After my presentation of my idea I decided to look into different film styles. Because I see a lot of interesting effects in music videos, I came across a music video for a band called Marmozets. I found the video visually really fascinating, incorporating several stylistic elements such as 'Bullet Time' or 'Time slice' effect, where time freezes and the camera moves, usually 180 or 360 degrees. The video also manipulates film by having scratch-like effect's, which looks very interesting. In addition to this the director uses a lot of rig's. such as a straight rig for the normal speed panning shots and 180 degree rig's for the time slice effect. I really like this effect, and how it captured each of the members facial expressions. The use of colour correction is also interesting and the use of light-writing at times, which I have experimented with previously. The video below discusses how the visuals were achieved.

During this lesson we looked at making a UFO for our Space Shooter game we're currently making in unity. We began with a simple cylinder shape and manipulated the faces and extruded the top out to make it a more accurate ufo-like shape.

We then looked at UV mapping our UFO. Luckily my shape was quite simplistic, with not too many Edge loops. I 'Planar' mapped by UFO s this gave the most accurate representation of it.

Finished UV map. 

The UV map was then snapshotted and taken into photoshop and edited. I changed it a few times to get the best look for my UFO. 

Original design

Final design

We then added a 'Blinn' material to our UFO and imported our finished image. This process was the same as how we did the spaceship. 

Original Imported mapping onto our UFO

Edited version imported

The 'Specularmap' image used allowed the spaceship to become more metallic-looking, to make it look more realistic and shine.

We then looked at making the elements of our UFO more realistic. To do this we would make the spherical shapes on our UFO 3D by making a new sphere object and moving them to the correct positions around the UFO.

Sphere's added to the UFO. 

To attach the sphere's to the ship we had to use the 'Transfer Maps' tool. The target mesh, being the shape we will attach the spheres too, was our UFO and the source meshes were the spheres themselves. The output was set to 'Normal' and was then baked. 

'Baked' UFO. 

Sadly it didn't come out the way I expected however I will repeat the process at a later date to make the sphere's smaller so that the colour's don't bleed as much as they did.

We lastly looked at animating our spaceship, for our Space Shooter game. This was done by adding keyframes and the first and last frame, starting the X axis at '0' and changing it at the last frame to '360' so it rotates 360 degrees.

The 'Time Slider' within Maya. 

After my tutorial with Rosie I decided to look at Dryden Goodwin's work, who is a British artist who incorporates drawings with photography and film and does a lot of multi screen installations. 

I began by looking at 'Cradle', a series of photographs consisting of etching onto a surface.Goodwin etches over passers by's faces. There's a definite sense of violation, making the subjects feel vulnerable due to the scratching effect.

http://www.drydengoodwin.com/cradle_2008.htm

When developing my idea, I tend to think more about how an idea can be technically achieved, however I struggle to think of a deeper meaning to my work. To further develop my idea I decided to think about themes I could look at. Because I want to scratch out faces, it would be suitable to aim my project around the theme of identity, however I would like to make it more developed than just the idea of identity.

One idea I have is to look at the idea of gender. One of my housemates called Emma is gay, and recently came out as being gender-fluid, which is something I wasn't too familiar with. She now prefers to be referred to as 'Alex'. after having a chat to her about her sexuality and what her take on being gender-fluid is, It made me think about how I could set up my scene, for example have one or two characters and scratch out there faces as they move forward towards the camera or just in different locations, however you have to guess which character Is male, and which character is female. This  could be quite interesting as it also looks upon the idea of stereotyping, and how people jump to conclusions depending on what you look like. 

Technically, I am going to work with a film camera and work on the steenbeck machine to achieve the scratching look I want. I was also thinking about looking into Pixellation as its quite a visually interesting animatic technique. I recently took out the book 'The animation book : a complete guide to animated filmmaking by Kit Laybourne', which gives handy technical tips on how to do Pixellation and stop frame animation.

My idea needs further developing and there is slight difficulty finding scratching example work, however i'm happy with the theme that I have chosen and will further develop my idea by researching into gender-related film work. 

Tutorial with Vicky

During the tutorial I had with Vicky, I discussed the brief idea I had, which is to look into film scratching and manipulating an image on film. Taking this into consideration, Vicky took me into the film editing room where we can watch, edit and cut our film. I was briefly shown how to use the Steenbeck editing machine, which is used for film pieces.

Steenbeck machine.

Vicky then showed me an example of a film that uses the film scratching technique, in particular over faces which I found really visually interesting. The film, Irma Vep, is a remake of 'Les Vampires'. its a behind the scenes look of this process, using visual elements such as film scratching appear at different times during the film. The scratching is used predominantly for the visual effect side of the film. I feel this is an interesting alternative to the use of motion graphics or CGI. I read an interesting review of the film which states "It seems to function as a cinematic state of affairs, examining the functions and motivations behind the movies we see.". This is interesting because the film makes you think more about why certain elements are used, for example film manipulation such as scratching and the deeper meaning within a film. The film itself is of a low budget and shot in a short amount of time, which gives the film a rougher, more visually experimental look, which I liked about it. 

Screenshot from Irma Vep 

Trailer for Irma Vep

Tutorial with Rosie

During my brief tutorial I had with Rosie, I was told that the idea I wanted to center my piece around, which is manipulating film is an interesting but challenging idea to pursue. Rosie was helpful in giving me advice to go away and think more about the concept behind my idea and what I'm trying to say to the audience. She also contacted David Cooper, who enrolled us to the 'Samurai Blade' and 'Sony EX3' to hopefully induct me into using the film camera available at the university, so I can progress with making my film. I'm quite inexperienced with film camera's, so I'm pleased that Rosie got in contact with David. The next step to take is think of a narrative for my piece or think deeper about what message i'm trying to convey within my work.