustrated in orange, before moving to the sillhouette of Big Ben and the image of V’s mask above her head.  The poster also succeeds at feeling aged, as though this movie were produced in an earlier era.

However, from a personal standpoint, I can’t say I much think this color scheme accurately portrays the movie.  The movie is rather dark, and the bright orange and beige simply seem out of place in this poster.  Also, the beige simply doesn’t do well in catching people’s attention – it makes the movie poster look plain and uninteresting.

I suppose this is why other movie posters are in existence, and why I hadn’t seen this one around.  The other movie posters do a much better job of portraying the movie – this one just features more interesting elements of design.  This might be thought of as a “what not to do” situation.

So, continuing along my tend of general nerdiness, here is the second opening sequence used in the first season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00.  This show was coming out in Japan around this time last year, and the opening sequence, set to the song “Ash like Snow,” by The Brilliant Green.  This is an opening theme like many anime have, but with key differences that make it very unique – namely, it’s emphasis on motion.  In the opening sequence, the credits roll (albeit in Japanese) and multiple characters and machines used in the show are prominently showcased.  Gundam 00 is famous for having an enormous animation budget, so it stands to reason that their opening sequence would be beautifully animated… It does play at the begining of each of their episodes, after all.

What makes this opening unique, though, is, as stated before, it’s unusual emphasis on motion.  The animators seemed to go quite far out of their way to make sure that, during the chorus, at least, the feeling of motion transfered from one cut to the next.  This is particularly noticable in the shifts between shots of characters in their cockpits and the motion of the robots (mobile suits) that they’re in.

However, there is a downside to this opening sequence, in that it still feels too much like a lot of other anime opening sequences out there.  Yes, the “shots,” if you will, are quite unique, but the problem is that it’s basically the same thing that every other anime tries to do with it’s opening: show all the characters and give a sense of what their personalities are all at once.  While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, it can get old.  Too many anime do that for it to be interesting each and every time.

So, if I had to make a suggestion, I would make the clips in the beginning of the opening sequence match more.  Showing all the characters in different, unlinked places feels too stereotypical – I’m not quite sure what would be better, perhaps showing them all together would w ork well, but the constant cuts undermine the assumed goal of this opening, which, again, is the imparted sense of motion from the video.  Short of that, I’m not quite sure what could be done.  Either way, it’s one of the best opening sequences I’ve seen out there for an anime.

VJ Day

Premiere at La Scala, Milan

Monks along the River Arno, Florence

These pictures were all done by Afred Eisenstaedt, the most famous being, of course, VJ Day.  That photograph, however, was taken in the heat of the moment, as it were, and while it is rightly famous, it does not appear to fit Eisenstaedt’s usual style of photography, which seems rather darker.  Each of these photos is uniquely made better by the fact that they are in black and white.  Were they in color, the balance in each photograph would likely seem off-balance in terms of their color schemes.  As it stands, however, their balance is maintained by the fact that each has only to deal with black and white – showing that Eisenstaedt had a remarkable understanding of how colors would translate when turned into black and white.

I had one of those claws you can get at carnivals and Chuck E. Cheese or whatever lying around, and I had these odd little toys from when I was ten… And I just figured they went well together.  The tricky part of it was keeping the claw gripped around the little yellow eyeball dude – while managing to keep the camera in the same place for effect.  Unfortunately, this led to me getting two unintentionally out-of-focus photographs of the little eyeball dude.  Anyways, when making this, I wanted it to be simultaneously funny and creepy.  On the one hand, the two photographed items are children’s toys, and on the other, it portrays something that admittedly looks kinda creepy in itself if you stare at it too long getting dragged off into the darkness and disappearing.  There’s no real message or meaning behind it

How Lawyers Settle Disputes

I honestly don’t remember where I got this picture – I simply saved it to my computer due to sheer hilarity.  This image was likely taken at an anime convention, where numerous people dress up as characters from anime shows or video games.  The two characters in this photograph are lawyers from a video game, in which you actually play a defense attorney (the court proceedings are lacking enough in reality to make actual lawyers cringe, however).   These two characters would never do what the people in the photo are doing, hence, the hilarity for someone who’s actually familiar with the game.  What you see in the picture is the two lawyers, Edgeworth the prosecutor in red and Wright the defense attorney in blue, swinging their brief cases at eachother as though in combat.

Other than sheer comedic value, I’d have to say the best part of this image is the fact that the camera was canted.  The stairs serve to better frame Edgeworth and Wright because their lines are at an angle in this photo, and, for lack of a better way of describing it, it simply makes the photo look dynamic.  The fact that the area is generally deserted also contributes to the feel of the shot, as though this was done with more purpose than a quick cell-phone snap-shot.  How much of the following is intentional can be debated, but the nitch under the front step between Edgeworth and Wright undercores their separation in the photograph, and makes the entire scene feel very centered just by being there.  Also, the opposing red and blue make for a nice clash in this image, although, that is, admittedly, more by virtue of their character designs than anything else.  The steps also look like the steps to a court house – I wonder if they are?

The one negative thing to say about this photo, however, is the fact that there are some people in it, obscured by Edgeworth but still visible.  A perfect shot would not have included these people, whose feat are the most visible part of them, given their placement in the upper left hand corner of the photo.

So ultimately, that would be the one thing I’d do differently – make sure no one else is in the frame before taking the shot.  Short of that, little can be done to improve this photo – it’s very well done.  Continuing what seems to be a building trend of nerdiness, I will also be attending another one of these conventions this weekend, the 13th of February through the 15th.  It promises to be quite entertaining, and had this assignment been given a week later, I may have used one of many pictures I’m sure to take while I’m at the convention.

AnimeMusicVideos.org Banner

This ad is a banner on a website called AnimeMusicVideos.org, or AMV.org.  The goal of theses banners, which function like ads, is to get people to join the website.  Fans of the website make them for free, and most incorporate (with questionable legality) the images of characters from different anime television shows.  I chose this ad because it is one of the few ads that actually tries to say what AMV.org actually is: “It’s like this weird place where we do stuff with anime & music!” is about as close to a solid descriptin as anyone ever got from one of these banners.  The AMV.org logo is featured on the left hand side of the ad, where darker colors abound.  The light blue text mixed with dark blue highlighted words is in front of a solid white background.

I like this ad because it actually attempts to say what AMV.org is, albeit in a comedic way.  Most others make little sense to people who don’t know what anime music videos are, and while this is admittedly cryptic, it does better than most similar ads.  Another thing to like about this ad is the fact that it does not borrow images from anywhere, save for the official AMV.org banner, which is a mandatory requirement for fans creating these things – and when they are created, the color scheme of the logo is changed to fit the color scheme of the ad.  Most ads steal images from other places, and while the ads look nice, they are, admittedly, bordering on copyright infringement.

Unfortunately, there are some very real drawbacks to the design of this banner.  While the text is humorous, and the message of the banner is accurately conveyed, the artistic design in this is somewhat lacking.  The vast majority of the banner has a plane white background, but the left side of the banner has so many dark colors that it makes the ad look unbalanced.  It also unnecessarily draws the eyes of the viewer to the logo, while, if this ad wanted to be truly effective, it would draw more attention to the text.

For this ad, I would suggest a more gradual fade between the dark and light sides of the ad, rather than the abrupt and seemingly random shift that takes place about three eighths into the ad from the left side.  This would divide the banner more in half, and to compensate for that, the text should be smaller, and perhaps a different color, or even underlined and designed differently, to draw more attention the words despite their smaller size.  All in all, there is a feeling that to fix the basic problems this ad has, one would have to start from the ground up.  Unfortunately, that might destroy what this ad is in the act, so the process of suggesting changes is difficult.