Western Pigs: Problems with footage + editing

Wow, today was a real nightmare because it turns out nearly all of our footage if not all were overexposed. It was because we didn't think about the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed settings. On one camera the ISO was set to 6400, which is far too high. I was worried that we'd have to film everything all over again because if we do it would have to be on next Tuesday which would make the schedule to the deadline really tight. It would mean that we might not finish in time and we'd have to rush through quite a few processes.

However, after working with the footage we got for a bit, it turns out that it wasn't so bad. As for the overexposure we can compensate for that by stylising what we can't do/fix. It's a bit like what artists do with their paintings. For example, if they try drawing a dog but they're not good with dog's legs they can stylise the legs via elongation and any other anatomical anomalies. If they tried to do a normal dog when they can't do the legs then it would look ridiculous because the viewer can tell that the artist was trying to draw a realistic dog but failed. We can do the same in our film.




My experiment with the footage can be improved. The noise effect will have to be adjusted to suit certain clips which are too dark and had too much noise. Some cuts are a bit long and the audio would need to be muted as we are dubbing it over later. Here the audio for the conversation scene is left on so that you know what they're saying. Also, if this edit is going to be used we'll have to think of a good way to slot in the flashbacks.

EDIT: Was going to upload the footage on here, but it takes more than a day to upload for some reason D: So I'll just put it on a DVD along with the other movies I'm supposed to be handing in.




It would be ideal to get the best footage you can on set during filming. Always adjust the ISO, aperture and shutter speed to suit the environment you're filming in and your needs to get the best quality, light, and colours. If you don't get the best footage you might not need to film it again because editing, in my POV, is a powerful thing.

Editing has the power to make film look good, make sense and can even make a crappy actor's performance ten times better. I can prove that with a film I did back in highschool. I had the worst actress ever because she was impatient with the filming process and she wasn't very co-operative so her performance was terrible. But after editing she was alright.

I think editing is like making clothes for the film. Piecing it all together, dressing it up. Emphasising the flow of the story.

Western Pigs: Filming Day-At Farm pt 2

The Straw Pig putting on his fake blood. The end result looked surprisingly convincing on camera once we got his positions of the limbs and expressions right.


A random photo of Straw Pig looking heroic, which is good because for most of the filming he's going to be dead anyway. XD

That's the Brick Pig. We got all actors except for Straw Pig to rub dirt in their face for an authentic rugged Western look.



One important thing we had to look out for in filming today was continuity errors and how to avoid making them. This was especially important because we decided not to film everything in chronological order because it would waste a lot of time resetting the position of the cameras, angles, and tripod. But that meant we had to remember exactly where everything was. Another important time was when we shot a bit of the film after lunch break. By then the shadows of the trees have moved, so we had to work around that too to make sure the error wasn't so large that it was blatantly obvious. Overall, I think we did great today because we got a variety of shots to work with and definitely had every shot we needed. Tomorrow it would be straight into editing what we have now and planning Friday's shoot with the greenscreen. We'll also have to think about backdrops for the greenscreen scenes.

I like this group, it's so organised and onto everything.

Western Pigs: Filming day-At farm

Today we went to the location to do our filming for the whole day so we didn't end up going to uni at all. It was pretty fun.


While waiting for the actors to come we got our props ready and quickly learnt to use the two cameras we got for the filming.

This is a part of our location for the standoff and ending scenes we were shooting. Being in the place made it a lot easier to decide where everything would be.

We had a little area setup to put all our equipment in one place. That made sure we didn't lose or forget anything.

Western Pigs: Filming prep

Today we finished up our script and storyboarding. Then we went to get our props ready for tomorrow's filming day. We made a list and I'm pretty sure we got everything for tomorrow. Not much happened today so it's going to be a really short blog entry.

The plan for tomorrow is that we go straight to the location and all we'll be doing tomorrow is filming. Then we go back home. We'll be filming the long standoff scene with the three pigs and wolf.




I think we're doing pretty well. Everything is going according to the schedule. We have to have everything go right tomorrow because time is important. Even though we're ahead of most groups, we're actually a bit behind on time as well. If we film any later than tomorrow it is unlikely that our project would be finished on time. I think what a lot of people don't realise is that filming really takes a lot of time, it is a long process. A thing I learnt in every project so far is the importance of getting an idea together quickly, clarifying and establishing it then really get into working on the project as soon as possible so that you can experiment early and develop your idea further into the end product. Time is probably most important factor, never underestimate your deadline. Control time or it will control you.

Western Pigs: Final plot + Making it happen

Today after watching clips of some examples of western movies we revised our entire plot and came up with a completely different one. Our previous plot was far too complex and there would be no way to fit that into 6mins because there's so many details in the interconnected relationships between the characters and shots in western movies tend to be rather long to build up tension and show silent contact between eyes. So we simplified the plot into a circular structure throwing the audience right into the climax after a quick intro of the characters. Then flashbacks between the last two standing in the standoff revealing what happened in the past then returning right back to the standoff and progressing to the ending. I like this structure better because it's not so predictable and makes the film more interesting because you want to know what happened.

As a result of this change character profiles had to be adapted for the story to make sense.



In the old plot the three pigs were corrupt sheriffs. In the new one they're now outlaws and criminals that nobody dares to speak up against because they're so dangerous.

Wolf's character stayed the same as the shadowy, lone wolf character who watches over the town.



Work on the storyboard has begun. With that I can start drawing up the backdrop, because that's my particular role. I'll be drawing backdrops for the green screen scenes. We're aiming to get the storyboard finished by Tuesday so that we can start filming straight away.

Scriptwriting has begun also. Each member will be writing their own dialogue in the standoff scene and the flashbacks where the ONLY dialogue in the whole film occurs. There's not a lot of dialogue in western films, only in really important moments. Then we will be piecing the best parts of each members' individual script into one fantastic whole.



In this group I really like how the work is all evenly distributed. I think we're just lucky to have one person who's good in at least one area that's different to everyone else so each member is specialised and that lets everyone worry less because nobody needs to fill in two roles at the same time.

Also, we had a group blog made so that members can communicate any new ideas and concerns that pop up when they're apart from each other.

Western Pigs: THE ULTIMATE TEAM

ARGH, I had this blog entry all written up yesterday but then it didn't post and I lost everything I wrote D:

Alright, so I'll just retype what I remember typing yesterday in this entry.



I'll write about the two editing exercises we did first and then our first day doing our official film project.


Editing exercise 1

30 seconds

In this exercise we were given a bunch of clips and audio to make a 30second film out of and we were supposed to be creative about which shots we put together and how we added the audio.

My one was about a boy waiting for his dad to come fly kites with him. His dad is driving on the road to go see him, in his rush to get there he begins to speed and eventually dies in flaming car crash.

The story was really clear, but I think it could be better. The limitation with the clips we got was that sometimes you don't have the perfect clip to go with everything. It was fun though, I think the audio could definitely be better. The "preview" voice was super annoying. Final Cut Pro was alright, I didn't like how the in-points and out-points were magnetic though, which meant that sometimes you couldn't cut your shots exactly where you want them to.


Editing exercise 2

Wizard of Oz

We got the full movie of The Wizard of Oz, and we had to re-edit it to fit the genre we picked out of a hat. I got black comedy, which is when you have sarcastic humour on subjects like death. I wasn't very motivated at all for this exercise so I admit that I didn't put a lot of effort into it and I don't intend to go back and redo this exercise as I see no point in doing so. To be totally honest I hated this exercise though I'm not sure why I hated it. DVD Studio Pro is confusing too, have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing with it. Luckily this morning I got somebody to help me out with it so now I think I'm alright with using it to make a DVD.



THE ULTIMATE TEAM

All in caps because THE ULTIMATE TEAM was just that great. There was confusion in getting the class sorted into groups because sorting ourselves into genres made absolutely no sense as the genres weren't evenly distributed. Luckily for me I was one of the leftovers out of 10 groupless people.

Since the 10 were confused anyway and were super indecisive about how to separate themselves into groups I took my chance and hand picked my own group. IT WAS THE PERFECT GROUP BECAUSE I CHOSE THEM ALL BASED ON THEIR WILLINGNESS TO WORK, THINKING STYLES, STRENGTHS, AND SENSE OF TIME.

It was going to be perfect and everybody knew it. So we were optimistic about this project because we had the perfect people for every role.

BUT one of our precious members was taken away to work with another group D: That was just horrible. Now my wonderful team isn't perfect anymore because an important member was taken away.

Despite that we made a lot of progress. We had a plotline going and had our basic concept sorted out to match our genre and fairytale which were western and Three Little Pigs. Since we're progressing quite well, I strongly believe that I have chosen my members well.




For higher chances of creating the best project in the world you should have a wonderful group. To have a wonderful group you must have wonderful people. You need to pick out wonderful people so don't wait for people to group themselves, take advantage of the few minutes of indecision and grab the people you want.

Demonstration day

Yesterday we had to demonstrate and present our robots. I'll talk about my three favourite robots.


I liked this one because it seems fun since you get to play a game with it. That way you actually want to interact with it because you want to play a game and have fun with it rather than just doing a drawing.


This is the robot that expresses 3 different sets of emotions: anger, sadness, and happiness. I liked the light art it created the most.


This is my favourite of all of them; the raverbot I think it was called. It dances with music and draws with highlighters on laminated foil. Then with a UV light and camera you get these cool glowing lines.

Another one I liked was the one that drips ink and glow stick fluid into water to get different patterns.


The demonstration for my group's robot went alright, but I wish I could be more confident in class and say something too.

Trials and perfecting the program

We finally got the final model completed. First, we wove the three nylon ropes that suspend the pyramid and then went to the 3D labs to glue on the cups using epoxy glue. We found that since the weight increased from the wooden mock up, we had to make a few changes to the program so that it can tilt enough and tilt at a reasonable speed.

In the photo above we secured the pyramid underneath the projector. We're wondering if we should do that or not because we don't want to break the projector so we'll ask for permission before strapping the pyramid on to it for an extended period of time. If not, then we'll just strap the pyramid to a table that's been pushed over on two of its legs.


It looks amazing on the the equilateral base, you get these really cool patterns as the paint moves in the pyramid. This reminds me of tropical islands and coral reefs.


During the trial we found that one of our sides weren't tilting in the right direction. It went down first and then up meaning that one pot of paint never got the chance to be poured. So we fixed that and finally got the blue pot to pour.


What I love about this are the explosions of splashes everywhere along the edge. Makes it look more dynamic. This happened because we added more water to the paint mixtures. Also, with added water it becomes an ever changing piece of abstract art. The moment you move the water you instantly get a new pattern. This is why for the presentation the pieces must be fresh.


As you can see above you get various different hues and a myriad of possible patterns.



My favourite part of today was getting the machine to draw. That was really fun although it did make a huge mess. >.> Will have a bigger piece of paper tomorrow, maybe double the layers so that it won't leak on to the carpet too.

Depending on where we strap the machine, we'll need to adjust the range at which the tilting is activated.

3D lab and decisions

Today we had a mini trial with the mock up of the paint pyramid. Our little container for the paint wasn't that great because it was a thin cylindrical shape which wouldn't work with our pyramid because if we used those it would take a LOT of tilt to get a little bit of paint out.


Another group member and I went to the 3D labs to go make the real one. Originally, our group wanted it to be twice the size of the mock up. But that would put too much strain at the top so we decided to made it only around 11cm bigger than the mock up.


I've never made anything like this before so I'm pretty proud of what we made.



Two of our group members got meningitis and wouldn't be in uni for quite some time. So we had to make decisions without them. One group member panicked because he was afraid of making the wrong decision so he tried to get out of making a group decision. I'm glad he told us that he was scared, or else we'll never know and there will be misunderstandings between group members. In the end, he came through and made a solid decision and went through with it. We're rather proud of him. Things should keep on going regardless of who is absent. When group members aren't here, it's up to the existing group members to make decisions and then explain what happened when the absent members return.

Changes to our robot

This morning we decided that we would use sound sensors only instead of three different ones because that made the relationships between the audience, environment and paint pyramid too confusing. This is what it looks like mounted onto the robot box.

But later on we changed out minds again. This time to using only ultrasonic sensors.

By using only ultrasonic sensors the element of interaction between human and robot is emphasised. Thus, the human can, to an extent, have some control over the paint pyramid's movements.

The picture above is a closeup of our pulley system and below is the entire paint pyramid with robot mounted on top.


In my opinion, this particular project has gone through a number of developments and has extensive research behind it to back it up. I have a good feeling that everyone in my group will do well with their journals. Also, we've started programming the robot today. There are a few issues with the movements and rotations, but I think we can get it through and fix those issues by the end of tomorrow.

I'm hoping that we can get the perspex version of the paint pyramid built and have the programming complete by tomorrow. That would leave Thursday to make the DVD of our project, which would be rather exciting. Also, we can pull together all of our materials to make sure that every member has an acceptable journal. That is the goal of the team; to make sure that everyone in the team has done enough work to pass and to help each other do well.

I've noticed how different it is between projects with extensive research and projects without. In previous projects I've done so far, there never has been extensive research. But this one has quite a bit of it. The difference is that with research the goals are very clear and everybody knows what to do because they have enough information to work on and to sort out their roles in the group. Without research, issues are not likely to be discovered until the last minute and members in the group are more likely to experience confusion since they will need to do a lot of guesswork to actually get work done. Another benefit to research is that it is easier to find out which members are good at what and take advantage of their skills whether it be problem solving, art making, programming, working with wood, or simply recording the progress of the team.

Acrylic Paint experiments

Since marbling paint had so many problems I tested out acrylic paints last time but with only limited colours. It worked out all right so today I did more tests on the acrylic+water mixture to see if it really would be suitable for our paint pyramid. First the three paints start off in the little plastic tray I've got. Then I mimic the motions that the robot would most likely make that would mix the paints together and drip/pour the paint on to a sheet of paper.


When it pours on to the page in the same spot in a continuous stream you get a lovely pattern that really reminds me of the ones seen in marbling paint, but thicker and richer. One thing I like about it is how the consistency of the paint with water still gives a really gooey effect in movement.


When the paint is dripped at a height of about one meter you get these thick, fantastic splashes with crazy patterns. This is one quality that the marbling paint does not possess because it is more fluid than gooey compared to acrylic paint.



One thing that might be bad about using acrylic is that it takes forever to dry because of how thick the layer of paint is. After about four hours since creation the larger splashes barely dried at all. The smaller splashes dried though. It is found that the pattern and the colours made at the moment of creation are retained throughout the extremely long drying process. As observed in the picture above, the water in the paint feathers at the edges as it is being absorbed in to the paper. I think this is an interesting feature because it makes the paint blob look like a cell, or a weirdly shaped planet with its city skyline.

After four hours the splatters dried slightly, a bit more than the giant paint blobs. These ones didn't feather into the page though. These experimental pieces were left at the studio overnight in a safe place to dry. Hopefully when we return tomorrow it would have dried by then. I think it would have, since I did something similar in high school but with a lot more paint and they dried over night. To speed up the drying process you could either use a hairdryer on a low setting. Low setting because if the wind is too strong you'll blow the pattern into a different direction which will ruin your original pattern. Or you can put it in the fridge because that sucks out the moisture in the paint.

Another alternative would be to hang the finished piece on the wall and allow the paint to snail off the page giving colourful tracks, thus creating yet another different piece of artwork.



As a group we decided that acrylic would be best because it has that gooey effect that we want while still retaining patterns.

My experiments with paints

The first type of paint I experimented with was marbling paint.



The colours don't mix a lot, which is a good thing because we want those lovely patterns. There's a closeup below to show you the patterns that I'm talking about. The 2 pictures shown here is when I didn't add any water to the paint. We want to add water to it so that it can flow better, will smell less overwhelming and so that we can use less paint which would reduce costs. But the problem is marbling paint forms a skin on the surface of the water it touches causing it to stick to the container that holds the paint unless the mixture is shaken or poured immediately. So we'll have to make some changes to the mixture of paint and water or find an alternative paint since it is highly unlikely that the robot would shake the paint pyramid vigorously and the paint may need to sit still for a while before its sensors are triggered. This means the paint might solidify at the bottom before it even moves to be poured out of the containers.



Since there are so many problems with marbling paint I also experimented a bit with acrylic paint with water added to get the right consistency. It doesn't set and solidify, unless the water evaporates. That wouldn't be a problem because it would take a very long time for the water to evaporate.


As you can see from these two pictures you still get an aesthetically pleasing pattern and the paints don't mix together readily unless you really stir the paint. That won't be a problem either as it will not be stirred. Will do a few more tries with the acrylics to make sure this isn't just a fluke. I'm sure this would work out with acrylics.





A key quality is flexibility and calmness. If one thing doesn't work out don't panic and have a massive mindblank then have a fit of rage. Think of alternatives and other ways you can achieve the desired result. There's ALWAYS a way. *And remember that if you want help there's always help available if you ask.

Wooden mock up for drawing machine

This is the paint pyramid that two of our guys went to make in the 3D labs. It's a smaller, wooden version of the real one that we're going to make out of perspex. The yellow wool suspends the paint pyramid.



These are the sensors that we're probably going to use. What sensors we're going to use hasn't been finalised yet. At the moment we're thinking ultrasonic to sense proximity of people, sound sensor to react to loudness of sounds and maybe a light sensor.



And these are our motors, which are going to be part of a pulley system to make the tilt of the pyramid in reaction to the various sensors. This will let the 3 pots of paint pour some of their paint over on to the base where it will mix and make interesting patterns of paint. Then drip through the corners of the base to make multicoloured splashes on a large piece of paper underneath the pyramid. This will give you a 2 layered 3D painting. The first layer is in the base of the pyramid and the second is the paper underneath.


The motors will be mounted in a wooden box above the pyramid. That hole is where the wool is fed through, tied to the motors. Then when the motors rotate it will pull up and gather the wool/let go of some of the wool.


This is what it looks like from the side in suspension.



Everything seems to be going smoothly and everyone is doing fantastic in their specific roles so all areas are running very efficiently. The machine is already built, wooden mock up works nicely, experiments with the paint are going well---things left to do is to try out the paint on the wooden mock up to make sure that the type of paint is suitable and to see how much of it we would need. We still need paint pots made from styrofoam cups and start programming the machine.

Thoughts on teamwork: Assign different roles for different people. Don't let the entire team do the exact same thing as this will limit productivity and maybe not let various issues you come across to be solve efficiently enough to make adequate improvements. This way you have at least one person discovering the possible problems you're going to have in EACH area at the same time which allows for the solving of problems to occur simultaneously in each area you're looking after. If the whole team does that same thing you're only going to solve 1 problem at a time whereas setting role can solve as least 2 problems at a time. The important thing to the multi-role approach is to let your other team members know what you're doing so that they can understand your area too and help you solve your particular area's issues with you. This way the team as a whole can develop the design together.

Drawing machine

Today we broke up our groups and made new ones for our brief which was to make a drawing machine using the NXT robot program. The idea for our one is that on each of the isosceles triangle flaps we're going to put on a little paint pot and have the flaps strung to a pulley system.
That way we can program each side to tilt accordingly so that the paint pours out and runs across the base into a beautiful waterfall of paint off the corners of the base to give you a SECOND drawing underneath the suspended triangle. So you get two drawings from this. One on the base and one on a giant piece of paper underneath. There are more details explained further in my journal.


This is a mini cardboard mock up. We've allocated each member a specific role. I'm going to experiment with different paints and inks.


This is a diagram with the dimensions of our paint pyramid.

I think we're progressing pretty well. We got our basic idea quickly. Now we gotta do some research and experimenting then come back to the idea and develop it accordingly and develop it more later to fit perfectly with the programming. I think the reason we're starting off well today is because we decided things quickly and started work on it straight away. It would be ideal if we could have all experimenting finished by tomorrow then how the paint pyramid built by Tuesday. That would leave Wednesday and Thursday to refine the programming since we'll be programming simultaneously and then adjusting it to suit the situation.