Update on Making of Project #3
In order to become further familiarised with team based projects, for the next making of project I was paired with two other individuals. Unlike the previous two projects, this time my team was faced with a specific brief, though it was very familiar to what I have done previously, as we had to obtain and record our own 'Outsider Story' and then provide a visual addition to it. Though at first misinterpreting the brief, mistakenly thinking we could animate any pre-recorded story as I have previously done in this module, I still was highly anticipating tackling this brief after realising we had to obtain the recording ourselves, as it gave me a chance to try something new, an area of production which I have yet to explore in this module. It also well allows us to make something that is entirely the project of my team, as although I was still proud of the work I've created previously in this topic both myself and collaboratively, as I didn't create the audio I never had the feeling that it was entirely mine or my teams creation.
After getting a full understanding of the brief, there was one idea which stood out to me a lot. I have been watching a lot of the BBC television series 'Would I Lie to You?' recently, and I find the format of that show so entertaining that I wished to create one myself, but using people that I know personally. The idea I had in mind, was gathering three students from my animation course (therefore giving the show a theme) and task them to write down an amusing truth about themselves on a piece of paper, and mix it in with a written lie which will be fabricated by my team, then record the outcomes as each of them as they unknowingly pick up either their lie or their truth, and have to convince the others its the truth regardless of whether or not it is. This would have hopefully caused some humorous outcomes which a visual addition could potentially emphasise.
This would gain me a whole new experience which I have always been interested in, and there would have been a lot of opportunity for documenting the production in live action for the making of aspect, something that I felt has been lacking from my previous making of's. As there would be three stories to animate from this, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have each person in my team animate a segment each, each in our very distinct and varied animation styles, such as my modern 2D animation, Dale's 3D animation, and Rowena's animatic and typography style.
However, this was when I considered the learning that I gained from my previous making of, and took into further consideration the time we have available, as I would prefer one perhaps shorter but complete outcome than a half finished more ambitious project, so I instead decided that we should instead pick one of the three stories that we found the most entertaining, and work as a team to animate that one segment.
An essential aspect of the brief was the term 'outsider', as that was meant to be where the story comes from. My interpretation of this term, was that the story had to come from someone who has views and experiences which are vastly different from our own, as we are an 'outsider' from their way of thinking. Interestingly however, in a discussion on Facebook with the other members of the group, it appeared that we each had a different interpretation of what an outsider is here's what the others said;
Our group arranged to meet to discuss the ideas that we've developed so far, and unlike the previous making of projects, which had all the audio scripted and recorded in reflection, we decided to record our discussion as our ideas initially developed, thus providing more material for the making of and a more in depth look into our thought processes. As I previously have been using rather amateur ways of recording audio in past topics (using my mobile phone), this time we wanted to record it in a professional manor, so Rowena arranged for us to have our discussion in a recording studio at Media City. This was new territory for all of us, and I felt it very beneficial for me to have this experience, especially as I have yet to delve into audio production in this topic.
There was a lot of things that went wrong during this session, but fortunately we made some interesting compromises for some of these problems, which would be interesting for the future making of documentary;
- There was a mix up of the rooms meaning we had to wait for the guys in the room to leave
- We didn't realise that there was only one mic, meaning we all had to be stood close together in a cramped space in order to get good audio quality
- As we wanted some video reference of this discussion, we booked out a camera. However, we soon realised that there was no decent vantage point where we all could be seen within frame, meaning that we had to move a chair and the camera into the already cramped space, and due to the low angle, we then needed to sit down whilst recording.
- This then lead us onto yet another issue, where being sat down meant that we were too far away from the mic, and as we couldn't get the tripod to stay level to us, I had to hold it in place whilst assuring not to obscure any of us in frame.
Despite all these issues that we ran into, we still managed to gather both an audio and a video clip of our discussion. The discussion itself had some interesting thoughts shared, though unfortunately we weren't able to compromise with what our outcome should be, as we all were going into completely different directions. For example, I wanted to continue my trend of animating comedy, whereas Rowena wanted to go for some darker and more serious subject matter.
This is when we developed our final idea, which was to animate our individual ideas in our individual styles from our initial conversation, as well as any other aspects which could have an interesting visual aspect implemented into them. This meant that we could each develop on our own ideas, and still have a unified final piece which would implement all our skills and abilities. As this discussion was originally going to be for the making of, and we wont be creating any project outside of this discussion and the visuals we put towards it, we decided to experiment with ways in which we could combine our project and the making of together, though we will have to wait until we have finished our project to see further into how we would go about this. If we do eventually decide to go down this route, it will be refreshing for me as though I felt the format of my previous two making of documentary's was effective enough, I am interested in experimenting with alternate, more imaginative ways of presenting our ideas and the production process. This would still fit the brief perfectly, as we are all outsiders from one another, as shown clearly by our different preferences and thinking patterns, and we are still effectively showing each of our stories.
Now that we all settled on an idea, I then began selecting my audio from our conversation that I wished to animate, which was where I discuss my 'Would I Lie to You?' idea. I decided to stick with the same animation style that I have developed over the course of this module, but due to the time-consuming method of lip-syncing (as experienced in the previous project), I wanted to limit it as much as possible, not only for time reasons, but also because it would give me more options to be creative with the visuals, as appose to just animating me talking, I could instead show what I was thinking. I've talked previously about how 'The Ricky Gervais Show' inspired my first making of, however the way I planned this animation was even more reminiscent of that show, as the conversations aren't just animated, but visuals are shown to better communicate what they are thinking, and it is done in some very clever ways, such as in this following clip -
After getting a full understanding of the brief, there was one idea which stood out to me a lot. I have been watching a lot of the BBC television series 'Would I Lie to You?' recently, and I find the format of that show so entertaining that I wished to create one myself, but using people that I know personally. The idea I had in mind, was gathering three students from my animation course (therefore giving the show a theme) and task them to write down an amusing truth about themselves on a piece of paper, and mix it in with a written lie which will be fabricated by my team, then record the outcomes as each of them as they unknowingly pick up either their lie or their truth, and have to convince the others its the truth regardless of whether or not it is. This would have hopefully caused some humorous outcomes which a visual addition could potentially emphasise.
 |
| BBC's 'Would I Lie to You?' Panel regulars |
However, this was when I considered the learning that I gained from my previous making of, and took into further consideration the time we have available, as I would prefer one perhaps shorter but complete outcome than a half finished more ambitious project, so I instead decided that we should instead pick one of the three stories that we found the most entertaining, and work as a team to animate that one segment.
An essential aspect of the brief was the term 'outsider', as that was meant to be where the story comes from. My interpretation of this term, was that the story had to come from someone who has views and experiences which are vastly different from our own, as we are an 'outsider' from their way of thinking. Interestingly however, in a discussion on Facebook with the other members of the group, it appeared that we each had a different interpretation of what an outsider is here's what the others said;
This has shown me that it's discussing this aspect of the brief further with the team, in order to ensure that each of our own interpretations of an outsider are implemented into the project somehow.
Our group arranged to meet to discuss the ideas that we've developed so far, and unlike the previous making of projects, which had all the audio scripted and recorded in reflection, we decided to record our discussion as our ideas initially developed, thus providing more material for the making of and a more in depth look into our thought processes. As I previously have been using rather amateur ways of recording audio in past topics (using my mobile phone), this time we wanted to record it in a professional manor, so Rowena arranged for us to have our discussion in a recording studio at Media City. This was new territory for all of us, and I felt it very beneficial for me to have this experience, especially as I have yet to delve into audio production in this topic.
 |
| Me, Rowena and Dale experimenting with the software available |
There was a lot of things that went wrong during this session, but fortunately we made some interesting compromises for some of these problems, which would be interesting for the future making of documentary;
- There was a mix up of the rooms meaning we had to wait for the guys in the room to leave
- We didn't realise that there was only one mic, meaning we all had to be stood close together in a cramped space in order to get good audio quality
- As we wanted some video reference of this discussion, we booked out a camera. However, we soon realised that there was no decent vantage point where we all could be seen within frame, meaning that we had to move a chair and the camera into the already cramped space, and due to the low angle, we then needed to sit down whilst recording.
- This then lead us onto yet another issue, where being sat down meant that we were too far away from the mic, and as we couldn't get the tripod to stay level to us, I had to hold it in place whilst assuring not to obscure any of us in frame.
 |
| A screenshot from our recorded footage in the recording booth |
Despite all these issues that we ran into, we still managed to gather both an audio and a video clip of our discussion. The discussion itself had some interesting thoughts shared, though unfortunately we weren't able to compromise with what our outcome should be, as we all were going into completely different directions. For example, I wanted to continue my trend of animating comedy, whereas Rowena wanted to go for some darker and more serious subject matter.
This is when we developed our final idea, which was to animate our individual ideas in our individual styles from our initial conversation, as well as any other aspects which could have an interesting visual aspect implemented into them. This meant that we could each develop on our own ideas, and still have a unified final piece which would implement all our skills and abilities. As this discussion was originally going to be for the making of, and we wont be creating any project outside of this discussion and the visuals we put towards it, we decided to experiment with ways in which we could combine our project and the making of together, though we will have to wait until we have finished our project to see further into how we would go about this. If we do eventually decide to go down this route, it will be refreshing for me as though I felt the format of my previous two making of documentary's was effective enough, I am interested in experimenting with alternate, more imaginative ways of presenting our ideas and the production process. This would still fit the brief perfectly, as we are all outsiders from one another, as shown clearly by our different preferences and thinking patterns, and we are still effectively showing each of our stories.
Now that we all settled on an idea, I then began selecting my audio from our conversation that I wished to animate, which was where I discuss my 'Would I Lie to You?' idea. I decided to stick with the same animation style that I have developed over the course of this module, but due to the time-consuming method of lip-syncing (as experienced in the previous project), I wanted to limit it as much as possible, not only for time reasons, but also because it would give me more options to be creative with the visuals, as appose to just animating me talking, I could instead show what I was thinking. I've talked previously about how 'The Ricky Gervais Show' inspired my first making of, however the way I planned this animation was even more reminiscent of that show, as the conversations aren't just animated, but visuals are shown to better communicate what they are thinking, and it is done in some very clever ways, such as in this following clip -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3oBQ7YRjEU
 |
| Character models which I drew digitaly for all the people who will be seen within my animation (from left to right): Me, Rowena, James Lawson, David Mitchell, Jeff and Lee Mack |
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| A screenshot showing my animation process along with a showcase of my keyframes |
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| Logo which I created for the show I idea I had |
Below is a link to what I managed to animate for my segment of the piece
https://vimeo.com/216014762
I am very pleased with what I have created for my piece, as I feel I have had some imaginative ideas for how to put visuals to my speech such as; animating me showing my mobile up to my phone to the screen to swipe through examples as I mention them, the set of the show adapting as new suggestions are made in the audio, and ending the video with a zoom out from my sketchbook as I hold it, showing the audience that they have just been witnessing my ideas. Though I tried to leave animating people talking as much as I could, I still used enough of it to incorporate my learnings from the previous two making ofs, and I feel as though I have shown even more progression in this technique, as this is the smoothest and most professional looking example of animation and lip-syncing which I have produced during this topic. Another thing that I am very satisfied with, is how much my caricatures have improved, seen within the many models which were made especially for this animation, this progression in quality was possibly due to what I am achieving in my daily project, but I feel I am truly developing my own style of caricatures which. One concern I have with this outcome however is the length, as I was worrying about running into the same issue as I did in my previous making of where I run out of time, this meant that I couldn't squeeze in some of the more humorous aspects of the conversation, and instead just animated the essential aspects that were needed to communicate my idea, but fortunately I managed to animate what I started to a high standard. I am highly anticipating combining this with the rest of the teams outcomes.
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