Typography

As I need to have a look at typography over my Christmas holidays I found some interesting bits and pieces.

Film Project

The Controlling Idea

• Connecting with your story:
• brutal honesty
• pursuit of truth
• you/what you know/your life, experience
• your emotional response

McKee ''Story''

• ''... Controlling idea, the story's ultimate meaning expressed through the ACTION and aesthetic emotion...''
• ''Not a word but a sentence - one clear, coherent sentence that express the story's irreducible meaning.''
• ''Far more is captured within the web of a story that can ever be stated in words - subtitles, subtexts, conceits, double meanings, richness of all kinds... The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in your film as they takes your ideas and follow it's implications into every aspects of their lives.''

Examples 

• Structure = Value + Cause
• Justice is restored when the law enforcer is more clever than the criminal. Justice is achieved via intelligence, not force.
• Love fills our lives when we conquer intellectual illusions and follow our instincts. Love triumphs when we sacrifice our needs for others.
• War is still widespread because men love war (about ''Paths of Glory'' or ''Dr. Strangelove'').
• The power of nature will have the final say over mankind's futile efforts (About ''The Elephant Man'', ''The Birds'').  

Notes

• A great work is a living metaphor that says ''Life is like this'' (McKee).
• This statement MUST NOT BE A CLICHE and it must be YOUR OWN personal response to the research and analysis of a subject of theme.

Connecting with your story

• Stanislavski - drawing from life as opposed to drawing from other plays and cliches.
• Start from what you know.
• Personal connections with all stages of the story.
• If you connect, others are likely too. If you don't, others definitely won't  (regardless of how well structured and produced the film is).
• Be as honest as you can - without honesty it;s a waste of everyone's time.
• Compelling Chance - discovery - can you feel it?  

Recommended viewings

Filminute.com

Black hole

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzUO7LCHn7k

Camera  Grammar Principles

• Verbal language have many arbitrary rules - film is mostly COMMON SENSE.
• Verbal language rules are objective - film principles are SUBJECTIVE TO INTERPRETATION (to a degree).
• Camera grammar is heavily CONTEXT-DEPENDENT- language only occasionally.
• Film is TIME-BASED media: even 3/25 ths of a sec. can dramatically change the meaning of a shot.

Camera size

• Size tends to be INDIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO DRAMATIC INTENSITY OR RELEVANCE.
• The choice of size is MAINLY DRAMATIC, NOT ABOUT STORY EXPOSITION.
•    EWS 

Shot angle

• The angle of the camera establishes the power relationship between audience and subject.
• It defines the way the audience understand the subject (powerful-less, accomplishes).

Context - Dependent

Obvious & subtle at the same time:

• using the camera to show & EXPRESS
• THE ACTOR SERVES THE CAMERA - never other way round.
• A well told sequence does not require ''Artificial help''

To be able to think about the grammatical and dramatic IMPLICATIONS of a shot is the first step toward good film-making.

Film acting - LESS IS MORE

EVERY element WITHIN THE SHOT serves a purpose (objects, actor's body parts, light&shade, sounds, etc.).

ELEMENTS OFF FRAME SERVE A PURPOSE

• The off frame space should ideally be as important as the onscreen space.

EVERY MOVEMENT OF THE CAMERA HAS GRAMMATICAL AND DRAMATIC IMPLICATIONS

• Pan/Tilt
• Tracking shot
• Hand held
• Steady camera

OUR PROJECT

10 years old supermodel

Is this gorgeous 10 year old french model the next big thing or is it just creepy?

Thylane Lena Rose Blondeau Shocking images

supermodel suggestive pose ignites global parents fury

Meet the 10 year old supermodel

10 Year Old Supermodel Paris Vogue

Essential kids

Also I done a bit of research about size 0 models.
We came up with documentary style video.

Our video is on Youtube:
http://youtu.be/uEkCP9hWOf8

Shape and Form

Photos by Jolanta Silobritaite

Transcription

Today I've been in five galleries to gain an understanding of current Photographers, Artists and Filmmakers. Also to respond to other practitioners' work and to develop personal ideas, considering new ways to use a camera and how to develop visual language.

''Michael Landy's Saints Alive'' 

At The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square.  

There are some photographs from his exhibition.

 First time in my life I couldn't believe what I saw. When I came out of the exhibition I saw this man sitting on nothing. This Mr. Golden Man is in the air. How? Even till now I can not explain this view.

A Radiant Idea

Today we done a briefly project on radiant idea which we needed to come up. We've been doing a brainstorming to generate our ideas and we came up with a cancer idea. 

Short plan & facts.

Continue.. 

Some groups came up with a really interesting ideas as a 'Spectrum Camera'' which captures all range of colors or a 'Face twins' where completely strangers seems like twins. Also I liked an idea of all us being an aliens. 02 (London) is an aliens office. It has the giant spikes which sends information to a space about all of us as human beings.

7 of 10 are aliens

Today I learned how quickly produce first draft. Actually it is essential to do it as soon as you come up with your ideas and quickly present into visuals. Then you know how raughly it looks like. Also, as usual first ideas are cliches and you need to push your ideas further with no limits.   

Summary of the rotation stage

I have been learning Digital Photography, Animation, Sound Design and Broadcast (Film) in eight weeks, which is two weeks on each subject. I was the most familiar with Digital Photography before this rotation stage. However, I learned more about natural and artificial lighting, principles and elements of photography and composition.

Now I also have a knowledge of how Animation is been made. I've been using I Stop Motion software to produce our final animation projects. Drawing skill is essential on this stage. The most incredible thing about animation is transitions from one scene to another. In any other stage you could not show such a creative way to move from one action into another.

For a Sound design I've been using Soundtrack Pro software for mixing and mastering our final audio pieces. This subject I found it quiet difficult for me as you need to think how to make and record particular sound which later you need to apply for completely different action. Also there are plenty of clichés in film sound, which we learned how to recognise and brake them or at least try to do it.

The last subject I found the most interesting for me as you combine all subjects together. Digital photography (cinematography for a film), transitions between the scenes, sound mastering for a film and overall storytelling. Story is the key for a movie and it is the hardest and longest stage of making a movie.

I had an incredible and the most valuable experience in all of those stages.

Broadcast

Chase

On this project I am working in a group of 5 girls. We need to present 1 min short movie of chase. Continuing Future Memories theme we chose to show a chase of people's fears. I done a bit of research and came up with conclusion that the biggest human's fear is failure.   

Top 10 Strong Human Fears

This is a list of 10 of the human fears that every member of a society deals with throughout their life.

10. Losing your freedom

While the exact definition of freedom and its value in a society are debatable subjects, the fear of losing your freedom has always been present in human minds because, even though it is not something that we think about every single moment, it has given us times of deep thought and wonder at what would happen if we were to lose the power to control our own lives. This fear starts with mundane things, such as that time you were grounded in your room by yourself without the possibility of leaving until you finished your homework, or our fear of the commitment that marriage establishes. But this raises a question, is absolute freedom the best thing for us? We have all seen people make bad decisions over and over again, and wondered whether having someone else make their decisions for them would make things better.

9. The Unknown

The fear of the unknown is easily explained like this: the mind tells us that in order to move forward, we must know what is waiting for us there, because “if I know, then I can control the situation, and if I don’t know, then I am not in control”. This second part is what scares us the most, because control is what establishes a measurement that we can use to manipulate the result of our actions. And when we don’t like what is different, this is simply because we can neither understand it, nor have a plan to control it beforehand.

This fear has been with us for thousands of years, and it is a great part of what has helped us survive as a species. Many of us, when we were kids, were afraid of the dark, mainly because we didn’t know what might be hiding in there, and similarly when we didn’t know what might be at the end of the hallway we felt the need to pull ourselves away from it. However, this fear of the unknown often stops our progress and makes it harder for us to discover and understand new things, encouraging rejection and closed mindedness.

8. Pain

Since the intensity of physical pain is a purely subjective feeling, which is sensed differently by each individual, it is quite hard to make generalizations of what causes people pain. But physical pain can be described as an unpleasant sensation, generally caused by damage to a certain part of the body.

Aside from a few exceptions, most of us are intolerant or afraid of physical pain, this can be noted in the fact that there are a great amount of medications related to pain relief, with different levels of strength and related to different types of pain. The rejection of pain is caused because we associate physical pain with illness and bad health, in general. This fear can be linked with the fear of losing your freedom, such as in the case of people that suffer from chronic pain and usually see their physical freedom limited because they want to avoid doing the actions that cause, or increase, the pain sensation. Let’s face it, pain is not a good sensation (although, as stated before, some people believe otherwise), and like animals do, we tend to keep away from that which causes us pain, as it is one of the key elements in survival instinct, as well as the way our brain tells us that there is something wrong with a certain part of our body or that the action we are doing is causing a negative effect on it. In this case pain in itself is not a bad thing, but a way to let us know that we must stop doing what we are doing to avoid further damage to our body.

7. Disapointment

This fear is somewhat hard to explain, since there are two different fears that are related to disappointment – one of disappointing others and one of suffering disappointment yourself.

We all, as kids, lived that awful experience in which we did something wrong or misbehaved, and were expecting a punishment or at least some screaming from our parents. But, instead we got the unpleasant sight of our parents just staring at us with sadness in their eyes, and saying “I am disappointed in you”. That single sentence hurt a lot more than any other punishment would have.

6. Misery

Poverty is defined as a situation that comes from the lack of the resources needed to completely fulfill the human needs. But misery is what we see as a more extreme case of poverty. It is the inability to cover our own basic personal needs. No one likes seeing or feeling human misery, because we know that the worst of human actions come out of the desperation caused by misery. It is what we consider as the lowest point in what comes to human needs, and that is why we fear it so much. No one wants to feel that absence of things, and this has caused the media to feed us more of this fear in advertising, telling us that we need more things than we actually do. And, even though we all know how bad a habit this actually is, at the end of the day we can all acknowledge how hard not having basic goods to back you up is. As it was expressed in the 2006 movie “The Last King of Scotland”, when Dr. Nicholas Garrigan tells Ugandan dictator Idi Amin that “money is no substitute for anything” he replies saying “[you say it because] you have never been poor”.

5. Loneliness

The fear of being alone is that dreadful feeling of emptiness caused by the absence of interaction with another human being. This fear has also evolved from one of our early survival instincts: we fear loneliness because it is more likely that we would survive if we live in group.

The fear of loneliness is related to doing something and no one noticing. We often feel that in order for our actions to be meaningful, someone has to notice them. This relates to the philosophy quote “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. If you make a groundbreaking discovery but no one else ever finds about it, does it still count?

4. Ridicule

The fear of ridicule is related to the fear of getting bad criticism, and is also caused by our social fear of not projecting a good enough image of ourselves to others. This fear is most often experienced in what is called “stage fright”. We all have felt it at least once in our lives, having to speak or perform in front of an audience. We fear that we might mess up and cause the audience to respond negatively, either by mocking us with laughter or, in the worst cases, booing. Even though some people practice hard enough to not feel stage fright, or have a well built self-confidence that helps deal with the effects of being laughed at or criticized, the fear of ridicule never really leaves us because we don’t like the feeling of being in the spotlight for a negative reason, and being at the mercy of the opinions of others.

3. Rejection

This social fear is one of the main reasons people act the way they do. We tend to (sometimes blindly) follow the actions of others, because it helps us avoid dealing with rejection from the society. We fear rejection because, like the fear of being alone, most of us can only justify our existence through the acknowledgement and acceptance of others. There are people who argue that acceptance from society is a mere illusion, and that there is no such thing as “normal” behavior from an individual within a society – if this is the case, then why do we fear not behaving “correctly” and in accordance with the cultural norms? This really puts into perspective our whole ethical infrastructure as a society; is something really good or bad just because society says so?

2. Death

This fear is not no. 1, because, even though it is the main reason our instincts tell us to act the way we do, it is a well known truth that we all in the end will kick the bucket. But that doesn’t mean we have death as our worst everyday worry, because we avoid the thought of it as a near future occurrence in our lives.

The fear of death is tightly tied to the fear of the unknown; we don’t know for sure what will happen to us when we leave this world. In fact, we are so interested in death that we have even developed whole cultures and religious beliefs that have tried to give an explanation to death since the beginning of time. Almost all ancient civilizations have a godly form or a method of worshiping death in some way, and we’ve all learned to respect it and eventually accept it.

1. Failure

This fear deserves the top spot because it rules over all our actions and decisions. We all do, and don’t do, things in order to avoid failure. Failure can be a lot of things; realizing you don’t live your life the way you wanted to, not succeeding in your plans, finding yourself helpless, or in the worst cases even hitting rock-bottom.

Failure is a very ambiguous and subjective term because failure is not on the same level and perspective to everyone, what counts as failure to one might not be even halfway there to another. To some, failure is actually a way to learn lessons and try again, so it is not really an end, but a tool for future reference. The main fear of failing comes with the disappointment that follows, that feeling that despite your effort, nothing seemed to go as you wished it did, and it causes a feeling such that you might not even want to try again. That is why this is the worst fear of all, the fear or failure is very often used as an excuse to procrastinate, or not do anything to make situations better – “why bother?” and “I’m just not good enough”.

After struggle to develop a strong story we changed our idea for a short video.

We decided to make a short video about love story.

This is our final short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv0C-yJoYQ4

Sound Design

Sound Journey

My aim is to produce a soundscape that explores the emotional impact of storytelling through sound. 

Sound on its own as a piece of sonic art or as a soundscape has a power and quality to transport the listener to different worlds, different times. 

Using self-recorded sounds outside, at home and some voice recording I will create a Journey inspired by developing ideas from the Future Memories research. 

Recently I've been brainstorming and came up with an idea of a journey with a parachute.

Brainstorm

IDEA

Character: man

Location: plane, air/space, ground. 

Time: midday 

A man is in the plane and just about to jump with a parachute. He is sweaty, nervous and feels fear of the coming danger. Suddenly he becomes brave and jumps with a parachute into the air. 

All he can hear is how he is cutting the air like a sword. He faces a fear, but the fear no longer faces him.

After this life changing journey he hits the ground and feels ecstatic. Itis emotional for me as I experienced this journey.

SOUND STORYBOARD

Jumping with a parachute from the plane

Recorded sounds: PLANE (Fear) - foot steps, door slide, wind, "hmm" sound as he jumps from the plane, scream, plane sound fade away, clothes flapping, coat sound as parachute opens, wind sound get less & less, birds sound gets louder, hitting the ground, "hah" sound at the end as he lands safely - GROUND (happiness). 

My Final Sound Journey project on Youtybe:

http://youtu.be/s4UBNYkSs5A

Future Memories Animation

A story about a boy

Animation for Future Memories

Storyboard

It's a story about a girl. She is lonely and bored in the world around her. She wants to explore more places, feel excitement of the life.  

In her dreams she meets strange human beings with wings and missing foreheads. 

Also they have electric brains.

And the only way of communicating with them is by electrical connection.

She discovers a mysterious planet, where everyone visualizes their dreams.

Her secret dream is a man.

Animation

Transitions

 

 

This is my group 5 work.

We chose 2 objects and draw how it could change from one object to another .

My objects are mobile phone changing into a sword.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Photography

Future Memories

I've been asked to experiment with the camera and to have a greater understanding of how to use a camera and to understand theories of composition, genre and to produce a series of photographic images.

Elements of photographic art

The visual elements in a photograph each have attributes which are called the ''photographic elements'' of a photograph. These are:

• Line - lines and edges that the eye follows within the scene.
• Colour - the variety of colours and individual hues (and intensities/brightness of each).
• Shape - a two dimensional area, marked out by edges, which exhibits similar textures/colours and may be geometric or defined by organic or natural processes.
• Form - three dimensional structure with length, width and height.
• Tone - shade and light variations that define 'form' persuading the eye of its three dimensionality.
• Texture - the surface detail of 'shapes' or 'forms' that persuade the eye they would have the feel of the real thing if touched.
• Space

Positive space - the space occupied by a shape or form.

Negative space - the space between shapes or forms.

• Depth - the viewers perception of distance between 'foreground' and the 'background' in the picture.
• Sharpness - the degree to which an object or particular part of the picture is sharp or blurred.

Principles of photographic art

1. Unity - the overall concept of the whole piece, how it hangs together as one piece and how well the elements are coherently organised overall to create the piece.
2. Harmony - the cultivation of a consistent overall theme which seeks to pull everything into a well ordered and uncomplicated outcome, minimising discordant and unnecessary elements.
3. Colour - individual colours act as independent elements in a picture, but the overall control of colour, its contrasts as well as complementary attributes make it an important part of the final organisation of the picture.
4. Variety - the degree to which different type of things, forms, and shapes are used as well as how to contrast and emphasis are deployed.
5. Movement - shows action or partially completed action, line of sight, implied movement into a scene or along a line, or control of the eye along a path defined by motion blur, or even the passive control of the eye movement through the scene by compositional use of elements (particularly lines and edges).
6. Contrast - the degree to which conflicting elements are used. Light and shade; brightness and darkness; colour differences; texture variations; pattern differences; etc - contrast has a powerful effect on the eye.
7. Balance - the arrangement of elements to create a harmonious distribution of visual weight in the picture. If an element occupies too much of the picture, or seems too heavy the picture is unbalanced. The eye tends to be drawn to the heavier elements.
8. Proportion - the relative size of shapes and forms; the relative quantity of an element; or the relative quantity of different elements.
9. Pattern and rhythm - use or recurring elements in an organised or rhythmic way introduces a dynamic to the picture. Pattern and/or rhythm can be used to imply movement, activity or organisation.
10. Geometry - the degree to which the shapes and forms in the picture are planned and organised as a part of the overall image. Is the picture constructed using symmetry/asymmetry, the golden mean, rule of thirds or other geometric principles to organise the final picture.
11. Focus - through the depht of field, focus controls how much sharpness there is at any given point or individual element and where that sharpness is created. The eye is naturally drawn to the sharpest part of the picture. However the transition from sharp to unsharp can be relatively abrupt or distributed throughout the depth of the picture. Focus also includes the quality of the unsharp (blurred) areas of the image.
12. Viewpoint - often not considered a principle of art, viewpoint is important in the principles of photographic art. The radical difference of a scene taken from different viewpoints make it a powerful way to use different elements of photography. The birds-eye view, adult eye-height view and ground level view offer three very different perspectives and probably different elements of the same scene. The point of view must therefore be an important principle in organising individual elements.

There is my response to this research.

B&W Portrait Photography

Final Image

Sword 

Hand

Symmetry

Background

Cigarette

Light

Nothing

Solders 

Colour

As photography is my passion I really enjoyed this project. I found it very successful as I learn how to control the light. I place the light source on the left side. I used Canon EOS 5D Mark II with 85mm/1.2f Lens. I got good feedback about my chosen photograph. Students said that it is well chosen B&W photograph with a good lighting & composition.

I've learn how to control the light, compose a shot & how to find a Golden Ratio.

The Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio is a little harder to use, however when you use it to align your primary subjects (such as portrait), it can lead to the most pleasing compositions. 

I am going to apply this rule for my future projects.

Note the point of convergence of the red and green lines. That particular point is the key point when using the Golden Ratio in photography. The simple rule here is to start from one side of the image, and visualize a square starting from that edge. Bisect that square along a diagonal. Bisect the entire image from the opposing corners, and place the key element of your key subject at the intersection of those bisecting lines. In the case of a portrait (where this rule is commonly used), you would want to place the eyes right around the point of intersection. You can also use this rule to photograph still subjects. It should be noted that the Golden Ratio is infinitely divisible (as you can see in the spiral image above), so you could identify multiple points of intersection for sub areas of a photograph, and place key still subjects at those points. You also have the option of following the spiral, and placing key subjects at the intersection of any two lines and part of the spiral curve.

Influential Photographers

http://www.professionalphotographer.co.uk/Magazine/Photographic-Inspiration/100-most-influential-photographers-of-all-time

Future Memories (I remember...)

I remember a dream about my sister. We've been walking through a cemetery. It was the early morning. Grass was green and water was very clear. I was without my shoes walking through the water and clearly could see my feet. My sister asked me what was this smell and my answer was: ''This is the rotten bones''...

I remember warm water, darkness, laugh, joy... I was swimming in the sea at midnight naked. It was very quiet and dark, I could feel my breath.

I remember a warm evening at home with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWIdqAgEmk0&list=PL30032A76E46991A2

I remember many places, which I used to call homes.

I remember my room, many of my rooms.

I remember the place and that moment  

 where I was with my sister by watching a movie 'Lovers on the bridge' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4R56VQDkqw

I remember in my conscious the rule of the third

I remember ... many stories. They could be endless.

Rule of Thirds

Perhaps the most well know principle of photographic composition is the ‘Rule of Thirds‘.

The “Rule of Thirds” one of the first things that budding digital photographers learn about in classes on photography and rightly so as it is the basis for well balanced and interesting shots.

I will say right up front however that rules are meant to be broken and ignoring this one doesn’t mean your images are necessarily unbalanced or uninteresting. However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot.

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Not only this – but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the shot – using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

Memory Palace

Definition of memory

mem·o·ry  (mm-r)

n. pl. mem·o·ries

1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.

2. The act or an instance of remembering; recollection: spent the afternoon lost in memory.

3. All that a person can remember: It hasn't happened in my memory.

4. Something remembered: pleasant childhood memories.

5. The fact of being remembered; remembrance: dedicated to their parents' memory.

6. The period of time covered by the remembrance or recollection of a person or group of persons: within the memory of humankind.

7. Biology Persistent modification of behavior resulting from an animal's experience.

8. Computer Science

a. A unit of a computer that preserves data for retrieval.

b. Capacity for storing information: two gigabytes of memory.

9. Statistics The set of past events affecting a given event in a stochastic process.

10. The capacity of a material, such as plastic or metal, to return to a previous shape after deformation.

11. Immunology The ability of the immune system to respond faster and more powerfully to subsequent exposure to an antigen.

Memory Palace

Here is how to remember. First you must choose a place. It should be somewhere you know very well. Most people pick somewhere spacious and grand - a great hall, one of the ruined towels of the city. You get to know this place as well as you can. You walk around it, impressing every detail on your memory, until you can tour it in your mind when you are not there.

Trip from my home to Tate Modern

Then you place the things you need to remember around the building, in the form of pictures. These pictures must be startling  enough to trigger your imagination.

It could be a rubbish 

It could be a book

It could be the news

It could be a poster

It could be a wallpaper

It could be a glass

It could be a toilet tissue roll

They can be the faces of people you know.

Twins

Dark side

Always in my mind, never far away from my mind

Movement

Flowing uphill

Glass

Moon

Spot

50 shades of grey

Joan of Arc

Honesty

Half

Side

Other side

Below

Shoulder

Faceless

Lips

Sing a song

Hm

Motion

Memories... aren't an escape!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTyRMfdDfc8
Memories is an anime produced in 1995 by artist/director Katsuhiro Otomo

Documentary by Ross McElwee 'Photographic memory'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcAjO5G3kTc

References

1. 9 p. Hari Kunzru ''Memory Palace''
2. Youtube
3. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/memories