Cute Little Video

As i was looking for cog videos i came across this.. a nice little video about living in a clock.

Its good how the bird interacts with the small environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4cP2oy4ebE&NR=1

Final Draught Idea

So having a week or so talking about all our ideas combined we came up with our project idea.

Set in a Victorian style cobbled street with skyscrapers in the backround. really moody, brown and smokey.

A Shadow is moving accross the ground following the camera forward as you hear the sound of footsteps crunching on snow, heavy breathing and shouting in the distance behind the camera.

The Shadow approaches a window of a house on the street and moves up the wall as it gets closer. The camera peers into the window tentitivly, making sure its not seen and checking noone is in the room.

The window is slightly ajar and gets lifted up, the camera/shadow enters the room and closes the window quickly but quietly.

Hear talking upstairs and floorboards squeaking. Commotion outside still but muffled. Room lit by 4 candles and a fire place. Door slightly ajar with light behind it.

As the Camera turns round to see the room again it knocks over a broom stick laying against the wall, it falls over and hits a key on the piano. This wakes up a bird in a cage.

The camera panicks, rushes over to the bird cage and opens it, sticking in a bloody hand it kills the bird in one squeeze. keeps hold of it in his hand.

Looks around.

Approaches the central table and moves the newspaper closer to a candle. 'Terrible Beast' is the headline. Puts the paper down again.

Walks to the Bookcase, pulls out books and books, finds a vessel behind one of them. takes it and drinks half of it, smashes the rest on the floor, see his reflection in the liquid on the floor by his feet.

Vision starts to get blurry, stumbles to an armchair next to the fire.

Hand on the arm rest lets go of the bird, falls on his lap. vision goes.

Hear footsteps and the door open, then the 'Are you alright dear?' of his wife.

Dennis Severs House

On Monday the group that didnt go to Barcelona went to, as the title suggests, Dennis Severs house. This is a normal house built in the 1800s which the late owner Mr.Sever kitted out in the decour that may have been at the time the house was built. He also made a ficticious family and had their possesions laid about the house as if they were still living there. These included wigs, portraits, letters, half eaten food, clothes and even a live bird. The sound design was exceptional, fake talking in the room next door, squeaking floorboards in the rooms above, fake traffic noises outside the windows, It really made you feel like the people were still there and you had just missed them move to the next room.

The visit made me realise what the project was really about;
Atmosphere, a sense of reality and belonging to the surroundings. Interactive didnt mean the environment had to change radically, it just meant it had to be interesting, like someone lived there, not just static.

First Ideas - the 3/4 monthly blog!

3 weeks in.

As this project is to do with interactive environments I started by thinking about how the environment could physically change and the problems the changes could present to an actor in the environment.

A few basic ideas were:
1) A Shrinking person trying to escape something. This would be good to try because it would be a constantly growing/changing environment and the actor would have to think ahead to make sure they could reach certain bits etc. This is kinda like 'Honey I shrunk the kids' or 'The Borrowers' both of which i enjoyed as a kid. The idea of how everything we build is built for our needs and how we interact with the environment from a different perspective. This reminds me of a book I read when i was younger called 'The Time and Space of Uncle Albert' (http://www.greenwich-observatory.co.uk/ualbert.html) Where they looked at how ants interacted with their environment and came up with different ideas, which were completely different from a different perspective.

2) A person running through a warzone with buildings falling over etc
I really wouldnt like to simulate a game though as this could look quite naff, and would require really stylised/realistic graphics. Could be in the style of the game 'Gears of War.'

3) A Hamster or some sort of brainy pet (pinky and the brain brainy) escaping a basement using massivly oversized power tools and a complex plan. Once it finally escapes to the street it gets run over. This would be inspired by the Honda advert style
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc)

As a kid I always enjoyed seeing what inventive machines they came up with each episode and how they always failed in the end.

I think the kitchen scene from 'Ratatouille' is probably the perfect piece of animation for this project, but unfortunatly, they thought of it first! Theres nothing more to say, its perfect.

4) A futuristic World overtaken by nature. The basic Idea: A fast paced film of An actor running through the streets of his rusting city (jumping on fast growing vines and trees, and in and out of falling buildings) trying to make it to some escape pods.
Ive always been interested in the idea of nature taking back whats rightfully hers, Aztec ruins, dereliction, and the such like, and thought this could represent the shifts between nature and technology. Opening scene would be a green world with a date of 2010 and then cut to a grey world overrun with skyscrapers and a date of 3010, then the chase scene, then an end scene of a green world again and a date of 3011. (Storyboard will be uploaded soon)

This could be similar to the scene from jumanji where the weeds are overtaking the house.

5) A world being flooded following an actor trying to get to higher ground. This would be relatively east to do but would concentrate more on the character animation than the environment. Would be fun to have a 'frogger' style scene though with floating cars etc.

This is similar to the film 'the day after tomorrow.' I could also use the photos of venice I took over the summer for reference.

I did concept work which I will upload once I get my scanner working too..

Anyway im going finish this blog now and make a new one about Dennis Severs house which I went to see last monday..

Start the ball rolling...

Well the first blog on here has to be an appology for the lack of a blog so far.

there we go.




fin.