Getting Up

This is the scene where Dan and Lucy stand up after sitting on the park bench.

Sitting on the Bench

Here is the scene where Dan and Lucy sit on the park bench together.

Walk to the Bench

This is the scene where Dan and Lucy walk to the park bench.

Walking through the Park

Here is the scene where Dan and Lucy walk through the park to get to the bench. Enjoy!

My Week

This Tuesday I was at the math competition so I didn't get the chance to work on my animation.

On Wednesday, I imported the images of the background, preparing to trace them, only to realise that I didn't have to! I also realised that I didn't have to spend all of last week tracing them either, as I just needed to import them and then leave them as I wasn't planning on changing anything. So frustrating!!!! Anyway, so I spent the lesson exporting a couple of the scenes I had already done and finishing the scene where Dan and Lucy stand up from the bench. I then began to work on the scene where they start to walk away from the bench.

On Thursday, I continued to work on the scene where the two walk away from the bench and am nearly finished. I also exported a couple more scenes, so now all of the scenes that I have done so far I have as Quicktime files. I will put them on my blog soon, so keep an eye out for them!

I was going to borrow a laptop for the weekend, but because I wasn't there for Tuesday's lesson and Mr Powell wasn't there for Wednesday or Thursday's lesson, I wasn't able to get the form signed in time as I didn't have enough time to find anyone to do this. Now that I think about it, I probably just could have got Miss Bardsley to sign it. Oh well, I WILL make sure that I have a laptop for next weekend, which is a long weekend thanks to the Gold Coast Show, to work on my animation.

Factory

This is the video I have selected to use for the Appraising Animation written task.

Factory from citrusink on Vimeo. Factory, http://vimeo.com/5905934 (15/09/10)

How To Analyze a Movie, http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/how-to-analyze-a-movie (15/09/10)

‘Factory’ by Miwa Matreyek seems to have been made using predominantly iStopMotion. In the first scene of this movie I see people wearing exactly the same uniforms and carrying a tool box. They are walking into what appears to be a huge factory and are checking their watches quite often. The camera moves above the factory to where I see lots of smoke coming from it and blimps with ships attached by rope underneath them. The scene changes to inside the factory where I see lots of machinery. There is a massive hand and part of an arm attached to a piece of machinery going through the motions of picking something up and putting it down in the top left corner. In the bottom right hand corner there is a woman surrounded by computers who is looking at things and typing. Some of the same men that I saw at the start are walking through the centre of the frame. The scene changes to another room where there is the same woman as in the previous scene typing in front of a whole bunch of ‘computers’. She is wearing the same uniform as everyone else and using two keyboards with one hand on each. A person in the background is wearing white and holding a clipboard. She walks in, looks at the woman, takes some notes and walks away. The scene changes to another room where there are two men in the same uniform as before. The man in the foreground is moving in a squat like action and holding a massive spanner which is moving a nut and making the machinery work. The other is behind him and is doing a similar thing but using a smaller spanner and only his arms. There are lots of other complex-looking machines surrounding them. The scene changes yet again to another room where there is another man in the uniform levering a spanner and making a machine move up and down which is making the huge blender mix something. There is more machinery in the background, although it is stationary.

The work all of the people are doing is very repetitive, boring and unchanging. I think that the mood of the work is grave. The music is very dark and foreboding, the video is in black and white, everything appears to be very structured in the factory and everyone is working. The workers are not smiling and do not appear to be having a good time at all.

I can tell that this movie has been edited because the smoke that is rising out of the factory at the beginning doesn’t quite line up with the chimneys and has edges that are too harsh around the blimps. Also there are things in this movie that couldn’t possibly have been filmed without editing, such as the mechanical hand and the size of some objects. Evidence of editing also included the brief pauses in music and sound effects as a change of scene occurred.

The scenes in this movie flow in a logical progression. Everything happens in the order that it would in real life and time. The movie contained a lot of attention to detail. Many layers have been used in order to get the effect of the movie and a lot of effort would have been put in to make them line up with such precision. Detailed pictures also made up the background.

The majority of the shapes in ‘Factory’ are geometric and the whole movie is in black and white. Most of the objects in this movie are in proportion. There are however, objects that are not, such as the massive hand, spanners and blender. I believe that the enormous tools the people use are so big to show how hard the job is and possibly even to draw attention to them or use them as a focal point. The quality of movement was quite good, only with the slight stilt of iStopMotion or a similar program.

The music was very low and deep and seemed grave, dark, mysterious, solemn, and indicated danger. There were also sounds of beeping electronics, sliding, humming, clunking and whirring machinery and engines, fog horns, hammering and movement. There was not, however, any dialogue. The music was of quite good quality and was quite clear, but the sounds were not of very good quality and sounded as though they were a bit muffled.

I believe that this work is about how we really are when it comes to the work force and the pollution we are causing. The smoke that comes out of the factory and fills the sky represents the huge amount of pollution that we are spilling into the environment. The blimp carrying the boat represents the fact that we are wasting water, as there will be no water left in the world so we will have to use the skies for things that were meant for the oceans. Even though the large mechanical hand is going through the motions of picking up something, it really isn’t and represents the fact that we are working for nothing. The whole factory seems very cluttered and full of ‘stuff’ and represents the way we live our lives, for we are always busy and don’t have time to organise things properly. The way that everyone works is very repetitive and boring and sends the message that we are working like machines. It also seems as though everyone is being overworked and as though there is nothing enjoyable about working, hence the dull colours, grave music and lack of life in the people.

My mum thinks that the work is about how people are living a robotic lifestyle. She thinks that it is showing that we are doing a lot of work and achieving nothing and that there is a lot of pollution on the earth. My dad thinks that the work is about how people don’t think anymore and just do what they have to, which is resulting in people becoming like machinery. Kate thinks the work is about global warming which is caused by modern day technologies.

I think that the intended audience is people that are in and entering the workforce. Although there is no clear outright purpose or meaning of this piece of work, I believe it was made so that this group of people can see what is really happening in the workplace and do something about it.

Matreyek has effectively used sound with animation images to create meaning in this piece of work. The music, sounds and images all tie in together to create a piece of work with a deep, hard to see meaning and a theme of there being too much emphasis on work and the fact that it is currently boring, repetitious and in a very solemn environment.

This Week

Well, I haven't really done much this week but trace what I have already done. I thought it wouldn't take that long, but it has actually taken like all of the lessons this week. I am very nearly finished the scene where they get up, so next week will be able to make them walk to the lake, which will just involve more tracing and making Dan and Lucy hold hands while they walk.

Scene 1

I finally exported one of the scenes of my animation. It is the first scene where Lucy drives into school and Dan walks in. I still have a little bit more to do, such as the evil glare Lucy gives Dan and then this whole first bit will be finished!

Wednesday & Thursday

On Wednesday I opened the scene where Dan and Lucy are sitting on the bench and found that it went all funny in the middle. I discovered, eventually, that this was because I had copied one frame and pasted it many times, but had changed the arm position of Dan in just one of the frames, which made them all change also. I spent a lot of Wednesday's lesson trying to fix this and came up with a solution that actually worked a couple of minutes before the bell. It was to copy the frame into the background, trace it in the foreground and then delete it in the background, which was very time consuming but the only thing I could think of. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this before the end of the lesson so spent a bit of Thursday's lesson working on it.
I had finished fixing that glitch by halfway through Thursday's lesson so was able to start making Dan and Lucy stand and prepare to walk away. I decided that the best way to do this would be to just copy the first frames of the scene and reverse them. This worked well until I had to make the "camera zoom out" using key frames as I had to start a new scene because there were already key frames in the foreground and background of this one. This meant that I had to export the last nine or so frames and trace them in a new scene, which I started on Thursday, but haven't yet completed.

3 August

Today I worked on the scene where Dan and Lucy sit on the bench. I managed to make them hold hands and lower their heads. Even though this doesn't seem like much, it is actually very time consuming.

Over the weekend I borrowed a laptop from the library and spent a couple of hours working on my assignment. I made Dan and Lucy walk to the bench, sit down, talk and blink. I even managed to make it look like the camera zoomed in by using key frames.