To help make this use of theme more effective the use of “lines” and “movement” are greatly utilized. For starters, the use of movement is incredibly evident because the director and editors did their best to make it seem like one long continuous shot. In doing so, it makes it easy to direct the viewers awareness of where they should be looking while also creating less obvious meanings. With this specific use of movement it allowed the cinematic to move to higher floors of the building without any confusion, also helping to support the idea of the theme and the different tiers within the organization. All of this movement helps creates tension within the scene because it isn't common to have a shot going for such length of time and therefore adds to the sense of evil that is supposed to be portrayed. As if this use of movement wasn't efficient enough, the director continued to improve on the shots from there by using lines to guide the viewers eyes as well. Amongst each floor and area the camera explores there is a great deal of affinity and contrast throughout the objects. The use of contrast, however, is the key point. By putting objects such as a flaming oil drum/trashcan it draws instant attention to the area in question because the flames create such a contrast of lines in the shot. The use of affinity amongst the lines is important, as well. If it wasn't for the less subtle lines used along the walls of the shots to help move along the movement it would make the seamless shot seem less smooth and a lot harder on the eyes.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Scene Deconstruction: District B13's Intro
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Animation Deconstruction
Lastly their differences/similarities in terms of movement. Since “$9.99” was created through claymation it had a lot more limitations in terms of its animation compared to “9”. Being computer generated “9's” animations were a lot more parallel and natural with their movements than those of “$9.99”. Even though “9's” foreground and background were more complex than that of “$9.99”, they both had a great deal of animations going on at all times, hence the use of overlapping movements in both films. Both films also successfully conveyed a realistic presentation of weight in their artificially created worlds.
Storyboard Imitation
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Song Deconstruction: Midnight City
When M83 originally released “Midnight City” not too long ago, many were blown away by it's excellence and a cover of it was simply unheard of. As usual, however, The Knocks did the unheard of and covered “Midnight City” and did so beautifully. When M83 did their recording of the lyrics they used a male vocalist and heavily effected the sound to make it fit in he sounds deep layered sound. The Knocks, on the other hand, used a female vocalist to do their lyrics and made her voice more subtle sounding. They both kept the same medium tempo/speed, but used different ways of instrumentation to keep the beat driving. They both used their vox-style synths and drums, but the Knocks version relied more on their kick drum to do most of the driving than M83 chose to do. The Knocks cover keeps true to M83's original melody just give it a little spin of their own to give it a brighter feel. The achieved this by using a slightly different instrumentation and by not adding as many effects to their layers to achieve a thinner sound than M83's (but still deep nonetheless). M83 used voice, drum set, synths, and a saxophone. The Knocks took a more simple route and used voice, synths (with different settings), and a drum pad. They both have a very intense feel to them, but M83's is darker sounding while The Knock's is uplifting. Both versions of the song follow the same organization, whereas they both start off with the intro that leads into the chorus, which is followed by a verse, which is followed by another chorus, another verse, and ends with a chorus. Each chorus has small elements added to add to their complexity and intensity. In terms of elements of sound, both had a complex tonal timbre to them and a loud intensity, Regarding pitch, M83's took a lower sound to it while The Knocks was higher.
If I had to pick my favorite, it was a very hard choice, but I would have to pick M83's version because it was their unique idea in the first place and if they would have never made their song The Knocks would have never been able to do their cover version of it.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Reflections on Sound Design: It's All Gone Pete Tong
Brainwashed
Acknowledging the Lizard – Acknowledging the Lizard is the part of our brain that fears negative criticism towards our work more than anything else. Upon being told it's “wrong”, it can cause us to just give up.
Fail – Failing is the ability to accept that what you did was total crap and being able to move onto the next project with our heads still held high regardless.
Connect – Connecting is the ability to share our thoughts and feelings with a wide range of people at simply the press of a button rather than the limitations innovators had in the past.
Accurate...? Somewhat.
While I didn't agree with all 7 of Seth Godin's tips, I do agree with the 3 I chose to summarize. To start, I'll talk about “Acknowledging the Lizard”. The concept of this is incredibly correct, and I know this from experience. There are numerous accounts of times when I've spent a lot of time on some sort of project and gotten it to a point where I find it to be acceptable, yet when I show it off to others they proceed to tear it apart. A lot of the time you will find yourself fighting back against their honest opinions and telling them “No, you're wrong.” simply because you yourself doesn't want to be wrong. Following that, upon enough negative criticism, I'll even give up on projects that could have easily been salvageable because of how discouraged the comments made me. This luckily isn't a problem when it comes to our blogging. We're given the ability to speak our minds, where no matter if we're for or against the subject, we will still receive credit for doing it. This is very important in improving as creative individuals because we don't have to fear being told what we've done was incorrect as long as we've followed the broad guidelines. Next comes “Failing”, a word I fear greatly. There is nothing worse than the feeling of knowing all of your hard work spent on something has been a total waste. Recovering from this and allowing yourself to continue to give your everything on the projects to come is a hard task to do, but yet a necessity. Allowing yourself to shortchange your creativity so you just end up doing the bear-minimal to meet a projects specific guidelines is horrible. Luckily, these blogs have incredibly broad rubrics, which allow for us to express ourselves without having to worry about losing large amounts of points all over the place and hence failing that assignment. The third of the terms I chose was “Connecting”, a term that applies perfectly to these blogs because that is entirely what they are. We are posting them to an online public blogging site where they are visible/connectable with the whole world with just the press of the button. This offers the ability for users to contribute feedback and opinions to other users instantly. Concepts like this would never have been possible in the past and restricted peers to only the feedback of their teacher, and even that took a great deal of time.