On The Frame Blog: Week 3 – Bullet Time and an arbitrary reason to talk about Metal Gear Solid

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Week 3

 Something I found very interesting from this weeks class was the short documentary on “bullet time” and the new cinematographic tecniques that wouldn’t be possible without computers.

Interestingly during the late 90s when the technology was being developed and showcased in The Matrix films were using it to create shots that weren’t possible previously in the medium, this was also the same time period when 3D animation and 3D polygon based video games were becoming incredibly popular.

The example I’ve chosen is 1998’s Metal Gear Solid published by Konami and interestingly directed by Hideo Kojima, a game having a director is no oddity, but the difference is MGS displayed its director as would a film, it even had an opening credits sequence listing all the major developers and voice actors for characters as they appear. Throughout the games many cutscenes every effort was placed on making it as cinematic as the lowly power of the original Playstation would allow. In a 3D digital environment the camera could be placed anywhere, and move around at any speed, but Kojima chose to display it through pans, tilts and emulating trolly or crane shots.

As seen in this extract from Metal Gear Solid, the times when gameplay stops and an important story moment happens the game looks very much like a film in its camera placements.

Conversely, looking at this iconic shot of the matrix (alas in low quality .gif form) the slo-mo 360 degrees camera spin is not something that would be classed as a “film technique”, at least in the classical sense, because it would have never been possible without extensive computer work.

Ironically, a 360 degree camera spin was (and is) common place in video games, allowing the player to judge their surroundings, and give the impression that an invisible camera is tethered to the player character and not existing in any real world parallel.

So as The Matrix had real people fighting in bullet time framed from angles no real-life set could replicate, video games were trying to legitimize themselves by drawing from film and film techniques for storytelling and showing action.

On the Frame blog: Week 2 – 50 frames and the art of photographing a shoe

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Week 2

The “50 frames” assignment has been interesting: Taking 50 photos knowing 46 of them will go unused, and the 4 that will be used are for an assignment worth 0%, is a strange task as there is no real incentive to put effort into it. However despite no tangible insentive for quality I have been trying to make my 50 frames good and varied.

The question posed on the board for a blog prompt is “Reflect on methodology for the 50 frames exercise. Did you complete it all in one go? Do you remember the story on your situation each photo?”

My methodology for taking the 50 frames was to at various moments of inspiration takes some photos of anything remotely interesting in my general vicinity. My photos were captured over many days, sometimes lots in one day, other days I wouldn’t take any, towards the end I was running out of time so I began desperately taking photos of random items around my parents house where I was staying the weekend.

I remember the “story and situation” for each photo, I tried to make it interesting and unique, attempting to capture a different aspect of stuff we talked about in class or something else related to film/photography.

Some examples include my time lapse photos of me eating an apple, it’s a series of 10 photos starting with a complete apple and then a “progress shot” after each bite until its gone. I soon realized I wouldn’t be able to use this for the assessment task since the sequence was more than double the required number of photos, and making all of them part of a sequence would make it hard to write about each one.

Ever since I was a kid stop motion has fascinated me, and I would create “movies” using action figures and a webcam that would create GIFs of fight scenes I choreographed with Dragon Ball Z characters, multiple Spidermans and the occasional Lego monstrosity. In my first project brief last semester the title screen was a stop motion progress shot of a hand drawn title card, and its definitely something I would like to continue to develop my skills at.

 

On the Frame blog – Week 1 Blog post

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For my studio this semester we are required to do 1 blog post per week on a seperate blog, but we are encouarged to cross-post here so I will.

Here is the first blog.

 

Week 1

This weeks first class didn’t do too much that was worthy of a blog post, so I’ll have to stretch to reach the required 250 words.

Tuesdays tutorial involved standard introductions and overviews of the course, but also some interesting discussion on films and the notion of “frame”. Everyone in the class was asked to name their favourite film as well as a so called “guilty pleasure”.

The answers given were extremely diverse, with favourite films ranging across all genres and spanning many decades. It was noted by several students (my self included) that it was impossible to pick one film above all others, but we had many films that could all equally qualify as our “favourite” depending on what type of mood we were in.

I found some peoples answers interesting, there was the usual spread of genres that’s to be expected, but what surprised me was the appreance of very recent films, 2014 in some cases. I don’t mean to say modern film is somehow inferior, but for me to put a film/TV show/video game/song into my “top tier list” I must wait for quite a while. This is because I need to give it enough time to be comparable to others in my memory, which means re-watching others and then the new contender to “mix it in” to my psychological list of movies. I find the notion that a brand new film could instantly overtake ones you’ve held in high esteem for years an unsettling thought.

The class word association with “FRAME” was also very interesting, coming into this studio I wasn’t really sure what the term would mean in the scope of a semester’s study. The array of terms we came up with was almost everything to do with film study. I’m still not entirely sure what we’re going to learn about, but I’m excited to find out, especially Project Brief 4 and the prospect of making a 5 minute short film.

Reaching 250 words was not an issue at all, and I hope this style of writing is correct for the blog. While im at it, I commend whoevers decision it was to make a forced submission every week, it means that there wont be a repeat of last semesters industrial grade procrastination that led to me frantically finishing the required amount of Blog posts in the minutes before submission time.

Final Curated Blog Post

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These are the 5 Blog posts which I feel best represent my learning throughout this semester.

1) Relating the statement “Innovation and progress are hindered by scientific regulation” to the 2007 video game Bioshock.

This blog post was made from a prompt in week 12s lectorial, the prompt heavily reminded me of Bioshock so I related it that and gave examples of how media can give answers to physiological questions such as this.

2) Kuleshov Effect and Editing

This blog post was made in relation to a lectorial about editing, and how Media practitioners can extract emotional responses from audiences with very simple techniques. I found this very interesting, and it related heavily to Intro to Cinema Studies.

3) SYN Media training and Video

This blog post recounts my experiences at SYN media during this semester and includes a video that I helped produce. I am quite proud of my work on that video, and the media training at SYN was a great experience.

4) Mad Max: Fury Road

This blog post involves my thoughts and opinions on the recently released movie Mad Max: Fury Road. As evidenced by this post, I really enjoyed the movie, and it contains a link to an article which I found very interesting and helped explain why it was so engaging.

5) Even More Aspect Ratios: Crash Bandicoot edition

This blog post is the final peice in my extended investigation into how aspect ratios are converted onto different proportioned screens and the pros/cons of each method of conversion. The original post was based of a tutorial, but the following ones were reports of my own noticing throughout day to day life.

 

Here is my learning graph, its a bit hard to see but if you Zoom you should be able to read which is which (I didn’t have access to any coloured pens at the time of making it then I completely forgot about it)

 

My Reflection on the semester.

Its been a crazy experience moving from a small country town into a very big city, as well as the transition from a highschool of ~250 students to a University of massive proportions.

This first semester has been a great experience, and I have learned much about making media and the the theoretical work behind it. Unlike many students in this course I did not do Media or art related subjects in highschool, so much of the “basic” stuff was new to me.

For me the “lightbulb moments” were creating Project Briefs 2 and 3, where editing the footage together finally worked and it all came together as a coherent video that fit the time constraints. Also as I mentioned in the 5 Blog posts, the SYN media training which I attended in May was great and gave me new insight into working with Media.

This class (as well as Pop Culture in Everyday life and Intro to Cinema) have been extremely fun and I have met many great people and made lots of friends. Through the lectorials and tutes I have gotten a much better understanding of Media and its prevalence in the world around us. This was especially true for the activity we did early in semester where we walked around Melbourne taking note of all the media we encountered.

By far my favourite part of this semester has been Project Briefs 2 and 3 for Media 1. Making media artefacts has always been a passion of mine, and this course allowed me to do this while also giving me advanced knowledge and equipment.

I feel I learn best by doing, and many of the concepts covered in class have not become fully clear to me until I used them in practice, which helped me understand why and how they are important.

The most challenging part of this semester has been the annotated bibliographies in both Media 1 and Pop Culture in Everyday Life. Prior to university I had never had any experience making an annotated bibliography, and I found it challenging to find, read, summarise and critique scholarly articles

This first semester of University has been an amazing experience, and apart from probably not utilising the blog as much as I should have, I think I’ve done pretty well.

 

 

 

 

Project Brief 4 Reflection

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Project Brief 4 reflection.

 

Project brief 4 was the final assignment for Media 1, and was significantly bigger and more involved than project briefs 2 and 3. I feel our final project is a good, but flawed media artifact.

Unlike the previous Project Briefs, this one was a group exercise, which made me initially nervous because I usually prefer to work alone. Even more daunting was the fact that we did not get to chose our own groups, which has lead to disastrous results in the past (and talking to friends in other Media tutorials, happened there as well). However both Kristan and Ali were both great to work with, and our group functioned as an efficient team. Our group met once per week outside of class to work on the Project, which I feel was very important and allowed us to work as team much better than other groups who worked independently and combined their work at a later date.

Our group worked well and everyone stayed in regular contact and did their assigned tasks between meetings, Ali especially did incredible work on editing the footage together. We worked well as a team as both Kristian and Ali were great partners and very easy to approach with any questions or concerns. We all adhered to the collaborative contract, and there was never any serious disagreements that were not dealt with civilly and respectfully.

I feel our group worked well as a team, each having our own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Kristian was the primary writer for the script because he has a passion for writing. His first draft contained numerous errors and awkward phrases relating to gaming and gaming culture because he is not involved, this is where me and Ali helped him re-phrase it to sound more knowledgably and cleared up some factual mistakes relating to release dates and other miscellaneous facts.

Originally we had not much of an idea on how to approach the topic of “Mediums”, or how much work was expected from this Project. Our initial idea was a website that showcased the history and differences of many different mediums, with each part being portrayed in the medium it was about.

We were very excited and enthusiastic about this idea, but as seen in THIS blog post, it was quickly and brutally shot down. However upon later reflection I can see that a Media artifact of this magnitude would have been impossible to complete in the time we had available.

Our final idea was to focus entirely on the medium of Video Games (which originally was going to be 1/4th of our project) and create a 5-6min video in the style of the ABC television program “Good Game” that looked at how video games were influenced by, and incorporate different mediums to become a new and unique medium.

I feel we succeeded in making it look similar to “Good Game” in the setup of the set and how the camera worked, switching from a wide shot with both of us, to close ups of our face talking to each other. We could also use footage of the videogames to cover up continuity errors. Over the several weeks following slowly developed the idea, making several prototype scripts and trying out different ways to film it.

The feedback we received in class was reassuring that we were headed in the right direction, and provide useful feedback to improve our final artifact. An example of this was Rachel suggesting adding the quotes from scholars as on-screen prompts, to add visual flair and help people see who was saying it, and where it was published.

I’m am reasonably happy with our final artifact, I cant think of many ways we could have improved it, but I feel the design wasn’t the best choice for our topic. Making our video in a similar style to “Good Game” and simultaneously quoting scholarly references did not mesh well in my opinion. I wish we had to opportunity to be more creative, but we were limited by time and having to cite scholarly research. My major gripe with this semesters project briefs is that each media artifact I have produced has been either about me, someone else or a thing in a factual way, I am much more comfortable making purely fictional media.

I am proud of our groups work, especially when I hear about the internal problems that plagued some of my friends groups, and although in retrospect I wish we could have taken a different route, I feel our artifact is well made and conveys its message well. This Project Brief has helped my perception of group work, as well as looking into the scholarly work done in the field of media.

2 Hour video talking about the cinematography of Mad Max: Fury Road

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As you may remember from THIS blog post, I really enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road. During my travels of the internet I came across this video, in which cinematographer John Seale talks about the making of the film

I found it very interesting and ended up watching all 2 hours of it.

 

Making of Mad Max: Fury Road from ACS Victoria with John Seale ACS ASC and David Burr ACS from ACS Victoria on Vimeo.

Even more aspect ratios: Crash Bandicoot edition.

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Continuing on from my previous “noticing” on aspect ratios and how they are dealt with when they are transformed (Blog posts found HERE and HERE) I continued noticing and reporting my findings.

This time it is to do with video games, specifically playing games designed for 4:3 on a very different screen.

First the background infomation. Crash Bandicoot was released in 1996 for the Playsation. However it is playable on Playstation 2 and 3’s via internal emulation of the old hardware. In addition to being able to put the disc in a newer console, you can also purchase a digital version from the Playstation Store to play on a Ps3 or a portable PSP/PsVita.

The topic at hand is playing a ps1 game (in this case Crash Bandicoot) on a PsVita: The PsVita has rectangular screen that is wider than even a 16:9 TV, so putting a 4:3 image onto will cause trouble.

You are given several options, each with their own upsides and downsides.

This is the “Original” setting, which is a pixel for pixel copy of the original image, it is perfectly proportioned and is not cropped at all. However as you can see, it doesnt even reach the edges of the screen either horizontally OR vertically and the image is tiny, especially when its already on a handheld device.

This is the “normal” setting, which stretches the “Original setting” until it hits the edge of the screen. due to it being 4:3 on a very wide display, it obviously hits the top first. This version is still un-cropped and in proportion, but it is bigger than the other option. The only downside is that the image has been expanded, but is no clearer, but this is negligible on such a small scale, especially for a 1997 game which was always jaggy and pixely.

 

This is the “Fullscreeen option” which enlarges the image until it hits the left/right edges of the screen. While it does make it the biggest option, an incredible amount of screen space has been cropped off to make it fit the PsVita’s rectangular screen. Even on the title screen menu options have disapered and if you were to actually play the game, some sections would be impossible because Crash Bandicoot himself would be off-screen.

 

The final option is “Stretch”, while the others have all kept the same proportions for the screen and copmonsating with either cropping or blackspace, this option stretchs the image horizontally to both keep everything in frame AND fill the screen. No detail is lost, but everything is enlongagted sideways. This is easier to see in gameplay, where “square” boxes become obvious rectangles.

 

 

 

As a consumer of media who is mindful of aspect ratios and altering the original artwork I am extremly glad Sony allows these options. For this particular incident I will always choose “Normal” since the proportions are correct and nothing is cropped, although sometimes I get pandantic and revert to “Original” for the 1:1 pixel recreation of the 90s.

 

 

Looking at other peoples drafts

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In Thursday 28th of May’s tutorial part of the class was showing prototype Brief 4’s to Rachel and the class.

The feedback we received for our artefact was already discussed in another blog post, but I also found it very interesting to see other groups.

All the groups took vastly different approach to making a media artefact, some were Websites or blogs (similar to our original concept), or videos (our final concept) or audio only.

One that stood out to me was the group that made a video on the classification board. It was done in a documentary style and was very informative and well put together.

Minutes for Project Brief 4 – final class

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Minutes for meeting 7.

  • We met in class and shared the music/sound effects we had found over the week and decided which to put into the final video. We now have background music, “whoosh” sound effects for transitions and a “rumble” followed up by a thunderclap for the HEAD TO HEAD logo.
  • In class today we showed our prototype brief to the class, and Rachel gave us feedback:
  • The feedback was good, with the only advice being to put some of the scholarly quotes/references on screen to make it more clear, and to add more visual stimulus.

Over the weekend the sound effects will be added to the video, as well as the on-screen text for quotes and names of which game is currently being shown etc…

 

As well as organise annotated bibliography and the rest of the dossier ready for submission on thursday.