CAT109-Post Production

This is a 1-3 minute public  information film  with the theme of recycling. The audience of this short film is children.

Act1: a little boy dropped the juice bottle into the gray trash can and a half-broken ceramic cup reminded her that she was put in the wrong place。

Act2:But by this time the garbage collection truck had already driven over to recycle the contents of the gray trash can, and it was about to be dumped into the car at the moment when it was very slippery because it was raining, and the bottle rolled to the ground

Act3:The next day a lady saw a bottle on the ground put her back in the blue trash can, and the bottle was reunited with her family

Because this is a public information film to children explaining how to recycle, I plan to use the form of fairy tales to stimulate children's interest in watching. The thrilling homecoming encounter of the bottle in the story can inspire empathy among the children and make them realize that the right garbage should be put in the right place and recycled. The images I uploaded on the journal have more detailed conversations and hope to receive some suggestions from you.

Reference List:

八成是一 (n.d.). 日本公益广告·‘垃圾’这个词没了多好（2008）中文字幕_哔哩哔哩_bilibili. [online] www.bilibili.com. Available at: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qf4y1E7i3?p=1&share_medium=ipad&share_plat=ios&share_source=COPY&share_tag=s_i×tamp=1647174441&unique_k=6fiEfEy [Accessed 1 Jun. 2022].

Anon, Available at: https://www.isd.gov.hk/sim/tvapi/19_ep186.html [Accessed June 1, 2022].

Anon, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/embed/uW5UrEPIrWI?start=%22+allowfullscreen [Accessed June 1, 2022].

I've reflected on week1's story and written a rough shot of my story based on what I've learned about camera shots and angles.

1.Establishing scene

2.Master shot

3.Medium close-up shot

4.High angle-POV

5.Inset shot

  The process of drawing the storyboard was not very smooth, at first, I tried to complete my storyboard in a more elaborate way, because in the last homework I had simply drawn some, but I was not very good at drawing, and the things I drew always made me dissatisfied, so I sent an email to teacher Myria  for help, she encouraged me to continue to create, the storyboard only needed to let the audience understand what happened in each scene, I was very grateful for her encouragement and advice. But in order to make the storyboard looks more good, I sought the help of a friend of mine and please her help me draw some sketches according to my ideas, so that I can recreate and improve my storyboard.

  I think it is very important to seek help in a timely manner when you encounter things that you can't handle and are not good at in the process of learning.

Here's my storyboard：

Based on the fact that I used the setting of Rainy Nights in my short film script, which I thought was the most aesthetically valuable part of the film, I found three films with Rainy Nights elements to appreciate and learn from them.

1.Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley,1952)

I really like the part where Don dances in the rain, which is also a very classic clip in the history of cinema. Focus on its color: on a rainy night, although the line of sight is not clear, the brightly lit shops on the street make the picture romantic and warm,this reflects the joy in the male protagonist's heart.

2.The Shawshank Redemption (Frank,1994)

Unlike the previous film, this rainy shot is accompanied by lightning and thunder, and the tone is bluish, cool. It reflects the harsh environment when the protagonist escapes from prison.

The picture below is the mood board I tried to make, the upper left corner is the natural scene under the rainy night street lamp, the same background as the story I envisioned, below is a trash can, and some elements, such as garbage bags will appear in my movie, also give my mother's clothes some imagination, and then make color cards based on the existing material colors, which is the inspiration for my mood board

Reference List:

莓莓 野樱, 2021. American retro | the innocence and pure love of romantic crispness in the rain. 小红书. Available at: http://xhslink.com/88n7ag [Accessed June 1, 2022].

This blog is about when I try to edit a one-minute video with Premiere Pro.

First of all, before I started, I watched the video tutorial on pr published by Mr. Myria and showed us some of the general operations of pr with a practical example "farm", which I think is an important point, in the face of a lot of software that we have to learn (eg. MFirst of all, before I started, I watched the video tutorial on pr published by Mr. Myria and showed us some of the general operations of pr with a practical example "farm", which I think is an important point, in the face of a lot of software that we have to learn (eg. Maya，UE4...) I find that watching the introduction of this software often feels more complicated and difficult, but if you follow the tutorial to actually work on a small project, those functions and shortcuts can be remembered during the operation.

Once I have become familiar with the basics, it's also a problem to collect footage so that each piece of footage can be related. I found some material about pianos, ballet girls, and white cats on the free footage website pexels.

Next, in how to edit the video so that there is some kind of internal connection between them, I think the white cat on the piano is graceful like a girl dancing ballet, so I began to search for places in these materials where the white cat and the girl's movements are very similar, and used the transition editing method of the distiller so that the audience can see the girl's shadow on the white cat.

Reference list: The footage are from: https://www.pexels.com/zh-cn/

1. AE as a software that has never been touched before is very difficult for me, I watched some video tutorials and found that I still can't understand some functions, and can't actually apply it to my storyboard, I think I still need more work and effort to learn AE, the animation that is currently made still won't move, I added some sound effects on the existing basis, I will try harder to be familiar with AE on the next exercise.

2.The definition of the animation

In my opinion, animation is a visual art that combines a variety of arts. It is transformed by static pictures to form a dynamic picture in our brains.

3.Bouncy ball practice

The bouncy ball exercise gave me a closer look at the other features of Ae, which is a deceptively simple exercise, but it's actually hard to master the position relationship of the x-axis y-axis to make the perfect bouncing arc in the example, and below is a video of the exercise I tried my best to complete. At first, I had been coordinating the values between the x-axis and the y-axis so that they could achieve a good bounce effect, but it was not very intuitive to use the values to coordinate the trajectory of the motion, and then I found a little trick: when the keyframes were added, the trajectory curve of the ball would appear on the screen: as shown in the following figure. Dragging the curve with the mouse to make it the ideal motion curve for small balls is a more convenient way than adjusting the values. However, it is still not enough that the ball should be rolling continuously in the final movement, and I just let it stop, maybe this change will make the effect look better.

1. Character Design

This is based on the image of the three main characters in my story: the little boy, the trash can and the bottle design (containing three angles) .

The little boy throwing the garbage is a very naughty image, so he added a duck-tongue hat to him to make the character look more sunny and naughty.

The little bottle as the protagonist is a very cute character, painting it with big eyes, looking both cute and innocent, and must be liked by the audience.

2.CHIAROSCURO

The first example I found was the movie Futurology Conference (Folman, 2013), and interestingly, this is a movie I was watching recently, which is a sci-fi, half-live-action, half-animated work. One of the fragments has a very strong chiaroscuro contrast, which can be remembered at a glance.

This is a scene where the protagonist enters the animation blockade area to stay in the hotel, in the movie, the protagonist is panicked because of the sudden darkening of the room, loudly call the front desk, and the front desk gives her the reply that "what you see is the inner projection" and the director's taking of this chiaroscuro makes the already weird painting style add a depressing atmosphere, making people feel that they are almost out of breath like the protagonist.

The second work is Boy with basket of fruit (Caravaggio, 1596). When it comes to chiaroscuro, we have to mention him- the leader of the chiaroscuro faction, Caravaggio. The shadow on the wall behind the man in this painting is the highlight of the whole painting, and the shadow looks like a pair of mysterious black wings. In the clear light and darkness, not only the head of the teenager is lifted, but also the desire and ambition in his heart, the main tone of the fruit basket is dark, but the light and brushstrokes in the background have rescued them from the darkness and led them out. There is so much information and implication in the contrast between chiaroscuro.

Reference List:

Caravaggio, M. (1596) Boy with basket of fruit. Available at:

https://www.sohu.com/a/256505345_817266

Futurology Conference 16/5 (2013) Directed by Ari Folman [Film].

Through today's study of the sound course, it helped me a lot, due to the epidemic, I was once again isolated at home, which brought a lot of trouble to my filmmaking, I decided to finish the film shooting at home, but most of time the sound material on the Internet can not meet all the shooting needs, I decided to use some items at home to simulate the sound in the movie: for example, I can use the drink bottle at home to throw it on the ground to simulate the sound of the bottle rolling off in my movie etc.

Maybe I'll end it with a piece of music at the end of the film.

1.Rewriting of the story

Due to the epidemic being sealed at home, my original shooting plan was disrupted, and after consulting with the teacher, I decided to change the previous story script to make it easier to shoot at home. The changed story is called "Gift" I did not change the theme of the original story, still with the theme of garbage recycling, the new story is about a girl who received a gift from a friend on her birthday, she happily opened the gift and threw the box into the wrong recycling bin, and finally through the magic of the little fairy, the girl threw the garbage back into the correct garbage bin, which means that the correct garbage classification is also the best gift for environmental protection, so the gift is also a pun.

2. The film making process

The production process of the film did not go smoothly, because the camera equipment could only be shot with a mobile phone at school, and because I could not go far away, I could only shoot some shots at home and in the community, thanks to Myria for agreeing to change the script, and thanks my good friend for being willing to be my actress to accompany me to shoot the film.

It's a public information film called A Gift on the topic of garbage recycling. According to the three-part narrative structure of the story, the film begins with the protagonist receiving a gift, throwing the gift box downstairs, and then ushering in the conflict point of the plot - she throws the box in the wrong trash can, and finally through magic she throws the garbage back into the correct trash can. Most of the light and color in the film are shown through natural light, which gives people a closer to the real feeling, and the beginning of the film uses warm-colored lighting when opening gifts, and the side sets off the protagonist's warm and happy mood. I think the more creative and challenging part of the film is the combination of real-shoot plus animation, because it is still hard to make a complete animation with AE, so I use the mask - key framing technique that I have mastered now to draw some simple moving cartoon images, and then use pr to add the animation part to the film to complete. In the choice of music, I basically followed the rhythm consistent with the development of the plot, using three different pieces of music in three stages, as far as possible to make the audience audiovisual and consistent, have a better viewing experience, and some key parts have added sound effects separately, such as the sound of closing the door and throwing garbage. The fonts are basically the same, choosing a font that matches the relaxed and cute atmosphere of the film, and adding animation effects to the subtitles at the end of the film to make it look less blunt. The process of film making is also a process of reviewing what I learned this semester, and even if the final film shooting conditions are limited and do not reach the level I expected, but I am very happy to find that I understand and apply what I have learned in my film.