Video and Sound Production: Final Project

28/03/2022 - 03/04/2022 (Week 1- Week 16)

Evaleez Voo Lian Yun / 0350275
Video and Sound Production/ Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Final Project

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Instructions

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Visual Research

Stop Motion

1. Fresh Guacamole - PES

 

This video is a guacamole cooking process. The creator uses stop motion and continuity to entice the audience's attention. The art direction was focused on using creative objects to signify each ingredient, i.e a "bomb" avocado, big dice turning into smaller ones after cutting, etc. Leaving viewers' surprised each time as if was out of their expection.

Static cameras are used and the overall flow of the video is what you would expecct from a cooking video. Meanwhile, he will use close ups to show the elements he added into the dish. 

2. Second to None - Vincent Gallagher

Vincent Gallagher sheds light on sibling rivalry through two twins brothers Frederick and Herman Butterfiel with this short. The art direction mainly focused on a more "handicraft" feeling for the background, making it feel casual and in contrast with the dark comedic twist on the story.

The character are quite memorable as well, having a rather huge, elongated face and outfits that suit the "older generation" stereotype. One of the twins has a black eye on one side which gives the impression of "evil" when compared to his brother, who has a lighter hair colour and trimmed moustache.

3. Tokri (The Basket) - Suresh Eriyat

 

This stop motion animation was a wholesome one. As the story goes you might looks at it as some predictable but there was a slight twist at the end that recaptures the audience's attention. Suresh did a great job in terms of sound production - providing a storytelling experience with only sound effects. 

In terms of the art style, this animation took in a lot of elements from Indian culture, as it is where the animation is set in place. The usage of culutral clothes and the hectic roads in India were implemented to futher enhance the atmosphere. 

Visual Effects

1. Zach King

Zach King in undeniably one of the most famous content creators that use visual effects in his videos. His videos are very creative and interesting, with the combination of different elements and effects. His style is pretty consistent in most of his videos as most of it is only a few second long and shot in a vertical plane. He often plays around with perspectives and camera zoom to give his output the wow factor.

2. David Mills - Jeric Pimentel and Nico Del Giudice

 

This CGI VFX short film was an interesting one. It captures the attention of the viewer with the main character's introduction and him abruptly running aruond the forest, saying, "I'm done." Afterwards, a huge monster appears bearing his teeth, chasing at him, in which he musters up the courage and screams, "I quit!". The scene that switches to an office, with David facing his boss. 

Several vfx techniques were used here, i.e lighting & shadow, motion blur when he's overthinking, etc. Besides that, the camera shots are taken really well and audio was edited perfectly.

3. Kitten Witch

For this video, the overall theme was very lighthearted. VFX and CGI were used in animating the cat and its surroundings. Blur, lighting & shadow, reflection, bubbles and sparkles were some exmples in the video that were added in with VFX to create the final output.

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Task

The first task we had to do for our final project was to decide whether we wanted to do visual effects of stop motion. I decided to do stop motion because I have never done it and it would be a new experience to uncover. After choosing our project type, we had to write down the story outline in 1 paragraph along with 3 references.

Idea 1:

 

Idea 2:

 

After reading through Idea 1, Mr Martin noted that it was a good theme to go for, however the story might be too long for it to be a 30s video. He also noted how the Malaysian government was banning the new Toy Story movie becuase of its LGBTQA+ scenes. He highlihghted that this would give you more reason to go for this theme as it keeps getting shut down by the government. Hence I came up with 2 more ideas for that theme.

Idea 3:

 

Idea 4:

After going through the two new ideas and storyboard, Mr Martin said Idea 2 is better. Hence, I started to create the clay figures for it. However the clays I made were so bad and it kept falling off ans my video was not getting any better. So, I decide to switch to paper cut animation instead. Mr Martin also said that Idea 2 would suit paper cut more.

Final Outcome

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Reflection

To be honest, I was so done with th project when my clay kept getting ruined. It was honestly so ugly and I'm glad I decided to use papercut animation instead. Besides that, I also found out my tripd is too short to as a tand for the paper cut, so I makeshifted a tripod stand with boxes and my iPad. Honestly I am so grateful that I have an iPad because I could use that to take the pictures and have a big screen to look at them.

All in all, it was an interesting experience and I'm happy to have chosen stop motion as my medium to share about gay rights! Too bad the video was finalised after pride month though :(.