D&AD; Black Holes Moodboard

I decided to design a mood board to try spark some new inspiration to help develop our ideas. One thing that came to mind whilst I was thinking of comedy on the subject space etc is Monty Python's Galaxy Song. It bring a light hearted approach to something considered by many as quite a dry topic whilst still communicating the facts perfectly. This is ideally what I feel we should aim to do. The comedy grabs there attention whilst the facts are sub consciously implanted in the mind.

My thereoies on the Big Bang, Black Holes and creationism

OK so to claim this theory as purely my own would be preposterous. However I have not as yet come across this theory in plain black and white before, It is merely a mish-mash of two ideas both widely believed by the population of this planet. Going on all the information I have taken on board throughout my 20 year biological existence, I have reason to believe that what we is the way in which we came to be. Before you read this I would like to make you all perfectly aware that I've spent the majority of my life an atheist. After being christened a roman catholic I investigated the meaning behind its beliefs and then its history, I was horrified with what I found. So I set out on a subconscious quest for knowledge and this is what I managed to come up with...

If the big bang theory is simply a means of explaining the birth of our universe then what was the cause of the big bang? Many physicists will claim an immense amount of heat and pressure that had reached critical mass and therefore could no longer be contained. But what caused this immense amount of heat and pressure? Well the only thing we can observe in our known universe that even comes close to this amount of energy is a point of singularity, in other words the centre of a black hole. However it would appear that the heat and pressure equivalent to even the largest black hole in our universe (18 billion times the mass of our sun) is merely a fraction of the energy contained within the point of singularity moments before the occurrence of the big bang. Why is this the case? Well our universe is still in a period of mass expansion, in fact it will be billions of years in the future until it will enter a period of contraction. It is at this point that many of the Universes super massive black holes will have merged to create black holes of unimaginable proportions. From here on in the knock-on effect would become more apparent, as many physicists agree on the fact that a black holes magnitude can only multiply and can not be stopped, therefore it is merely a matter of time until the entire universe is devoured by black holes. Immediately after the entire previous universe has been consumed there is the birth of a new one, and so on and so forth. A near recurrence of events, exploring every possible eventuality imaginable before starting over. A kind of reincarnation of the universe itself.

OK so this isn't enough for most physicists. It's like posing to them the question about which came first, the chicken or egg. If you ask a biologist this question you will simply get the answer... neither, it occurred over millions of years of evolution. So why can't the same be said about the universe developing over trillions of years whilst it goes through the theorised stages of expansion and contraction? Unfortunately this is not a satisfactory answer to many physicists as it leaves room for speculation from the creationists.

On what facts can anyone person state that whatever causes a point of singularity to develop into the vast expanse of our known universe only to shrink back down into an object smaller than yourself, a process that seems to reoccur over and over in a seemingly endless cycle could not be the experiment of supreme being(s)? After all look at how far we've developed in such a short space of time in comparison to the time scale of the existence of our universe. We have developed an understanding of how and what we are and how life came about. If we were to live for the same amount of time as even the length of our own planet, think of what we could develop in this amount of time.

D&AD; Black Holes, Mark's After Effects work

This is an for the idea level of production intended for the motion graphics we plan to use for much of this short animation on the topic of black holes. Good work Mark!

D&AD; Black Holes research,

D&AD; Black Holes research

The 3D work on this at the beginning is the the way I imagined the animation to be for our piece on black holes. We would have to find a way of presenting this information in a way that would be appealing to kids of 8-14. This is going to be the most difficult part.

D&AD; Black Holes research

An very good idea but not the sort of thing that we have to do.

D&AD; Initial thoughts on black holes

After some initial brainstorming I felt we weren't quite at the stage to begin storyboarding. I decided the best thing to do was to compare the three main parts that I see as being key in the development of a solid structure to a storyline. Given the nature of the intended outcome of the brief I feel the beginning, concept and degree of intelligence required to understand the content as being the most important factors that will decide the course that this story will take. The ideas proposed are the ones I felt showed most possible in further developing into strong ideas. The aim of this is to find qualities and weaknesses of possible takes we could have on each idea.

D&AD Brief; Black Holes

When I decided to choose this brief I figured it would be a good chance to flex my Maya and After Effects skills. However since then it has become apparent there is to be an additional member to the team, therefore it seems that this will no longer be the case. I feel that Dave is much more highly skilled in Maya than myself. With Dave and James showing a lack of interest in developing the concept and ideas and being more focused on creating the finished animation. It became a group decision that Graham and I assumed the jobs of Writing and Directing the 90 second animation.

D&AD Brief; I have chosen a brief

I after much consideration, (actually I lie.) After listening to the song for the music video brief I have decided to go with the Black Holes brief. The first time I heard the song it wasn't so bad, however the second and third times that I heard it, I started to feel like shooting myself. This is not what you want if it's something that would have to be listened to over and over again. This isn't the only reason for my choice however.

I feel my prior knowledge on this topic combined with my basic After Effects and Maya skills should make a good contribution towards the production of an educational animation on the topic of black holes.

D&AD; Choosing a brief

When first given the list of possible live briefs to choose from I was able to narrow it down straight away in two possible candidates. The first of which is one that I can see been very popular as I feel it would be the easiest to tackle and possibly the most interesting out of the choices I also had a high interest this area and began looking into the production of music videos as a possible career oppurtunity.

My other choice is within an area that has been of great interest to me since my earliest memories. The Black holes brief would give me a chance to expand on my current knowledge of Maya and After Effects whilst at the same time I can be sure it is not something I am likely to loose interest in. The only thing I am skeptical about is figuring out how to communicate this message to a younger audience.

Thoughts on the finished piece.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the final piece but to be honest I don't think I ever will be. No point in trying to edit it any more I think in order to not loose any more marks I'm best just burning it to disk now. I've got to moan about the sound as well, I don't feel the time or effort put in to composing the sound really reflects that what has been put in to editing and composting video, I think in my own time I will definitely come back to write my own music for this project. I feel this is the main thing that brings this project down, Sadly it's Alex's only notable contribution towards the post production work. I hope that the tutor's can be reasonable when marking this after all the setbacks and problems I have making this finished video look something like I imagined.

Compatibility Issues

I have encountered many compatibility prolems with codecs in this project. From the Final Cut footage not playing on my PC even though I have Quicktime pro, I managed to get around this by exporting the Final Cut footage in a Mpeg 4 codec. However I don't think anything could have prepared me for what happened earlier. Just when I thought we would be ready to hand in, I discovered all my maya scenes were not compatible with Mac's, the best I could do was export with a watermark right through it. Most other mac's wouldn't even view the AVI file at all. I also came across a problem with the footage I had rendered form Maya. The 3D scenes were rendered to AVI, I have since found out that AVI is like a cover for the hidden codec which was created on windows therefore it is in a WMV format. To overcome this I tried exporting the 3D scenes first at uni however Mayas liesence wasn't installed so this was a no go. I had no other shoice but to render it out agen on my incredibly slow PC. Mike suggested exporting the scenes as single Tiff images, however I couldn't find a way of putting these images together as this would take forever to do frame by frame in After Effects. So I decided to overcome this problem by using After Effects to render all the 3D scenes out converting the AVI scenes in to one MOV file, this had the hidden codec of H.264 in HD1080p. I expected this to have completely sorted out the codec problem however in reality it meant that I had to composit the the zoom scene of the animation once again.

NXT Evaluation

Optional Pathway - Evaluation

This project hasn't exactly gone according to plan. Alex and I started out with the best intentions for this brief as we both planned to use this piece of work in our Port Folios. However it must be said that towards the end the workload was rather unevenly shared between us. Due to Alex’s work commitments I found myself completing the majority of the 3D and post-production work. This was the main reason I instructed Alex to produce the sound otherwise apart from helping me film he would have no creative input in the production of the final piece. I found myself often waiting about for a convenient time that Alex was able to come help me film. This is the reason why I feel Alex became a strain on the progress of work. Having said that, this only applies to the period after the given deadline had passed. I felt as though I was the only driving force by the end having taken on many roles from director to cameraman and editor to compositor. If I had known this would be the case I would have opted to do this project alone, as it is clear to see that if I hadn’t put in the hours then none of this would have happened. Before this however we were equally intent on producing a professional standard of work.

Alex started the project off by building up the Lego Mindstorms NXT in its humanoid form. This took somewhere in the region of three to four hours, much longer than originally estimated. Even at this early stage in the project it became apparent that this would be more time consuming than first considered. Never the less we decided to follow the original plan of filming the NXT in stop frame animation showing it building up piece by piece then rotating and showing each sensor accordingly, filming all this in front of green screen so that the background could be edited out afterwards, this would later be composited with the 3D work we planned to do with the logo in Maya. We planned to get filming right away, Alex and I managed to get a green screen test shot done before the criteria, using only the ceiling lights in the AV suite, this came out much better than expected however the shadow was hard to key out without loosing the quality of film. Matt from the AV suite suggested creating a sort of green screen podium to stand the NXT on so that when we filmed it there wouldn't be as much shadow because it would be raised and straight on towards the camera. He also suggested lighting it with the spotlight however early research had shown that the shiny plastic of the NXT caused too much glare from the reflection. We took Matt's advice on board and decided to attempt lighting the NXT differently, using two spotlights from either side to reduce shadows and a modeling light on the front to define the NXT. I looked at some suitable materials that could be used for a possible green screen podium and came up with a large industrial tub of mayo. This gave us the idea of rotating the NXT using a motor hidden inside the green screen podium however after much time spent creating it the green screen podium failed on several fronts. This was a case of trial and error although a colossal waste of time it seemed liked a good idea before hand. This wasn't the only time wasting we did in this project, a week or so after we were handed the brief I had started building the Mindstorms logo in Maya block by block I managed to get it finished a few hours later only to find Alex doing the same pain staking work I had just been doing. This is time that could have much better spent. That aside, it was even before the interim criteria that some availability issues with the NXT became apparent. This became more of a problem when the discovery was made that there was only one full NXT kit. The lack of equipment can most definitely be the number one factor in causing the failure to meet the deadline. As the end of the project approached it became a case of everyman for himself which determined who managed to get their final shoot done with time to edited it still leftover, unfortunately Alex and I were a amongst a few others who were left out to dry. I wouldn't have been too fussed about this if we hadn't made the effort however this was not the case. We had carefully planned this out leaving countless notes on the NXT stating we planned to commence filming the following day and for anyone using the NXT could they please return it by then, these were ignored every single time. The inconsideration of others in this project made getting the required equipment needed to film nearly impossible. From here on in we were constantly having setbacks. From Alex having trouble exporting anything from Maya to the modeling light disappeared when we actually managed to track down the NXT. This meant that when we were able to film the NXT for the final time it was lit properly from the front making the footage a nightmare to key out leaving us with such poor quality footage it would simply be embarrassing to hand in, frankly we were both absolutely gutted after having such high expectations for this brief, especially after receiving praise from Annabeth in the interim criteria.

After missing the deadline I took it upon myself to try and redeem the project by hiring out all of the required equipment the following day. This meant that we had a good few weeks to shoot and edit over Christmas, it was when I told Alex I had done so that he explained how he was working practically all Christmas and new year working right up to weekend of the 4th January. Never the less I built up the NXT and completed all of the 3D work. Alex reminded me how to track cameras in Maya giving me the required skills to materialize my idea of having the camera track through the 'S' of the Mindstorms logo rotating, panning and finally zooming out unveil the logo. I made sure all this work was done over the Christmas period so we would be ready to film on Monday 5th January. I also experienced rendering issues with Maya, often crashing an hour or two into rendering, I overcame this problem eventually by rendering clips of no more than five seconds at a time pending on how long the camera tracking animation was. To cut down on unnecessary rendering time I decided the best thing to do was to time map in After Effects and stretch the length of footage to compensate for the time where the camera is not being tracked, this worked much better. Unfortunately when we came to film we where greeted with yet more technical difficulties, we spent hours trying to log and capture live footage yet every time we tried Alex's version of Final Cut unexpectedly quit. after exhausting every possible technique we decided to call it a day. The following day we shot all the footage on to film and fortunately I was able to get into the AV Suite in order to capture the footage. At this point Matt explained about changing one of the settings in >Audio/visual to a non controllable device, this was because the footage we shot on film still wasn't as good as it could have been. We tried this technique yet still Final Cut quit on us. So we decided to record in Imovie, it seemed to work OK but I was unable to view the footage on my computer and therefore unable to edit it at home. So the following day I managed to sneak into our room despite it being closed except for third years. It was here that I discovered that all of the footage recorded in Imovie was of an incredibly poor quality. I decided to make do with the footage we filmed to tape earlier in the week, this is why the lighting is different from each angle however adjusting the color balance and adding a block dissolve helped blend the separate pieces of footage together. I spent countless hours over the weekend compositing the film footage with the 3D work from Maya, often having to scale and position footage frame by frame in order to obtain a fairly smooth motion. My main regret in this project would be choosing to film in front of green screen. The shiny nature of the NXT made it pain to light so it was bright enough to key out yet not too bright so that the NXT wouldn't reflect too much of the green. In all I'm not entirely satisfied with the final footage however I feel I have done the best job I possibly could given the circumstances. A major crippling factor for me in this project has been compatibility between film exported from Final Cut and my PC. Fortunately I plan to invest in a Mac in the near future so soon issues like this should become a thing of the past. I explored a wide range of areas of specialty in this brief, I have decided that directing is not an area for me to go into, I have enough trouble motivating myself sometimes never mind ensuring others do their share of the work. After all I have said about the downsides of this project it has taught me a few vital lessons for the future, I have also found that I have an interest in working in compositing 3D footage and film together, although it can be one of the most frustrating jobs at times it is by far the most rewarding.

Filming the NXT program and sounds

Alex had tried to find a program that could record what's happening on screen and mananged to find one, only to find it was full of spyware. So before Alex goes to work tonight I asked him to bring his laptop down so I can record the NXT program in action. I have also recorded the sounds and started to edit them in logic when the battery died. Not to worry we have tomorrow afternoon to produce the sound, apart from this all I have to do is write the evaluation tonight and then burn everything to disk.

Compositing film and 3D animation in After Effects

First of all I started by keying out the green screen. After I had erased all of the green I masked out any bits that didn't key out well. Now I am left with just the NXT visible with no background. I did this for both pieces of footage and the tried to blend them accordingly using colour correction effects such as colour balance and hue and saturate. This was quite difficult as the lighting wasn't exactly the same so it was hard to blend. It soon became apparent that it was never going to look quite right. I decided to overcome this by adding and a block dissolve to the footage to give the effect that the NXT is like a holographic image that isn't materializing properly. When I put the 3D backround benind NXT footage it seemed to all fall into place. The only difficult and by far the most time consuming part was editing the photo of the NXT to move with the animation, it was a case of scaling and postioning frame by frame. After this it was just a case of scale the film to fit with the animation, this went smoothly as it was as simple as I had first imagined.

Errm... A little Help would be nice

Alex is working the next three nights in a row now so I can expect no help what so ever. Alex works until the early hours of the morning so he tends to sleep all day becoming sort of nocturnal, anyway this means that I am basically not going to see him now until Monday. This is very convenient for him because as he knows we planned to have this project in for Monday in order not to lose any more marks. This means that if there's any chance of handing this in first day back then I will have to do all the post production work myself. To be honest if I had known this was going to happen I would have worked alone from the start. I'm also starting to wonder just how much creative input Alex will actually have towards the final piece of this group project. I think it's fair enough if Alex wants to work for a bit of extra cash but when he's expecting me to do his share of the work well I think he needs to get his priorities sorted out. I will just do it this time without kicking up too much fuss however this only because we can't afford to keep losing extra marks. The only thing I can think of to get Alex involved in the final piece is by giving him the job of producing the sound, he has logic on his Mac so it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Cutting out in Photoshop to get a full view of the NXT

At first we were unsure how we would get a full size front view of the NXT to put at the point that the animation first comes across the NXT. The only method I could think of is using is an image that could be cut out in Photoshop using the the lasso tool. After doing this I took the still image of the nxt into After Effects to try match it up with the other footage. The lighting wasn't the same so I decided to take the image back into photoshop and use the dodge/burn/sponge tool along with the curves to try match it at much a possible to the othe footage.

Things aren't looking so good

After going into college to edit the final footage early today I discovered that the footage shot in Imovie didn't key out nicely. Because of this we will just have to make do with the footage we already have. Furthermore, because we chose to to re-shoot it yesterday it's meant that all the editing and compisiting will have to be done on over the weekned on my PC. This I can see being a nightmare as it is incredibly slow, All I can do is hope for the best in order to get this in on monday morning. Anyway I've edited the footage filmed to tape on tuesday this can be seen below;

The Final Shoot

Alex and I figured we had put so much time into this already that it was worth one last chance to get the lighting perfect. Especially seen as it appeared Final Cut didn't work properly due to one hidden away setting that we would have never of suspected. So we set to work filming one final shoot. It wasn't long before we realised that the non-controllable device wasn't the cause for Final Cut unexpectantly quitting. We were about to give up and just start compositing the footage from the previous shoot when Alex suggested using Imovie to capture the live footage. To our amazement it was incredibly simple to capture live HD footage. We couldn't understand why it worked so well with Imovie yet didn't seem to work at all in Final Cut. Anyway we filmed it all again in Imovie and all the lighting looked much better than any previous shoot we had done. I tried editing this in After Effects on my PC but I couldn't seem to open it fully. I'm going to go into college tomorrow morning to edit it and turn into a regonizable format for my PC.

How many times have we filmed this now?

I took the footage shot yesterday into college this morning and managed to capture it. The quality of footage after keying out the green screen is rather good in the rotating sequence however the walk cycle is only just acceptable. We weren't strict enough with the lighting so the two pieces of footage don't match up completely. I also explained the trouble we had been having with Final Cut to Matt, he suggested changing the audio/visual settings to a non-controllable device. If that doesn't work then it's most probably an issue with Alex's Mac apparently.

Possible final footage filmed today

Final Cut is still refusing to let us long and capture live footage so we've had to film to tape. I think this footage should have come out nicely because there has been a strong sun today giving us the ideal lighting conditions. I will not be sure of this however until I take this footage in to After Effects. Fingers crossed, I should be able to find out tomorrow as long as the AV suite is available.

Rendered 3D animation

After trying over and over agin to export my Maya animation in one 45 second I began to realize my computer couldn't handle that sort of work. So I decided export scenes with footage no longer than 5 seconds maximum. I already had the first scene done so it was just a case of rendering of four more scenes. I also knew that I was able to map this animation in After Effects, this cut down on render time which always a great bonus when your computer likes to render at an average of one frame a minute.

If worst comes to worst... We will have to record to tape

Since we made the discovery that we are unable to capture live footage into Final Cut I have been worrying about how we're going to get this filmed. I remebered the other day that I have a few old DV tapes knocking about from previous projects. I am prepared to try Final Cut once more but if we still have no look it appears we will just have to film to tape and hope the AV Suite is open next week. Although this offers a solution it is still not exactly ideal. It is difficult to determine just how well the green screen will key on a tiny camera screen plus this will envolve trekking back and forth to college all the time. I guess if worst to comes worst we will just have to make do with the resources we have.