London

London was fun. We had really nice weather so pretty much just walked everywhere, and even when we used the Tube we (stupidly) took the zillions of stairs at Russell Square rather than taking a lift. The British Museum was definitely a highlight - I could spend days in there because there is so much to see. Although the fact Britain has basically plundered the world of all its priceless artifacts and put them in a museum is pretty sad. There is  a sense that maybe all this stuff should be in museums in the countries that made them. Camden was also really cool, we went on a Sunday so it was really busy but the atmosphere was great. I could have eaten so much that day - the food stalls there are amazing. I tried this African curry which was rather delicious and we bought some crazy African dudes CD. It was just a copied CD with a rubbish black and white cover but it cost us £10! The guy who sold it us was too nice and happy  to turn down. Ooh - and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club was pretty cool. There was a bottle of champagne on the menu for £3500! I had to look twice I didnt believe anyone would pay that much for a drink! I made a list of free things to do in London but I think I only managed to do like 4 of them....

free things to do in london

British Museum

Changing of the guard

Houses of Parliament / Westminster

Imperial War Museum

London Silver Vaults Markets

Museum of London National Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

National Theatre

Natural History Museum

Royal Academy of Music

Royal Opera House,

Covent Garden

Science Museum

Selfridges

Serpentine Gallery

Soanes Museum

Sotheby’s

Speaker's Corner

Tate Britain

Tate Modern Templar's Church (as seen in the Da Vinci Code)

Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum

Whitechapel Gallery

Evaluation

In evaluation of my work I would first like to explain what I have learned. One important area in which I have acquired knowledge has been specifically in web2 technology. The interconnected nature of all of the websites I used (vimeo, youtube, blogger and flickr) was very interesting, because they all relate to each other so well I was able to take advantage of the various cross over points. I found that it was easy to manage all of my accounts because each individual website was tailored to the others I used. At first I found all of the different file formats quite daunting and couldn’t understand the need for such a variety but after some trial and error I found that I was able to find a balance between video quality and streaming speed – something which is crucial of course when trying to create a promotional video for an artist (musician) especially because it was designed for myspace. The main draw back for me with using the internet, despite its numerous obvious advantages, was the many problems I had with uploading videos, mainly the time each video took to upload was very disappointing especially when considering the technology I have been using is very advanced and by no means shoddy. This is perhaps just an unavoidable inconvenience. However in researching the many uses of my camera I was able to save sometime when I discovered that my camera has a function that enables it to upload footage straight to youtube without having to edit or convert them into different file formats.
Most importantly I have become competent in using Final Cut from experimenting with animatics and stop motion video. Once developing skills in this area I was able to make better use of other programs such as Flash. The main relation between the two for me, was in understanding key frames, once I was able to use these, they became a useful tool in creating an animation from scratch using Flash.
In relation to the feedback that I received in the form of views, for both of the videos that I have created (25 views of my animation on youtube and 17 for my music video in contrast to vimeo in which I have had 7 views for each video) I concluded that youtube was the best site for me to use in order to achieve a greater amount of exposure for the musician. This is simply because youtube is more popular and although I found vimeo easier to use and find that it has better features I think that as it grows in popularity the website will be forced to loose some of these features and become more like youtube so that it does not become so slow as to make in unusable.
Overall I feel I have been successful in terms of the knowledge I have gained in using final cut also I have found that I am very interested in learning more about animation. I am happy with my animation and music video and am confident that the musician was happy as he has also received positive feedback via myspace. If I were to have done anything differently I would have looked further into High Definition technology, I think that what research I have undergone however has been useful as I am now aware of what direction the field is heading in and what impact it will have on the future of film and television. I would also like to know when this transitional stage into which we have recently entered, from the standard technology to HD will be complete.

The Future of Animation

Currently the world of animation is attempting to create photorealistic animation of humans, at the moment we often see animals in films like the new award winning Bolt in which we see stylised dogs, cats, pigeons, hamsters and cartoon humans. We are yet to see realistic humans of such high quality as to fool us into disbelief, this of course is the goal. We hope to create realistic animated human interactions set within a detailed enviroment. Upto now Final Fantasy:The Spirits within is cited as the first animation attempting to create realistic humans without using puppetry or animatronics, this considered, its clear that we are a long way from achieving this. However if/when this arrives it will mean big changes for the film industry in terms of the role of the actor. For another example of this attempt at human like recreation with 3D animation and motion capture you can hope to see an improvement in Alice In Wonderland due to be released in 2010.

I've been struggling to understand some of the technical jargon I found on Wikipedia but Ive recently found a sister website, http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/, which offers simple, easy to understand explanations.

A bit more about HD

The three things which make HD differnet to SDTV are:

• Frame size This is the number of horizontal pixels x number of vertical pixels, for example 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080.
• Scanning system is progressive scanning rather than interlaced.
• Frame rate which is identified as the number of video frames per second.

QuickTime

 A technician showed me that you can also create simple image sequences using QuickTime. All you do is go into File then click on 'Open Image Sequence'. If you put all your images into a folder you can then choose the folder and it opens all of them. Its the simplest method I've found as there is no way of editing the clips once there on there, you can only choose the frame rate at the beginning. Also you cant rearrange your images so you have to photograph them all in the right order. To give you more control over your animation you can then open up the image sequence in Photoshop. It displays the sequence as one single image with as many layers as photos in the sequence. By clicking on Window then Animation, it then brings up a timeline where you can then begin editing your video. There is still no where near the amount of control you get when using Final Cut as you would expect so I didn't really see the point in trying this method out myself, though I did create a simple sequence using QuickTime just because I was quite surprised that you could even do that.

Untitled from holly raper on Vimeo.

(excuse the picture of the hamster at the end - i didn't realise that was in the folder when i imported in into QuickTime!)

Flash!

I dabbled with Flash today - I found that even though I was only trying to do something simple and I had been to the Flash workshop the previous week, I still couldn't get my bird to fly! I had to, yet again, ask one the I.T technicians to help and once he left me to it I was on a roll! I dont know if i over did it on the bird front-I originally just wanted to animate one bird flying across the screen, but for a bit of practice I ended up animating 5. What I did was create 3 birds in different positions using Illustrator, as I learnt you cant use tweens with pixels meaning I couldn't just import my original photographs into Flash. I then converted them to symbols. I then had to create a blank symbol to put my bird images onto. I had to create BLANK keyframes for each bird and then use a tool called the 'onion layer' to make my keyframes see through so I could position each bird in the correct place over each other. Then you save this symbol which is now animated to look as if it is flying and drag it onto the stage. Then, using keyframes, you can move this animated bird over the screen so it looks like is actually flying somewhere and not just statically moving its wings. To create the movement I had to add a motion tween on the timeline. I repeated this technique for each bird, adjusting the size and the speed in which they fly across the screen to give some kind of perspective.

Although I had to ask for help, I'm still pleased with myself for managing to carry on going once the I.T technician left. I think that once I can get my head around Flash (hopefully the second workshop next week will help) I will find it a really valuable and practical tool. I chose not to compile my whole animation in Flash because as my knowledge of it is still pretty limited I think it would have taken up too much time and I wouldn't be able to stick to the deadline. 

flying bird using Flash from holly raper on Vimeo.

Myspace video

I tried using MySpace video to upload my animation but I didn't have the patience as it was taking waay too long. It's just a lot easier to use a website designed for video upload like YouTube then embed your videos elsewhere. I also tried 'sharing' my animation with MySpace using Vimeo but there were only a few locations you could send it to and I only managed to send it to MySpace Blog which I didn't even know existed. So after trying some other methods of getting my videos online I've decided uploading onto Vimeo (not YouTube as this is slightly slower) and then embedding the link is the most hassle-free way of doing it. 

TAGGING

When I've been uploading my videos onto Vimeo and YouTube I have also been tagging them to make them more searchable. I used words like music, folk, an earth tongue, animation, music video and also my name. I found that my videos are much easier to find on Vimeo than YouTube but I presume this is just because YouTube is so much bigger and more popular.

Final Cut animation

I have now also edited my animation using Final Cut. A problem I encountered earlier was that the shortest frame duration was 1 second which is much too long for an animation. I got around this problem by speeding every frame up by 700%. This took forever. I'm sure there is a quicker way to do this but I am yet to figure it out. Unlike i movie you have almost total control over what you want to achieve as it has much more advanced functions. For example I added a fade in and fade out at the beginning and end of the animation in i movie. But you could only attach the fade to the first and last frame so the fade wasnt that gradual. Whereas in Final cut you can layer a fade or cross dissolve over as many frames as you like making the transition look much smoother. Another even better way to control fade in/out using Final Cut is a small button called 'Toggle Clip Overlay' which creates a black line on every frame in the timeline. Using the pen tool you can then drag the line up or down to give different opacities, it also works on audio tracks so you can adjust the sound levels easily. 

I did, however, find that the titles were much easier to create on i movie than in Final Cut and because i movie has such a wide selection and an easy to use interface i think you can get just as good results as in Final Cut. I could not figure out how move text around the screen in Final Cut but it was really obvious and easy to use in i movie. 

To make the animation more interesting and less static I experimented using key frames to adjust the movement of the 'camera'. This also took me a while to figure out as at first I was trying to create movement using just a beginning and an end key frame like I had been taught in the Animatics workshop. But because I was working with a stop motion animation I had to add a key frame to every frame in the sequence. I am beginning to see why Flash is the preferred option as using motion tweens in between keyframes drastically reduces the amount of time you have to spend editing. I used key frames to zoom in on and pan over to important features of the animation to direct the eye the parts I don't want the viewer to miss. I find the whole idea of key framing brilliant as it gives you complete control and i think its amazing how the computer actually knows what to do. I really enjoyed figuring Final Cut out on my own and it actually working for me, as usually I have to bother the IT technicians with simple questions. I could possibly say I am now competent with Final Cut and am looking forward to being able to say I am confident using Final Cut. 

Next stop - Flash!

HD and Super 8 comparison

Sharon suggested I read this article in SmallFormat magazine about converting super8 film into High Definition. It gave me a lot of useful information on the basics of HD as well as some of its advantages and disadvantages. So heres a summary of the stuff I found interesting..

• HD has two resolutions, 1920x1080 and 1280x720 pixels and also 5 different frame rates- 24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 fps.
• It has a variety of different formats because it is required to meet compatibility standards with PAL and NTSC. 
  
• Instead of having to convert formats when playing back HD can be played as true 24 fps.
• HD is shot in 16:9 so is compatible with most modern Television screens whereas with super 8 you have to either lose a third of your image, stretch it to fit which leads to distortion or use the pillarbox view.
• Even though most HD video is compressed especially for comsumer use the difference in quality between compressed and uncompressed is hardly noticeable, this is because most Tv sets use a lower resolution which hides any compression artifacts and also a lot of compression systems are adapted to weaknesses in human perception. This compression fools the eye into thinking that the the video has more detail and sharpness. 
• Blu-ray discs will become readily available and more affordable in the near future - meaning eventually the first choice for most people will be HD.
• Sharpness and resolution is greatly improved with HD.
• With HD there is no need for different worldwide formatting standards. 

Disadvantages

• The cineon format, widely used in film cinema plays at a very similar resolution to HD video and it is not compressed which means you don't have to compromise on colour resolution and contrast which is often lost somewhat when watching in HD.
• HD uses up an awful lot of storage which means you have to always compress it.

i movie

I have compiled all my images to make an animation in i movie to begin with as i think this is the most simple program to work with. When i imported my pictures it automatically put a strange effect on all of them, called the Ken Burns effect. This is simply removed by selecting all the images and clicking on 'Show photo settings' then unticking the Ken Burns Effect box. Apart from this I found the program really easy to use - you simply drag and drop your pictures onto the timeline. I couldn't work out how to highlight groups of photos to change their duration all at once so I unfortunately had to each one individually, though all in all the whole process only took roughly an hour. As the program is so simple, I didnt have as much control over the transistions. I put a fade in/out at the beginning and the end but it will only attach itself to the first and last clip which made it quite jerky and not flowing. I also dabbled with few of the video effects and added an aged affect to make it look old fashioned as the animation is very lo-tech. I decided to produce something simple and without using too much technology because I wanted to focus solely on the editing software and what this is capable of. Next I am going to experiment with final cut though I did import all my images onto it before and it seemed that the shortest frame duration is 1 second which is much too long for animation purposes.

JVC Everio Camcorder

So I've been reading some online reviews about my video  camera to see what other people make of it and have  discovered some of its handy functions. It has the ability  to function manually aswell as automatically which  enables me to adjust things such as aperture, exposure  and it has a colour mode function (vivid and natural).  Below is a short clip I filmed of a canal. It was a beautiful  sunset but the colours were quite faded and mute when  I played it back through my camera. So I fiddled with  the brightness and contrast and also adjusted the aperture  which gave me much better results.  My camera can also convert standard film into HD  so you can play better quality footage through your Tv.  This is a valuable function to have at present as more  and more people are buying HD ready Tv's which means  that my camera won't be outdated for a longer period of time.  Also you can upload footage straight onto YouTube from  the camera. Not sure how that works, I think you might  have to have an iLink everio dock which I dont. But this  function is really handy for people who make video diaries  or have documented some event that needs no editing and  can be put online straight away as it cuts out a whole load of  uploading and exporting video to the proper format etc.

animation

I photographed my animation today. The lighting was rubbish - I've learnt how important it is and I probably should have borrowed some studio lights from college but I only did the animation to experiment with the different editing software available to me so it doesn't matter greatly. I made 12 bird cut-outs each in a slightly different position to the next so when i swapped them each time I took a picture it looked as though the bird was flying. From playing the shots back from my camera the flying movement seemed fairly smooth and fluid but the occasional panning of the camera was not and needed more photographs inbetween. I thought for ages about a good way to shoot a certain scene where the leaves fall off the tree. Now as I had painted the leaves on, I couldn't really take them off again; so in the end I just drew another tree and cut out lots of leaf shapes to animate seperately. I will try to experiment in Flash to see if there is some way of doing it without having to re-draw everything, but I'm not sure how successful I will be. I feel that even though I do learn a geat deal in the workshops I have I could not comfortably use the software on my own with my own images. I might look at some online tutorials to help get my head around tweens and key frames.

myspace

I have embedded my music video from YouTube onto An Earth Tongues MySpace. Heres the link:

www.myspace.com/anearthtongue

Hopefully this will make his profile more interesting and make it gain more views and also perhaps spark some interest in my actual video. I will include a link to my blog for anyone who likes the video. MySpace has its own video site and I'm wondering if I uploaded it straight onto 'MySpace Tv' I could pehaps join a relevant group and gain more interest for both the video and An Earth Tongue.

vimeo

After all the trouble with uploading videos onto YouTube I thought I'd try another site called Vimeo. It gives you a larger weekly upload size than YouTube and often gives better quality video as YouTube automatically compress all the videos that get uploaded onto the site which reduces the quality and makes it look pixelated. I am still unhappy with the quality of the video and was wondering if it might just be my video camera but when I edited it on Final Cut I thought the quality was fine. Also unlike YouTube, Vimeo enables you to watch and upload videos in High Definition, which I think alot of the other video sharing sites will introduce in the near future if they are to catch up with Vimeo. Alot of Films and Tv especially are beginning to be shot in HD so the places which you can watch these back in need te be compatible with HD also.

I would have uploaded both videos I made for An Earth Tongue on Vimeo but my weekly upload limit is already spent which is a shame - not sure why as ive only uploaded one 600mb film on so far. Though Vimeo took less time than YouTube and I like the interface as it just looks a lot nicer. Also you can you use the share function to add your videos onto afew different websites, like Facebook, Flickr and MySpace which will be really useful for me as I made the videos to go onto a MySpace page. Here is the link. 

http://www.vimeo.com/3066889