Finished!!

After hours researching, hours in After Effects I have finally finished!!

Im pretty happy with this, and I feel i've worked really hard at it.

So, here it my finished product!

Lights, Camera, Action!!

Okay, so i've pretty much made this now, although I want my Logo on it!

I don't really have many fonts, so I went to dafont and grabbed me some funky looking font that I like, with the font I am going to have this at the beginning of the sequence and at the end.

I found one eventually, and I am pretty happy with this and have used it not just on my logo, but on just about everything.

Regarding the logo I haven't really done a lot I wrote the text on the background and then made it 3D but because I wanted two logos I had to make two different compoisitions and then include them in my sequence, I didn't add much effect to them I changed the opacity of one at the beginning to get a fade in kinda of effect, and then at the end I faded in the other one and made it grow in size gradually.

Whilst doing this I haven't mentioned about keeping a grunge feel to it, now i kinda forgot at first, but found out pretty quickly that it already had a grunge feel too it.

Im pretty much there now, I want to add some audio onto the background, not a clue what I am doing yet, although I think I'm going to have Nivarnas' Heart shaped box playing in the back off it, because it suits the video quite well.

I feel like I should speak about what I have done to the photos to make them work. Well I actually haven't done much with them, i created them using separate compositions and just included them into the main composition. Then what I did with them was made them a 3D layer since I am using a camera. When i entered them into the composition i deliberately didn't have them on screen this is so I can make it look like someone has just thrown the photo into the compositon.

Lighting is a nice thing on After Effects I hadn't really used lights before but I thought well im just gonna add one and move it around a tad and hey ho I got the gist of it pretty quickly and managed to create a smooth round edge look on my background which looked good. I played this through to see if the light would continue all the through the sequence, it didn't. Which got me thinking well, if like cameras lights are hard to move I will need to link it to my Null Object, which i did, and it worked!! So i was feeling pretty chuffed with myself.

Light on!

Light off!

I have had a pretty productive couple of hours and feel I have learnt a lot, I have finished the sequence now, although I just need to pop it into premier to render it, After Effects makes my files too big, which I'm not a fan off.

After Effects

So I've been busy designing my idea, and planning out what I want it to all look like although I am have an issue, how do I make the second camera pan? This is something I need to look into.

I searched youtube, and too be honest it didn't take very long at all to find a tutorial that would help me achieve this. It was pretty simple, I only listened to a few minutes of the tutorial then I knew what to do.

I should probably prove myself.

Okay to create a camera what you need to do is;

1. Create a new composition
2. Add a Camera object - Camera's can only be used on 3d layers therefor you will need to make all your layers 3D, to do this there is a 3D option within the layers, its the Cube just tick that box and your layer will become 3D.
3. Create a Null Object, the purpose of this is to control the camera otherwise according to the tutorial I watched it is hard to control camera's without a Null Object.
4. Now you need to make the Null Object and the Camera work together to do this you can see a spiral sort of thing near the 3D layer option, if you click the spiral from the camera to the Null Object they will become linked and work with each other.
5. What you need to do now is decide what way you want the camera to pan. For this I decided I would grab a random image, enlarge it so that it was off my screen and then guide the Null Object around it.
6. With this you need to create positions for the camera to do the press 'P' this will load the position of the layer and allow you to key them in.
7. Set the keyframe to your starting position, then move your timer to however much you wish on your timeline and keep setting them in the way you want until you are satisfied with the movement you have.

Example:

The quality isn't brilliant, but it shows the camera panning around the image.

What happens is that the camera actually stays still and the image moves around the camera which is pretty cool!

I applied this to my sequences allowing me to pan through the image, and throwing photos into the mix.


Anyway this is as far as I've got so far I've done a few more bits on the video and its pretty much finished. However I'm not 100% happy with it yet so will keep this up to date on whats happening!

Getting there!!

After coming up with an idea of a photo book sort of sequence for After Effects, I figured I need to do some research on how to create one!

Then I saw that a photo throw effect looked a lot better and is really simple to create!

So i got thinking, what looks good? I first was going to have white border around the picture, sort of like a Polaroid photo.

Example:

This is the design I have chosen for my photographs.

However once put into the movie, I didn't like it so I got rid of the white solid behind the photo, and just had the text showing on the background along with image. After I had resolved this issue I needed to start thinking about the background. What will it look like? How would it suit? Anyway i thought a washed out sort of tea stained look would suitable for the background image and it worked out pretty well, although I then figured I would need the background to loop continuously which required me to make a loop of the background using after effects.

Looping wasn't too difficult, I got my original placed it within After effects, moved it off the composition and put a new one in, I did this until I reached 40 seconds, the reason for the 40 seconds is because my whole sequence is 33 seconds, meaning If I wanted to make it longer then I could. After this I saved it, put it within premier and rendered it through premier.

Example:

It's very blurred, but this is my background.

Anyway its all working out quite well and coming together quite nicely at the moment, I have thought about the motion and how I could make it work, looking at other videos on Youtube of photo-throwing I'm pretty sure I can do it.

Starting Off

After too much procrastination over the christmas period, today was the day i decided to bite the bullet and attempt this assignment.

I grabbed my energy drink and a sneaky subway and put my mind to work.

At first I was a bit unsure on how I would do this however after much thinking I sort of realised I'm gonna need a sort of photo book to make this work.

From the word go I was pretty much decided on what song I was going to use to cover my motion piece this being 'Heart Shaped Box' by Nivarna. It suits the piece I am doing and well since Nivarna was a big part of the Grunge Era it made a whole lot of sense to do it.

So anyway I headed to Video-copilot to see if I could find any tutorials on this subject, after well not very much looking I soon realised this wasn't going to happen since they didn't have anything on this subject...Boo.

So I got thinking, how would I make this? I headed to Youtube to check on tutorials. However Youtube being Youtube, didn't get what I meant by the looks of it so I just checked some videos out and left it at that.

So i wasn't having a hell of a lot of luck, although there are some pretty eye catching things out there! 

I took to the drawing board, thinking how do i do this? How will I make my video, Television standard?

I then thought, lets open After Effects!

Once After Effects was open I thought a bout using a template to help me create my sequence, I proceeded to look for one, eventually finding one, my initial thought was great! lets just use this so I don't have to do the work. However although that would be the easy way out, and even though it was an open source template, I thought no and just used the template as an idea.

Anyway up to now the project is going quite well, not that I have actually achieved anything yet, although I am getting their and really getting a feel for the project!

The Grunge Era

I am happy with my decision to do this era, mainly because it's the music I like now and the way they dressed back then influenced how I used to dress and still do dress on somedays.

There was a few big bands back around this era from the likes of Nivarna, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam just to name a few!!

The grunge era(Seattle Sound) didn't come about till mid 80's young musicians and artists where inspired by heavier genres of metal such as Whitesnake, Motley Crue, Poison and Bon jovi. They began to form their own unique form of music that combined loud guitars with emotionally introspective lyrics far removed from the polish and sequins of popular metal.

Music in the Grunge Era

A large number of the bands representing this sound congregated in the seattle area. At first bands like Mudhoney, the Melvins and Green River had a huge local following but couldn't break out of the region to attract more fans. 

Soundgarden had already previously released successful records by this time. In 1989 Nivarna released 'Bleach' however, it would take Nivarna's 1991 album 'Nevermind' to breakthrough to the mainstream, which catapulted Kurt Cobain into international stardom focusing an enormously bright media spotlight on seattle itself.

The intense scrutiny from the musical press regarding what was termed the 'seattle sound' or 'grunge' music caused several bands to be swept up in the genre despite the significant differences in their music styles. However, to mainstream radio and MTV it didn't matter, and if it could packaged as grunge it could be sold to millions of musically starved teens who suddenly found an outlet for the angst that had been building up inside them for years.

The grunge movement's legs weren't quite as long as most record executives would have liked. Nivarna released a stark, noisy and abrasive record names 'In Utero' as their follow-up to the more radio-friendly 'Nevermind,' and while it was a critical success other bands such as Stone Temple Pilots and Blind Melon began to move in a poppier direction.

Kurt Cobains suicide in 1994 a few months after nivarna's seminal appearance on 'MTV: Unplugged' would signal the beginning of the end of grunge's popularity. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden would go on to release two of the most popular albums of the 1990's, 'Grind' and 'Superunknown,' but each band would dissolve a few short years later, leaving Seattle bereft of its orginal musical leadership.

Nivarna's 'Nevermind' Album

Appearances

From what I can see appearances stood for a lot back during the Grunge era it allowed people to recognise who you was, it seemed a lot of people had long hair, torn jeans, combat boots and a plaid Flannel, generally looking quite scruffy. It also seems that wool caps was worn over the stringy greasy long hair was a very popular thing to do back then.

Its funny looking at the times now, not much has changed for what people like to were for example my friends will often go out in a checkered shirt, combat boots and possibly a wool hat. However the wool hat wouldn't be covering long greasy hair. Torn jeans aren't really that fashionable nowadays, skinny jeans are the choice of jeans now days.

Alice in Chains in the 80's

Grunge Culture

Grunge musicians didn't like expensive, highly staged performance. Most grunge bands wouldn't use pyrotechnics or other complicated lighting and visual effects during their shows. Grunge music bacame so popular it started to influence the way people would dress. The musicians where known for their unkempt looks. Wearing thrift store clothing, the most notable thing was the flannel shirts, grunge followers would copy this look. As grunge became more mainstream it provided the concept for the Seattle-based movie Singles. This movie featured guest apperances from Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and members of Pearl Jam as bandmates of star Matt Dillon's group Citizen Dick. Due to the film having the guest appearances it has, the soundtrack for the movie was performed by the musicians involved.

Although many of the bands had massive success, they was uncomfortable with their mainstream popularity. They was used to recording for small, independent record labels and playing to relativly small crowds. They wasn't used the national recording industry or performing in stadium like atmospheres.

Kurt Cobain provides a notable example of the diffculties grunge musicians had with their success. Cobain suffered from serious drug addiction which ended in suicide.

Post Kurt Cobain's Death

Cobain's death is often reffered to as the end of the grunge era, although his death did somewhat kill the genre, there was many musicians such as; Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in chains didn't want it to die so they carried on producing the music and managed to bring it through the rest of the decade and into the next.

After Cobains death, Nivarna didn't continue as Kurt Cobain was there lead singer. However the band may have died but David Grohl the bands former drummer wanted to keep the genre of grunge going and formed the Foo Fighters. although they sounded different to Nivarna, they was very much influenced in the same way.

Grunge in a Nutshell

Whilst browsing for research on this topic I found this picture which pretty much sums grunge up rather nicely, and covers everything that I have within the blog entry.

How am I going to incorporate grunge?

The way I am going to do this is;

Create a short After Effects clip, portraying my understanding of the grunge era.

I will also provide this blog, which will have all the research I have done for this project on it.

Assignment 1

We have been given an assignment for our Interactive Design Workshop module the assignment entails the following;

You are required to select one visually rich era to study in depth:

The Edwardian Period - England

The High Victorian Period - India

The Roaring Twenties - New York

The 1950’s Nuclear Family - USA

The Swinging 60’s, Mods and Rockers - UK

Post Disco, 1970’s Punk – London

The Grunge Scene, 1980’s Seattle - USA

Using the key visual skills covered to date, undertake a thorough visual examination of your chosen era. Open up avenues of serious research and information gathering that gets away from the convenience of Google.

Your research needs to produce either one twenty second motion piece or six still images that distil your understanding of the chosen era. Support this research with tangible visualisations in your blog.

You are required to intervene between any original images and those you create yourself. This may be photographic, collaged, seamlessly composited or jarringly juxtaposed: use stills, sound, original drawing, narrative and digital trickery to enliven the piece. The important thing is to bring together your visual skills and create a piece that is informed and credible. Consideration should be given to any original lighting conditions, props, costume, body language and photographic or drawing techniques.

Put yourself in the position of an agency tasked with producing an exciting visual trailer for Channel 4.

I have chosen to do The Grunge Scene, 1980's Seattle - USA, for this I am going to use a short sequence to show my understanding of the era

I will mainly be using my skills in After Effects for this.