more ident progress

At last these are pretty much finished. The only thing that needs adding is the TCM logo animations at the very end. Unfortunately I left these at college so I can't add them today. I have added music from each film to round off the end of every clip so there isn't silence after the quotes. This was a pain to find all the songs, and edit them to fit.


Goodfellas. I have used a new sound clip thet included the song starting as it does in the film, apart from that I havent changed much in this one.

Casino. Now with some music added at the end, I did do some lighting effects to this but then decided it was better without, yes thats the problem when you start fiddling with something.

Sexy beast. This one I have done more to. I have decided to change this to the black background to match the other idents, and also I decided it was too long so I have chopped off the start of the talking. Music added as well which works really well on this one.

American Gangster. I spent a lot more time on this one than any of the others. I didnt like this one having a white background when all the others are black but I wanted to keep the typewriter feel so I have done quite a bit with lighting here. I start with black background with white text, then switch to a spot-lit white background then fade back down to black. I am liking this a lot better now. Music also added at the end.

Finished ident..

Or is it? Well not sure to be honest, I am pretty sick of it now as I have been working on it so long. Its got to the stage where i'm note sure if the chages I am making are improving it or not so I thought I better stop here for now and work on another of the five. Well anyway here it is, a full 10 seconds at last, but you tube will have knocked a bit off the start and end, I forgot to put handles on it. I still need to adjust the audio levels of the two samples to match also.

Crit questions

Please be honest with feedback, posts to look at are tagged with 'crit'.

1. I have tried to use a different font to represent each speaking voice, are these working? appropriate?
2. So far I have used very limited colours, should I chose a colour for each speaking voice or stick to black and white? Also, should I experiment with a gritty background texture or keep a clean look?
3. Are my test pieces successful? Any more so than others? why?
4. As I am working mostly with text, I am struggling to come up with an interesting DVD menu, I am thinking of using animated text for these, any other suggestions?
5. Any suggestions how I can now finish these off into finished idents? The sound clips are all shorter than 10 seconds so I can add a closing scene to each with channel logo and film information etc?

Ident ending

I did this last week but forgot to put it up here, I plan to end my idents with a sequence like this to show the channel and film season details, I will make a slightly different one for each films Kinetic type.

Another..

This one is a Donnie Brasco quote, work in progress again. Interestingly the bit where 'alive' disappears and 'dead' re appears looks really simple but was actually the hardest thing I have had to work out in After Effects so far. Many thanks to James in the mac suite for staying back past his home time to help me sort it out. The problem is that you cant have a static mask to hide a moving object, but we (ok, James) worked out a way to do it in the end.

Casino after effects

Another work in progress. Quote from the film 'Casino', I'm not sure about the ending of this but I think the Las Vegas sign works well. I used the actual sign for reference (below)

American Gangster

More work in progress. This is my first try at the American gangster ident. This is quite simple and I went with a typewriter style to illustrate this voice (courier font). This hasn't turned out too bad and with a bit of tweaking I will be able to use this I think. Again there are no lighting effects yet in this.

More testing

I've had a bit of a frustrating time getting all the sound clips that I needed for my idents but I finally have them all now. I have had a go at the 'Sexy Beast' kinetic type. this has taken longer for some reason and I am less happy with it but I will go back to it later. The second half works better, I will re-do the first section of this. Colours are just working colours and there is no lighting in this yet.

Rationale

Brief Title:
Gangster Season

Subject and Rational:

A set of ident trailers for a season of films in the 'Gangster' genre for a movie channel (Film 4, TCM etc.). Each ident will promote a separate film on the season. These will be designed to be shown on the week the film will be shown so they might say 'this Thursday, Goodfellas' for example. These will be 10 seconds long.

Design Direction:

I will base my idents around a sound clip quotes from each film. I plan to explore the use of kinetic type but might also incorporate graphics appropriate to the subject. I want to use fonts to represent each speaking voice in the quotes. The movements of the text on screen will also be designed to represent the voices. The station logo is the other main element I want to incorporate into my idents. I will see how these can be animated to complement my subject (to make them feel' gangster'). My designs will be the movements I create for the text in After Effects, I want to further explore he use of 3D, cameras and lighting in this program.

Goodfellas kinetic type test

This is my first try at making kinetic type quotes for my movie season brief. The story board I worked out wasn't as useful as I hoped because the speech is so fast paced I couldn't fit in most of the stuff I had planned. Despite that, the storyboard did give me a starting point and meant I had a direction to work from even if the result was substantially different. There is actually quite a bit of complex stuff going on in this but most of it happens in a flash. This isn't a bad thing I guess because the result looks snappy, but it did take me a whole day to make and its only 4 seconds long! Partly this is because I made this in a slightly different way to my previous 'fold' clips and I was learning the method. The text in this is made directly in after effects rather than imported illustrator layers, this has advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that they stay in a form that is easy to edit within the program, I can change the colour or even the font without having to remake the clip.

Using film quotes

To get up and running with this brief, I have pressed a virtual reset button on my previous ideas and decided to base my 10 second animations around quotes from each film. This should give me a strong starting point with opotunities to add complexity into my peices as they develop. These are the films and the quotes I am thinking about using (some I have picked out two alternative quotes to test).

Goodfellas:

1) As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

Sexy beast:

1) I am going to have to turn this opportunity down.

No, you are going to have to turn this opportunity yes!

American gangster:

1) My investigation indicates that Frank Lucas is above the Mafia.

2) See, you are what you are in this world. That's either one of two things: Either you're somebody, or you ain't nobody

Donnie Brasco:

1) When they send for you, you go in alive, you come out dead, and it's your best friend that does it.

2) If you're a rat, then I'm the biggest mutt in the history of the Mafia.

Casino:

1) Normally, my prospects of coming back alive from a meeting with Nicky were 99 out of 100. But this time, when I heard him say "a couple of hundred yards down the road", I gave myself 50-50.

2) Running a casino is like robbing a bank with no cops around. For guys like me, Las Vegas washes away your sins. It's like a morality car wash.

I think these are all strong quotes and represent the films well. I can animate kenetic type to go along with these quotes and hopefully come up with a strong set of idents. My next step is to storyboard some ideas.

Crit Feedback and thoughts

My gangster season project is off to a slower start than I hoped. I went into this crit asking for help with my concepts and hoped to come out with a clearer direction. I am not sure I have this yet, but I did come out with a few new ideas to investigate. I am keen to get into aftereffects and start making something, so I am very frustrated that I dont have a clear good concept just yet.

Good points here on finding a 'mood' and 'tone' to work with. I will investigate this and may be the key to moving forward with this. Also comment about simplicity, I think now I excited about the possibilities of aftereffects it has caused me to 'over think' what is needed to create this brief and I have ended up with almost nothing.

This second feedback is very generic, no real suggestions.

DVD menu, flowchart

This took a bit more working out that I thought it would. For my DVD I want a clear straightforward menu system. I dont want endless menus that you cave to click through because nothing frustrates me more!

This was my first flowchart but I didnt like this as you would have to click through two pages to get to the film season final pieces, also I though I might have too many options in the Silent Movie brief menu because all the finals and all the development is on the same screen.

My second attempt I think will work far better. I have the same structure now for each brief. All my final  pieces are now displayed just one click from the main menu and all my development work will be just one further click away. This should be simple and effective, I hope. There will be a back button on each screen to go back up one level, I shouldn't need a back to main menu button, as the main menu will be at most two clicks away.

(note, these are mock ups for the structure, not the actual designs, these are yet to be worked out)

Movie Season Presentation

Movie Season Presentation

View more documents from mitch20vt.

This outlines my direction for this brief.

More Folding

Over Christmas I have been reworking and refining my 'fold' After Effects pieces, and since I have borrowed some internet today I can finaly blog them.

(I am having youtube issues, these animations should run smother without the jerkiness, I am looking into why youtube does this and how it can be prevented)




















The final one here probably communicates 'fold' least well, but its going up because I learnt a hell of a lot making it, you cant just press a button to make a shadow like that you know? All fun stuff though.
I think the box works best, it wasnt half as cool before I had a sudden thought about playing with transparencies, then it quickly became a glass box. The lighting took ages as well but I'm not even going to talk about that!