Online screening

For our groups online screening of the re-done animation piece for Crisis, we had two people (Alex Brown and Perry Dabbs) from RavensWood School go onto our blog posts and watch our final piece. The following information is what was given back to us after the individual online screenings were finished.

Alex Brown

WWW

This was our first person that we chose to do an online screening of our animation with. He thoroughly enjoyed watching our second attempt of creating the piece, as our first try at this project had extremely poor camerawork, however he did understand the meaning of the charity and how the actual animation related to what the charity (Crisis) do. Our group wasn't pleased to hear this and immediately got back to filming a better animation that focused on the characters moving and not the camera moving. So when Alex decided that this camera work this time round was good, we were pleased to hear this.

Moving onto the next point that Alex made, he thought that the voice over in the previous piece was very good and so our group kept the same one in the second animation, however again he commented on how well it went with our camera work, and was the main backbone on helping the viewer understand what the charity does. Another point that Alex made about the sound of the piece was the backing track that we created for our animation, he noted that it was a very good tone to use as it was not happy but also was not sad, it was somewhere in-between that just makes the audience think about how they could help the homeless.

The final thing that Alex mentioned was the actual setting of the animation. He explained to us that he thought the setting seemed very real and was easy for a viewer to understand how it must be for a homeless person living on the street. Secondly he liked the transition where the Lego character put money in the cup of the homeless person and it transition from a Lego man to a real human hand placing money into a pot. He said that it made it clear of what action the Lego man was doing.

EBI

There was only one issue that Alex spotted with this animation, which was also evident in the last, and this was the material that was used to hold the Lego characters up (Blu-Tac) he decided that it was visible from the characters feet to help them stand as they couldn't without it. However it didn't effect his feelings towards the cause of the advert, which we were pleased to hear. A possible option that could be used if this were to be done again would be glue (Pritt-Stick) as it shall not be visible.

Perry Dabbs 

WWW

Perry Was our second person who was apart of our individual online screening, he also agreed that it was much better than the first time the animation was done and seemed much more professional in terms of its camera work which our group was thrilled to hear.

The first point Perry liked within our animation was the transition of different mediums from Lego stop-motion to real live actions. He thought that it also made it clear as to what the Lego character was doing and almost gave off the sense that you could change a homeless persons day just by giving money to them or giving money to the Crisis charity.

The second thing that Perry thoroughly enjoyed from this piece was "The professional sounding voice-over" He thought that this made it seem like a real charity advert and gave the intentions of the charity out well as well as politely asking the audience to fight against homelessness. This also links in with his third point where he explained the message of the charity was explained very clearly and thought that if it were a real advert on the television it would make him want to partake with abolishing homelessness once and for all. The last comment that Perry gave us on our animation was the movement of our characters, he thought that we made the movements of our characters look professional and was 'fun' to watch whilst giving out the important message.

EBI

Perry also gave us the same even better if as Alex did, as he noticed the small pieces of blu-tac attached to the characters feet, he also gave us the suggestion of if we were to create this again we could have used double sided cello tape as it is clear so the audience wouldn't be able to notice it, however he did also explain it wasn't a problem as the deep message in the advert was still taken in and the animation itself also looked professional.

Crisis Animation #1 (Needs re-filming)

ANIMATION SHALL BE RE-FILMED!

Copyright research

Copyright research 

What is copyright? 

Copyright is an exclusive right that is legally given to companies, groups or a single person, or whoever is the originator of a single thing. This is found very commonly in music, when an artist creates a track, they are given a document to sign that would bind a song to the original creator. So if someone would like to use the song in another project such as a film, the people involved with making the film would have to get in contact with the artist of the song who would make a decision on whether or not the creators of the film were able to use the track within their film. 

Why is it important? 

Copyright is extremely important for both the originator and the person willing to use the piece of music, art etc. There is one reason why it is very important for the originator of something, if someone were to want to use their piece of music, art etc without the originator claiming copyright on it, the person who is deciding to use it could possibly pass it off as their own piece. So this keeps people from stealing pieces of music, art etc from their original owners. It is also important to the person who is using the song from the actual artist and not a pirated or fake copy of the piece of music, film, art etc, another reason for it being important for the person receiving the music as if they are caught illegally downloading a piece of music they can in fact be charged a large sum of money as it is a criminal offence.


This is the universal sign for copyright that will be shown on any piece of music, art, software and many other things that has copyright claimed on it by it's originator. An example could be a music artist creating a song and placing a patent on it which means that if someone were to copyright this piece then they would be in trouble for it, a patent is almost like a form of insurance for the originator of the piece of music.

For our groups project, in order to avoid the copyright law we are not choosing to use anything related to the copyright law. We shall generate our own music on a program called garageband.

A real life case I found on the internet of someone being punished for their piracy, a man who worked for a small time company thought he could be kept under the radar of the FBI however when he was caught pirating software he had to pay a fine of what he had actually copied which came up to $270.000 and also had to pay a fee due to not complying with copyright laws which came up to $500.000. As you can see the punishment fees are massively expensive, however sometimes you aren't just fined a sum of money, depending on how serious the offence is, judges often hand harsh prison sentences to the offenders of the copyright law.

Issues in documentary and film

  Issues in Documentary

Accuracy- Accuracy is the explanation of a subject in a precise manner.  Accuracy is extremely important within a documentary as it mustn’t give the audience false factual information. A documentary that gives good precise information in its facts is Fahrenheit 911 whereby it explains the events correctly that happened within George Bushes presidency. It also gives accurate statistics within the film to give the viewer an idea of how big or small something could be.  

Balance- Balance within a documentary is to show equal sides to a story and or argument. This helps the documentary seem bias (one sided) Balanced documentaries make the viewers look at both sides of a story and let them choose what to believe in or not. Fahrenheit 911 is also very well balanced for both sides of the Iraq war, who it affects and why.

Impartiality- Impartiality is the documentary is neither for or against whatever the subject may be (quite similar to balance) Showing equal amounts for both sides for or against. Michael Moore (Director of Fahrenheit 911) has his own opinion on George Bush who he doesn’t like. However he does not portray this within the film, it shows equal sides of good and bad within the documentary. 

Objectivity- This is when a documentary places facts and information to point the subject into one corner for the audience to believe (To persuade the audience to look to one side)

Subjectivity- This is when facts, information and opinions are presented in order to let the audience decide for their own opinion. An example of this being shown within Fahrenheit 911 is when the all the information is presented of the Bush family and the Bin Laden family relationship. The information is powerful but it doesn’t stay persistent on just attacking the bush family to force peoples opinions to a bad side.

Opinion- This is the thoughts of the audience who are viewing the documentary and their opinions on what they are being shown.

Bias- This is where a documentary can be one sided towards the subject, or argument. This could possibly be to make someone or something look bad and another thing look good in comparison.  

Issues in film




Film can also be evident to using biased opinions as well as documentaries. Often with many of the true story based films, there will be a small element of a two sided argument on the subject that is being filmed. However in most cases within a film, it shall only show one side of a story. The reasons for this could be things such as the side of the story not talked about could have been to hard to adapt to screenplay. This means that what happened at a certain event could have been too challenging to portray in the correct way within the film.


Or it can simply be the director or producers who only want to portray a story in one specific way. This is the much more negative side of being biased in film due to some what of ignorance of the people creating the film. A good example of a film being biased is the new Zero Dark Thirty, this film is about the build up and finish of killing Bin Laden. The main reasons for it being relatively biased is because it seems to ignore the hard work of the CIA, FBI, Homeland security of America, George W.Bush and Obama and place it all on just one female CIA agent who was the only reason why Bin Laden was killed. It even, to some extent seems to only touch on the Navy Seals who carried out the operation to kill Bin Laden. You could also link this film with the idea of Objectivity, whereby a director points the subject into one corner for the viewers to believe, it seems to keep the audience ignorant towards the deeper side of the subject being the hard work done by the CIA, FBI etc.


Another example within this film is where nearly every Muslim women in the Pakistan scenes are wearing some sort of head covering. Which causes controversy seeing as the only time women wear head coverings within Pakistan are within the tribal areas. This film seems to portray Muslim women wearing head coverings as terrorists. As you can imagine this has caused much controversy and stress to many people across the globe.

Team meeting minutes

Group members: Oscar Artini & Robert Welland

Items discussed:

Meeting 1 Date:April 5th 2013

During our first team meeting we discussed our different opinions and feelings towards the storyboards that were generated for our animation, we decided that the first two generated were 'okay' in terms of their standards and how a good message could be developed from them, we then went onto discuss how technical it would be to generate them. Unfortunately for the first two storyboards that were developed we decided that it would be too time consuming and extremely hard to create.


The next section of the meeting we decided to discuss different soundtracks that could be placed into the project. We both agreed on using a track that emulates a sad style to it however, combining it with  a voice over at the end to give a brief description of what the charity (Crisis) do for the homeless 'by giving them a home etc'







Meeting 2 Date: April 20th 

This meeting was to assure our group that all was agreed on. This was because we had finished our drafting stage of generating ideas for the project, another reason for this meeting being held was because our group had decided that we were ready to film and needed to start as soon as possible.

This last meeting also made a slight two changes to the animation, this was in the part when the homeless person heard a voice from the sky saying to turn around and look at the wall. In the storyboard on the left you can see that there is now another lego character who shall put money into the homeless persons pot and asks him to turn around a look at the 'Crisis wall' This decision was made by both of the group members (Robert Welland and Oz Artini) We decided that the previous idea was too unrealistic and the new idea made the animation seem a lot more realistic and a situation that seemed like it would actually occur.

Production schedule animation

Production Schedule 

Film title: Crisis Animation

Client: Crisis

Producers: Oscar Artini and Robert Welland 

Date: 25th April 2013

Planning started: January 2nd 2013 Date completed: January 30th 2013

Proposal started: February 4th 2013 Date completed: February 18th 2013

Agreement from client: February 27th 2013 Date completed: March 1st 2013

Audience Research started: March 15th 2013 Date completed: March 18th 2013 

Audience research analyzed: March 20th 2013 Date completed: March 28th 2013

Drafting started: April 1st 2013 Date completed: 20th April 2013

Production started: 29th April 2013 Date completed: May 20th 2013

Rough cut supplied to client: May 29th 2013 Date completed: June 8th 2013

Final version to client: June 10th 2013 Date completed: June 25th 2013

final interview no.2