Sound Recording with Jimmy

So I took Jimmy down to the sound booth off creative advertising and asked him to read both sets of quotes I gave him chance to read each one, gave him a few hints on where to have dramatic pauses. I decided to ask him (he's off creative advertising) because he has a very BBC kind of voice, I found it very difficult to make him get passionate they were very nonchalant recordings. I probably could have been bossier in hindsight and more directive.

See in sound folder for Jimmy's Recordings.

After Naye popped by so I got her to record the little tag lines, she has such an M&S advertising voice, they were supposed to be jokey (she recorded a lot of them in a singsong voice) but I actually really liked a couple of them so I saved them too.

On the plus side, I think I've now mastered the sound booth and got some really good clear recordings.

3 Week Schedule

SAT 25/4

F: Narrative 3 Ideas.

A: List of Props, Example Cast

SUN 26/4

F: Build Armature

A: Shopping List / Blogs

MON 27/4

F: Armature Padding, Blogging

A: Feedback on Narratives

TUE 28/4

A/F : Illustrator Grates, and other bits for Laser cutting. & Storyboard

WED 29/4

Animatic/Sound

A: Padding on Armature & Make costumes

THUR 30/4

A&F: Put everything together for Crit

FRI 1/5  CRIT

F: Get form for lights/camera

SAT 2/5 Make Props

SUN 3/5 Make Props

NB: Also for this week speak to Don about casting heads this needs to be done sometime this week.

MON ⅘ Prop making armature stuffing

TUE 5/5

Casting resin pigs / heads

Costume making

WED 6/5 1pm Sound booth to re record sound

THUR 7/5 1pm  Laser Cutter

SET UP IN ANIMATION SUITE

FRI 8/5

10am lighting help with matt burton

Animating

SAT 9/5

Animating

SUN 10/5

Marketing Pack

MON 11/5

Last minute animating/packing down

TUE 12/5

Post

WED 13/5

Post

THUR 14/5

Be finished today so we can go see Man and Superman with Ralph Fiennes at the cinema.

FRI 15/5

So now that responsive is over, we only have three weeks to get this short made, and Anna was starting to stress so I've made us a 3 week action plan to help show it's manageable.

Update:

As we got closer to the deadline, I kept breaking down the tasks at hand to do and making it as easy as possible to devote time and get everything done for the deadline.

Project Report

http://issuu.com/fionastuart-clark/docs/project_report_woo

http://issuu.com/fionastuart-clark/docs/project_report_woo

Narrative take 2

So me and anna sat down wrote some questions and emailed Grace's uncle whose worked as a Butcher and in an Abattoir for many years. Unfortunately we didn't think it would be possible to use his responses. So I had a look on the internet for some inspiration.

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her171/Fitzgerald.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/abattoir
http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661/
http://www.animalwritings.com/2008/06/interviews-with-slaughterhouse-workers.asp
http://xeny.net/the_silence_of_the_lambs
http://a-denison252717-sp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/OUAN505%20Applied%20Animation%202

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her171/Fitzgerald.pdf

I wanted to mash together a script from facts and quotes, but their isn't a great deal out their that faces the hard realities of it, nor is their anything that's truly reliable. I was reading essays on the history of the slaughter house thinking this is not relevant. We need something unique and I just don't know what to do.

In the end I went back to Anna's quotes and see if I could find more about them. When I delved deeper it turned out that they weren't just from a "love vegan" website but that they were actually taken from a book. So this was really exciting. I read half the book. There were some real tear jerking interviews in it, everything from chicken farms, to the farms where they take the plume off birds for duvets and pillows to hogs and cows. So the two ideas:

IDEA 1

We have two different speakers, but they are both in the same abattoir. During the shots where the abattoir is empty we have the titles, over the empty shots then it’s taken in turns between the two different speakers and the focus varies between the two different puppets in the storyboard for each of the quotes.  We do care, don’t be ignorant any more, eat meat, source local.

"I've seen hogs beaten, whipped, kicked in the head to get them to the restrainer. One night, I saw a driver get so angry at a hog he broke it's back with a piece of board."

"Management was constantly complaining to us about blown loins. They claimed that when the stunner voltage was too high it tore up the meat. The supervisors always wanted it on low stun no matter what size hogs we were stunning. When you got big sows and boars in the restrainer, the stunner wouldn't work at all."

"When hogs end up in the catch pen alive, the shackler beats them over the head with a lead pipe a couple of times - until they're dazed so he can get a chain around the hog's leg - and then he hoists it up. By then they may have come back to life and be squealing their heads off."

"The managers would say, 'that's just muscle reaction, nerves. It's not alive.' I'd say, 'then why's the damn hog trying to bite me? Just how stupid do you think I am?'"

"After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they're dunked in 140 degree water. That's to scald the hair off...there's no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they're still fully conscious and screaming."  

“I’d Come home, wife would ask me how my night went, and instead of being happy to see her, I’d say, “What the hell do you care?’”

Fiona over end credit of lights turning off: We do care, don’t be ignorant, eat meat, source local.

“Workers open the hide on the legs, the stomach, the neck; they cut off the feet while the cow is breathing. It makes noise. It’s looking around,” said one worker. ‘Cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. All the hide is stripped out down to the neck there,” said another.

“Their eyes look like they are popping out. I feel bad that I have to do my job on them,” explained a third.

“Sometimes they go pretty far. Sometimes they have all the skin out and they’re all peeled. Sometimes you can tell they’re alive because when you look at their eyes, you can see the tears of cow. And their eyes are moving and everything. But mainly they just make a lot of noise and are trying to kick,” described another.

“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. If I see a live animal, I cannot stop the line. Because the supervisor has told us that you have to work on a cow that’s alive”

http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661/

Idea 2

Same as before but instead of the hog quotes, quotes from the afterword of the same book regarding cows.

“Workers open the hide on the legs, the stomach, the neck; they cut off the feet while the cow is breathing. It makes noise. It’s looking around,”

‘Cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. All the hide is stripped out down to the neck there,”

“Their eyes look like they are popping out. I feel bad that I have to do my job on them,”

“Sometimes they go pretty far. Sometimes they have all the skin out and they’re all peeled. Sometimes you can tell they’re alive because when you look at their eyes, you can see the tears of cow.”

“And their eyes are moving and everything. But mainly they just make a lot of noise and are trying to kick,”

“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. If I see a live animal, I cannot stop the line. Because the supervisor has told us that you have to work on a cow that’s alive”

End speech: Stop the line. Eat meat, Source Local.


I personally prefer the Cow interview, because I feel like I can resonate with it more because at the start of the project I spent a whole afternoon crying after watching a cow being stunned and tears running down it's face. I went meat free for a fortnight till I smelt bacon. But in all honestly I don't really mind which we do, I know Anna really wants to make pigs so we will probably end up doing that one.

Tiled Walls

So for the set I managed to source some boards from a company called MPM, that supports local organisations, occasionally offers materials or services they can provide to help community projects. (everything from shower cubicles for a local gym to big sheets of wood for animation students?). I gave them the measurements and then they also provided some supports so we got perfect pieces for the set. Next the task was to create the effect of a tiled wall. no I thought about getting actual tiles, and I found some through a friend whose dad owns the yorkshire tiling company but they were just so heavy, I thought there would be no chance of getting the tiled walls to uni. So I spoke to Elliot and saw his mock up of grouted tiles and thought this would be the best effect. So I started by marking up the two tiled walls.

I went through seven tubs of grout. I did not expect it to take so many. I also did not expect it to warp the wood. But as grout is waterbased apparently this is a common thing, so I clamped the floor piece to a table ( see final picture) when applying the thin layer of grout to that. 

Floor piece clamped:

In hindsight I really would of liked them smoother, and I should have sanded them before painting them but I did not think of this. They took so long to do, to smooth out each section then etch the lines in which you'd just covered up.

When painting the tiles, I stocked up on enamel paint.. but it didn't go very far. So I stopped using the enamel and gave it a few coats of acrylic and then did several enamel ones in between to break up the boards and then to make them shiny I put a load of varnish on them. But I made sure just to do the surface of each tile rather than inbetween them, because I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the grout.

In the end I went for a combination of grey paint and plasticine. I think if I was to do this again, I would either make them out of clay and stick them on, or make one out of clay vacuum pack mould it and make lots of sheets of tiles from this.

Storyboard for Becky's Project

So Becky asked me to do a "Story Board" with her, I don't think this one can be classed as such, it was more a massive conversation with a few sketches at the pub. I think this really helped her think about how much she had to do, and to refine the narrative of the project.

I started off by googling ideas of things she was talking about, so I had good reference for the sketches.

Becky has since accidently lost panel 1, but that was a long shot of the farm and rolling hills.

Panel 2:

Shot zooms in to Norm at a long table with fruit and veg.

Action - norm waves excitedly maybe rubs hands together.

Sound? -Country Music

Panel 3:

Norm picks out all the weirdly shaped veg.

Suggestion - Superimpose faces on all the veg in 2D post and have all the weird veg have gremlin troll faces?

Panel 4

Shot of crates of veg and Norm fill in’ em cut to the crates and then pans to the back of Norm

Action: Norm stands and goes to crate, pans back to see the truck pulling in

Panel 5

Crates/Bags being put in the truck

Panel 6

Shot of supermarket, zooms out to show the bins at the back of the building

Reference, Kwik-e-mart, Simpsons

Tree & Background Green Screened

Panel 7

Pans along from the super-mart to the restaurant, truck pulls in.

Panel 8

Inside the kitchen of the restaurant, Chef doing Chef things.

Panel 9

Walk in fridge

Chef checks food dates, throwing out food that is past it’s decent date

Panel 10

Chef throws food from fridge out of the back door into the bins

Panel 11

Young man popping out of the bins

Panel 12

The same young man making meals in his healthy cafe

I had fun doing this with Becky, I think you can tell the style gradually gets worse as you go along, but I think it was important for her to visualise this process. I personally said, that there's a lot of content, a lot of locations and characters for her first attempt at stop motion. Which concerns me, as a worrier, but it's her project if she thinks she can deliver it this concisely good for her. I think it's best for me and Anna to stick to one set and make a character each and then we can really focus on making it a special short.

Creative Cv

Idea Generation

For this Cv I came up with a couple of different layout ideas.

 Caris suggested having a logo to go with a quote, she suggested a diamond, but I wasn't sure this would give the right impression, I explained she didn't want to come across superficial. So We settled with pentagon shapes in the CV. I was going to do multiple attempts of the layout, but she was really impressed with the first attempt so we just kept tweaking it.

As you can see this is just a small snapshot of the tweaks we went through, I actually forgot to screenshot half of them. Towards the end it gets to small things like text alignment and indentations that are barely noticeable. I think although some people may find this annoying I actually revelled in making the tweaks because I knew that it was making Caris happy, and also I think it made her realise how much I care about it for her. Now it'll be interesting to see what feedback she gets on it on the 27th of april. 

Also before giving it to her I had to save the backdrop as a JPG without text on and save it to a word document and add text boxes and download the font (Forum) which I chose on her laptop because she isn't very tech savvy, and this was the easiest way for her to edit because once she sent me the text, she obviously re read it a lot through the tweaks and realised she wasn't happy with it.

I don't think I would offer to do this task for anyone else unless I knew them really well because I think it's a very personal thing, and I think it requires a lot of knowledge about design that I don't really have I think I just have an eye for what looks okay but it's not amazing. I learnt a lot about what things text boxes can do with alignment in photoshop, I'm going to use these skills in my project report! I hope you notice! I think this will help improve my work. I was also able to download lots of cool free fonts although it's interesting how many allow personal but not business use. I've made a note of them because I respect the designers rights, I don't think I'd have the patience to design text. I sometimes wonder if I have enough patience to animate.

I also seeked the advice of Annabeth, and she suggested that maybe the alignment of the hexagons could go the other way, but I don't really have time to alter it, before she goes home for easter. Also she made a suggestion in the future of incorporating photo's from these events ( I know she doesn't have many) but this is a suggestion I've made for a future CV when she's got new experience's because she could totally do a polaroid range like this.