Amelia Fell – 12th February to 15th March

Week one – An introduction to the use of sound in animation and watching several animated short films that use sound in interesting ways. Also an introduction to the technique of Pixilation; posing actors frame by frame to create a stop motion film. A brief on the film we should create and thinking about the sound effects we could use in interesting ways. I made a list of the effects I wanted to use and searched through websites such as BBC Sounds and FreeSound.org to find appropriate sounds and downloaded them.

Introduction on how to use Adobe Audition to edit sounds which I wrote down as a cheat sheet in my note book to refer to later. Also a lesson on how to use microphones to record our own sound, which we did in small groups by doing mock-interviews. We then wandered around the building recording sounds that we could use in our films, such as footsteps, sounds in the library and the ambience of the lifts. We also re-named and organised all the sound files into folders to keep track of them.

Week two – I edited together my chosen sounds to make a sound scape that suggested a story using ambience and train sounds. More Adobe Audition, how to export the finished sound scape and edit the sound levels to make sure it is at its best quality. We also looked at how to record sound directly from Audition and edit it to remove background noises. Also made a mind map inducing plans for lighting, visuals and camera and sounds and audio.

Also looked into some post editing techniques we could use in After Effects on the films to make them better such as masking, using silhouettes and adding effects like colour changing and shadows. Looked at using a stop motion app on our phones in groups and experimented with using it to film pixilation such as walk cycles etc. Finally we looked at Adobe Premier Pro (which I made a cheat sheet on how to use) and made a short story board using pictures synched to our sound scape’s.

Week three – Looked at more effects in After effects such as transitions. Made a rough shot list of things shots to film. Also looked at how to use Rotoscoping in Tv Paint by drawing over pre-filed footage to capture human movements.

I took some photos of train stations to use as references to create the backgrounds and begun to work on that, however I decided instead to use actual photographs as the background instead.

*tried to film some stuff but could not.

Week four – re-made my story board to make it shorter and easier to film/edit. Re-filmed some scenes during the weekend and started to work on them using rotoscoping in TV Paint. Also looked into some post editing techniques we could use in After Effects on the films to make them better such as transitioning between shots with L vs J cuts, using the effect Posturize time and changing footage from coloured to black and white.

Week five – Continued to work on the scenes by animating scenes filmed using pixilation (like a low shot of a character walking across the frame and walking down stairs) also began to animate some other scenes.

Had a showing where we looked at everyone’s films (mine was not ready at that time)

Continued to work on the film.