Zachary Willard Film/Blender

One of the things that I felt I did well on was the creative aspect of the animation. I can tell that it was creative because nobody had the same or a similar idea to mine. My project was unique to me which is why I enjoyed working on it so much. Some of the things that I was told went well were the camera movements, the title, and the creative use of a flamingo for a pendulum. The area that I definitely need to improve upon is the technical aspect. This includes keyframing and easing for the most part. I found it difficult to create a realistic swinging movement that had both good timing as well as spacing. In order to improve upon this I will remember to start at the beginning and end to divide it into keyframes rather than freehanding the keyframes which creates problems. To continue to improve my creativity and use of principles of design I will focus on the pre production. Focusing on pre production will allow me more time to create a more fluent and universal story with meaningfu...

Crane Shots (0:15-1:10) (1:27-1:30) Slider Shots (2:14-2:18) (1:18-1:23) (0:49-0:53) Wide Aperture Shots (0:16-0:20) (0:09-0:10) One idea that I had for the crane was to mount the camera tilted down and position it in front of the subject and start high above the subject and slowly bring it down to a medium shot while keeping the subject as the focus. I thought that this would be an interesting shot for changing the perspective on the subject in regards to its environment. For the slider I was thinking about placing it perpendicular to the subject and then panning with the focus on the subject. This shot would allow for an emphasis to be put on the subject because they are staying at the center of the shot the whole time. With the wide aperture lense I wanted to try a pull focus shot where the focus starts on the body of the subject with their arm extented towards the camera. Then I would pull focus from the body, along the arm, and end at the hand of...

Inglourious Basterds is a spaghetti western war film that is continually shocking with its subversions. A spaghetti western is a sub-genre of western films that caught on thanks to the success of director Sergio Leone and his dollars trilogy. Quentin Tarantino uses the conventions of a spaghetti western in order to subvert the war genre. The conventions that Tarantino focuses on are revenge, extreme violence, and bizarre hero names. Tarantino uses these conventions of a spaghetti western in order to consistently surprise the audience. One of the ways that he does this is by introducing characters with carefully thought out back stories, and then killing those characters quite quickly. Another example of subverting the audience is when he makes you expect action because it is a spaghetti western, but instead the film is very dialogue centered. He also subverts expectations by changing the way that history plays out. This subverts the idea that the audience always knows how a historical ...

Displacement tutorial (Far background mountains/mountain textures found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmf6l0RN-Cc&list=PL8UcbfveVMZqvPRH5edAdbh-OlGyGxWAB&index=7&t=0s)

Through the creation of a new environment and change of camera angles I was able to make the pendulum animation much better. One way it was improved was the composition of the shot was more thought out making the focus of the shot the pendulum. The leading lines used in the shot lead the eyes towards the pendulum to rest in order to create a sense of peace and harmony. The diagonal lines in the background display chaos and unpredictability where the pendulum is not present. This chaos gives the viewer a feeling that the pendulum brings balance. The horizontal lines in the sun omit a meditative quality adding to the overall filling of stability. The opening camera angle adds to the feeling of vast emptiness drawing the eye of the audience to the target at focus, the pendulum. The zolly gives off a sense that the pendulum is somehow unique and possibly other worldly. The tracking shot changes the perspective of the audience and allows them to view the surrounding world as the pendulum ...

 Something that I feel we accomplished successfully was the acting and blocking of the shots. Our location helped a lot because of how extremely accurate it was to the actual location in the film. Another thing that we did well was the use of a tripod, which allowed us to have very stable shots throughout the scene. The white balance also remained fairly consistent from shot to shot. However, There were a lot of obstacles that got in the way of completing shooting. One of these was the zoom recorder. We were never actually able to use it in the film because everytime that we got on set it would either be dead or malfunction. A way that we might be able to fix this problem is if the sound engineer were to test the zoom recorder in the CVTV room ahead of time. This is part of what lead to having audio that was a bit off. Another problem was the shots were a bit grainy at times since we were rushing to get shots taken and weren't making sure that everything wa...

Of all of the genres that we learned about in film the one that most interests me is the thriller genre. One of the reasons that I like the thriller genre so much is that it the excitement keeps me on the edge of my seat. I like this because it can create a feeling of excitement which allows me to be absorbed in the story. This is the main reason why I love Alfred Hitchcocks films. They all create some sort of suspense or anticipation during parts of the film. I appreciate the suspense created by uncertainty and excitement rather than fear. This is why I prefer action-thrillers, crime-thrillers, and sci-fi thrillers over horror. The fact that I am drawn to the thriller genre displays that I am intrigued by excitement but also tension and anticipation. Some of the directors that I would like to emulate would be Alfred Hitchcock, Quinten Tarantino, Denis Villeneuve, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, and Stanley Kubrick.

I ended up selecting the image at the very top of the list for my project. I chose this image because it has a lot of variety through the use of horizontal lines, leading lines, curved lines, and diagonal lines. This adds interest to the shot and make it feel more alive. I was also going to add contrast in the color of the lines to create conflict. Another reason that I ended up choosing this image is because the proportion and the leading lines create emphasis on the pendulum. For the lighting I am going to have the lines giving off cool light and the sun give off warm light. I will also have the pendulum give off white light to create emphasis through contrast of light.

There are two very basic fundamentals of animating. The first is timing, timing is how long it takes for the action that is being animated to get from the start frame to end frame. If you can master this you will be able to create animations that occur over an amount of time that is relative to real life making your animations look like reality to the viewer. However, without good spacing it will not look real. This is because spacing is the location of the object at each individual frame. This is what allows for easing in and out as well as movements that appear realistic when it comes to friction, inertia, gravity, and other forms of resistance or assistance of motion. When both timing and spacing are put together in an effective manner you are able to create realistic like motion. Once you know how to create realistic motion you then are able to exaggerate certain movements to create a cartoon-like effects. This is why timing and spacing are extremely crucial to create animation t...

As an actor in the film I had to look over my lines in the script repeatedly in order to have them memorized for production. I repeatedly watched the video to try and see what Marty's hand movements where, facial expressions, and where he was looking. For my role as a writer I had to find the lines used in the scene we found and convert the scene into master script format. For pre-production we had to pick a film clip that was possible for us to do. This proved to be quite difficult because the theme of art that we had picked was invention and fantasy, and we had couldn't do anything that involved special effects. In the future I would recommend picking a theme of art that would be easier to do based upon the location you have access to. Next came the task of picking roles for the film. Once roles had been picked the writer had to rewrite the script, the cinematographer had to create the storyboard, the sound designer had to choose mics, and the actors had to memorize l...

California Institute of the Arts On man who played a relatively large role in the history of animation is John Lasseter. Lasseter has directed many computer animated films, his most famous being Toy Story. This is partially due to the fact that Toy Story was the first feature length film that was fully computer animated. More importantly Lasseter was one of the driving forces behind the creation of PIXAR and the computer animated movie industry as a whole. John Lasseter was born on January 12, 1957. After he had graduated high school he went to the California Institute of the Arts to take the newly offered animation courses that were being taught by retired Disney animators. Soon after he graduated from CILA in 1979 he received a job at Disney's animation studio. During his career at Disney he worked on The Fox and the Hound and Mickey's Christmas Carol.  However, he and his superiors did not agree on the computerized direction that Lasseter thought animation should take. T...

The theme that really resonated with me was the theme on invention and fantasy. This is mostly because most of my favorite films are science fiction and have to deal with the struggle for the survival of humanity. Invention and Fantasy is a theme about a unnatural and fictitious world. I would like to direct a film dealing with this theme because I find it so interesting to watch on screen which makes me want to try out my own ideas and see what they look like when everything comes together on screen. I would also be interested in writing a film like this because it would enable me to translate my own ideas to film and not the ideas of others. This topic would also make me want to help with the production of the film as a producer just because of how invested I am in this type of film. I'm intrigued by these kinds of films mostly because of how different they are from day to day life but how easy it is to express a common struggle through exaggerating certain aspects of life. One o...

Based upon the images I have seen I have come to the conclusion that hard surface modeling is a technique used when modeling 3d objects that have hard curving surfaces.

What can you do to fix audio? When you are trying to fix audio you can adjust the db level that is being heard by the listener. This means that if something is too loud you can lower the db and if something is too quiet you can raise the db. What cannot be fixed? Things that cannot be fixed include the audio recording because the only thing that can be adjusted is the overall db level for the audio track. What is the optimal level for sound recording? When recording sound it is best to record as close to 0.0 db as possible because that allows for the most adjustment later on while the recording still retains clarity with minimal static.

During the long panning scene in the film Rear Window Hitchcock uses changes in audio to show the different life everyone lives on their own. The audio communicates this by changing when the camera pans to a new window. This demonstrates the plot of Hitchcock's movie by displaying multiple stories overlapping at once. Hitchcock also uses set design changes to show the different stories. For instance at the beginning of the shot the two people wake up outside on a fire escape, but when the camera pans to the next apartment the ballerina is inside walking around her apartment making something to eat. While watching this clip I was particularly found of the fact that there was a mysterious and intriguing mood created by the silent reaction shots and the omniscient view of the audience. I also like the perspective shots of the audience looking through the camera when Jeff looks through the camera which makes it feel like you're a part of the action. In total it was a well put toge...

Sound Effects In the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window there can be many sound effects heard throughout the film that are being used. The first sound effect that I heard was the alarm clock that rang which woke up the man and the woman who were sleeping on the fire escape outside of their apartment. The next sound was the woman breathing while she sat up on the mattress next to the man. After that you can hear a radio begin to play and continue to play in the background throughout the entire scene. As the camera pans down to the next apartment window pigeons on the roof can be heard chirping and scene wondering around. After that the camera pans to look down at the street level and a car engine can be heard along the street as well as children laughing and playing in the courtyard. Lastly a woman can be heard humming very briefly as she hangs her clothes out of the window to dry. Post War Period Images

In the movie "O Brother, Where Art Though?" the Coen brothers borrow many characters and situations from "The Odyssey" by Homer. One of the first related situations is when Everett, Delmer, and Pete meet the blind man on the railroad. The blind man tells them about the future of their journey by saying that they will find treasure but it will not be the treasure they seek. This parallels a part in the Odyssey when Odysseus meets Teireseus who is also a former seer (blind)and he tells Odysseus about his future journey and how it will not go as anticipated. These encounters mark the first connection between encounters in the two stories.  The second connection that I noticed throughout the whole story is that both Everett and Odysseus are journeying back home to their families. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is traveling back to Ithaca after fighting in the trojan war where as in "O Brother, Where Art Though?" Everett is journeying back to his wife and kids af...

Aspect ratio is the ratio between the width and height of the image. On the other hand, resolution is the overall amount of pixels being used to create the image or the number of pixels used to display the image. Throughout this film there were a lot of successes, however, there are also a lot of recommendations I would have for anyone doing this sort of a film in the future. One of the things that was done well in the film was the lighting when the main character is working late at the office. Another thing that I thought was done well was the bokeh effect when he is in the dark room. This was accomplished by using Christmas lights that were hung from the ceiling. The last thing that I thought was a success was the use of the watercolor dripping down into the water. I thought this added an interesting change of pace throughout the film because it had its own tempo that it kept relatively well during the entire film. Now there are a few things that could be done be...

Birds Eye View Close up shot Long shot Medium shot Over the Shoulder shot Throughout this project I had to overcome multiple challenges, one of those was the rice. The rice on the sushi was very challenging because I decided to use a particle system. This created complications because the particle system wasn't colliding with the sushi wrap so it would stick out of the sushi. Another challenge with the rice was it wasn't spreading out evenly so I had to tamper with the randomize settings and cluster settings to make it more realistic. Most everything else in the shot was pretty straight forward and didn't take long at all to create.