Shots & Shot framing

Shot list:

Shot 1:
Locker Room
Sven & Gordon are putting their boots on and tying their laces. Putting on aprons, hair nets etc and they clock in (credits roll)

Shot 2:
Enter Slaughterhouse
They turn the lights on as they walk in, as they flicker on more credits roll. There's four different shots of the empty set showing off Anna's top notch model making skills.

Shot 3:
Close up of the sink and water draining down the plug hole as they wash their hands -
fact on screen:
It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1lb of meat and only 25gallons of water to produce 1lb of wheat.

Shot 4:
Taps turn off and it zooms out, as this happens you hear footsteps walking away and a truck pulling up followed by sound of cattle.

Shot 5:
Cuts to the plastic curtain wafting and dust (super imposed, particles via maya?) Comes up through the curtain.

Shot 6:
Butcher is testing the stun gun. Camera moves to him picking it up.

Shot 7:
Lights flicker in the slaughter house and it all goes dark. (Red lighting behind frosted plastic curtains?)

Shot 8:
Close up of butcher with stun gun and it zooms into the stun gun. The pattern of voltage is in the shape of a tree and we get a new fact on the screen, relating to animal production and deforestation.

Shot 9:
Shot zooms back and you see the other butcher hitting the cow with a stick moving him into the stun gun area. Shot cuts to several brutal shots of the violence.

Shot 10:
Zooms out (more of a cut shot) to the other butcher putting the gate down.

Shot 11:
Low down shot of cow pat, facts about greenhouse gases - live stock is more than 18% responsible for greenhouse gases, which may not sound like a lot, but this is more than Cars, Planes and Fossil Fuels.

Shot 12:
Close up under the chin looking up at the butcher with the stun gun, with a manic facial expression.

Shot 13:
Cow stunned. Medium shot. Cow then drops to the floor.

Shot 14:
Close Up of cows face as he cries. Fact on screen: The stress of farming has a massive effect of ecological systems, spoiling diversity and contributing to overheating of the planet.

Shot 15:
A different camera angle to shot 13 the cow is stunned again and it pans to the railing of a cow upside down on the meat hooks.

Shot 16:
Close up of the cow being cut open and the screen pans down as the blood drips down and pools on the floor.

Shot 17:
Close up of a pool of blood in post production we impose 2D animated fishes swimming around that quickly die off, face about dead zones in the ocean from run off farm anim waste. Whilst this happens sounds of cow being skinned.

Shot 18:
Super fast pan to the cowskin being thrown in a tub. We hear more footsteps and we see lights flicker and hear the stun gun as we pause on blood dripping and leaking out of the tub.

Shot 19:
Cuts dramatically to a CCTV shot from top room corner - butchers being really naughty whilst moving the cows round. (Screen flickers and the clock on the CCTV exaggerates the passage of time) see shots of one of them taking a selfie with one of the cows - fact about CCTV being applicable in slaughter houses). By this point several cows are strung up.

Shot 20:
Cuts to butchers hosing down the slaughterhouse for the evening, push carcasses off screen, truck sound moving away.

Feedback from crit (in Anna's words).

        As expected, when Anna and I pitched our idea, the majority of the feedback was concerning our two disparate ideas. While our tutor stated that he was more drawn to the animated interview, there were also suggestions that hard facts could be incorporated with the more opinion based interview. Ultimately, we have to decide (very soon) whether we are going to combine our narrative concepts, work on just one, or work co-operatively on both. To me, this last option, of working on two stop motion animations simultaneously, seems highly unrealistic especially given the high volume of work we currently have for other modules.

        Another issue which was raised was regarding the consistency of character designs. Given our desire to each attempt to model a character, there is a chance that we could end up with two characters which do not sit well alongside one another, who don't belong to the same world. To prevent this happening, we will need to work closely alongside one another during the modelling and construction process, to ensure there is as little discrepancy as possible between the characters.

        On a more practical note, questions were also raised about how we would handle the animation of blood. As we have been struggling with agreeing on a single narrative, we have not as yet managed to do any animation tests. There will undoubtedly be a fair amount of blood in either concept, and consequently it is necessary that we consider how to animate with liquid. While we could use semi dry PVA (dyed red), which will be malleable for a time, we could simply film dripping blood in set, as live action, provided there doesn't need to be any animation at the same time. This is something we will have to explore as part of our proof of concept stage, before beginning the animation in earnest.

        Our most pressing course of action, however is to meet with our tutor, and attempt to come to a final decision on the direction of our narrative.

This crit didn't go very well. I think we are both quite stubborn. My Idea is way too long I appreciate this. Hence why I haven't had time to do a storyboard. And it's pointless doing one now because I know it's too long we will just have to find a compromise.

Vice Brief Pitch Crit:

Links to animatics:

What do you think of the animatics?

"The styles super nice, very young ones esque"

Animatics good, works well.

* You will have to be a bit steadier with your zooms, to begin with. Perhaps ease into an abrupt camera shake, or add anticipation with one shake, pause then irratic shaking, (if that makes sense).

Like the style - very 'Punk Anarchist', appeals to audience well - represents british culture well.

Good animatic - works well with the theme of vice. - Sound works well with the theme of vice, but maybe add more and refine it.


Does it reach the target audience?

We think that the design style will do a good job of reaching the broad demographic, especially if it maintains the hand drawn aesthetic. Universal, Timeless.

Yes.

Yeh.

The style suits the brief well.


How would you improve this?

Doesn't look like a knife.

I like the union jack knife, but didn't know it was a knife until I read it.

(Dave's response is to put some silver in this so it looks more Knife like.)

Does this appeal to you? (Please state whether or not you read Vice).

We have never read or heard of vice. However from what we have read of the brief, your designs seem to fit. They are bold and eye catching. However we feel the Jack Knife is too aggressive. (me too)

I have heard of vice and read a couple of things on vice, the ideas are cool, I like the style and it's very eye catching.

You're impacting a fear factor, which is very effective!

Illustrations are very ralph steadman and go so well with the chaotic themes.

If more colour was added, (these are just rough sketches for the idea).


What do you think of the references? Any other suggestions?

You need more illustrative references ie:
- Joanna Quinn's, "Rule Britannia"
- Raymond Brigg's "Fawklands" one we went through in COP2.
- Vice City
- Silent Hill Comics (a grittier art style is shown than the games, (David said these are s***.))
- Ronald Searle (I like these, like the inky style, but this isn't how we are going to make it)

-Red Bull gives you wings.

-Ed, Ed and Eddy
-Terry Gillian
-The Young Ones opening
-Ralph Dakshi

Character Designs

Character 1:

This character is based on my closest friend from foundation. She introduced me to vice, and she avidly went and got multiple copies from OK Comics every month (one to read one to tear the pictures out of) and her life dream goal has always been to move to california and work for the Graphic Design team (she currently at UWE studying graphics) so I couldn't not include her!!! (She'd love me forever to be on the start of the video's if we won).

Character 2:

I felt like the group needed an angry punk, with all the attitude of sid vicious, and a Mohawk to make him stand out, because what revolution was better than the anarchists? (I mean besides the french one, and the one for black rights, and that one that happened for equal rights for women, and those other ones).

Character 3:

This guy is based on this Rule Britannia video:

Character 4:

Inspired by the wrestling and bloody sport videos on the vice series Rule Britannia, this wrestler makes revolution happen.

Character 5: 

When I imagine what a vice reader looks like, this comes to mind, a loving bearded, top knotted skinny male, who drinks too much and wants to stand out and be controversial. 

Bingomation Brief Analysis

http://bingomation.tumblr.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_bingo_nicknames
http://bingomation.tumblr.com/guidelines

I came across Bingomation through Skwigly online magazine. I've been given the chance to interview the makers through skype to write an article on it, so I'm so totally taking part. Although there's so stiff gif's to beat already online!

What problem is the brief setting?

The brief wants a bingo board made with animated gif's.

What does the brief require?

A gif that loops, using the set colour scheme and the font Patagonia, 500x500px.

Who will benefit?

I'm not really sure, I know I will benefit because any animating is practice that helps improves technique and skill

Who is the audience?

I feel like at the moment, it's only other animators and VFX artists that are viewing this page, as interesting as it is.

What are you expected to communicate to them?

A GIF

What will be challenging about this brief:

There are a lot of requirements for this brief. More so than any uni brief so it's going to be really interesting getting my personality into this piece of work.

How will that message/idea/concept be delivered?

Through an email.

I've already looked at the bingo calls and I've already scoped up my favourite, but I'm going to have a look at some of the ones that are already up:

My favourites, and Jump n Jive, Stayin' alive and 28 in a State. See research folder for Mpg's of the other two, I think you will be impressed!!

Storyboards and Animatics

So before I had chance to do the storyboard, dave had made a rough animatic with his image, and added some creepy piano music that he envisions would be the sound on this project. 

My Storyboard:

Panel 1:

Close up of the TV, the eyes which are blended into the background pop out (clicking sound as they blink) and the tv crackles as the flag waves behind the the vice logo. (dave suggested we could rip some of the clips off youtube and put some of that imagery into the tv as it zooms out, this means I'll have to green screen the TV in the concept art.)

Panel 2:

The scene zooms out from the tv and reveals the characters. The lighting is Red and Blue, and the characters flesh has red and blue highlights of the tv. TV crackle noise, smoking - inhaling noise, scratching general awkward living noises. Sighs. Eyes constantly fading in and out of the background still clicking when they blink.

Panel 3:

In this panel we zoom out some more to reveal the weird suit man with the big knife, I think it would be nice to have some depth of field here and flicker between the knife man having focal control and the weight lifter plugging out the tv in focal control. Continuation of eyes blending in and out of the background 

Panel 4:
As the weight unplugs the tv it goes black (with like a white cross in the middle like it used to on really old tvs and makes that horrible whizzing sound) and then flicks back on and off with the boxer coming closer and the camera zooming in a little to emphasise it as he throws it at the viewer, crashing banging etc noises, girl character drops to the floor and puts her hand on her head. (symbolises revolution). Eyes widen with shock and get more prominent.

Panel 5:

As the screen gets closer the viewport is filled up with tv screen and Vice, Rule Britannia appears. Maybe a fanfare or something?

Animatic :- update to come.

Kirsten Lepore

Garden/Pool bumper for Whole Foods' Thrive Network from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Kirsten lepore is famous for her Bottle animation with the sand and snow man. But I stumbled across her sweet dreams animation and found these trailers for brands. Although they aren't technically documentary they fit nicely into the food category. And I really like how it's not really fiction, it's still based upon a brand and their statements and I think it contrasts nicely from our project because it shows a fun side to this project. I think it's really fascinating how in the group we have massive differences between the funny documentary's and the dark ones. Me and Anna are feeling far too serious about our work to do anything funny, also the stop motion style suits the dark and the creepy.


Heinz' Poppers web ad from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

I really like the Jalpeno kicking in the womb, with just the right amount of kick, this is so innovative, I appreciate this!



I also think that the style of Lepore's animation is really quite smooth, but she knows when to have pauses and hold on a still camera shot. I think this really makes the animation seem like magic.

Being Elmo

I watched this documentary on being Elmo. It was so good. What I loved most about it was the storytelling of the guy who created elmo and his journey through life and how he made you feel a whole range of emotions. I really like how you feel sorry for him and sad lifes not going well but proud that he's working hard and then happy that he gets to the big time but then sad for his family because they miss him, they kind of killed it at this point with the emotional rollercoaster, but it's still a good film because it shows you the behind the scenes of the Muppets, and they have a room where they make muppets characters and it's more like the size of a warehouse and they have draws and draws full of eyes and teeth and fury bits.

Although it's not documentary animation I decided to include this into the research because I think it's a hugely important thing for a documentary to play on the audience's emotions. More so than any other way of visually telling a story, because it factual you can always hit the audience harder if you play on their emotions because you can be like oh it's so much intense because it's true life.

I also watched The Weinstein Project

Which was an unbelievable film, so so good. Again this is not because you love Harvey Weinstein, but because you genuinely hate him with a passion. But it just get's so emotive. Even though it's documentary the emotional card really is exaggerated in these films, I think a lot more than they are in animations. In animations it's often used to portray as a tool to make the facts seem less real, or easier to swallow. I think this is an interesting role reversal in the two visual storytelling methods. I think this means that maybe we shouldn't make ours so hard core.

Influences for Background concept art

We decided to look more in depth in what we envision the idea to feel and reference.


- las vegas tunnels

Underneath the flashing lights of Las Vegas, is a series of underground tunnels, built to protect the city from flooding, but mysteriously it is inhabited by the homeless, the drug addicts and those who've lost everything. I think if we are going for this slum like lifestyle in our ident then we need to reference stuff like this to really exaggerate, also I first found out about these from vice:

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/inside-the-tunnels-las-vegass-homeless-population-calls-home

- Silent Hill video game

Now this may come as a huge shock to you my avid readers of this blog, but I actually don't play many video games (and when I do, it'll be skyrim or something like that and I'll spend three hours making potions and picklocking doors and avoid fighting things). So this is a David recommendation, when he first envisioned the idea, he pictured the pinky brown colour scheme of Silent Hill, I also think he go the idea of the creepy eyes from this, because the first image here has some seriously creepy eyes.

After looking at images of the game, I also really want to incorporate the mesh of textures in the floor and walls, because I think it will give it a more interesting visual aesthetic.

- dark souls

I have never even heard of these games, but I tried doing some research on this (I didn't play it), but it came across that the characters and settings in the majority of the game are very medieval but it has a dark feel to it, so I can understand how you might want that darkness but I don't think I'll use any of this directly for reference.

- the dark knight film




I think I'll have to rewatch this film to pick out specific scenes to reference from, what a pity!

The concept art, and promo posters are all very blue which will juxtapose the pinky brown really nicely because we want the lighting to flicker between red and blue so I think this will also work really nicely.

Ideas

So we agreed to come up with a couple of ideas for when we next met up and I'll start with mine:

Idea 1

Pictured above - Here we see a vintage esque street party, I thought it would be quite interesting to have ten seconds of this scene, but rather than your traditional families at the street party having various people who make up england in the stereotypical format, so in the scene above we have the weightlifter from the rule britannia videos, and a young reoffender, two hipsters at either side who would probably read the magazine both binge drinking and a fake tanned to the max housewife in the centre.

Idea 2:

So here I thought we could have a really scenic concept art, digital painted, of Buckingham Palace and then have similar to people to the ones at the street party climbing out of the windows. I think there'd be a good split in workload if we did this as well. Just in case you can't read my scrawl above it says that this would symbolise the fact that England's made of many people who all Rule Britannia. The idea would zoom into the flag at the top of the palace and say Rule Britannia.

Idea 3:

The third idea would be to have a black screen with the Orb and the Sceptre on screen, have the hands flash round and wave them with scary red eyes in the background and then the face would pop out and it would be a clown maniacally laughing. Basically symbolising that everyone's crazy.

Idea 4: 

This one was David's idea.

It's quite difficult to explain it took me a while to get my head round but basically he envisioned having minorities sat round a tv, watching british propaganda (symbolised by the union jack) at the same time they are being watched by lots of creepy realistic eyes blinking at them, symbolising the government. I basically suggested a few changes, that maybe instead of minorities we should use controversial subcultures, with people who would actually watch the vice videos, and then we could have the vice logo on the TV. 

I decided to redraw the idea to get my head around the concept and symbolism some more. We decided to use this brief, because it was clear David was very passionate about it, and I thought it would be easier to go with.

The Symbolism:

TV - Symbolise british propaganda,

People Watching - the british public, varying cultures and subcultures consuming the propaganda

Eyes - symbolise the government watching over them

The suit man - the typical british patriot 

The knife - lengths they'll go make sure that people are following british are the traditions, the man’s Power and forceful, masculinity the british culture is empowering to men

The dinginess of the room - appropriate setting, lack of money

We changed the symbolism of the tv, to the people watching around watching VICE Rule Britannia videos, and the suit man representing both the government and patriarchal british people, being angry with his knife.

For the next time we meet up we made some to do lists:

For Me:

- Story Board

- Character Designs, rough sketches for pitch board.

- Print Brief Analysis and The Contract

- 100 words on the idea (which I can use from this blog post to put into the pitch board).

Dave:

- animatics (I'll send the storyboard to him asap)

- A rough sketch of the suit man.

Research

http://www.sustainabletable.org/982/agriculture-energy-climate-change

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/facts-on-animal-farming-and-the-environment/

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-co2-from-cars-427843.html

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/20/farming-now-worse-climate-deforestation-land-use-change/

So besides from watching a tonne of animal cruelty videos, including cows crying whilst being stunned, and CCTV footage of men brutally hurting animals.

A lot of my ideas for the first idea of my narrative came from the film below.



Cowspiracy Official Trailer from First Spark Media on Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/95436726

http://comfortablyunaware.com/video-of-the-month/

http://www.hsi.org/issues/climate_change/

http://www.solarmovie.ws/watch-cowspiracy-the-sustainability-secret-2014-online.html

I read all these articles and watched these films. I was shocked at the industry and really feel it's important that we stick to this subject. I even tried going meat free but it didn't last and I feel terrible for it.

Narrative/Script

We are really struggling with the script and narrative. I think being documentary is a real challenge for both of us because we are both so good at telling fictional stories. I've actually spent a lot of time putting off collating all the material I've been looking at and I think Anna's done the same focusing on the design side of it.

Anna's found some amazing interviews they are less to do with cows and more lambs and pigs but they are still really interesting.

http://xeny.net/the_silence_of_the_lambs
http://www.animalwritings.com/2008/06/interviews-with-slaughterhouse-workers.asp

I suggested that if we did an interview it'd be better to have a backstory of the interview setting up, the character writhing his hands and shuffling his feet. The odd cough, choking up and touching his throat and using the abattoir scenes as flashbacks. But she doesn't envision it like this but more like the Aardman interviews where the images simply give visuals to the interview. My only issue with this is that I don't think it will be as memorable, and I'm also finding it really hard to imagine, so we've decided that we need visuals so Anna's going to add that to her to do list.

I decided that we needed to really focus, and took the questions from the responsive brief and went through them together with anna.

What’s the problem?
To create a 2min animation, documentary about food. We've chosen the scene and the characters but are struggling with the narrative and what we want to say.

What's it require?
The technical side is that it requires a college sting at the start and in .H264 and it needs to be up to two minutes long. It also requires a portfolio work and several blog posts labelled OUAN505.
For the pitch we are required to present, concept art, material testing, storyboards, character designs etc and it needs to be ten minutes long.
The narrative requires to be either, real stories and interviews, docudrama or motion graphics. We have ruled out motion graphics.

What's it trying to achieve?
We are trying to make people aware of the cruelty that goes into animal slaughter in the meat industry. We do not want to convince people to become vegans or vegetarians, just to consider where their meat comes from and insist the regulations are stuck to.

One possibility we thought of is maybe getting people to consider to cut back on their meat intake, especially the really low quality meat. Sourcing from there local butchers instead of large scale factories. Maybe even considering Meat Free Mondays.

Who will benefit?
The public, will have a greater understanding of where their food comes from, and make more informed choices and the animals will benefit, from an increase in standards.

Who is the audience?
16+, the people that do the food shopping, mums, dad's meat eaters, restaurant owners and suppliers and the people that work in the houses themselves.

What are you expected to communicate to them?
a two minute short that

How will that message/idea/concept be delivered?
Through stop motion, a short animation.


I watched a really amazing video called Cowspiracy: (see previous blog post for more in depth conversation on the film).



I really like there tact on providing facts as to why we have an issue with the way the current meat industry isn't working and it isn't sustainable. This video isn't telling people to go vegan it's saying hey look it's producing too much greenhouse gas, consuming too much water, we are growing too much food for the animals when people are starving, the run off is causing dead zones in the ocean and no one like greenpeace or WWF is addressing the issue because it's so controversial.

I like the fact that we are attacking animal cruelty but I think we need to incorporate some of these facts into our short because otherwise it might just come across like we are angry vegetarians trying to get people to stop eating meat. Which we aren't. I think the important thing as well is if we are thinking about our audience, a lot of people take the stand point that ignorance is better for them because they love the taste and convenience of meat so if we can incorporate these facts maybe it wouldn't be as hard hitting for the audience and I think more people would listen. I just can't figure out a way in my mind to incorporate it into a narrative.

Me and Anna have discussed and decided that for when we next meet on monday we will each come up with a storyboard so we can visualise each others ideas, hopefully there will be a way we can merge the two.

Things for me to do for monday:

- set design images
- fact finding on Cowspiracy, and other facts on slaughterhouses and animal cruelty
- storyboards and narratives
-material tests
-character design front and back

I feel like this workload is really big at the moment, and I'm not sure I can get all this done for monday, so I'm going to focus on getting the material tests done this evening, the fact finding this afternoon, and the narrative and storyboards this weekend. I think I need to sleep on my ideas.

Character Drawings and Criting for final Design

So it's tuesday and we meet again, hurray! But we are very at how fast time has flown and neither of us have done as much as we would have liked to. So I managed to get my eight drawings of sven done, and I've sourced materials but I haven't had chance to do the material tests. I can do the black wall tests and the locker room ones today though so that's exciting. Over the weekend I went to a garden centre in Otley with the best craft section so I was also able to get anna some change and some exciting materials to experiment with the material tests, so I'll discuss those once they've been done. I've also managed to source some wood from a family friend, but this means a change in height of the slaughterhouse because the wood we can get is only 60cm high. Also I've spoken to my flat mate because her closest friend at uni works at a tiling factory and she's working on saturday so hopefully we can get some tiles off her.

Anna's reaction to sven:

- needs to look older 

- less hair on his head prefers scraggily receding hair

- like the checkered pants

- quite round body shape, should be more angular to look harder and meaner

-tattoo's are good

I found this exercise really hard because I found it really difficult to get to like the character but I think this is good it means I can now do a final life size drawing of front and back and then when we both have these we can take them down to ceramics and cast him out of clay so we can make a mould of him, and a naked mould for the armature. Anna's unfortunately not had chance to draw her eight but she's put detail into the set drawings:

There's a third one that she's still sat next to me working on. I think my only issue with these two is that the cows gets stunned and hung up, but there's no stun gun or smooth transition so I think it's going to need a few more details adding on and a bit changing, but I spoke to her about it and she's really conscientious about the space we have to animate in and doesn't want to make it too ambitious. Which is where I think I'm opposite I can get really carried away. So I'm now going to take these drawings back and try get them done for monday when we meet again so that they are all painted with details for the pitch.

Stop motion that influence our project

Canis - Trailer from I+G Stop Motion on Vimeo.


So although this animation isn't documentary I have still included it in my Blog as it's in the style that we want to go for. Very dark and gory and bit messy, not a really an animation for children, one that will give them nightmares.

I have also looked at Peter and the Wolf. As this is Anna's all time favourite film and I think it's good for us to be inspired by what each other watches. I really like it, especially it's jerkiness and hand made feeling it has, but the face does scare me quite a bit.  So we want to take this hand made feeling into our project.

Images of Slaughterhouses to inspire Set Design

So here are the images I've collated for Anna to inspire the little details in our butchers. From these you can see some of the thing that have inspired the basics of it, but most of those details it's easier to pick out the details you like more when watching a video, so when I talk about the video's inspiring the concept, I shall pick out the bits that have inspired the set design too.