Hello Roto

I am so close to joining some kind of 'Technology is driving me bonkers' support group. If only there were such a thing.

I have been unable to fine tune any of the vids, and I am uploading what was the last draft (prior to all these PC issues) onto Facebook. What I wanted to do last week was run some filters through the VOs and fine tune the outlines, but hopefully after a good reformat I will be able to revisit all of this and fix it up, just for the sake of good craftsmanship :)

But here is a pretty close idea of what the project should look like, shy of a bit of fine tuning. For slightly higher quality versions please visit my Facebook page as the fractal noise seems to work better on there for some reason. The videos also play faster on there.

If you're on Facebook and want to be friends (lol that sounds so weird), my profile is set on private so I don't show up in the search page, but I can add you if you let me know what your details are so feel free to shoot me an email.


Title Sequence




Sleep Sequence




Bush Sequence




Underwater Sequence




Wake Sequence

BSOD and other PC Issues

I have been having PC issues this week, and what's more because I've networked my PCs, this new strain of Virtumonde has infected the 2 computers in this room through Java. It's a tricky one to remove, Norton doesn't really pick it up and the old Virtumonde fixes don't work, so it's been an uphill battle trying to clean it in Safe Mode.

I've isolated most of it on one of the PCs (the server) which has CS4 installed on it, so that PC is still functional and online. I keep having issues (freezes and crashes mainly) with CS4 as I mentioned a few months back in the discussion forum. It's also painfully slow.

I am now working off my laptop and furiously trying to backup what I have on my other beloved computer (lol), my Quad Core pride and joy. It's also the main one I have been using for this project (CS3).

Hopefully it all works out and I can get the DVD sent off for marking, but I will have to fix this crashing somehow because the functional PC doesn't like to render for too long, and I don't know if it will stay on for long enough to compress the vids.

To be continued...

Aaww...freak out!

Crunch time is drawing near. I have revised the look of my project over and over again, and now, once more.

Not being able to work out the sharpness problem I was having earlier, I have decided to just run with it by rotoscoping over what I already have, to at least give the pix some definition. It has actually saved me a lot of time because I got to shoot the footage instead of trying to create them all from scratch which I found very time consuming.

It also really helped with the sleep sequence, it gives off the filmed at night vibe, and I think it looks artistic yet believable. I'm still tinkering with the VOs and sound FX but I think I will still be able to make the deadline at this stage. I will start posting some video previews soon.

Assignment 3 - And so it begins!

I've been working on the underwater sequence this week, and I've put together a few clips so far into a 2min narrative with audio but I still need to fine tune the colour correction.

After testing this sequence as a streaming video in HD, I found that it looks rather dull. The more realistic it looks, the more dull it is. I've exaggerated a few colours as well as the brightness and contrast in some clips, and that seems to do the trick. It also isn't as sharp as I would like it to be, but because it is meant to represent a surrealist painting it doesn't really work when it's sharp. I will fine tune this as well, I'm sure I'll be able to find a happy medium.

Altogether when the clips for this sequence are arranged into a narrative it totals about 2:13sec.

To save time when rendering I've been using two networked computers, and while one renders I work on the other.

I think I should be finished with this sequence by the end of the week. I will be starting work on the title and waking sequence over the weekend, but as I have other major assessments as well I will have to juggle. Working on this project is however, far more fun than typing pages and pages of code in notepad, so I have no trouble with getting stuck into it.

Assignment 3 - Progress Report: Score by Kashi Kollective

Stephen Bellm has just granted permission for me to use music from Kashi Kollective for my project, which I am over the moon about!

I have decided to use a sample from Raga Raindrop for the title sequence so far. I'm so excited :)

For more info on Kashi Kollective visit:

The Kashi Kollective website
Kashi Kollective on MySpace
Stephen Bellm on Myspace

Title sequence comparison

The Good the Bad and the Ugly and The Island of Dr. Moreau

The similarities between the title sequences of these films are evident in the creation of composites, and the synchronisation of footage, stills, text and animation to music. Both title sequences from these films create a composite by superimposing text and animation over footage or stills, but the methods they used would have varied considerably.

In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, I think Lardani used a rostrum camera to create a travelling matte over some of the Warhol inspired screen prints from frames in the movie. For example where he uses a paintbrush to paint over some glass from the outside in, except he splices the film in reverse order to make it appear as though the paintbrush is revealing what is underneath instead of painting on the glass. He does that twice, except the 2nd time Lardani is blowing/spraying the paint onto the glass, making it look more like dust particles/sand. Rotoscoping is pretty obvious throughout the title sequence in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, especially with the horse riding in the beginning and also with the cannon at the end.

The Island of Dr Moreau uses the same compositing principles except it’s computer generated and superimposes the animated text on (many more) scenes of footage rather than stills. It also uses transitions on both layers (footage and text animations) rather than just the top layer and doesn't use rotoscoping.