no_money

I finished the skating part of this shot a while ago. I'd love to go back and clean it up but I've got too many other shots still to do. That's the problem with animating like this. You never get to the look that you're truly happy with until most of the film is practically finished.

The second part of this shot was a beast to do because of the varying frame rates and motion tracking. I had to really finesse it to make it all look like it was running at 12 fps and at the same time because it's actually at 29.97. But I like the shot. I still need to make some minor adjustments to when the outlines of people start tracking to the wall but it's almost there.

This is definitely the finished look for the interviewee though. I've only done 2 other sections of interview so I might go back and redo those to look more like this section.

technical difficulties

I don't trust Adobe Premiere at all. Never have. Never will. Today I loaded up my project and all of my footage (interview, skate and city) was unlinked. Basically that means the software thinks it's gone. I was able to manually relink the footage but it took a long time and was kind of a pain in the ass cause I had to go across all my hard drives and find the footage. Usually when footage gets unlinked you can find just one clip and Premiere will find the rest on it's own. Not this time. I had to do each one individually.

I also use a combination of Quicktime and AVI files. Now when I load up Premiere it tells me that it can not load some of the AVI files because the original clips no longer fit the same format, i.e. they no longer have sound. Which is bullshit because if you open the clips they play with sound in the Media Player.

This also meant the majority of my previews were gone so I had to re-render the entire film.

Life may now continue but I still don't trust Adobe Premiere.

stuff

I went to the Red Cat the other night to see the best of the Platform show. It was pretty good. There was an amazing motion graphics film by Josh Raskin called I Met the Walrus. I highly recommend it. But this piece was outside in the lobby.




Since I don't drive anymore I've had a chance to survey my surroundings a little more closely. It's amazing how much stuff is all over the place in my neighborhood. I just never noticed it when I was driving.

paul_can_1

So I finished another shot. I tried something new for this shot and I hope it wasn't a big waste of time. I've had a couple people suggest that I add some variation to the roto style. I've been ignoring those suggestions up until now because I chose the style that I have been using for a very specific reason (I'll write more about that reason later). I had to try it though because it's better to know something isn't going to work then to wonder what if. But as of right now I doubt I'm going to use this version of the shot.

map_zoom_star

In certain areas of the film I felt that it was better to create some sort of visual representation of what was being spoken about. In this shot I pan and zoom around the city as Paul talks about certain landmarks and their relationship to each other. The shot ends at Freedom Plaza to show just how close it is to everything else downtown.

1shot_timed_ae

This is the first shot of skating in the film. I did adjust the timing of the shot a little. Right now it looks somewhat jarring because it happens almost immediately. But I keep saying there is going to be an intro of sorts that brings the viewer into the city. An intro should give me enough time to establish looks and reveal some subtle visual trickery that I intend to do throughout the film. So by the time we get to this shot it should be old news.

The first line of dialogue also appears over top of this shot on the right side. I'm not completely happy with the roto job though. It was the first attempt at rotoing the interview footage so the style is pretty rough.

wall rides

I have two wall rides rotoed. The second one in the film leaves a stencil on the wall because it coincides with a crucial point in the interview where Paul is talking about skaters adapting to the city. I haven't decided if the first wall ride is going to leave a stencil though. I'd rather he leave black wheel marks on the wall and white marks on the metal. But that's a tracking battle beyond just tacking a frame up there.

236x

I'm pretty happy with how this shot turned out. I did some sound design tests on this shot as well. If I go that route I'll definitely need to look into getting some help.