#exercise 3

For this exercise, I chose to animate a picture of myself in a 1970's style. I wanted the background colors to evoke the look of retro carpets and wallpapers, and the typeface would reference posters and advertisements. An especially important detail would be recreating the look of 1970s film stock, with heightened contrast and saturation plus film projection jitter.

For my subject, I used a picture of myself at a softball game in Miami earlier this summer, and my first objective was to separate my body from the background.

To accomplish this, I imported my picture into Photoshop and used the Object Selection tool in Photoshop to select my body and duplicate it. Next, I used the Content Aware Fill feature to fill in the gap left behind.

Once I had my body and my background as two separate images, I got to work separating my arms from my body. This was a difficult process. I again used the Object Selection Tool to select and duplicate each of my arms as new layers. I then used the Content Aware Fill and Eraser tools to remove my arms from the full image of my body. Now I had a clean plate to animate on top of.

After I imported all my assets into After Effects, I used the Position and Scale tools to animate myself moving into frame along with the background. I also used the Opacity tool to have the picture's original background transition into a 1970's inspired pattern off a public domain site called Freepik.

I then used the Position tool to animate the text entering the frame, with some Motion Blur as an added touch.

https://vimeo.com/654190648

My role was the production designer. I communicated through text to schedule meet ups and encouraged communication and action. I booked out the equipment and stored it in my flat. I found and provided a filming location. I set up equipment and struck the equipment. I coordinated and fulfilled my duties as Production designer as well as the duties of other roles in order to fill in the gaps. Some challenges included attempting to balance getting things done. However, we ended up recreating the storyboard, and I directed and operated the camera, in order to get the project made.

I think that the lighting on the boy was alright - we managed to get a similar reflection off his face which was nice. The lighting on the woman needed a bit of work though, it was too much of a general wash, and we needed something more powerful to cut through it and get light on her face - there needed to be green in her moments as well.

The camera's focal length was a bit off, due to the telephoto lens used in the original, so that can be worked on. But the camera didn't wobble or shake on the tripod so at least it was steady. The frame rate was weird with the lighting as well, so I would definitely try to get a better camera if I redid this in order to fix the slight pulsing in the background of the boy.

In terms of production design, the kitchen could used a bit more dressing to make it mroe accurate - but the location in general had the same vibe I think, so at least the feel was there. The hallway wasn't ideal due to the door being on the opposite side, but the width was pretty good in terms of similarity.

I contributed by creating and filling out the Props and Costume list, creating a kit list, and taking location recce photos. I attended and participated during our meetings and communicated ideas over text as well, which included brainstorming movie scenes and facilitating role distribution.

below are the pre-production materials

Choose a photo and write! The tropier the better.