The Third & The Seventh is a CG short film about photography and architecture, with almost everything being modelled, textured, lit and created on computer, except for the photographer (shot on greenscreen), pigeons, timelapsed growing flowers, the flying airplane and sky backgrounds.

It is nevertheless a stunning display of the kinds of realism that can be achieved, perhaps by immersing the audience in the imperfection of being shot through a camera, adding lens flare, focus re-adjusting and other real-world jitters that fool your mind into thinking it must be real because there's a camera there.


Here is the completed experimental short  money.


For an experimental piece, I feel reasonably pleased with the finished result, and I think more than the final piece, I'm pleased with the way we worked as a group, with everyone putting the effort and hours in and contributing to the project. There were two obvious sides to the group with us splitting into the pixilation half and the stop-motion half, both trying different experimental ideas. I feel the culmination of the two groups worked well and came together very well. This would only have been possible with good communication between the two groups, which there was.

The topic of animation this week was experimental animation, and we were given several themes to choose from:

Growth
Dance
Conflict
Sea-life/wildlife

Once brainstorming was over, we settled on conflict, that being mental/moral conflict. But we did have a squid in it to cover sea-life too. After brainstorming we got stuck into our final idea, which evolved along the way:
Early Ideas
Set Design
Set Construction
Character Construction
Shooting

The animation was split into two parts, a material-based stop motion animation, slightly more surreal and experimental, which covered the 'real' segments of the story, and a piece on pixilation for the dream-sequence in the plot.

I was in the half of the group responsible for the pixilation sequence (there were clear cut groups but we often spoke to and influenced the other group with ideas etc, and vice-versa)
colour
Our piece was to be in black and white, but as it was shot on DSLR we shot it in colour, to give us the option later on, and more available to experiment with if we should so desire. Clothes/lighting etc were all chosen and produced with black and white in mind, i.e. contrasting clothes (white tie on black shirt / stripy robber top).

Light Tests

Test Video1
Test Video2
Here all the shots are put together, but unedited:

Black and White (iMovie) Test
Black and White (Photoshop) Test

Finally, some credits were produced for the end of the piece, and then sound effects all done by members of the group, to keep with the experimental nature of the piece.

Please see the next blog post for the completed piece and evaluation.

Credits Test
Again using DSLR here, the focus is a bit on and off as I tried to do some manipulating of it during the animation but neglected to check if it was correctly in focus beforehand.
Not bad for a little test, but the nearby window was still casting some light which led to some undue flickering. Lessons learned!

Popular Posts

  • Suzie Templeton Interview
    A Suzie Templeton interview from Don't Panic Magazine: Your adaptation of Peter and the Wolf won the Oscar for Best Animated Short F...
  • The End of University
    Wrapping up my final week at University, I finished with a satisfying First Class Honours, which has made the work seem worthwhile. ...
  • Mini Animals and Things
    Some miniatures made of polymer clay, flocking, glass bottles, all available on my Etsy Store
  • Karina's Project (Planning)
    Dividing up the scenes: Claire  - Bird flying (front)  - Bird flying (side) Gareth  - Clock (still)  - Feeding Me  - Clock (anima...
  • Mold Making Part 2
    Right, next steps, adding a pliable wire skeleton to the hand mold: A couple of drops of red and yellow ink to the latex to give it a sli...