V&A Museum!

10:23 1 Comments


photograph taken by myself.
For first year of Multimedia Design, we all went on a trip to the V&A museum in London. The aim of going was to find certain practitioners that inspired you and your own work. This was the first time I had been to the V&A museum and I didn't expect it to be that big. I thought the building was beautiful and after this blog I will go on to research the V&A building's history.

The museum is split into parts, Asia, Europe, modern, materials and techniques and exhibitions. They all had their own unique artifacts and sculptures which were either 18, 19 or 20th century. We managed to look around the museum as much as possible and along the way I found some inspiring artists.
When looking through all the separate galleries, I wasn't so much interested in the 18/19th century antiques however, they were gorgeous to look at but I think my own work doesn't relate to that sense of style.

I was mainly intrigued by the isotype gallery, painting and drawings, stained glass and photography. To find practitioners at the V&A I thought these three areas would be key to use towards my own work, since I am mainly focusing on virtual environments as my chosen pathway for the next two years. The images below show the artwork in each area that inspired me the most. I have written a brief description to show why I am inspired by them. (I photographed all the images below and manipulated them only slightly to present them more attractively and clearer.)

Isotype

Isotype (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education) is a method of constructing and publishing information using visual graphic materials. These are pictogram's of people or objects that communicate visually to people of all ages. It shows a clear design method for educational and development of knowledge.

From the images above you can see on the right hand side, the design titles 'Unemployment In Great Britian' and below give a clear example of the dates and small graphic pictures of people. This shows us a quick and easy message to what it is trying to get across to the viewers.

There are three creators of Isotype. Otto Neurath, Marie Neurath and Gerd Arntz. Otto Neurath is the intellectual leader of Isotype, who spent his lifetime embracing political economy, sociology, philosophy, urbanism and visual communication. He was also the director of the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna. Marie Neurath became a creative author in the 1950's and 60's designing children's books on history and science subjects. Gerd Arntz worked at the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna producing pictogram's and gave Isotype its outstanding graphic style.

I have decided to use Isotype within my research for my visual essay because I think this will help me to show my work visually and since my chosen pathway for level two is virtual environments (animation), I consider the style of graphics used in Isotype can relate to the design in my own work. I tend to use block, bold and bright colours within my work, which keeps it quite modern and clear. This applies insignificantly to the graphic style of Isotype. I will continue to research further on Isotype, which can potentially work towards my ideas for presenting my essay.

Paintings & Drawings

In the paintings & drawings gallery, I came across these paintings by an artist named John Constable. The detail of each painting made them stand out to me and the artist uses similar landscape images. Constable uses pencil sketches to produce his work. He was an English romantic painter, who painted the surroundings of is home - "I should paint my own paintings best".

I definitely consider to use him to relate to my own work because he creates brilliant landscape paintings which connects with the reality of virtual environments. In animation it is crucial to have an artistic background and I personally think John Constable can help me throughout my research to be able to capture the environments within an animation. I will continue to research John Constable and his paintings.


I also came across children's books in the paintings & drawing gallery, as shown above. The artist is called Walter Crane who was a English artist and book illustrator. Crane is a well known children's book creator of his generation. As you can see above, he has developed numerous illustrated children's books with some minor text during the 19th and 20th century. I was interested by the style of the drawings and how you can see that they are quite aged by the costume design and detail. 

On the bottom right image, you can see the sketched illustration and the painted version. This is nice to see, because you can see a simple development of the drawing. I would like to use this practitioner towards my own work to show the contrast and familiarity within my animation and character design work.

Photography


The photography gallery was quite small and a security woman kept telling us to not take photographs for some reason, but I managed to take the two above. The image on the left was produced by an artist named Robert Heinecken. I read the blurb about the photographs and I thought it was interesting because Heinecken believed there was too many photographic images. He named this ARE YOU REA, which extenuates REAL/REALLY. He used this to explore consumer culture and self-image. 

The image on the right is by an artist named Henry Holmes Smith. In his portfolio he explains 'As the syrup lens runs down the sheet of glass it causes light falling on it to refract, making marks that celebrate life itself. This celebration, in turn, honours sight and in this double celebration I honour not only light and sight but true master, L. Moholy-Nagy, as well.'

I'm inspired by this photograph because it is very unique and abstract and it keeps you thinking about the image. It also looks quite modern and stylish, yet the meaning behind it is very detailed, as shown above.  

I could explore these two artists because even if their artwork doesn't inspire my own, there style of thinking about design could possibly inspire me to think more creatively.  

Stained Glass

I thought the stained glass gallery was interesting because of the fine detail and how they tell a story visually, which is a great feature to explore for my own work. The three images above (I have manipulated them slightly) tells the story - The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee. The story depicts the miracle of Jesus calming the Sea's Of Galilee, which is from the Gospel Of Mark of the Christian Bible.

This is unique and delicate, especially the stained glass artwork which shows a narrative understanding of the testament in the bible.


I purposely picked out this piece of stained glass because the people in the artwork look a lot like modern cartoon characters compared to the stained glass artwork we normally see. Originally stained glass artwork has many people shown, which tells a story however this doesn't seem to be narrative. The main aspect I like about stained glass artwork is the colours used. They always seem to be bright and colourful to look at, which makes it attractive and graceful. This would be useful to research, as they use different materials and in college I made a candle holder using stained glass, which I could possibly included within my visual essay.

After selecting the practitioners and information from the V&A museum, I will now expand and research my chosen artists. I will also use these artists to relate to others who are similar. 
Isotype, John Constable, Walter Crane will be considered as the main practitioners I have selected from the trip to use towards my visual essay. Yet, I will also explore photography and stained glass in a way of thinking about design as a concept. 
Overall the V&A museum was a great opportunity and I am pleased with the practitioners I have found, which can  potentially inspire my own work.

1 comments :

Role Two: Production Designer!

09:39 0 Comments

My other role during the film making is the production designer, as well as sound designer. It is important to know exactly what I will be in charge of during the making of our film.

What is a production designer? - My understanding is that the production designer is head of the art department in film. This means working with the producer and director to visually set the style of a scene to tell a story. Therefore before and after shooting I will be focusing on the style and the visual feel. As a production designer, it is also required to help with the costume designer and hair and make-up artist to guide them to create the appearance and trend we desire to create. I will also work with the location manager, the special effects director and photography to secure the sense of visual aspects.














However as we only have roles for the producer, director, editor, camera and lighting and sound and production designer  because there isn't enough of us in the group. We have set each other additional roles, such as costume and prop design, location, description of characters and etc. We have also assigned roles which involves being responsible for all the risk assessments and permission. As my main role is the sound and production designer, I will be working with more or less all of the members in our group because it is important for me to create the ambience and feel that reacts to the audience.

"Film is ultimately a visual medium, its visual material is almost like another actor, itself creating a mood and eliciting an emotional reaction from the audience. Just think how much the production design in Todd Haynes’ "Far From Heaven" contributed to the overall effectiveness of his story. It is the PD’s responsibility to find the right visual and spatial elements that best convey the film’s theme and emotion."
http://newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/03january/pd.htm

I think I will work well as the production designer within the film making.
As an individual, I personally like anything to look organized and stylish whether its from a piece of writing to the layout of your bedroom or even a blog on this journal. I think this will be a great role for me to undertake and explore.

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Ticket?

15:48 0 Comments

Over the past two weeks I have researched sound design and thought about what techniques we could use within our film called 'Ticket'. Our film is about a girl (Lisa) who seems to sit at a bus stop/bench for a long period of time day after day. Then one day a boy (Sam) starts talking to her and she seems to know a lot about this boy. So, overall we have decided that Lisa's character is quite shy, quirky but intelligent and Sam's character is quite popular and out going. The main ambience we want to create for the audience is romance, however we want to make sure it keeps the viewers interested throughout. An idea I have for this is flash-backs of her or his past which shows why they have opposite personalities or even flash-backs to how Lisa knows so much about Sam.

As I am the sound designer, I have been looking into what sounds would suit the type of mood we want to create. Sound is ideal, as it is an important factor to create the atmosphere. Since romance is our focus point, I have looked at music from other films used to set the mood.


I would also like to create synchronous sound effects such as, the sound of opening a fizzy drink I.E. recorded the sound separately and overlay onto the film. Another idea is, Lisa or Sam might have earphones in their ears listening to music. Therefore the music could be edited onto the film so the audience can hear what he or she is listening to. It could then possibly flip to the other person talking, which means you would hear the music only slightly and hear the other person speaking. These are all synchronous effects. Asynchronous sound effects could be used when Lisa is sat on the bench I.E. traffic noises, as though it would be coming from where the camera is filming.

I have been assigned to write a sound treatment for my role as the sound designer. I have many ideas for the sound, however when we plan the scenes out clearly I will be able to write a description on the sound techniques scene by scene, as it depends on the location. In our group discussion on Friday (21stJan), we will plan out a detailed plan of each scene and give every member of the group a copy, which then means I can get started on practicing recording sounds and using the equipment.

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Sound and Production Designer!

10:36 1 Comments

reel to reel

" Before computer editing, sound editor used to reelaudio tape players to record sound."


I have researched my role as a sound designer for our short film. I used filmsound.org to research and learn my own understanding of sound. They are mainly broken down into three main areas these are:
sound effects, music and dialog.   

Sounds Effects
Synchronous and asynchronous sounds are used within sound effects.

Synchronous means sounds are synchronized to what is happening within the film. Its basically a combination of visual and sound working together on screen. For example, sounds might be recorded separately for parts of a scene and then edited to increase or decrease the pitch of the sound. I.E. door creak, to create the mood of the film and keep the audience interested. A door creak may make the audience feel anxious and fearful to what might happen next.

Asynchronous means more or less the opposite to synchronous. Sound effects would be used that do not match what is on screen. It makes the audience visualise what might be happening in the background of the film (which is not on screen). For example, a couple might be talking in a kitchen in the house and throughout, sound might be used such as an ambience sound that is coming from outside on the street, but the focus is on the characters reaction in the 'kitchen'.

So, I think synchronous and asynchronous would work nicely within our work and I will look further into them both before filming. They would work well braking down the awkward parts during the film, as we have planned to make the connection between the two characters quite uncomfortable. Camera techniques could also be used to grab the audiences attention.  

Music
Music is used to set the mood of the scene to keep the audience interested, link to different scenes and to make the audience feel emotional.

Certain short sounds and music can be recognised that relates to a certain action or film. For example, when we here 'durdum durdum' (If you get the gist) we automatically think of sharks swimming in the water I.E. The film, Jaws. Another example would be Randy Newman who sings 'You've got a friend in me', everyone who here's this song would most likely think of the animated film Toy Story, as it is the theme song. This is also popular in the public eye, which makes the music familiar.

This is something to think about when making sound for our film. Even little effects like the 'durdum durdum' makes the audience feel the mood you are trying to create because they can relate to the sounds.

Dialog
Voices can be heard throughout a a film using many different techniques.

One technique is called voice over, usually abbreviated VO in scripts. Voice over is a narrative commentary or concept used over visuals in a film or advert. This means you cannot see the person speaking, you can only hear them. A good example of this is commercials
(Peter Dickson - Voice Over for channel E4 adverts)

Dialog is not always used whilst filming on set. Some dialog is recorded off location and put onto the film when editing. When film making, they sometimes shoot silent, MOS (Motion Omit Sound) which means the crew can film without being perfectly quite. It might also be used in case of background noises on location. Therefore the dialog would be recorded in a studio/booth. Although a highly directional microphone can be used to control the sound on location.

Sometimes when dialog editing, it is common that the editor might use a word in the dialog to complete another, if it was distorted in anyway. 

Dialog in film is important to make sure it is clear throughout any film. I think this will be the most difficult part of sound and I will need to practice with the equipment before filming. Yet, it is recommended to record dialog when filming on a external location.  

1 comments :

Moving Image!

16:47 1 Comments

For our first five week project, we were put into groups and given a short script to work from for the next five weeks. The script we have been assigned to is called 'Ticket' which is about a girl and a boy meeting at a bus stop/bench. We were all given roles, these were producer, director, editor, sound and production designer and camera and lighting. I am the sound and production designer. This basically means that I will be in charge of making sure the sound is clear and also what sounds to use within the film. Such as, music, voices, sound effects and etc. This will involve making my own sound effects for the film and using different pitches to enhance the ambience and feel of the scenes within the film which I will work and discuss this with the editor I.E. Samantha :-)

For my own role, I will continue to research, test my own sounds and use the equipment to my best ability. I am mainly looking into creating sound effects such as, crunching of leaves and fizzy drink bottles opening and etc.

I will blog plenty.

1 comments :

Threshold Concept!

16:23 0 Comments

In our first lecture back from Christmas, we were introduced to Threshold Concepts and discussed them briefly.
"A threshold concept is like a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something, without which the learner can not progress. Meyer & Land (2003)"

We then watched a film called eXistenZ for the rest of the lecture. The film was about virtual reality gaming. It was quite strange, but it kept you thinking throughout the film.
We were given three words to write and relate to towards the film. These were:

Narrative
Interactivity
Convergence

The film showed narrative as though you questioned what was happening throughout the film. It showed both fantasy and reality, however it was unsure whether the scenes you where watching were either. It definitely developed a story throughout. Interactivity was used within the characters and theory of the film. It also keeps you, as the audience intrigued about what is going on in the game, making you think, why they are doing this and where its going to end. It also keeps you relating back to previous scenes. Convergence works with what you might think or imagine what is going to happen throughout the film.


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Module One!

18:01 0 Comments

Animation
http://vimeo.com/17954966 (improved version)

http://vimeo.com/16214913 (original version)

Interactive
(Alyssa Brookes)
http://makingnewmaps.com/

Moving Image
http://vimeo.com/17332808




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