Unit 19 Evaluation

Digital Graphics was an entirely new experience for me as I only had very basic knowledge of Photoshop. Working on this unit helped me become more familiar with other Adobe software as well as Blogger.

 

One of the tasks, which we had to maintain all throughout the unit, was to have a blog and update it regularly. I had never used Blogger before, although I had visited other blogs but have never had one of my own. Blogger is very interesting to use and to portray one’s work and opinions but it does have some limits when it comes to editing the blog posts.

 

For the first task of this unit, we were required to create an infographic explaining different keywords used in the digital graphics field. Initially, I had no idea what an infographic was and through research I found some very interesting ones. This task also helped me to further my knowledge of Photoshop, especially when using the Pen Tool.

 

In the other tasks, we had to research, design and create the mediacast blog in groups. I think that we worked quite well as a group with good communication between us all throughout the task. This task also helped us to get to know more about mediacast and other students who are part of it. I thoroughly enjoyed creating the banners and posters although I found some difficulty initially because I was out of ideas. However, once I knew what to do,  I enjoyed creating them and I am very satisfied with the results.

 

Other elements in this unit which I found very useful were learning how to use the clone tool to retouch old photos and then colour them using brushes. Through online research, I also found tutorials which helped me to create my mediacast blog posters using filters in Photoshop.

 

Something that up till now, I have not been able to grasp well, is how to use Adobe Illustrator. I managed quite well during the tutorials in class, but when it came to working and creating something of my own, I did not really succeed. I hope to better my knowledge of Illustrator by practicing it more in the summer holidays.

 

Overall, it was quite an enjoyable unit, although the first time I read the brief I thought that it was going to be very difficult for me. However, in the end, I think I managed quite well and I will find the things I learnt very helpful in the future as I now also have basic knowledge in creating digital graphics.

Advertisement Production Evaluation

Now that the final advertisement is ready, we gave out questionnaires to some people to collect feedback and evaluate it. Here below are some of the filled in questionnaires that we collected.

Advertisement DVD cover

Here is the DVD cover I designed for the Advertisement Production assignment we had this semester. I used Photoshop and some screen shots and photos taken during filming.

Advertisement Production Pre-Production

Treatment

The production team has finally agreed to work on an audio-visual advert for the book “The Encyclopedia of Hollywood; An A-Z Guide to the stars, stories, and secrets of Hollywood”. We plan to introduce a variety of Hollywood personalities impersonated by actors who are inspired by their looks and styles, whilst representing different roles in the Media Industries. The actors are to be filmed in one location featuring a black background, standing individually in different shots. The location will be mostly dark using just one redhead to light one side of each actor to create the effect of over-exposed highlights and shadows. Most shots are going to resemble popular scenes from Hollywood, each having their own signature props and music tunes. Finally we plan to end our advert with an effective caption and details of where the book can be bought from.

Script

Storyboard

Inital Storyboard

Final Storyboard

Production Schedule

Location Recce

As a location, we studied two different ones; a garage and a stage at Mgarr. We decided to use the stage for the simple reason that we would not disturb anyone when using it and for the fact that there was already a black screen in place. It is located in Sala Dun Edgar, Oratorju Qalb Bla Tebgha ta' Marija, Mgarr.

Risk Assessment

Crew

Producer/Director/Location Scouting/Props/Actors - Maria Vella

Camera Operator/Music Production - Josef Cohen

Make-Up/Props - Jessica Catania

Scriptwriter/Gaffer/Key Grip/Risk Assessment/Editor - Luke Zammit

Actors

The Godfather - Jason Vella

Mary Poppins - Alison Vella

Charlie Chaplin - Stefano Vella

Elvis Presley - Chris Deguara

Walt Disney - Mario Sammut

Audrey Hepburn - Ema Camilleri

Laurel - Stefano Vella

Hardy - Clayton Gauci

Marilyn Monroe - Nathalie Vella

With thanks to Anthea Vella for the help provided on the shooting day

MediaCast Blog; Final Design Proposals (Task 3)

I approached this task by creating 3 different Design Proposals, each having a matching Poster, Banner and Colour Scheme. The idea is that when people see the poster and then enter the blog and see the banner and colour scheme, they can associate them all together.

Design Proposal 1

Banner

In the first banner I created two lighting effects from both corners using filters in Photoshop. This light is coming down on the mediacast logo, to which I added some inner bevel to create the illusion of the light on the letters.

Poster

I created the same lighting effect on the mediacast logo as I used in the banner. Then I added the sticky note and I wrote "What's new with". The idea behind this was that MCAST first introduced the media courses, then mediacast was born, and then the programme "Int Min Int" started being produced. So now, what's new with mediacast? The mediacast blog. I used the caption "Your Blog" because this poster is aimed at the mediacast students, who will be using the blog, so it is really and truly their blog.

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme is composed of colours which are all found in the poster and banner. They will be used as follows; Black for the Background, White for the text, Blue for the Post Title and Yellow for the Links and Labels. The fonts used will be the same as those used here in my personal blog; Gruppo for the Post Title and Calibri for all the other text to create as a professional look as possible.

Design Proposal 2

Banner

This is the only banner I kept from the previous 3 banners; I discarded the other two. As I explained in the previous blog post, I created this banner by using a screenshot from the filming for our advertisement and adding some filters and adjustments. Finally I added the mediacast logo at the top left corner.

Poster

In this poster I took a photo of someone with the mediacast tshirt and I cropped it as I wanted to. I then selected the neck and the arm and created a layer via copy. I desatureated it and used a smart blur filter to get the outlines and I then used the invert adjustment. Finally I used the pen tool to create a stroke path and get a more visible outline. I used the same caption I used in the previous poster; Your Blog. Coming Soon.

Colour Scheme

In this color scheme I used the black and white and the colours found in the MCAST logo; green and gold. The colours will be used as in the previous colour scheme. Black for the Background, White for the text, Green for the Post Title and Yellow for the Links and Labels. The proposed fonts here are also Gruppo and Calibri.

Design Proposal 3

Banner

Since one can access the mediacast blog only from a laptop or a computer, I took a photo of a media student with a laptop (which is also used in the poster below), adjusted the brightness and added the text to create my final blog banner.

Poster

I used the same photo I used in the banner and again adjusted the brightness. Finally I added the same caption I used in all of my posters; Your Blog. Coming Soon.

Colour Scheme

I based this colour scheme on black, light brown, blue/green and turquoise as I think that they are colours which go very well together. The black will again be used for the background, this time the text will be in light brown, the Post Title in Blue/Green and the links and labels in Turquoise. I always used a bright colour for the links and labels so they stand out from the normal text. The fonts are Gruppo and Calibri also in this third and final proposal.

MediaCast Blog; Colour Schemes (Task 3a)

These are the 3 colour schemes I am proposing for the MediaCast blog. They are very similar as I have in mind to include only particular colours in the blog, based on the research my group and I conducted. This is because the majority of the students asked for simple colours based on a grayscale and the colours found in the MediaCast logo.

Colour Scheme 1 - White, black and the colours found in the MCAST logo

Colour Scheme 2 - White, black, gray (to be based on a grayscale) and gold (to have a colour which stands out)

Colour Scheme 3 - White, black, green and yellow (found in the MCAST logo) but which are brighter than the ones in Colour Scheme 1 

The colours would be used in the following way;

In all colour schemes
Colour 1 (white) - Text Colour and Date Header
Colour 2 (black) - Background and Background of the Post Footer

Colour Schemes 1 & 3
Colour 3 (green) - Post Title and Text in Post Footer
Colour 4 (yellow) - Link Colour and Labels

Colour Scheme 2
Colour 3 (gray) - Text in Post Footer
Colour 4 (gold) - Link Colour, Labels and Post Title

MediaCast Blog; Banners (Task 3a)

Finally my three MediaCast blog banners are ready!

I created this by downloading a font which looks like a film strip and removed the letters from inside it (by creating another layer and using a white brush to cover them) since I didn't like the font. I wrote each letter separately and placed them inside the film strip and then put the image of the scissors between "Media" and "Cast" to generate the idea of editing. Finally I added the last sentence using a simple font and the colours found in the MCAST logo.

The second one is composed from a screenshot I took from our filming of the advertisement, adding some adjustments and filters. Finally I added the MediaCast logo at the top left.

In the third and last one, I filled the background with a gradient composed of the colours found in the MCAST logo and I added some stroke effect to the "MediaCast" text. To finish it off, I added some brushes to the background in black and white and changed the opacity and Blending Mode untill I was satisfied.

Filming!

Last Saturday, the 30th of April 2011, my group and I filmed all the footage we need for our advertisement. Filming was supposed to take place also on Friday the 29th of April but due to a problem with one of the actors who couldn't come (the one who was supposed to impersonate Charlie Chaplin), we filmed everything in one day. However, we immediately solved that problem because Charlie Chaplin was impersonated by the same actor who impersonated Laurel.

Filming overall went well; we had all the paperwork, props and set ready and so there was nothing that could have possibly been of a hindrance to us. We were a bit off schedule in the morning since we took a bit more than expected to set up, but we soon got right back on track and everything went smoothly. The actors were all on time and cooperated greatly with all of the group.

I think that we worked very well as a team since everyone had his specific role and did it as best he could. We did have some minor arguments, due to some small changes we made to the storyboard, but we had good communication between us and we solved everything instantly. It was a very tiring day, but all worthwhile because it's the end product that counts and I think we have some great shots to produce this advertisement. And now?? Editing awaits us!

Advertisement Production Ideas

Idea Generation & Initial Plans and Proposals:

The initial idea for my advertisement production was to assemble the contents of the book cover by stop motion. The idea was that various drawings or cutouts of items which are found on the book cover, move towards each other to finally create the image of the book. I wasn't too convinced about this idea so then I got to think about the Unique Selling Point of the book [The Encyclopedia of Hollywood; An A-Z Guide to the stars, stories, and secrets of Hollywood]. What can one read about in the book? What would make people interested in buying and reading the book? The book gives concise information about Hollywood artists, films, jobs, equipment and also technical terms; all having to do with the film industry. I continued to think about this concept and finally came up with a story which I was happy and satisfied with.

I wanted to bring out the message that the book has a lot of text and that every piece of information is brief so the initial idea was to have a person impersonating Marilyn Monroe for a few seconds, then a person with a clapperboard, someone writing a script, and so on; various people impersonating Hollywood stars or doing jobs related to the film industry. Throughout all this, there would be text on screen displaying various terms which have to do with the particular scene at that time. In the end, these graphics would all fade into a shot of someone reading the book.

I continued to develop this story after speaking with my lecturer and I finally decided on the final proposal. There will be 9 actors all impersonating different Hollywood stars and who, at the same time, are doing jobs related to film. For example, someone impersonating the Godfather whilst writing a script,  someone impersonating Charlie Chaplin whilst playing with a clapperboard, etc. I still kept the idea of the text passing by as graphics as I wanted to bring out the idea that the book has a lot of text.

Identification of message:

I think that the message is clearly depicted in this advertisement proposal. Since each scene will be very brief (6 seconds or less) it will send the message that each bit of information in the book is also brief and that it contains a lot of different information. Furthermore, the graphics on screen tell the audience that the book has a lot of text in it.

Content & Style:

Scene 1: "The Godfather" writing a script
Scene 2: "Mary Poppins" getting makeup out of her bag and gives it to a makeup artist
Scene 3: "Charlie Chaplin" experimenting with a clapperboard
Scene 4: "Elvis Presley" using different microphones, including a boom mic
Scene 5: "Walt Disney" drawing Mickey Mouse which is then transformed into an animation of Mickey Mouse
Scene 6: "Audrey Hepburn" holding an Oscar statue in her hand
Scene 7: "Laurel & Hardy" cutting film reels and joining them to give the idea of editing
Scene 8: "Marilyn Monroe" standing on a Hollywood Boulevard star
Scene 9: Person reading the book

The style is as entertaining as possible since we see various Hollywood personalities. Furthermore, it will be humorous at some points especially in scenes 3 and 7.

Relevance to audience:

I think that this advert will appeal to its target audience. It is short, fun and entertaining so that one wouldn't be bored watching it. Furthermore, it depicts the message clearly and hopefully the audience can understand it.

The Social Network

I have recently watched 'The Social Network'; a true story about the birth of Facebook directed by David Fincher. I really liked the way in which the story is portrayed through editing; it goes back and forth from the story as it happened to two different lawsuits - the story as it was told during the lawsuit between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, and the story as it was told during another lawsuit between Mark Zuckerberg and the co-founder of Facebook Eduardo Saverin. However, a behind-the-scenes DVD also comes with the film and it was very interesting to see how they worked behind the scenes, how they rehearse and also the actors' point of view about the whole production. Apart from all this, the fact which I found most interesting was how they, in a certain sense, "made" the Winklevoss twins. They couldn't find the twin actors they needed so instead they hired two different actors, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence, and they replaced Josh Pence's face with Armie Hammer's face using CGI. Here below is the section of the DVD which talks about this.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/social_network_winklevii.html

I further researched this on the internet since the DVD only gives brief information to try and understand further this technique and I found the following article;

In ‘The Social Network’, Actor Armie Hammer Played 2 Twin Brothers, Dubbed By Zuckerberg As “The Winkle-vi”

Although it was Armie Hammer’s face on both twins, it was not his body. A model named Josh Pence (also extremely tall)  was acting in each scene that was shot, right next to Hammer. Afterward, Hammer’s face was superimposed onto Pence’s.


Word is, the two worked together for 10 months, learning to emulate each other in, especially, movement. An acting coach was used. They trained together also, so as to create as similar physiques, as possible.

Actor Armie Hammer and Model Josh Pence

According To Director David Fincher, Using Twin Actors Was Preferred…

CGI was a last resort, but they couldn’t find two twins who were also actors, that fit the breakdown.  The real Winklevoss twins are 6’5″, Olympic athletes, intelligent, and well, clearly ‘WASP’-y.

The Real Winklevoss Twins (Getty Photo)

The director insists that he didn’t use all this CGI wizardry just for kicks. “For a long time, I held out for this idea that we were going to find two 6’5″ 220-pound scullers who were going to be able to act,” he laughs. “So we looked and we looked and we looked and finally, probably about four weeks out from shooting, I just said, this is crazy. We’re never going to be able to get [it]. We need an actor. We need one person to play two people.”

Many Actors Find It Hard To Watch Their Own Performances.

How do you think Armie Hammer felt, watching two of himself, acting onscreen, at the same time, in The Social Network?

Actor Armand Hammer As A Winklevoss

The Social Network Used A Unique ‘Twinning’ Technique

…Interesting that director David Fincher winged it some, as they filmed. That’s in the article below too.
‘Benjamin Button’ was also directed by David Fincher. That’s a film that also included some tricky CGI, enabling Brad Pitt to age backwards, onscreen.  That film had a lot more money to spend on the special effects, besides a different CGI goal. Creating the illusion of twins, apparently, was an easier task.
Here’s how it was done, by a special effects group called Lola:


Surprisingly for anyone who knows the tech behind the Oscar winning work of Benjamin Button, Director David Fincher’s previous film, Lola ended up producing perfect twin face replacement in ‘The Social Network’ without a single HDR sample from on set. In fact, while it might appear after Benjamin Button face replacement was ‘solved’ , – the approach taken on this film was actually technically quite different.


Before we investigate why, one needs to understand the two processes. ‘Benjamin Button’ worked primarily on having an actor’s head replaced with a fully digital version of Brad Pitt’s head. A digital version based on Brad Pitt’s performance but fully rendered in 3D. HDRs were taken on set not in just one position but through a range of positions. Brad Pitt was scanned in an ICT Lightstage allowing for a near infinite range of lighting environments to be recreated and derived from the sampled Lightstage session. The HDRs from the set were then used to produce a frame of Pitt’s real head with the correct HDR lighting.

Actor Brad Pitt As Older Benjamin Button

In parallel a scan was used to make a very accurate digital head and this was animated to match the performance of Brad Pitt delivering the lines on a special set. The digital animated head was then composited over the scene but not before it was compared with the Lightstage sampled image of Brad at the same lighting point. This way the final compositors had

a) a digital animated ‘aged’ Brad Pitt

b) a sampled Brad Pitt but computed or dialed in with the correct lighting – side by side.

Of course the old head had to be removed and the background patched, but the effect was breathtakingly real and rightly earned Digital Domain and the other companies (like Lola) that worked on the visual effects a well deserved Oscar and massive industry wide respect for spanning the so called “uncanny valley.”


For ‘The Social Network’, Lola’s approach was actually quite different. The problem in The Social Network was to have twins on screen played by the same actor. This is a problem that has appeared and been attempted by almost countless vfx artists since visual effects entered film making, Dead Ringers, Multiplicity, The Parent Trap, Adaption , The Man in the Iron Mask, Hot Fuzz etc, and with the exception of Matt Lucas as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, – these rarely involved attempting face replacement, (and even then Alice is a special case due to costume).


…The solution was not to replace Pence’s head with a digital head matched with HDRs and animation to Hammer’s performance. Instead it was to map Hammer’s face onto Pence’s face.
In the words of Lola VFX supervisor Edson Williams, David Fincher worked all this out, ” a lot of this was his idea, the basis of this technique was his, it was his fundamental idea to project on to geometry, my job was just to simplify it, he did everything he could to help us, apart from shoot HDRs ”

Steps for face replacement:

Stage 1: Pre-production The actors Pence and Hammer train to both move and look alike. Gym work and acting training produced two body shapes that matched the close similar physical presence of identical twins.

Stage 2: The two actors simply acted out the scene with Pence wearing dots on his face. “Fincher described the effect as the ‘hockey’ mask”, explained Williams. As the plan was only replace the face, hats and head bands were used to provide a clean line for Lola.

No one from Lola was on set for the twin’s scenes and no HDRs or special measurements were taken. (Although Fincher is extremely CGI savvy and one could argue no Lola VFX presence was needed).

Stage 3: Lola worked based on just the principal photography and any on set texture photos and production stills to recreate the lighting of the set, as it would appear on the face of Pence as he acted. “We just had the final principal photography, but nothing shot for us, we did have a lot of reference shots – just because Fincher is very thorough” points out Williams. This CGI lighting would need to animate, if say Pence walked past a door or window. At this stage a scanned version of Pence (not Hammer) is used to check accuracy. “We just recreated it roughly, we just built a simple mockup, it was just a general look of the environment”, adds Williams.

Pence’s real head is object tracked primarily in PFtrack. In a perfect world the real Pence and his digital double would match perfectly in lighting and orientation. Once this match was achieved that head is discarded – but the lighting design is used in the next stage and the object track was kept.

Stage 4: This lighting information obtained from 3D was used to program a rock concert

style DMX lighting board. Actor Armie Hammer was then filmed delivering his performance sitting in a chair filmed with 4 Red cameras. To obtain the correct eye line a back projected 30ft x 12ft screen was placed in his eye line and a projected dot was animated to move – providing the correct eye line position.

This was also derived from the 3D animation done in stage 3.” We would break down the quicktime of the performance frame by frame, and control the lights, …we had a bank of 12 lights around him (Hammer) ” says Williams, but he points out that at this stage there was some flexibility. “You had to be pretty good, but if you got within 80% you were doing pretty good, you actually had a surprising amount of leeway”. That being said it is still an art to match lighting “Michael Watson helped me most with the lights, he’s worked with David Fincher in the past, he is very Red savvy a very good cameraman, he helped me the most with matching the lighting”.

Stage 5. The four Red cameras are combined to produce one full face texture mask, with the Red captured performance with the correct lighting from the DMX panel – but the orientation of Hammer’s head during the performance is unimportant as this moving textured mask is now just a disembodied 3D texture.

Stage 6: A scanned version of Hammer’s head is now carefully animated to match the 4 camera filmed performance. The digital animated head is hand animated to do this, but the animator has the action filmed from 4 angles to reference. Josh Singer was the Lead 3D artist. The digital head needs to animate to match the performance but it does not need to be lit in a CG sense as it will have the combined 4 camera RED texture map projected on it.

For example if the digital Winklevoss twin smiles – the CG face moves to match the smile – but the subtle skin texture creases and lighting all come from the live action projected performance. Interestingly while the cg nose and ears need to align to the projected texture, - the mouth was not internally modeled, the mouth was just a flat surface that the interior mouth texture was projected on to.

Stage 7. The original Pence head PFtrack is now applied to the animated – texture projected digital Winklevoss face. This provides a moving – correctly positioned, correctly lit, very real face mask.

Stage 8. This face mask is now integrated with the original background plate. In some cases this meant mesh warping the body double’s ears, “as Arnie’s ears were smaller, and that’s more of a traditional Lola kind of thing, we do that in traditional flame work”. They did not ever need to use digital hair, “we used the hair of the body double” says Williams.

Then the team remove any elements such as Pence’s chin that tended to be slightly longer than Hammer’s chin. “we did do the last 15% in the comp”, he adds ” we were able to get pretty close with just the 12 lights and the DMX”.

Stage 9; This comp was then beautifully and very accurately color graded to match the on stage multiple RED performance to the exact lighting of where Pence’s body was in shot. While the technique would get the artists most of the way there, subtle differences would still need to be adjusted, shadows or highlights added (some shine or spec highlights were rendered digitally using standard CG approaches).

“It is really interesting how different their faces were tonally, as far as colour correcting, I mean two guys standing next to each other, Arnie’s face was always a bit more magenta.. it looked a bit odd when you AB’ed with the original body double but when you look at Arnie standing right next to him – it matched… it is pretty interesting how people look different in the same light”.

This approach was used for some 20 shots in the film, Lola did a further 90 odd shots, which included traditional split-screen work, with Hammer’s separate performances as each brother stitched together in the same frame. However, due to the film being unable to shoot at Harvard, computer screen replacements and blue screen etc , in total it had almost 1000 visual effects shots in the film.

So why did Fincher pick this route over the Benjamin Button route?

Well firstly he was right, the effect is perfect and there is no arguing with the amazing result.
The good point from Williams point of view is how much this approached allowed Fincher to work with Hammer to get a great performance, “David Fincher was being so specific (for example he’d say) be a bit more pensive on this take… he was getting exactly the performance he wanted, and the actor was only worrying about his performance, he wasn’t worried about where he was walking or landing on his mark, – he did not have any of those (technical) concerns, his only concern was delivering the line David was wanting him to recreate… it was a very controlled way to get an accurate performance”


It is William’s opinion that David Fincher does not like HDRs on set. It is no secret that complex HDR

Director David Fincher behind film camera

Sampling on set can take a fair amount of time, and perhaps more importantly break the mood and pace for actors in a very strong performance driven piece. In The Social Network it is also a less dramatic difference than in Benjamin Button. In that film the character had to age and be remarkably different than Brad Pitt in size and head proportions.


In The Social Network, by design, the actors were very similar to start with in both stature and of course importantly in age. In breaking with such a breakthrough proven method and adopting a new innovative approach Fincher simplified on set. The Social Network is believed to have been only a $50 million film vs an estimated three times that for Button…

http://www.hollywoodactorprep.com/blog/2010/11/tech-stuff-acting-as-two-different-characters-on-same-movie-screen/