#actually putting everything together and animating the whole thing. rendering. editing for the final render. rendering again.

[spideysatan]

i know the rest of the year will be..... eventful, to put it lightly but damn am i stressing over it already

[legionofpotatoes]

alright here’s ma thoughts on that flick I mentioned

we hatewatched a*my of the dead because we were CONVINCED “zombies in las vegas” would be an impossible concept to screw up, but in so assuming we obviously invoked a holy wager with the universe and got reminded, once again, that hoping for improvement from someone who’s dependably put out bad art is never a wise choice 😐

but we were honestly kinda roped in by the marketing??? and expected a goofy fast-paced flick with the odd traditional undead metaphor thrown in, framing some sort of relationship drama maybe or hell even nothing at all! we’d have taken pure indulgent storytelling, idk italian job with zombies in las vegas, I don’t know fucking anything but??? whatever this was???? spoilers below for it is time for One Of My Rants

I mean the main reason I really want to write all this and complain. this film here probably has the most unappealing cinematography I have ever experienced in my life and that is saying something. who the fuck signed off on that CONSTANT shallow-ass depth of field that imprisons your eyeline and turns every shot into bokeh paste???? and I mean every shot almost!!!! I promise if you think I am overreacting just throw a dart at the seek bar and watch twenty seconds from wherever it lands. it is horrifying to look at. at least it gave my girlfriend a good visual shorthand for what it’s like when I lose my glasses

why was sean spicer in this movie. did they pay him to be here. was sean spicer paid hollywood money for his scene in this film because fuck everyone who was involved in that decision

the legitimately baffling hints at the extraterrestrial origins of the infection that went absolutely nowhere and had no dramatic or plot-level bearing. we love to see the franchise sprouts fellas

yet another big budget waste of everything hiroyuki sanada has to offer. and bautista too I guess? I like him but man was this an odd career move

what was the crux of his conflict/resolution with his daughter btw. I understand it was rooted in miscommunication over their forms of grief irt mom but uhh… it was all rather clunky and didn’t land for me. I tried I really tried to buy in but something was wrong fundamentally with the groundwork there, it did not click and their catharsis felt unearned. I know there’s massive amounts of tragic baggage being projected there from the author so I’m not slapping any judgment down really;

but again it would be an easy thing to wave off if they just had a vibrant cast of lovable simpletons with good chemistry and the kinetic sense of plotting the trailers promised (and this premise never discounts good drama, either). but instead it was just two and a half (!) hours of meandering into situations the filmmaking instincts had no idea how to flow in and out of

to wit. I know talking about “bad pacing” is associated with armchair bullshit but consider the example of the scene were dieter does an out of nowhere little dance after childishly screaming but then still-killing a zombie, with the film framing this as a micro character triumph, and not a second later the bg soundtrack instantly fades into an orchestral score dramatizing a nearby mcguffin reveal, completely 180 degreeing the tone without a semblance of deft insert shot stitching or even I dont know a fucking jump cut maybe. now imagine this whiplash for 2.5 hrs uninterrupted

I will keep complaining about the length yeah because this was not a story requiring this much real estate to be told. Uhh in my humble and personal opinion, of course

[man sees zombie tiger] “this is crossing the line!” you can in fact write dialogue that is not utter nonsense that falls apart once you drill down its single fickle layer of referential meta winking. what line are you talking about. you have rules in this insane situation you’re in? total nitpick moment I know but it got burned in my brain for some reason. like a microcosm of the mismanaged dramatic instincts paired with weird writing that dots this movie. I am sure the director calls this either satire or genre deconstruction. I am SO sure

tumblr domino meme that goes from “dude getting sucked off while driving” to “entire las vegas literally nuked”

tig notaro is always great to see but once you know she’s been filmed as a separate greenscreen plate months after photography wrapped - cause she had to apparently replace some abusive asshole but that’s a whole other pig not worth fucking - it becomes impossible to unsee her odd detachment from everyone else in the movie lmao. it doesn’t really “ruin” anything on its lonesome but it is hard to unsee

why. was. sean. spicer. in. this. movie

a very simple key ingredient missing from fully turning lip service sympathy for main uruk hai dude into actual empathy that would generate meaningful conflict with hero family would be to spend a bit more time articulating what he internally wanted the most. because he was obviously trying to do something here with pointed agenda. a family, to have kids, build a caste system, save his wife’s head, return to his planet??? all of these could represent the bigger context in his psychology that spurred his vengeance but none of them are dramatically emphasized long enough for you to cheer him on. I’m not asking too much I promise. Articulating interiority of a mute character is pretty doable with deft cinema language, just gotta linger and hold a shot here and there for a few seconds, frame as his POV, donezo. I know this is also one of those like. “who cares” moments but the movie does, very evidently so, in making this guy an actual character. you can kinda piece it together and create a framework of sympathy for him, sure, but then again he ultimately becomes a foil to be killed and not defeated, so. Ehh whatever

quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was n

the rooftop helicopter fakout at the end was such an ass-backwards, manufactured moment of what could be a simple setup/payoff it just pissed me off??? you gain nothing by giving sad dad five seconds of pointless crisis that flips right back to previous status quo ANYWAY, except for a weaksauce waste of runtime, which could be used instead to get inside notaro’s head and actually SHOW the remorse form as she took off, literally maybe even a frown playing on her face as she’s headed for safety right before we cut back to drax and the kid. just a simple-ass, minimal, momentary setup for what is the most basic filmmaking trick of creating macro catharsis moments. Just???? g o d if you can’t even land that shit why are you even doing any of this

that lil run final pam did was very very charming and super choreographed in a way that was the tiiiniest bit overdone

the whole intro with the simul-backstories and posing with family photos was just… oddly motivated. what was the goal? “here’s what we’re fighting for” vignettes? why? it’s not a functional setup in that vein. what was all that

also I am sorry if this is insensitive but the reasons most characters end up articulating to justify going back into the hell that destroyed their lives makes them sound seriously insane

I dont like complaining about CGI (honestly) but so much of it in modern movies can achieve higher fidelity if the animation is simply subdued. Do not overengineer and over-apply 2D cell methodologies and kinematics to each tiny twitch and movement in a hyper 3D model and I promise you. it will look a thousand times more natural. look at thanos in those last two movies. your rendering and detail are absolutely perfect with the tiger you just have to let stuff sit instead of constantly simulating swaying hair strands and firing off all facial muscles at once. great moment at one point where makeup zombie horse and CG zombie tiger are both in one shot together and just by unnecessary amounts of movement alone you can tell who doesn’t belong. again; detail, rendering, compositing, lighting, all picture-perfect; but y’all just gotta let the animation breathe sometimes, and chill it out

plot holes don’t really matter to me but it was kinda funny how lilly decided not to mention the enormous wrinkle in intel pertaining to an actual territorial tribe of intelligent zombies that require human offerings to let you pass, just so that reveal could play out in real time through the joyous punishment of the cartoonishly misogynistic dude

total chad move for mister uruk hai and final pam to rule from a rusted swimming pool complex

the ending with vanderohe oh my god. with the. cash stacks at the airport register. and specifically them working in his favor. that is literally something you do to get arrested under suspicion of theft. it was almost played for laughs and I respect that. coulda been goofier. make these movies goofy ya dorks

anyway, weird, weird movie. bad marketing. message unclear (something something sins of the father???), baffling editing instincts, literal worst-looking cinematography I ever laid eyes upon. Confidently dying on that last hill

[aion-rsa]

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17 Review: Uncut Femmes

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This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17

The Simpsons Season 32, episode 17, ” Uncut Femmes,” is a caper comedy, and criminals Sarah Wiggum (Megan Mullally) and Fat Tony (Joe Mantegna) steal every scene they are in. Over the course of the jewel heist parody at the center of the installment, we learn Chief Wiggum’s wife has a shady past, and the neighborhood mob boss has a paternal presence. They don’t have any scenes together, but they make crime pay off, and prove two or so wrongs can make a right.

“Oh, my hallway-walking God,” the episode opens, as a workplace atrocity leads to a nondisclosure agreement which results in two front-row seats at a Bob Seger concert. The rock star plays himself, but goes against the wind. Yes, this is the Silver edition of his Bullet Band, but when he learns both Homer and Chief Wiggum dumped an overnight field trip with the kids on their wives to make the show, he feels obliged to remind them: a wife, like rock and roll, never forgets. Who knew a Detroit belter like Seger could throw such guilt?

The trip is to a World War II battleship, retrofitted to look like it did back in May 1943. That was the last time it was scrubbed, and the kids and wives get keelhauled into breaking up everything but the barnacles. They swab the decks and are told they’re killing Oxees, which sounds enough like Nazis for Springfield Elementary. Nick Offerman voices Captain Bowditch, who Sarah Wiggum calls Captain Dingdong before robbing his liquor cabinet and sharing a bottle with Marge.  

The police chief’s wife also shares some unexpectedly relatable problems, like the pressures of being married to “a man with a dangerous job he’s just not good at” But her best comic line is about her husband’s health, and how every slice of cheese could be his last. The bonding scene is very effective, warm and witty. Both women give up so much because they are mothers.

Sarah Wiggum gave up a glitzy and glamorous life of crime, like the Ocean’s 8 masterminds. She was the getaway driver on the famed “Hourglass Diamond” heist. Her story is broken down in a flashback sequence with subtitles like “The Grab,” “The Camaraderie,” and “The Double Cross.” To give historical perspective, one of the items which the young thieves steal, while listening to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” are MP3 players which held over 300 songs. 

In the segment entitled “The Honey Pot,” Sarah explains her own role in the robbery. “The Chump” denotes when she met Clancy Wiggum, then a mere security guard, working his way through one of his many attempts at passing the police academy. “I love a man in a rented uniform,” she says. 

Marge had to miss the one event she gets to share with her sisters’ friends, which includes the crumbs of the crème de la crème of Springfield’s LGBTQ community: Watching the annual Gen Gala on TV and making scathing remarks. Marge is jonesing for snark. She’s got an itch to throw good shade. This would be a blast to hear from Marge, who is “still working up the courage to call a man the B word.” This year’s Gala is themed, “The Audacity.” The prior year was called “The Nerve.  Marge breaks her usual reserve to tell Rihanna she listens “to the clean versions of all your songs.”

Marge is so consistently Marge-like, so clearly defined within the vantage point the series has set up for her. Marge’s first words, when trying to start a conversation with Sarah, are “the top 10 ways of starting a conversation.” When she is kidnapped, she observes whoever had the bag over their face before her was a smoker. Julie Kavner also pulls off amazing physical comedy in this episode, even though it’s vocal acrobatics. When Marge is bound by Sarah’s old gang, she hops away – chair, pole and all – to allow them to scheme. She points to their scheme-board with her high mound of hair, which she later uses to blur surveillance cameras. Kavner’s inquisitive or insistent moans fuel every blue follicle.

To distract the mark, Lindsey Naegle, Marge makes small talk about common household chores the VIP would never do herself, like paying attention to whether you switch delicates to extra warm when you’re doing laundry. “You’re not famous, so you don’t exist,” Lindsey, who pocketed the diamond for herself to buy a celebrity lifestyle, snorts at Marge. Her husband, Springfield’s beloved Rainier Luftwaffe Wolfcastle, takes this gag to an absurd conclusion. Wolfcastle has no idea what the two were talking about when he enters the scene, but he is more blinded by his celebrity. He asks his wife why she’s talking to an empty chair. It’s all a punchline which lands on “somebody stop those nobodies,” a masterful twist of social restraint.

Ultimately, one of the snarkiest lines turns out to be a comment on Marge, when she makes a very surprising appearance at the Gala. But only because “she looks like dirt” walking a red carpet designed for 20 plus-size gladiators to carry Beyoncé. The snide aside comes across as exactly what Marge would’ve wanted.

The episode has plenty of successful throwaway sight gags. Homer closes shop at his post at the nuclear plant with the same kind of cage storefronts lock up with after hours. We’re not sure if this means the workers on the other side are locked in the workspace without emergency supervision for the whole weekend, though.

The kidnapping is first reported by Chief Wiggum’s son, Ralph, who was watch commander on deck. Fat Tony will come to be simpatico with Ralph in hysterically edgy ways later in the episode. They both “know nothing about nothing.” Until he met Ralph, Fat Tony thought putting crumbled Oreos on ice cream would be redundant, but now finds it transcendent. It is like a grooming process; the police chief’s son even begins wearing a matching fur coat. And when a kid behind an ice cream counter tells Ralph not to grab at the Gummy Bears, Fat Tony says “if the boy wants this the boy wants to smooch, the boy will spook smooch.” He could be telling The Bronx Tale. Ralph’s rejoinder, “I love you, scary daddy,” is so in keeping with his character of cluelessly deranged innocence.

When Homer and Wiggum first learn their wives are missing, the police chief immediately blames Fat Tony. The reputed, reported, alleged and convicted crime boss is plainly being honest when he says he would never even consider such a crime. First of all, how would he finish the sentence “it would be a shame if something were to happen to?” 

Wiggum is very important to crime in the town. This episode points out how it flourishes under his lazy watchful eye. Fat Tony loves “Chief Bungles” because he’s a horrible cop. Even Sarah admits her husband is “better at planting evidence than finding it.” But, more importantly to Fat Tony, the chief loves the top cop because he is a selfish man. He’s on the take from Burns, Fat Tony, and we know from past episodes he’s in on schemes with Mayor Quimby. But some things, even a cartoon mob boss cannot forget.

Fat Tony is surprisingly woke in his off hours. It’s the espresso. His men only yell respectful innuendoes at attractive women. The boss not only tutors Homer and Clancy on ways to respect their wives, but takes care of Ralphie while he lets the men fix their marriages. The male gaze is all over this episode, and it gets poked in the eye repeatedly. From WWII books to gender-trading action movie remakes. The real Silver bullet is the truth. Seger’s concert T-shirt is actually a list of things he has to get done to keep his marriage happy, including getting a C-PAP for his snoring.

For Homer, this change is as sweet as a donut, the ordeal makes him notice what Marge looks like when she’s happy. Clancy realizes, for the first time in his long career, that there is a museum in town. At their heart, Homer and the Chief are really only paying attention to their wives for themselves. Oh, and for Bob Seger, they did promise him that. The lesson they learn when confronted with their selfish ways is: “it’s all about us.”

The final part of the scheme earns its subtitle as the exact kind of surprise double revenge twist we have come to expect from this genre. The only difference is what kind of spin the parody will take. Things have a special way of falling on The Simpsons. In a classic early episode, Homer took a memorable tumble down the rocky edges of a cliff in a failed daredevil stunt. So, he knows to get out of the way when Lindsey comes tumbling down the stairs at the Gala. She tumbles long enough for Wolfcastle to find a newer, younger, more trophy of a wife. In real life the fall would have killed her, and Marge would feel terrible. Thank god for animation. Kids, don’t try this at home.

“This isn’t about the cash, it’s about righting a wrong and looking damn good doing it,” Sarah convincingly explains when she lays out the premise of the heist. By the end, Marge declares it “best field trip of my freaking life,” which is what the episode seems to be going for. It’s fun, more fun than most school trips, and it teaches a lesson.

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“Uncut Femmes” is a fun and playful movie satire. It captures the suspense, romance, glamour and pace of a heist film, but puts The Simpsons touch on it. Marge shines in the unexpected, manages to clean house at the same time, and brings Homer into an understanding. The crooks get away with it, and nothing will change. Like so many crimes in Springfield, it’s got Chief Wiggum on the case, and that’s like having no one at all.

The post The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17 Review: Uncut Femmes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[raven-wraith]

This is Actually a Completely Subjective List Written in a Completely Objective Voice, so I’m not Wrong, Y’all just had a Bad Year: A Look at the Best Titles of 2020 A.D.

By Orova

I feel like a recap or an intro that encompasses the past year will be redundant to both the reader and the writer, so I just won’t. Instead, I’ll just say that due to circumstances provided by 2020, I had a lot of time to just shut up and play games. And games did I play. I played a lot of good games[1]. I played a lot of bad games[2]. I bought the newest games that came out[3] and I went back down memory lane with some classics[4]. But at the end of every day, I was completely satisfied with how I spent my time and did what I wanted. So this is a list of the games that surpassed satisfaction, pushed the bar higher, and made me reconsider what a truly great game can be in 2020.

The Last Of Us Part II

This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling. If gripping gameplay is what you came for, then you’ll be staying for the story. Naughty Dog continues to come out with games that push current gen Playstations to astronomical heights, making that hardware and software work overtime to get a game that becomes so overwhelmingly tangible that it cause the player to stop. The Last of Us Part II is no exception to this rule. So often does this game take lefts and rights when you expect it to go straight that it is absolutely insane how much ground it truly covers. Sneaking about before getting into claustrophobic gunfights feels smooth and natural, the new mechanics and enemies are unique, and while the non-linear parts can overstay their welcome at times, the game is long enough for them to not fill in empty space. 

When I first played this, I was with my girlfriend for the whole journey and at the end, I didn’t feel quite as fulfilled as I thought I should’ve from the sequel to one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. It wasn’t until I returned on a higher difficulty did I find just how much this game has to offer, making the story all the more powerful as every fight truly felt like my last and every enemy made me rethink my choices and decision making and every arrow I fired and molotov I threw felt a nice weight to it that I have to emphasize once more. This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling as the gameplay speaks for itself before anything else.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

To those that actually care, I reviewed this game when it came out[5] and I was shocked to find how many people didn’t appreciate it as much as I did. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most influential titles of my life that being able to see Cloud’s hair rendered so cleanly in this dystopian futuristic gothic fantasy world was a miracle in my eyes. A dream come true. The action comes in spades with enough sword fighting and magic to make Power Rangers to look like a fucking picnic.

The graphical design of the game, the direction of animation, and the cunning take on a lot of depth we never got to see so early on makes me very excited for future titles to come. There are some downsides, lots involving the side quests and voice acting, but that is just some of its downsides to look past to find the content at its core. Shooting moonbeams out of your greatsword at stormtroopers while in chase on a motorcycle. Take down a tyrannical oil monger as an eco-terrorist. Find cats for a little girl. Is this a Bioshock? No. But is it a game I keep trying to remind myself to not replay? Yes.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remake

Superman by Goldfinger played and my sister laughed as she watched me cry. This game brought tears to my eyes, literally. As I got to relive sitting in my grandma’s basement, I was propelled to complete absolutely everything I wanted to do. This game was a complete package and its delivery was spot on with what a remake should be. A collection on a past game with quality of life improvements, enhanced handling and accessibility, and a software overhaul.

The game is simple. Complete challenges, unlock drip, flex on your friends. Usually in that order. But it is finally that simplicity in a new game that makes it such a good title. We wanted the game we knew and loved and they promised that. Nothing more, nothing less, it is exactly what we got. A new soundtrack, updated graphics, and nostalgia not most can achieve is a massive point to play this game.

Huntdown

Contra meets Kung Fury. Why the fuck have you not grabbed a friend and played this masterpiece yet. I mean seriously. If you’ve got a roommate or SO or friend with nothing going on tonight, play this shit. It’s great. Moving on.

Mortal Shell

I would like to address the fact that, yes, this is a souls-like and it isn’t exactly the most friendly game because of it. However, this game came out of fucking nowhere and blew me on my ass. Going back to delivering on a promise, these guys crafted an unforgiving title with little to no hand holding to show that this-THIS[6]-is how you make a souls-like. It is balls to the walls skill based combat where the player has to use what little tools they have to overcome a myriad of enemies. Progress is possible only through rewards and items, meaning there is no grinding or farming, just straight gameplay.

This is a game where I paid half the price for a full game and got, while a shorter title, the enjoyment from a full priced AAA game. It takes no time to complete when the “click” happens and it is a fun, fulfilling title the whole time. There are some incredibly unique mechanics that forced me to break my souls brain and for that, it just makes the experience far more personal. If you aren’t weak hearted, I cannot recommend Mortal Shell enough.

Doom Eternal

When Doom Eternal dropped, my sister was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After we both went into respective video game comas from it, we dubbed March 20th Doom Crossing Day. Doom is Doom. Nothing more to say past that honestly, but I will continue my rambling cause I know it’s what you all want anyway.

These guys keep cranking the intensity knob higher and higher. With Doom 2016 these guys said, “Hey, what if we gave the best first person shooter that requires no thinking whatsoever to completely obliterate enemies and zoom around the map at breakneck speeds?” With Eternal, the guys said, “Hey, what if we did what we did for 2016 except this time, we actually have the everyone (enemies and the player) move faster, hit harder, and actually require them to think?” With that, the gore orgy of Doom Eternal was born. Still very much a fast paced shooter with some extra content to fill the pockets of completionists, it delivers in fucking truckloads exactly what it wants from the player. To let loose and fucking floor every hellish abomination in their path.

And the soundtrack, while a sad story, is still one of the best things to listen to in gaming and probably the world.

Darkwood

The only thing that made me stop to consider buying this game was how reliant on a crafting system it seemed. I hate games that force crafting. I don’t know why, so I won’t elaborate. But, done with The Last of Us Part II and needing a survival horror itch to scratch, I sucked it up and bought it. After all, being an indie title for a genre I admire more than most, it couldn’t have been a terrible waste of time. That was probably the single best decision I made during the last year and Darkwood is not lost on me in that sense.

The fact that Darkwood has not only exposed the horizon of top-down horror, but it has experimented and perfected its use for the camera angle is astounding. The atmosphere rides on that perspective and, between the short days of scavenging and talking to the few NPCs you meet to the long nights crouched in the corner of your (un)safe haven, it is never lost. It’s a game where you constantly hear your heart in your ears. The combat can be sloppy at times but the story is one of a kind and its execution is phenomenal. If you are a fan of horror games or roguelikes, I cannot tell you enough. Get Darkwood.

Deep Rock Galactic

After lots of thoughtful consideration, I have deemed this the number one title of 2020. Not only did it keep me and my friends together and in touch during the hard times, it is a shooter that I support with my whole body. You and your friends play as a team of drunk space dwarves, tasked with a mission that sends you deep into a spider-infested planet, where you will have to use your class sets to fight, plunder, and escape the hostile environment.

With PvE at its core and ridiculousness as its foundation, Deep Rock Galactic is a masterpiece of cooperative shooting and procedurally generated dungeon crawling. Blending class play from Team Fortress 2 with unexpected and differing missions from Darkest Dungeon, one will find this lighthearted shooter is an easy, accessible title. With a hint of Risk of Rain to complete its graphics, the game is above all fun. That’s right. It. Is. Just. Fun. Shoot a spider that launches fireballs from its mouth, drink beer that teleports you into the farthest reaches of space, get rich off of gold veins while your team calls you greedy, dye your beard purple, and Rock and Stone in this amazing fusion of PvE and dungeon crawling. 

Thank you for coming. There will be no score. It is simply a list where I feel those that need some new titles after the biggest disappointment of them all[7] should find some great titles in here for themselves. Have a safe next year and be patient. Patience is what will reward you. Practice is what humbles you. Hesitation is defeat. Toodles.

[1] Ghostrunner

[2] Hellpoint

[3] Mafia: Definitive Edition

[4] Silent Hill 3

[5] 9/10

[6] Not you Hellpoint

[7] Cyberpunk 2077 but I mean, we all saw this coming. I had to put it in here somewhere.

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (General: A - B)

Full, Superior Alternative on Google Docs.

So, I’ve been on the fence as to whether or not to publicly share this. In the end, it’s really nothing more than a project of self-indulgence. However, it is 100k+ words of self-indulgence and it does involve a story at least a decent number of my followers have read and liked. I also talk about a lot about Stevidot and all the characters in general for this project. Considering I haven’t written anything since the end of August (and real life interference is finally affecting my ability to reliably produce anything of substance since then), I figured it was only fair to offer something. I do still have the itch to write; I just really don’t feel comfortable doing it if I myself am not in a good state mentally or emotionally.

Why did I make this? Well, I’ve mentioned in the past that my other super-huge, much-more-popular story Travels of the Trifecta! eventually gained enough notoriety to not only make it to the Fanfic Rec list on TV Tropes, but a few readers were even gracious enough to make an actual trope page for the story itself. However, despite great temptations, I never once contributed to the page myself, for fear I’d never get the story done because of how addictive and time-consuming that site is. 

I was naively hoping Gem Ascension (or at least Bottled Up, which is easily my most popular story outside the main GA series) might get the same honors. But back then, I was also new to the fanbase and didn’t realize just how badly Stevidot as a ship was wrongfully considered an immoral ship... and still is. So that’ll probably never happen for real. 

That said, so long as I completed my initial 3-act series for GA, I considered it fair game to play around with tropes that I could associate with it. And I finished that sucker in record time. So, since the early months of Summer, I’ve slowly compiled a list of tropes for my GA continuity - so far for general coverage and character-specifics only. 

They’re similar to my GA Reference Tour posts in that aspect. Like I said, though, the entire document is over 100k in length, so no way is that all going up at once. The general listing is big enough to make me think it won’t fit in one post, either (especially as I continue to waste space rambling here). As the length alone proves, I was right to avoid doing this for Trifecta.

I wouldn’t consider it a complete (or even entirely accurate) listing; the character sections are very lop-sided in terms of content, but that’s a little justified, at least. Anyway, I did make some new art for certain character sections in future posts, so I figured this would at least be a neat way to share them. I’ve linked said tropes and everything. It’s really only worth a read if you’re that interested in getting some more in-depth details to the GAverse that I haven’t really covered here properly yet. But it does technically count as Stevidot content, so there’s the grab.

Beyond the spoiler cut, there are no marked spoilers. I’m not savvy enough to go THAT far with the style... plus, the main series has been complete since early March and it’s now October. Just... if you recently found the story, haven’t finished it, but actually intend to do so, look on at your own risk, I guess. 

Well, let’s see how much I can actually fit in here. And whether or not it’ll format properly. 

Edit: Turns out, only up to the K Tropes. Loooooovely~. Looks like I’m gonna play it safe and cut this after the Bs.

Edit II: As a bonus, I see the links being retained when I edit this post, but they won’t appear on the post itself. Just. Awesome. I may just put this up on Google Docs as an alternative if anyone cares that much about having the hyperlink access. That link is up. I’ll need to neuter these things something fierce so the hyperlinks will appear again.

GEM ASCENSION CONTINUITY TROPES

 GENERAL

 A Day in the Limelight: Act II as a whole functions somewhat like this; Hero Protagonist Peridot, save for the short final scene at the end of the act, is completely absent. She is frequently talked about and is featured in prerecorded Video Wills, but the 8 chapters Act II is comprised of are dedicated to the 8 remaining members of the main cast. Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, Connie, and Steven – characters who had much less time to feature in Act I due to being captured during the first half – all have chapters entirely dedicated to them. Greg, despite being part of GA from the start, also had limited time to feature in Act I past Chapter 3 due to being a Non-Action Guy. His chapter is one of the longest; Greg is also involved in a subplot with Bismuth and Lapis, and as of Chapter 7, he receives a Rank Up and officially becomes a legit member of the Crystal Gems.

A Fate Worse than Death: Pallification. Not only worse than a gem’s shattering, but even corruption. It’s similar to corruption in that a gem is technically still alive, but their consciousnesses are greatly compromised. While a corrupted gem is more akin to a mutated rabid animal until a cure is found, a pallified gem’s body – while usually maintaining the integrity of its physical form – has been rendered soulless. Once White Diamond supplants their conscious minds with her own, she boots them out to parts unknown (she doesn’t even care enough for her own subjects to figure out what exactly she’s doing to their conscious minds) with no way for them to find their way back to their original body. It’s not even made clear whether or not a gem’s consciousness is killed off outright the moment White infects them. So, a pallified gem is basically condemned to eternal purgatory. Naturally, even after the events of GA, there are still millions of gems afflicted with this condition with no known cure to ail them. With White Diamond herself shattered at this point, these victims are little more than vegetables at best.

A Friend in Need: It must be stressed that the objective from the start of Gem Ascension was not to overthrow the Diamond Authority (and certainly not to destroy Homeworld itself): it was to rescue friends who were in trouble. Steven, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Connie were all imprisoned on Homeworld with no means to truly escape, so Steven resorted to sending an SOS to the Crystal Gems on standby on Earth. After taking charge of this mission, Peridot greatly emphasized their objective being a quick in-and-out after rescuing their friends as quietly as possible. Then the mission escalated with much higher stakes, but the objective remained the same. Act I concluded with all of the Crystal Gems safely escaping Homeworld and returning to Earth… save for Peridot. The follow-up mission, consequently, had the same objective: rescue Peridot, then escape. It was later amended to rescue all of Homeworld’s native gems once it was discovered that Homeworld itself was going to fall apart very soon. The revolution that came about with Homeworld’s destruction and the fall of the Diamonds were merely byproducts of the rescue mission. Only Pearl seemed to anticipate this kind of result, but none of the Crystal Gems were prepared to be responsible for keeping Era 3 going on Earth in Homeworld’s absence (as well as the Diamonds’). 

Acceptable Targets: In-Universe, the lower you are in the caste system on Homeworld, the more you’re expected to take abuse of any kind from any gem of a higher class. This is Who I Am goes further into depth on this topic; it’s revealed Peridots have no rights when it comes to being mistreated by gems above their class. Even worse, it’s illegal for a Peridot to antagonize a gem of a higher caste for any reason – yet it’s perfectly legal for elite gems, such as quartzes, to do whatever they wish to a Peridot so long as it doesn’t permanently damage them or compromise whatever mission they’re assigned together on. Yes, even if a low-caste gem is raped (like Peridot almost was), it’s legal and the victimized gem is fully expected to suck it up and deal with it.

Adaptation Expansion: Not only does the GA series serve as an alternative to Change Your Mind, but it frequently brings up events from past canon episodes. This isn’t done for nostalgia’s sake, but rather to expand on said scenes and observe them with a different lens. Through this, scenes in the show readers have seen multiple times can yield some new discoveries with the additional details and questions posed within the GA narrative.

Adaptational Alternate Ending: Takes place shortly after Escapism in the show. The first few minutes of Change Your Mind are canon to the fic (mainly Blue Diamond’s Heel-Face Turn), but it’s completely off the rails from there on out. So, it’s basically an alternative ending to Season 5.

After-Action Healing Drama: In Chapter 5 of Act I, after Peridot got caught in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown with 9FC and sustained severe injuries in the previous chapter, the recently-rescued Steven uses Lion to take himself and Peridot somewhere private so he can heal her many injuries.

All For Nothing: The battle with White Diamond in Chapter 6 of Act III is this, as that wasn’t the real White Diamond to begin with. The Crystal Gems just wasted a load of time and energy on a proxy, and it’s the realization of this trope that causes said battle to abruptly turn in White’s favor, ending in a Curb-Stomp Battle with the Crystal Gems on the losing end.

Due to this aspect of the battle, it means Rainbow Quartz 2.0’s scheme to siphon off some of White Diamond’s essence (to later use for a cure for corruption and pallification when they return to Earth, knowing White’s never going to help willfully) was also a waste, and what Pearl and Steven gained was just the essence of a bunch of dead gems. Pearl has a bit of a minor Heroic BSoD in Chapter 7 over this, but Garnet pulls her out of it and encourages her to not give up on the endeavor.

All Up to You: The premise of Gem Ascension: Peridot, Lapis, Bismuth, and Greg step up to rescue their A-Team friends against all odds. 

Alternate Continuity: This story takes place shortly after Escapism. Beyond the first few minutes of Change Your Mind, it becomes canon divergent from there.

Anachronic Order: After Gem Ascension’s completion, a set of stories was released throughout the month of May that all took place in Gem Asension’s continuity (save for one, technically, which took place a while before GA starts and has no connections to said continuity outside of being referenced in a few of the other stories) for Stevidot Month. Justified, somewhat, as they were only released out of order due to representing at least one of three prompts assigned for the five weeks of Stevidot Month, and Word of God planned much of this on the fly. A couple of stories were pre-prepared (Plans Change and This is Who I Am’s first chapter), but didn’t fit any prompts other than the ones assigned to the final two weeks. Since May’s conclusion, all stories (in their AO3 incarnations) have been put in a collection and are arranged in chronological order.

Bottled Up is the only story that averts this, as it chronologically occurs before all the others listed here and was also the first one released in May. However, since it does take place a good amount of time before GA’s starting point, it can easily be read as a standalone. The same cannot be said for the stories following it.

My Time is Now, which properly introduces Sphalerite (who only got an unnamed, featureless cameo in Act III and spoke the very last lines of the story), takes place no more than half an hour after Act III’s conclusion, but it was also the last story released in May. 

Second-to-last was Plans Change, which took place only a few hours after the aforementioned story. 

This is Who I Am chronologically falls roughly half a week after that, but its first chapter was released in the middle of the month.

Peri-dise: The Capitalist Anarchy takes place about 1-2 months after GA Act III, making it currently second-to-last in GA’s overall continuity, but was the third story released overall during May’s second week.

It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is takes place in late August, making it the furthest-removed from GA’s timeline by 3-4 months (until the release of Our Tomorrow – a direct sequel to this story taking place exactly one year later, but won’t be listed here as it was made long after Stevidot Month ended). It was the second story released for Stevidot Month. 

Anyone Can Die: The moment White Pearl and Blue Diamond die (relatively close to the same time) by Chapter 6 of Act I makes it apparent no punches will be pulled in this story; especially after it’s made clear how much of a Complete Monster White Diamond is in this continuity. Yellow Diamond falls two chapters later, and at least for a short while it’s presumed Peridot met a similar fate. There’s also the concept of pallification, which renders several hundred gems functionally dead in Act I alone. The majority of the gems left on the planet end up pallified by the time the Crystal Gems return to Homeworld in Act III. By the climax of said act, White Diamond self-destructs. On a smaller scale, almost every original character introduced in GA either dies or is already dead upon introduction. 5XF is the only one so far who averts this.

Astral Projection: An aspect of Steven’s developing powers in Act III. During Chapter 4, an all-pink astral projection of Steven travels into Peridot’s subconscious to find out what White Diamond did to fragment her mind. A bit later in Chapter 8, astral projections of Steven and Peridot are seen superimposed over the corporeal forms of Pink Diamond 2.0 and Chartreuse Diamond to signify both coming to terms with their Alter Egos becoming part of them and becoming whole.

Autodoc: The restoration machines that are abundant and scattered across Homeworld, which the Crystal Gems use to speed up the recovery process for Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl at the end of Chapter 6 of Act I.

Badasses in Distress: All of the imperiled Crystal Gems at the start of the story qualify. After Act I, Peridot takes their place.\

The Big Damn Kiss: Steven gives Peridot a pretty significant one in Act I’s final chapter right in the middle of a large and busy battlefield before they split ways to help their friends. Punctuated with a deliberate Shout-Out to Gem Drill.

Big Damn Reunion: Chapters 6 and 7 of Act I is this, as is Chapter 5 of Act III for the follow-up rescue mission.

Birthday Episode: It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is serves as one for Peridot. It also loosely applies to Steven, as his birthday is less than two weeks before hers and is frequently referenced (the pair’s chronological ages are 14 and 15 respectively by this point). Our Tomorrow is a direct sequel to the aforementioned story taking place exactly a year later, making Peridot 15 and Steven 16.

Bittersweet Ending: GA’s conclusion in a nutshell. The Diamond Authority is no longer a threat to anyone, but Homeworld is destroyed, meaning the Crystal Gems have to directly deal with the fallout of this particular revolution while ensuring Earth’s safety. Now they have thousands, if not millions of gems to help adapt to life on Earth and teach the concept of independence and free thought. Homeworld’s colony planets are doomed to civil disorder and collapse unless the heroes directly help, but that also presents a risk if they don’t play their cards right. Peridot and Steven’s lives are irrevocably shaken in their own right, and they’re the ones who’ll have to be the most involved in helping the Homeworld refugees. And there’s still the matter of curing not only the corrupted gems, but now the pallids as well. While GA ended the best way it possibly could, given the circumstances, there’s still a lot of work ahead for the Crystal Gems… and a lot of it will be unpleasant/awkward at best and outright life-threatening at worst. 

Blank White Void: The nature of the Pocket Dimensions featured in Act III, save for the one Steven is initially imprisoned in at the end of Chapter 3.

[dandelliongirl]

Final stretch

of January.

Holy damn it’s been a long month. 5 weeks! It’s really hard to wait for spring and summer because I’m really looking forward to my new summer house being finished and getting to furnish it. ♥

We started our 2019 by visiting my guy’s grandparents for his grandpa’s 80th birthday. It was really nice seeing my guy’s cousins from his mum’s side and get to hang out with my guy’s whole family as well. Usually one or more of them are missing so this time it was all of us together. We played board games and ate so much tasty food. I’m going as vegan as possible (excluding the occasional dairy and eggs) and trying to avoid wheat so it was a bit of a struggle but I’m proud of how well I did. The roads were very icy on our way there and our car did a 180 at one point but nothing bad happened and we got to change lanes safely. Both me and my guy got a really bad flu right after Christmas break ended that took us both out for almost 2 weeks.

On the 10th of January my new sleeping cottage was finally transported to our summer house. It was such an exciting Thursday that focusing at work was really difficult and I kept refreshing my email for any updates from the process. Everything went well and they managed to lower the cottage on the foundation safely despite the crazy amounts of snow and trees bent over the road. Waiting until Saturday to go see it in person was really difficult but it was so worth it! It was the sunniest and nicest day and everything looked gorgeous. ☼ The new cottage is the cutest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and the forest around looked magical with all the snow covering the trees.

We had a campfire going and did some cleanup from after the construction workers. We baked delicious treats on the campfire and had coffee/warm berry juice. I never wanted to leave.. ♥ All of Sunday I felt really irritated and depressed from seeing so much beauty in one day, but it was worth the beauty-hangover. Now I just have to have patience to wait until March/April for the snow to melt. They’re going to fix some damage done during the transportation, finish building the porch on site and finish work inside. I’ve already started to shop for furniture and written a list of things I need to buy for my new house! I really hope for a sunny summer...

Last weekend me and my friend finally got to continue my photography project. Photography makes me so incredibly happy and bringing out my camera for the first time in months got me super inspired. I’ve been watching a lot of Irene Rudnyk’s videos on YouTube and it is really inspiring to see that a lot of the techniques that I’ve learned over the years through trial and error are also used by actual professional photographers. Even though her style of portrait photography isn’t what I personally prefer her videos have taught me a lot about posing my model and looking for good angles as well as a bunch of useful photoshop and retouch tricks. Anyway my firend was dressed as a Little Red Riding Hood-ish character with a red velvet cape that I pinned on her with safety pins, and we went to a snowy forest to shoot some really cute photos. I started editing them last night and I’m hoping to finish today. I was also inspired to re-edit the results of our last photoshoot and I’ve done a lot more planning for future ones. It’s just probably going to take until July-ish. Another thing that I have to be patient and wait for.. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to shoot other photos in the meantime. I’m definitely wanting to carry my camera with me a lot more as I’ve been lazy and very married to my phone camera lately. I didn’t buy a 500€ camera to keep it in the camera bag - especially when taking photos with an actual camera gets me feeling this alive and inspired. ♥

Work has been going well as per usual. We’ve had a chill month before the craziness of trainings and technical help starts in February/March, and I’ve been enjoying my long lunch breaks, crossword puzzles and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

This past week has been really cold and putting on several layers of ski-pants and thick coats many times a day takes an effort. Because of the -15 to -22 Celsius weathers I also haven’t been able to go skiing at all. On the plus side everything looks beautiful.☼  It’s this time of the year that makes winter worth it even though I’m always cold. Since it’s around midsummer on the southern hemisphere oranges are really tasty this time of year and that’s what I always look forward to.

So we’re 26 days into 2019 and still have no news on Animal Crossing for the Switch. ANOTHER thing to wait patiently for.. It really seems like time’s CRAWLING forward. I’ve been listening to a lot of ACNL hourly music (my favourites are probably 8pm, 1am, 3am and 8am) and imagining what the new game might bring... I just really hope that it’s good and won’t be a nightmare of microtransactions, paid online services and an integration into ACPC that renders amiibo useless. It’s both exciting and scary to wait for information to drop.

I finally signed up for graduation this May. Mum and grandmum are both working on my skirt, shirt and jacket and it feels so special having these important women create my outfit from scratch. We got a really cute jacket pattern and made a test version that looked really nice. I can’t wait to see the outfit come together. I’m also really hoping that my friend’s boyfriend signs up for graduation as well so that the four of us can go to the dinner dance together. It would be a lot of fun. Dance rehearsals start in a few weeks.

I’m going to continue photo editing and in the afternoon I’m doing my guy’s sister’s hair for a fancy event she has tonight. I’ll get to see my dear bunny friend again for the first time in almost a year. ♥ My guy is out of town for the weekend so I’m trying to get everything that requires my PC done. We’ve been playing the Witcher III basically whenever both of us are at home and that means my PC is occupied on most days. My guy goes side questing and plays gwent whenever I’m not home, and I join him for any interesting and/or main story missions. It’s a good system because I still can’t really relate to Geralt and am not that immersed into the world. It’s like starting Mass Effect 3 with someone else’s Shepard. Speaking of BioWare, the Anthem VIP demo dropped - as did EA:s servers. This doesn’t bode well for #TheDreadWolfRises but let’s hope people have a short memory and Anthem sells well despite this hickup...

Waiting (patiently) for springtime... ☼

[simonaj1804]

Stage 3 -  Final Project Evaluation

Name: Simona Jindrova Specialism: Film Project Title: 

The concept of my final project is focused on the impact social media has on people. Especially the individuals who spend most of their time on it or who become easily affected by things they’ve seen on the internet. I wanted to make a trailer for short film or quick music video with a message behind it that could be screened as an advertisement video, on conventions such as gaming ones where people who play loads of video games or spend lots of time on the internet gather and I wanted to also upload it on YouTube to reach wider audience.  The idea at first came from my own experience with online ‘drama’ and people on the internet who use internet to cope with their mental problems or as an escape from reality. It has sustained throughout the project but I have rather more focused on specific things that can or will affect even people who don’t often use internet. My creative process has revolved around successfully carrying my main idea through and supporting it with primary and secondary research, experimentation and contextualisation. The project proposal early on helped me with structuring and writing down my thoughts, allowing me to portray the message I wanted to send behind it and during that time I have also put together a loose timeplan that has helped me to get through even if I was feeling unmotivated or was having problems with my mental health. The proposal came out great but it needed more focus on research and context but also idealisation and mindmapping before starting the writing of proposal.

Research

• wide range of secondary and primary research focusing the message behind the main idea. • updated and constant referencing of all the resources I have used of bibliography in my research . • contextual research is well shown throughout primary and secondary research that is written down on my blog including reflections, evaluations and experimentations with problem solving. • I could have done more primary research.

Development of creative practice

• my creative practice has not improved much since I haven’t been able to actually experiment with cameras or participate in any workshops that were on campus. • my outcome and process has become wider over the range of animation and film which has helped me to open my mind to thinking more widely and become more confident and comfortable in both . • this pathway has altered my intended future study - I intend on studying Graphic Design or Psychology. • would have started gathering footage earlier, use an actual camera and be allowed to make my own scenes and compositions.

Problem solving

I have managed to identify and solve majority of my problems from ideology to technical problems which I’ve been trying to explain and identify clearly in my blog posts. I reflected honestly on my thinking and time management and use this to think further ahead about my options and choices to guide myself forward. I have a sense of nitpicking when it comes to video editing or videos themselves so I’m able to reflect and evaluate weaknesses in my own and others work easily. Working with Procreate and other people has given me confidence in my skills and decision making and allowed me to gather more knowledge.

Planning progress & Production

• I have tried to find suitable video editing style compromising between my own editing style and style or aesthetics showcased in my research. •  the information gained has been written down on blog supporting technical explanations and reflections & evaluations • the tested work and ideology has been shown in my tutorial sessions in 1 on 1s and to people from editing industry which have given me constructive feedback which I used in future tests (experimentations) and further research.

Evaluation & Reflection

• I haven’t done weekly evaluations and reflections but I have reflected on my research and my contextual research as well.  At the end I have evaluated and reflected on my project as whole based on my secondary research and my own practice by comparing and finding the weaknesses and strenghts. • I attended most of the tutorials and critique meetings. • I tried to always take notes of any feedback eventhough sometimes I felt like I haven’t received enough critique or feedback so I have gone out to either other editors or people and asked them about their opinions to gain more feedback and reflections from others. • I need to improve for future on consistently doing weekly research and evaluations & reflections on my project. I think I have successfully done research in general and at the end also clearly shown evalutations and reflections done upon it. Thanks to research into audience and end user context it became more refined than in the previous stages and it has supported and helped me to improve my final project outcome.

Communicating and presenting a creative practice

• I have weekly presented my work on my blog and communicated through it. I have tried to write down as much of my thought process as I could to make the development of ideas and critical thinking clear. How successful is your final outcome? • I think the process and making has been more successful than ones in the previous stages I found my final outcome not completely satisfying as I would’ve liked it to me because of the scheduling complications and not having access to filming cameras. • I managed to upload and finish everything in time, I’m quick with research and with video editing so those were my least worries. I still need to gain experience with camera usage as I haven’t gotten to throughout the entire course. • I have managed to show my end user context through small mindmaps and research that I have done.  How well have you presented your final outcome? Have you shown it in an end user context eg. visualisations (photoshop/3D render or photograph) of outcome in situ (eg. installation in an architectural space, children’s book in a window display, garment on a model etc) • No I haven’t as I agreed with the owner of footage that I will use his footage only for this project and not publish it publicly.  

[movieswithkevin27]

Ghost in the Shell

For a film about a brain that gets put into a terrorist fighting robot, Rupert Sanders' Ghost in the Shell sure is dull and conventional. Blowing the budget on special effects and a beautiful score, Ghost in the Shell apparently could not spare a dime for an overhauled script that was not so pale, cliche, and run-of-the-mill. A classic tale of a dedicated-to-the-law hero who slowly discovers that everything they thought was true is not true, the bad guy is actually good, and those helping them are actually the bad ones, Ghost in the Shell feels impeccably shallow, forgettable, and shockingly boring. While a visual splendor at every turn, Ghost in the Shell's success is skin deep with no beating heart to keep its blood pumping and no charm to be found whatsoever in this science fiction action film.

As I have never watched the anime or manga or whatever the film is based on, I came into this one without any pre-conceived notion as to what it should look and feel like. Yet, I nonetheless came away wholly underwhelmed. Horrifically edited, chopped up, and dumped at about 90 minutes long, Ghost in the Shell is a film that hints at many different topics, but is never actually given a chance to explore them. As she is a woman killed by a malevolent organization and then used by that organization to advance their cause in the body of a robot, the film could have a lot of things to say about identity, politics, and be used as a critique of governmental control of a country. Yet, none of these are given any measure of depth. Instead, the lazy and nonsensical writing of the plot leaves these items as backdrops to beautiful effects, forgetting to actually provide the film with any measure of depth in its story. Comfortable being a passable and forgettable shoot 'em up action flick with cliches throughout, Ghost in the Shell feels as though it is a studio product built to suppress the interesting ideas clearly envisioned in the source material in favor of making it more commercially viable. By the end, it is clear that this is not Ghost in the Shell, but rather something inspired by it that entirely misses the point of its source material. It is a live-action remake without heart or soul that feels as though it is nothing more than an ill-advised cash grab attempt.

The aforementioned issues with the editing are really what waylays this film. Much like 2016’s Suicide Squad, there a lot of interesting ideas and themes that get tossed at the wall in Ghost in the Shell. However, very little actually winds up sticking. Instead, it gets lost in a film that feels chopped up and wholly misguided. At a tight 90 minutes, Ghost in the Shell could have been a cohesive and smart action science fiction film. Unfortunately, at a loose 90 minutes, Ghost in the Shell is a longer film crammed into a shorter running time that still tries to accomplish all of the same goals and messaging as a longer film. Thus, Ghost in the Shell is one of those films that tries to do too much in a short timeframe, never giving any of it the proper depth. This is truly exemplified when the film finally jumps into the plotting in the second half. Speeding through without trying to remain a cohesive piece, Ghost in the Shell has to resort to having characters just come out and explain things that would be shown or revealed in a different fashion in other, better films. Instead, here, everybody seems willing to just spill the beans and say exactly what the mysterious project that created Major and others was really all about. After years of covering it all up, it is amazing what the realization that the film is about to end can do to a character’s motivation to explain what happened. In stark contrast, the first half takes its time and really tries to pace itself before everything just hits the fan in the second half with the film stumbling out of control, desperately trying to end in time while covering as much ground as possible. Ghost in the Shell is a film that, when it ends, you wonder where the rest of the movie went.

The film’s storyline really does not do the film’s strengths any justice either whatsoever. Largely about a new program that puts human brains into robot bodies to make warriors, Ghost in the Shell ditches its heady ideas about augmentation and then blending of human with mechanical in favor of becoming just another film about cover-ups. On the surface, it could be interesting with the mysterious Kuze (Michael Pitt) infecting robots and using them to kill the scientists on some highly secretive project. A compelling character given a strong rendition by Pitt, Kuze winds up just being a character with a vengeance that is being hunted by the people who are actually evil, who use the unwitting Major to do their bidding. Revealing he is actually good and there to help Major, only to die seconds later, Ghost in the Shell is a lazily written and unimaginative film with a derivative and dull plot that just happens to be set in an extravagant and futuristic world. It refuses to take chances, instead opting for this safe cover-up angle with a cliché militaristic bad guy, a misunderstood opponent who is actually good, and a few hardcore yet goofy sidekicks along the for the ride with Major. For a film that hints at so many undercurrents that seems compelling on the surface, but winds up reverting to tired clichés for both plot and character development that renders the film as one that has nothing under the skin.

Shockingly, the film's action is equally ineffectual. The fight scenes are largely low-key, unimaginative, and not particularly great either. The final climactic battle scene with Major getting helped by Kuze does not really work either. The choreography is certainly a major issue with these fight scenes, as it never really seems to flow or actually look appealing. However, the fight scenes also feel exceedingly dull. There is no anticipation or climactic release found in these, instead suffering from the same crisis faced by Marvel superhero films: the fight scenes exist not to tell a story or be visually stunning, but just look cool. As Major rips a thing open and loses her arm in the process, it is hard to not see this as a hollow expression of the film's own shallow intentions. Though its visuals largely stun with intricate designs, the fight scenes themselves are not similarly inspired, instead just hollow re-creations of better action scenes in film that feel as though they know the beats and how it should look, but lack the punch, thrill, and excitement to actually work in their own right.

One area of this film that is largely a source of conflict for my own opinion is the acting. Led by Scarlett Johansson, Ghost in the Shell lacks a charismatic lead to really come off smoothly, but whether or not that is fair to criticize due to Johansson playing a robot is up for debate. Her emotions and movements are incredibly robotic, showing that she really did get that down well, but it is not particularly different than how she usually acts. For a woman cast as the action hero lead in many films, Johansson really lacks the charisma and charm to make these kinds of roles come off well, with Ghost in the Shell being a great example of this. That said, again, it may be intentional in this case. Thus, turning to her delivery, this is where Johansson really struggles. With a weak script that fails to develop the characters, the plot, or workable dialogue, it is hard to lay the blame entirely at her feet. However, Johansson is somebody who always acts like they are acting. She seems self-aware that she is an actress, which often greatly undermines her performance by it being stiff, rigid, and unconvincing. In this film, it kind of benefits her, but I have really yet to find a performance by her that I love.

Visually, the film is largely top-notch. The holograms floating around buildings are a weird touch that do not really work all that much, but otherwise, the film is incredibly gorgeous. Though perhaps not strictly necessary, Major splashing into a room through an all-glass window to kick some ass is a seriously stunning image. This neon-lit visual behemoth has been defended as a good film because of its visuals and it is hard to not see why that is the case. For those who value visuals above all else, Ghost in the Shell certainly delivers that in spades. Perhaps the highlight is a shot of a group of people on a boat in a pinkish blue light floating by on the water with the city skyline in the background. It is perhaps director Rupert Sanders' most inspired moment in the film. As a whole, much has been said about the film's visuals and it is hard to not praise them. There is a lot of neon in this film and, as always, it is a lot of different kinds of pretty. At some point, neon will not look so good, but that time is not yet. The incredible production design goes hand-in-hand with the great effects as the skyline and set pieces consistently deliver the goods with intricate designs that really turn into eye candy. The highlight there being the excellent sequence in which Major goes into the mind of one of the companion robots to see the infection it had. Dimly lit with winding tunnels, the design and visuals of the moment are more low-key than this film will be remembered for, but are nonetheless excellently put together.

That said, what really entices me to love this film is Clint Mansell. Perhaps one of the best composers working in Hollywood right now with The Fountain being his crowning achievement. His score in Ghost in the Shell sounds similar at times, especially with the awe-inspiring and hopeful beginning of this film as the robot form of Major rises out of a pool of liquid to be completed. The score hits some beautiful notes in that moment that both stand out on their own and greatly benefits that sequence, which is exactly what a score should do. Setting the tone and the scene perfectly throughout, Mansell's rapturous score meshes beautifully with the excellent visuals and effects that goes to solidify Ghost in the Shell as a technical masterpiece but a structural failure.

Beautiful visuals and an excellent Clint Mansell score notwithstanding, however, Rupert Sanders' Ghost in the Shell drops the ball. With horrifically paper-thin writing, disposable characters, bad and generic dialogue, shoddy editing that rushes through the rising action and climax, and iffy acting from Scarlett Johansson, there is not much to praise about this film beyond its visuals and score. Hinting at deeper ideas about identity and the dangers regarding artificial intelligence as it begins to mesh with humanity, Ghost in the Shell drops everything in the name of rushing through its finale with cliches abounding. Predictable, dull, and the very definition of shallow entertainment, Ghost in the Shell should have stayed in its shell.

[yeartwovfx]

Evaluation of Robot Unit

The easiest way for me to write this review is for me to run through step by step explain the way I did my project start to finish. Every step also has blog posts to be able to go backwards to and see how things went if this is something you would like to look deeper into.

 Firstly, I would like to say to anyone who is thinking of learning Maya and starting the process from beginning to end. You should go and learn every step before beginning well at least look into them and find out the small things beforehand. I only say this because there were quite a few different stages where I got to the next step and instantly my thoughts were. ‘I wish I knew that beforehand’ to me it was a very important process to stick to how they would do this professionally as you will have noticed last year and from the start of my entire journey I have been fixated on learning everything the professional way as my main intention is to look for a job and to gain the required experience and knowledge.

With that being said in this review I am going to go over Modelling, Rigging/Skinning, UV Mapping/Texturing, Animating and Rendering all in Maya and then I will give a small review of my work involving filming and then editing in After Effects and Premiere Pro.

 Starting point. Ideas. Design ideas and references, Story boarding

 After receiving our unit brief, I was excited to find out that we would be doing 3D modelling in Maya as this is something I have been wanting to learn. Instantly I wanted to work through every step that a professional would. First thing is first I needed to think about my target audience which after looking at the types of robots I like and different references I came up with the age of 15+ after this I started doing different drawings and asking people in my class what they thought, what could be improved and what should be completely removed. After some feedback and about 4-5 different attempts at the body parts I managed to put together a final design. The reason to doing this is to make sure I get something that hits my target audience along with being able to take my design into Maya and use it as a guide for the modelling of my robot. I was told by one of my classmates that I should keep the aesthetics very similar throughout the whole robot for instance if I had a rounded head I would need to have a rounded body, rounded shoulders/Arms etc. I showed him my design after taking his advice out board and got told that it should work well with the age group I am trying to reach. Next it was time to storyboard. This is where I did some rough sketches of what came up in my mind and what I was hoping to get from my outcome. I can say that this is not the case but I am not disheartened as I am still impressed with my outcome and I believe the reasoning for me not being able to follow the storyboard was just because I wanted a smooth video rather than something that could of made my robot look worse off. I believe this to be the case because I am not the best videographer so my video would of came out very choppy next time I might be able to get the assistance of someone who is very experienced in filming I will ask for them to help with the storyboard and then for them to assist me in executing the video this way anything I do with my 3D project it will be a result of my modelling and not the video quality.

 Opening Maya first time, learning basics, Learning difference between sculpting and modelling. Steps of modelling rounding it

 This is where I got into my element. I dove right in and began learning all the shortcuts. These are essential. The first thing I noticed was a problem was the whole of this programme would need to use a mouse. Off I went to buy a wireless one just to make everything that little bit easier. I learnt the basics of how to get around this programme in a matter of hours which I guess is pretty good. Now I am not saying I know everything because every day I am learning more and more and the more knowledge of this programme the better. Every time I hit an obstacles, I noticed fairly quickly that I was not the only one everyone my course hit the same issues then after a quick search of the internet people had hit them too. No need to worry because every time there was a problem, I found someone online teaching me the best steps around this which I will now be able to take through with me for future projects. I started off by getting a cube or a sphere and attempting to sculpt them into faces. Let me just say here. Sculpting is not the easiest to do and everyone that uses sculpting on there projects opts to not use Maya as the tools do not work perfectly shall I say. I guess you could learn to use them but apparently there is easier was around this. I found that if I took the front of my drawn robot image and the back of it then put them into my project made sure that when I was in was in front view I would only see half off my robot then when in the back view I would see the same side but from behind what this allowed me to do was create the full one side of my robot considering it would be a symmetrical robot I would then be able to just copy and flip it over to the opposite side. I found that I was able to add edge loops what this allowed me to do was put extra faces into my project giving me the ability to position the mould of my body parts where I wanted them. At this point everything looked very pointy but with the simple push of a number on the keypad I was able to put everything into a curved look which definitely in this case made my robot look more pleasing to the eye. At this point I found someone on YouTube teaching me a lot of the basics in modelling a robot his account name was Spidey406 I found that everything he was telling me seemed as if it was hard to understand and first but after spending time experimenting it got so much easier. In his videos he was creating a very basic robot which I used as a reference to create my robot which meant doing things a lot different to his videos but using hit tips and tricks to progress in my project.

After I got to a stage of thinking I had created half the chest I then ‘duplicate special’ the finished part what this allowed me to do was create an exact copy but already flipped and put in place for me. I then grabbed the target weld tool all the faces and moulded the two-chest half’s together to give 1 fully finished chest piece.

I did the exact same with almost every body part but I did find a few issues with doing it this way and after a while I actually ended up looking for inspiration on the rest of the project from another 3d modeller and this person called themselves 3Dex I will come back to him later when I used his videos for the other parts of my project. Anyway carrying on with the issues I had when modelling this way. When I attempted to duplicate special the head it created indents, so I had to spend a lot of time grabbing each individual point to mould them together. I also found out that when I attempted to create the shape of the face as this was my first time doing this I had accidently combined two shapes together giving the problems of having many faces inside my robots head. The reason this was a problem was because I was attempting to work at high standards where as I could have ignored this and pretended like it wasn’t there, I wanted to make sure it was created in a way of being correct.

At this point I cut my loses and started again. I realised that there was so many little mistakes that I was going to go back to the beginning and I ended up remodelling my entire robot with less polygon faces to make sure everything would look smoother. This also helps when it comes to UV mapping which I did not know anything about at this point in time. After all of the little issues I had hit previously I found it rather simple to recreate my robots outer model.

Putting on a rig for the first time, joints, parenting, hip, IK handles compared to FK handles. Preferred point, rotation of joints. Adding controls and then animating.

 Now that I have my robot modelled and in place I needed to rig so after combining everything together I found out that most rigs should be done with your model in a T-pose. I had to jig the position of my model to be able to do this which wasn’t too hard to do but was a bit of a pain. From now on I will be drawing them this way and creating them like this too so that it makes things that little bit easier. Once everything was in the correct position, I didn’t find too many issues from hear on out.

Starting with rigging, I learned how to rig which was quite easy once I got the hang of it. Basically everything runs from parents in this case the main area to parent everything to is the hip, this is because if you move your hip in real life it moves both of your legs so rigging works exactly the same as bones. Everything is run through joints, spines and skeleton. I’ve on learned how to use this for a human type shape so I’m not sure how this would work with other things which is something I will be very interest to learn. The way things work with the human type body shape is as follows;

Hip>Top of leg> Knee>Ankle>heel>Toe Tips.

Shoulder>Elbow>Wrist>Centre of hand> Fingers (each having three joints).

Spine>Clavicle>Arm

Spine>neck>Chin>Centre Head>Top Head

Spine>Hip

At the end they all connect back to each other through the spine or the hip but these two are the main parents for the top half and then the bottom half of the body. After fully connecting these parts I had the option to add in either IK handles or FK handles you can add both but in my case IK handles were the best option. IK handles are a limb as such what it does is allows you to choose the top join of an area then the bottom joint of the area for instance if I was to choose the top of the arm then the wrist it would allow me to move the wrist and all the joints in the middle will automatically move for me where as FK handles mean that you would need to move each individual join singularly but allowing you to group them up. Depending on the circumstance you will choose what type of kinematics would be best for you. After doing this you need to rotate every joint to make sure the Y axes is in the direction you want your joints to bend and I found that if it is the elbow or the knee join you want to bend forward then you need to move the joint further in the direction you want it the bend hold right click it the choose preferred angle this means that when you grab the handle end and move it in then it will bend in that direction and not look strange. Once you have everything in the position you want it you need to make sure that it is all exactly how you want it, next you want to highlight you entire project press skeleton then bind skin this means when you bend a joint the mesh of your object with bend like skin to make sure there is a smooth look between everything.  I will say it is very hard to come back and change this in my case I was able to go backwards and unbind the skin to change the directions of the joints as the script I used didn’t change all of the joints into the correct direction I was lucky that I found the issue fairly soon after binding the skin to the joints. There is an option to orientate the joints with the skin bound but this only works once per joint then you need to do select it again this is a pain because it is very time consuming which I came to find out so in my case I found it more time effective to just unbind the entire skin recheck all my joints orientations then bind the skin back together. The reasoning to binding the skin is to give the viewing a smooth watch which is good for the audience as no one wants to watch something that is very choppy and jumpy. Lastly with the rigging before animation you need to give your project controls. This makes the entire next process so much easier to grab and move. I found controls extremely useful because once you have allowed everything to be editable again you can grab the control which is outside of created object easy and you can move it without needing to worry about grabbing the wrong thing then displacing it.

To animate in Maya I found it as simple as doing it in any other programme I have previously used for this there is automatic smoothing between the two keyframes so it was as simple as putting the robot into one position going forward x amount of frames then moving it again in my case I moved the robot every 5 frames to give a smooth look to everything and there is not much for the programme to mess up through its automated process but at the same time it cut my workflow down. I used 248 frames to be able to receive a longer animation but also be able to get that easy to watch flow between the whole movement of the robot without needed to squeeze it into one small sequence.

 Texturing

 In my case I used texturing as a format for ease of use with the mistakes throughout the process of creating my robot rather than not being able to visible see these till the end. So as much as it seems simple from what I have learned so far to add in a texture to a model I noticed that you need to create your initial robot in such a way to give you a nicely fit UV map and this is something that I will be learning to do with my next project in Maya. This was a huge stumble for me which actually ended up stopping me from getting the look I would of ideally given to my robot. I wanted to give my robot a rustic look but this was not possible because after I had gotten to a stage to add a texture when I attempted to add in a third party texture it just stretch the colours and made them look completely wrong this is because where my mesh had too many faces it needed to try and extend the texture image throughout the UV faces but in my case this didn’t work for my original concept which resulted in me giving a shiny grew full material to my entire robot. Luckily for me this made my wrong look great for the background I used as a stage to add my robot too but in the professional world this Is not something I will be able to do which I understand yet I also understand this is an area I need to develop further knowledge which I am hoping to build together by the end of the course.

 Rendering

 The last step in Maya is rendering. This is not something I was impressed with because I cannot get round how I think if you are creating something in a 3D world you should be able to render it as a 3D object that you will still be able to move and position accordingly in the case of using Maya you had to export everything from the view of a camera into exported images that run a sequence to look like a 3D moving object.

After effects and premiere pro, shadowing, blur, colour grey, rotation and position. Feedback, adjustments and sound.

 I exported my Maya project as 248 IFF files what that means it when I import the first picture it pulls all 248 images in as one group as well as giving them a completely transparent background. I liked this format because it allowed me to get my project from one programme to the other with ease and with keeping it very precise to how I had created it. After that I attempted to attach the three videos, I had taken with a DSLR but due to my lack of ability with filmography I did not like the look and feel these three videos would have given to my audience. In my opinion they would of given the sense of amateur work and no one would have been able to connect with my final outcome. This made me change my video to one short video shot with a hand-held camera that paned around the room allowing me to put my robot into the scene and give the audience something to not look away from and indulge themselves into the short scene. Once I had both my assets in after effects, I took the filmed scene then 3D tracked the plane giving the tracking markers I was able to stick the 3D robot onto the edge of the laptop giving the illusion that I was already there. After this I tried to add in a light, ticking the cast shadow box I thought it would be fairly easy to give my robot a robot that would reflect onto the video behind but in face this did not work at all it just either gave more light to the front of my robot or none at all so it went dark. I didn’t like this because it made me realise that the two scenes were not actually together, so it isn’t possible to just cast a shadow off something that isn’t real to the scene. My illusion of my own scene just disappeared! Now this meant I would need to gey my audience to believe like it is actually in my scene to do this I would need to create a fake casted shadow that pulled everything together and made it look real to do this I duplicated my robot then used the gaussian blur effect to distort the look and lowered the opacity, after this I used fill mask to change the entire colour to a dark grey. I didn’t choose to use black because such a solid dark colour would make things look less believable to the viewer so grey was the choice. Combining the blue with the colour then rotating and position the duplicate moving it to the layer underneath my original robot this made a shadow effect appear now because my duplicate was animated I needed to attach the feet to the original robots feet using key frames then positioning and rotation more to keep it in the correct place I was able to cast a shadow into the scene to make it look real. I thought I was finished… I exported out then showed my video to 3 people in my class effectively an audience to gain some feedback there two bits of feedback I go given were that the footage and final video was unstable and needed sound to make it believable so I went back to the drawing board put my scene into premiere pro and then used the effect warp stabiliser this made my footage look less shaky now to add in some sound. This was fairly easy I found a bit of robot noises from the internet then added them together in premiere and made my robot sound as if it was turning on and off then when it moved it would also make a mechanical sound to make it sound like it was attempting to move I exported again and showed me work to the same 3 people from my class they said that after taking there feedback on board I had finally managed to create something that looked believable and up to a semi-professional standard this made me feel like I had reached my original goal.

 References of YouTubers.

Spidey406

(2015) ‘ How to model in Maya - Maya Modeling Tutorial - Robot Model’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7uEaWHR3bE [Accessed 1st October 2018]

3dEx

(2018) ‘Autodesk Maya 2018 - Character Rigging (Part 1 of 3)’ YouTube.Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOokoFED7QE [Accessed 5th November 2018]

(2018) ‘Autodesk Maya 2018 - Character Rigging (Part 2 of 3)’ YouTube.Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWrKiOKuK4o [Accessed 11th November 2018]

(2018) ‘Autodesk Maya 2018 - Character Rigging (Part 3 of 3)’ YouTube.Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK34DUULP6I [Accessed 17th November 2018]

[antonyjohnsonunit27]

Stop Motion Animation

Research

what is stop motion animation?

Stop motion animation is a technique used to bring still objects to life. This is done by moving the object/objects in increments then you film a frame per increment and when you put them all together you get movement. 

commercial stop animation is where most advertisements use this technique.This is because a lot of advertising is based off of products that can’t move. For example food adverts use stop motion for an interesting and eye catching ad so that it draw peoples attention so they can buy the product.

Stop motion is also used to make feature films for example Wallace and Gromit was made using stop motion. this was done by using clay for the characters and small objects. To make a really good long feature film using stop motion it’ll take a very long time it took quite a few years to make Wallace and Gromit the were rabbit.

Artistic contexts

This is where fine artists use their art and bring it to life by using stop motion. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJdJIwCF_Y

This video truly expresses stop motion used in artistic contexts. They’re showing of their art skills however this is just random creativity but it is still really good the way they expressed themselves with their art. This takes a lot of skill and creativity in order to produce something truly great. They also used a lot of objects making this video interesting.

Making a Stop motion Animation process

Step 1: Decide on your concept, it can be based off of anything you want it to as long as its still and easy enough to work with.

Step 2: Work area set up, you will need an area that has no natural light as this will effect the lighting as it changes on it’s own. You will also need a table that is still also a background is always good so your objects stand out.

Step 3: Camera set up, you will need a tripod to keep your camera really still when making shots. The ideal quality for stop motion animation is between 12fps and 24fps (1920x1080). However you can choose whatever suits you best. Higher the frame rate the smoother the animation. Set camera to manual as auto may alter the light.

Step 4: Premiere Pro cc

save all your images into a folder then open your editor and then navigate to where you import your images. After go to File<Import then select your first image after doing so make sure you tick the box that says Image sequence and select import. This will turn all of your images into 1 time lapse. From here edit the timing and the pacing of the video then add music and sound effects. That’s it a Stop Motion animation has been made. If production goes well  the editing process should piece together quickly.

https://wistia.com/library/producing-stop-motion

Step 4: Adobe Photoshop cc 

First go to File<Open then select your file where the images are saved make sure to tick the box that says image sequence. After you select open you get the option to select your FPS(Frames Per Second) anything between 12 and 24 is usually best.  If your animation window is not already open select this from the toolbar Window<Animation. This will provide you with an animation timeline. Now you can edit the timing and everything for your video. Once everything is completed you need to render the video. To do this go to File<Export<Render Video, give your video a name then click select folder to save it. After click settings from the File options then it takes you to movie settings then select settings again. You then need to change the compression type to H.264 and change the video quality to best. then press OK twice then select render. 

Finally Upload your video online to Youtube for example.

Idea Generation

When i was making my idea generation first i had to view some stop motion videos to get some ides however they didn’t help very much. I just jotted down idea that i thought were good. When I put clocks it got me thinking then big Ben came into mind this is good because it’s something from real life. then i thought i could use props to make background movement and then i drew the clock .

After coming up with ideas i made a story board to support my ideas. I thought I could use different colored clothing for the sky as it changes from morning to night. this is because the clock hands are turning making it look like the day go by quickly. I’m then going to use charging cables to form clouds then they will disappear  as it gets to night.  There will also be birds in the background.

This is Big Ben that i drew I stuck paper on cardboard to give it more strength and doesn’t move easily. I also made clock hands seprately this will make the time change when i move them.

Production

I did this in a small studio with no natural light and used led lamps so that my lighting stayed the same all the way through. i used a desk so that my image would stay completely still and i had my DSLR in a stand so it was looking down ontothe image. Once I was set up i started the process of taking images. I would move the hands on the clock for every single image. For the background i would change the colours as time went by this represents early morning to night. I also used charging leads for cloud creation and movement. When i finished i had taken around 360 photographs, The next step was to get the images off of the camera and into a file on my memory stick.

After i opened up my Photoshop file i went to window then to timeline. This allows you to add photos to your timeline in a sequence after go to the plus button on the timeline, this is where you select all the photos you want in your Stop motion. To select all (Ctrl+A). Once all of the photos have loaded in this will give you the photos in a sequence on your timeline.

In order for my stop motion to move a lot faster and smoother i needed to select the button with 3 dots on my timeline, this allows me to change my frame rate. I put it down to 0.1 seconds.

After editing my video I had to export it and render it.

Once this was completed i uploaded it to YouTube the link is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khx8XWS-uaA&feature=youtu.be

Evaluation

What I have made is a Stopmotion animation about a clocks hands turning and the scenery changes as the day goes by. I made the clock by drawing it and i used a pin to make the hands spin. For the background i used clothing for the sky and charging leads for the clouds. Making this took a few hours. Looking at what i have made is extremely rushed this is because i didn’t use the whole time given for certain reasons. I believe if i were to use the whole time given i could’ve created a good clean Stopmotion either based on the same thing or something different. However what I thought I did well was being able to quickly come up with ideas and produce something that actually worked. Overall if i were to do this project again i would keep experimenting with different materials and ideas to make a smooth animation and make different adaptations. 

[acgtooln9567178-blog]

(can’t get the rendering in after effect work, keep giving black screen, put different images sequence together but most of them basically do nothing, gues it won’t work if I just put them under composition and composition)

(video form by shots)

only with final image output, the one below is render out form after effect.

(different render pass form unreal Base color, Depth, Normal ,scene color)

Work hour: 1 hour on reading instruction on Unreal web site for the sequencer in unreal real  , 4 hour for actually work in unreal and the affect effect ,2 hour blog

This Week, I start to learn about making video and render it out in different format by unreal engine, which I never done it before, the whole process was like following the instruction  provide by the blackboard.

Once understand the basic concept, the work in unreal won’t be hard, since I already start use this software form other unit before , know about the basic control and interface of it and the method of the sequence is similar to a lot 3d software animating part . There are some problem I encounter in the process, it’s about the keyframe setting in the sequencer, I can only set the keyframe after I make change, but my habit was to set the keyframe first, which cost me a lot of time on trying to figure out what’s wrong with something that suppose to be very simple.

After reading the instruction of unreal, I decide to try form the video by putting different shots together, figure it would be easier to edit different shots separately than putting everything together.

  In the shots, I play with features of the camera actor, like the camera movement, rotate, and also the focus on object and the focus length of the camera to create shots, .

My problem would be the rendering form the after effect, maybe a bit form the unreal as well, simply adding word is easy or just render the final output images in after effect, but I just can’t do the rendering about using different render pass for the the rendering, that is something I can’t do, I‘m really not good at using after effect, it didn’t change much even I use it before.

If I got extra time, I might go to have a deeper look to figure out how it works, I think I can’t even remember which kind of render pass I need form unreal. As fair as I know, it had something common in setting up material in real-time graphic, but that’s never never my strong suit.

But I really don’t have much time, since an assessment form other unit took more time than I thought, and I have to spend most of my time on INB380, a group project, I have to spend around 20 hours at least to create assets , in order to just make sure the project can be finished in time.

About what could have to be make this easier, I don’t have a clear idea, except form should forgot most of the thing about after effect. For future, Looking into character related stuff is very obvious, because I only have very limited knowledge about character modeling,rigging, a bit more about animation, but still not much.

My first choice of the further stage and focus will be character rigging and related,like skin weight or animation features, it’s not my strong suit, just feel a bit right to choose it, and the main reason is that I was never good at making things look pretty, like colors and making surface images , always a mess, I simply lack of the understand of “beautiful”. 

It seen modeling building and some not so complex environment stuff is achievable to me to work on. Also, I figure the camera stuff, create and design shots , position of things maybe an option for me to focus in the further stage for an animation work.

[lorrainecparker]

ART OF THE CUT with the editor of “War for the Planet of the Apes”

William Hoy, ACE got into the editor’s seat on feature films back in the mid-‘80s. One of his first major feature films was Dances With Wolves. Since then he’s edited a string of box office and critically acclaimed hit films: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Patriot Games, Se7en, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Bone Collector, Dawn of the Dead, Fantastic Four, 300, Watchmen, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Art of the Cut caught up with William recently to discuss his work on War for the Planet of the Apes.

HULLFISH: The ape performances were obviously motion capture. What was the workflow for editing?

HOY: The genius of WETA (the visual effects company responsible for the motion capture, animation and VFX rendering) is that they can translate a human face into a simian face. If you see the motion capture performance side by side with the final animation, you’ll absolutely see every nuance that Andy Serkis had. Every little twitch. Every subtle look. The tear falling – they matched the tear falling off – that was CG but that is entirely Andy’s performance. As Matt (director, Matt Reeves) and I go through the picture, we choose the actor’s performance. This picture is different in motion capture from some other ones that I know of because the motion capture on others are shot within a virtual set, so the actors aren’t performing in the real environment. We were actually shooting scenes in the forest. We had all these “witness cams” that capture the action of the apes and then there were also cameras on their faces and they have dots all over their face and they are wearing these sensors on these gray spandex suits that looked like gray pajamas. But we’re on location and Serkis has to walk like an ape. He has to do all of the physicality of an ape. Right before picture started, Terry Notary – who was also in Rise and Dawn as Rocket – he runs Ape school. So any new actors go to this school and he teaches them how to move. They have these crutches so their movements simulate quadrupeding of apes.

All of that goes to WETA who translates their performances. The translation is amazing and it’s only gotten better through each of these pictures from Rise to Dawn. So I would come in in the morning – because WETA is in New Zealand – and I would see these shots that have come in overnight and I would be so moved because you can actually see the emotion in the performances. These apes in the animation had the performance that we originally chose from the actor. When I first started seeing the nuance coming in on this particular film, it was at another level which really was breathtaking. So the performances of our actors is basically what we work with. A huge part of the budget on this picture is visual effects and almost all of it was dedicated to performance. So that’s why I wanted to return to work another one. There is also the collaboration with Matt Reeves. It’s become easier because there’s a bit of shorthand. So I can actually take a performance and slap it on the side of captured performer’s head and Matt can look at it and understand what he’s eventually going to get.

HULLFISH: So beyond that shorthand, do you find any other value to working with the same director/editorial team?

HOY: The big thing is that the director has confidence that you’ve been diligent about choosing the right performance and that you didn’t say, “I cut in the last take because I thought that’s what you were going for.” On the first one it took a while for him to trust me in that way because he’s very very meticulous. We would go through each scene and take, but on this one he accepted some of the takes that I chose without asking to look at them all again. He would say, “Oh yeah. That is the best one. I remember that.” And we could move on and spend time solving bigger problems, which is a real help because the picture was so complicated.

We shot a lot in the Pacific Northwest forest, but we also did shoot on the motion capture stage. So while they were shooting, I’m on location, but I’m actually in my editing room cutting the picture, so to spend time on the set means time away from putting the picture together. When they shot on the motion capture stage – which was very close to where the cutting rooms were – it gave me an opportunity to go down there and see how things are shaping up to see if I have something to add that early on because a lot of times those scenes haven’t been put together.

On this particular picture we held out three weeks of motion capture to be shot later because we knew we wanted to visualize some scenes first and see how everything fits in. And we knew we would want to tweak things so there were certain scenes that weren’t entirely shot in the first pass. So we waited until the picture was together and then we shot motion capture here in L.A. and I was on the set for that. We actually had our Avids out on the motion capture stage. So we could see that we need characters to run quicker or a certain character needs to enter here or for a certain performance because we need these interconnecting pieces. There’s also scenes that we had to reimagine in the cutting room, Matt and I. And so those are the scenes that we talked out extensively.

For example, “what if we just had Caesar come down the mountain here and he slid?” Because I have this amazing wide shot and wouldn’t it be nice if he slid down the mountain and caused this slight avalanche, which is kind of a precursor to what comes later? So we captured Andy doing this action on the stage.  Without that, it might come out of the blue. If we had that happen, we know that the snow was unstable so WETA put in a little break in the snow.

HULLFISH: So you actually started by cutting using the motion capture footage?

HOY: Absolutely so. I start editing the picture as soon as they finish shooting a scene with our human and motion capture actors and began crafting that scene into what I hope it ultimately would be. But in the meantime we need to begin to turn some of these visual effects over because they just take so long. And you can’t jam up WETA’s pipeline all at once: say, “OK, we’re done with the locked picture. Here are 1,400 shots.” It’s not going to happen. So we segment out with a schedule of what WETA can handle and what scenes are first. Then we would focus our attention on those scenes. We had the luxury of actually putting the picture together on this one and we could turn it over as soon as soon as Matt saw the picture, which was two weeks after we came back from location. So right after that, there were some scenes that he was happy with already, so we could send those out.

I should add to that I was on location on my own and put most of the picture together then Stan Salfas, who also worked on the last one, came onboard in Los Angeles a few weeks before we came back from location. Because the picture was so demanding – as far as time is concerned – I’d come in the morning and look at shots and then Matt would come in, we’d look at them together, discuss the progress of each shot and then we’d work on scenes together. Matt broke for dinner at about 7:00 or 8:00 and I’d continue to complete my work for the day. He would work with Stan until midnight. He’s the hardest working guy on the picture.

You’re right as far as: how do you visualize some of these performances? When they’re rendered, the performances begin to transform. We have complete faith in WETA, but you never know exactly what you’re going to get, so we have a tendency to leave things just a little long if we can – just a few frames, but when there is an action match or something like that there’s nothing you can do. We just go on the faith that we picked the right frame.

As the picture evolves, and you begin to see some of these rendered apes in their final form, we found that we could drop some of the music, because we didn’t need that music to tell us how to feel about the apes at this point in the story. When we’re at a more primitive state, technically, we had a tendency to load the picture up with temp music. But when we came to the final mix, we started stripping out music and just letting these characters play, because they’re so real and they give you everything you would want from an actor. You just look in their eyes and say, “Oh My God! I get it!” We don’t need all this dressing. As a matter of fact, sometimes the music made it too melodramatic. Sometimes it telegraphed an idea. So we were kind of showing our hand before the climax or the point of the scene.

We put this together with motion capture characters and then we have to screen it. So I look at it with Matt and he says, “Yeah that’s working pretty good.” But how do we represent this in a screening? The characters are looking the wrong way or we had elements of a scene that did not exist at that point. We had VFX editors who would actually cut heads out and put it in where needed. We know that ultimately WETA is going to make that seamless. But, how do you show that to the studio? How do you show that to an audience and get the emotional reaction that you want? So there’s another step which doesn’t lead to the final step, but it’s a side step that we need to take because none of this will end up in the final, it’s just for screening. Our VFX producer, Ryan Stafford, knew this from working on Rise and Dawn. He knew to have a whole crew of post-viz artists, so they could depict these in more detail.

We had what we call “ape puppets”  – something to represent a character be it Caesar if he’s riding a horse – we were able to put this ape puppet on there and put “Caesar” on his chest, and have him riding on the horse. Ultimately we know that’s going to be a photo-real Caesar riding on that horse. But these are the interim steps we have to take to show it to someone before we start getting the shots back from WETA.

WETA delivers different iterations of the animation. The first is what’s called blocking. So, they’re WETA’s puppets in the position with the right movement and then we can see if one shots matching into another as far as movement is concerned. And then they go into animation, where they start doing the facial features and the actual emotions of the character. And all through this process we sit and and talk to WETA for hours at a time each day. Matt’s sitting there. He’s talking to them about the details of a shot and what he wants out of Andy’s performance and almost all of the time Matt is referring back to Andy’s actual performance, like, “He’s just sadder in this shot. He just has this very subtle sadness in his eyes.” Somehow we have to capture that. So then WETA goes in and put just a little glazing on his eyes, like he’s been tearing up, or he’s about to, details like that. Matt wanted to preserve the performances of our actors who were pretty phenomenal.

HULLFISH: I’ve talked to several editors who said that they were able to cut lines from the script once they saw the performance of the actor. The actor can tell you something in a look or an expression that makes the scripted line superfluous. Were you finding the same thing when you were getting back these expressive WETA ape shots?

HOY: Yes. And that goes for the music and goes with entire scenes. With this movie, there’s not a lot of dialogue going on. The ape and the humans are connecting by just looking, and so we’re relying heavily on CGI characters. It’s a pretty amazing thing. We go through the picture and say, “Are we being redundant saying this again and again? We’ve mentioned it three times.” There’s that rule that if you repeat it three times, the audience will get it, but there are times you need to break that rule, because otherwise it can feel like, “He was really heavy-handed in this. I get it. I get what he’s going for.”

We have a scene where our main characters are saying goodbye to each other, but we found that at that moment it was slowing down the action. Not only that it, but it becomes redundant because that happens again later. It was one of my favorite moments by the two actors, but it was really slowing us down. So then you lose that. But you only know that once you see the picture as a whole. When you read the script you say, “Oh yeah. We need that because those two characters are the bedrock of this whole franchise.” But then you say, “No, we don’t. Because at this moment we don’t care about this. This is what’s going on at this moment, so we want to get past this. What is the important thing here? It’s Caesar’s quest at that moment.” And so we want to simplify it and refine it to that point where we modified the scene. So yes: we did lose lines for sure… entire scenes.

I agree about what you said earlier: that if you have great actors, they can say so much with just their face – with just that performance. That’s what can eliminate an entire scene. If you cut from his reaction and his reaction then tells you what the next scene was going to be about. When you read the script you think, “Oh my God. We need to see our hero get angry and then go on the road.” OK. But I have it in this close up. I have it and I can just cut this entire scene right out of the movie. What I’m left with, if I cut him at the right moment, he’s fuming he’s holding his son and he’s worried for the fate of his people.

Andy Serkis on the set of Twentieth Century Fox’s “War for the Planet of the Apes.”

And that’s what the next scene was about. But he already said it – not in so many words: I’m worried for the fate of my people but I have to go and do this. But he says it all with his face and you understand that when we come to the next scene and you see what he’s doing you realize, “I don’t need that scene to tell us this.” With a script you want things laid out for you sometimes. I think the written word is different than film obviously because you get so much out as you’re watching. You’re forming all these ideas and it points to one direction. I think as an audience we are very impatient to get moving. There’s a tendency to try to repeat things to make sure the audience gets it… but yeah, I got it… move on.

HULLFISH: Exactly. You’ve worked on a lot of action and VFX pictures, but the only way to get these pictures to work is through the performances and the emotion, and caring about character, right?

HOY: You know we have a tendency as editors to get typecast in a certain way. I’m proud that I’ve done a bunch of FX or action movies. But there’s something that lies underneath that which is performance and character and emotion and story. And the best battle scenes in any movie and hopefully ones I’ve worked on  – is character, and if you don’t care about the characters then your battle scene becomes just noise and action. But if you care about your character and you have taken the time to build that, then you really care about what’s going on and you can cut to one look from our hero or the villain and you know exactly what’s going on and you’re invested in these characters. You have to build that into your editing somehow. I’ve been asked, “So, what is your editing style?” I don’t really have an editing style but I’m hoping my style or whatever I do is what the picture is in need of. And hopefully that comes out of intuition and that comes out of trying to get the best out of the story and the characters.

I’ll watch a movie and it can be very simply shot – wide shots… close ups. But if the story and the characters are involving. I’m just drawn into this for an hour and a half. Story absolutely is the most important thing. I can’t remember a movie I’ve seen where I thought, “The story was terrible, but I loved it because Wow what a spectacle!”

HULLFISH: But building that concern for a character has to be so hard when you’re dealing with characters you don’t really even get to see until later.

HOY: I go by faith that whatever I’m envisioning – that that’s going to be part of what’s going to end up on the screen. So I’ll look at a shot and there will be nothing in there…

HULLFISH: Like a plate.

HOY: Like a plate. It’s just a shot moving across the mountains and at some point there are going to be some apes on horseback going across there … or we’re looking at a green screen. We’re looking at two actors and they’re saying goodbye and behind them there’s this enormous army. So I look at them and think, “Well, how long do I stay on this? Is it a transitional moment? Is it an establishing moment? Is there emotional value? How long do I stay on the shot? With the plate shot of the apes traveling: look where they are in the wilderness. Where have they gotten themselves into now?

The other thing is emotional. It’s an army leaving and these two characters are framed in front of a huge army that’s waiting for them – probably to go to their death – so you want to stay on that longer and just let that play out and your eyes can do the searching for you. So in those two instances, that would be the idea of pacing. The pacing has to do with the dialogue and dialogue scenes – regardless of whether you have heavy visual effects – that pacing is based on what type of a scene it is. Do I want to sit there and watch their eyes and just be really absorbed with these characters? Because if I cut away, it’s going to ruin that moment. It’s going to be artificial. But if I just stay on that, that’s amazing. I don’t need to cut. This is where the moment is, right here.

In a battle scene, there’s a rise and fall to it. You’re pacing it and then you get to the height of the battle. How far can you go? The sound is now maximum. The music is maximum. The pace is cutcutcutcutcut. Where do you go? I like to go to the character. What’s he seeing? How’s he feeling about this? So when the opportunity presents itself, there have to be these moments where, “Oh my God! There’s something else happening in this battle or something’s happening in this character’s head. Something is happening other than just shooting people, dying, suffering or characters witnessing it. So how does that play out? Do I play that out in his head? Do I play that out in silence?

I have to find another way to transcend that moment which is: I think I’m reaching the climax but NO, NOW I’m into somebody’s head. Those are the kind of things that, as far as pacing is concerned, it fascinates me, because I actually love those little moments where you can you can insert something that is unexpected where you think, “What? Where are we now? Wow! I didn’t think I was going to feel this during this battle scene.” So those are some instances, as far as pacing, but when you see the picture as a whole you think, “OK, we have to tighten this area because I really don’t want to get bogged down here. What’s happening here is really oppressive, but we don’t want the picture to slip into oppressiveness. We want our hero to go through the pain and suffering, but we don’t want to dwell there for a long time because for an audience: “I get it. He’s suffering. Can we move on now?”

HULLFISH: I would think that it’s hard to screen some of these scenes with so many VFX and temp motion-captures as “stand ins.”

HOY: Sometimes you get art work: “Your king is leading an army and there is this army behind them and it’s an open field.” You want to make sure that you sit on that long enough so that you absorb it all. In that case, I stayed on it so that I would have our characters do most of the action in this wide shot and then much later go in to a close-up or more coverage. In other situations, maybe I wouldn’t if the visuals didn’t support the emotion of the scene. If there’s nothing more to get from the wide shot, let’s go in to a close-up and get the emotions there. But if, with the wide shot, you did get the emotion, because it was a spectacle, then you’re fine. Here are these two characters who are reduced to less significant things in this vast landscape.

You want to be able to make use of all of the tools that you have at hand, so let’s maximize this because soon enough I’m going to be in on a close-up.

There are certain steps along the way before you actually commit yourself to X amount of thousands of dollars for a shot There are shots where things are moving and you have to imagine: “How long does it take for the arrows to travel until they get there?” After a while you can come pretty close to a few frames of guessing those timings.

I co-edited with Neil Travis and back in the film days and he would measure out a piece of film from his nose to arm’s length and with a wink say to me, “That’s the length of a reaction.” Roughly two and half seconds. So that’s  one guideline to how long a shot might play.

Every frame costs thousands of dollars. On Dawn an ape shot was $60,000 a shot. (More for shot length over 5 seconds.) I think it’s slightly less on this one just because of the way it was budgeted and they figured out how to do it for less, but that’s really expensive. And we have over fourteen hundred ape shots.

I worked with young editors and assistant editors and I tell them, “You’re paid to have an opinion.” You’re not paid to be a pair of hands. Go in there saying, “This is what I think it should be.” They want that opinion. Hopefully I bring things to the movie that the director may not have thought about. What I like to do is tell the director after principal photography, “Please take a break for 10 days, two weeks and come back and I’ll show you the movie. I’ll try to put as much music as I have time for and sound effects and I’ll show it to you and you sit here and watch it with some objectivity and then decide what do we do with the picture as a whole.”

With most directors, I’m on location. I’m showing them scenes as I go, so they know the performances are being captured the way they want. So when they see the picture as a whole, then we can talk about any differences of opinion. The director may say, “I intended to start the scene with this shot instead of this one.” We can work that out and we can talk about why. Ultimately, we can cut it the way he originally visualized, but there have been times where they say, “I actually like what you did before. Let’s go back to that.” That’s having a point of view and an Avid and being able to save all those versions. It’s a real plus, because on film, when you re-cut, those original choices disappear. The director needs to have a vision for the movie as a whole, and so I try to help bring that vision to the screen. If I have a difference of opinion, it’s only because I want what’s best for the picture. And as long as the director knows that, they’re OK with it. It’s not because I like it that way. It’s not because I cut it that way. It’s because that’s what’s best for the picture.

HULLFISH: It’s nice to have trust in a person, but if you both trust that what you both really want is for the good of the picture, you’ve got a solid foundation for solving any disagreement. How do you have your assistants set up your bins?

HOY: Basically in the same alphabetical order they shot the setups, so I know where the shots will be. I like to have my bins set up in Frame view. My assistant will also choose a representative frame for each shot that best represents that shot, so when I just look at the clip, I see, “ That’s the wide shot and there’s the close up, and there’s the over the shoulder.”

Also the director will choose select takes and the assistants will put a checkmark beside that take. We print everything. (meaning non-selected or B-neg shots are in the bin just like any other shot)

I watch all the dailies straight through and then I’ll go back to the daily bin. I put markers on moments that I think might be the foundation of the scene. The assistants put them in the bin in a straight line, and if I like one more than the others, I just nudge it up a little higher in the row. We also have assistants building selects reels, where every setup and take of a specific line plays back to back. So if I wanted use another performance or to replace a word I can go in there and see if it’s clearer somewhere else.

But that’s only in the refining process that I use the select reels. There are times when there are certain moments that will be the backbone of the scene. There are some moments that you say, “I somehow have to have this moment in here and action-match doesn’t matter. I need to get to this moment.” So I approach the scene – what I call “from the inside out.” I don’t start at the beginning and move through, instead I’ve got to get to this moment so I’ll start putting it together knowing that the scene is going to progress so that I can reach that moment.

Then I can start thinking about the rhythm of what that scene might be. There might be two of those moments – and I’m basing it on performance. Obviously when it’s an action piece: What is the best piece of action that got him from point A to Point B? What shows him doing this best? What shot do I have of the sword going through. What’s the best and quickest shot that I can use that to depict this particular moment. Those things are what you discover when you begin to put an action piece together. Then I start putting just the dialogue tracks and the picture together. And when I feel that scene is ready for some sound effects or some temp music I’ll start laying some of that in. At which point, if the director’s around and I think it’s ready to show him, then I’ll show it. Sometimes he may want to see a scene really quickly because of some concerns he may have about it and I’ll have to show it before I feel it’s ready, but I am loathe to show a director something that is not really polished, because it’s not fair to me. It’s not fair to the director either, because they’re very self-aware. They don’t want to come in and look at something and think, “Oh my God! That’s not working! Is it me? … Or is it you?” Right? So you don’t want to do that. You want to have it to that point where you can analyze: How are the characters working? How’s is the story working? How’s this scene working?

So once I start putting scenes together then other scenes will begin to come in, but now I get to see how he starts the next scene. So, I might have to go back and rework the scene that I had leading into this scene because the transition doesn’t work. You have to keep in mind what the transitions are going to be into the next scene and that’s an ever-evolving thing, because if you eventually lose that scene, now you’ll need to make a different transition to the next scene coming in. So that’s an ongoing thing.

As we go through I’m trying to imagine – based on the script – what the next scene is going to be and how he might approach that. And at some point you will have something resembling the movie which is always amazing and surprising to me.

HULLFISH: So at the point you have the entire movie together, do you find it useful to watch that as a whole from beginning to end? Because in the 100 interviews I’ve done, there is not complete agreement. There are some who feel they want to hold off on viewing the whole movie, because it affects their ability to remain objective about the story as a whole.

HOY: I certainly agree that objectivity is your best ally and that we lose objectivity because we’re into the minutia and it’s hard to maintain that objectivity. My first impression is when the picture is finally put together and I have a chance to sit there and watch it with the director, because, up until that moment, I probably have not watched the picture entirely myself because I just haven’t had the time to. I’ve certainly watch a better part of it but I don’t know how the picture is progressing, so to watch the movie and to have that impression … I try to hold on to some of those first impressions that I have so that it continues to inform me later on. I can see what those other editors are talking about, but for me, and any director I’ve worked with, I’ve never experienced that.

The other important thing with these big VFX movies is that we have to begin to turnover our visual effects. How do we know what we actually need from the visual effects if I haven’t seen the picture in total? That could cost a lot of money down the line, because we could discover that we can or must cut entire scenes of visual effects. And for pictures where the budgets are so huge, it adds up real quick. So discovering that you can delete an entire scene can save a lot of money.

I’ve mixed this film in my Avid for all the screenings. We got 5.1 surround tracks from our sound design team. The temp music editor, Paul Apelgren is part of composer Michael Giacchino’s team.

I’ve actually mixed the picture eight times. For the studio alone, we screened it probably four times, five times easily. There was one time where I was rushing to get the picture finished for the screening the next day and after the screening, Matt asked me what I thought and I said, “I didn’t think anything, because I didn’t get anything out of that screening, because I was so worried about technical stuff.” Sometimes the objectivity comes in for me by just removing myself from that normal seat or that usual theater. So we took it from a theater which was right downstairs from our editing room and went to the huge Zanuck theater on the Fox lot. It was just the director and the two editors sitting and watching the movie, and because I already knew the picture was in sync – that it was supposed to play the way it was supposed to play – that I could actually sit and watch the movie and see it as objectively as I could. Sometimes when I’m screening for an audience I’m so worried that some critical thing is going to happen and spoil the screening and all the work we’ve put in just to get to this moment will be ruined – that’s always in the back of my mind. Once I know the screener is OK, I can actually become an audience member again so that really helps.

HULLFISH: The other thing is just getting away from the editing controls, right? Just the fact that you can’t hit pause and fix something completely changes the experience of watching the movie.

HOY: It completely does. In my cutting room I have my Avid set up with a 43 inch plasma on my right. So for the most part that’s where I watch it. But I also have a 65 inch to the side with it’s own dedicated sound system. So you hit a button and I play it over there. So just by me turning around and not being able to get close to my mixing board and the volume controls and not be distracted by the Avid screens and just dedicating myself to the picture as a whole, that gives me some objectivity. It’s just a matter of changing seats – getting out of my Aeron chair into a couch just feels different right there.

HULLFISH: Can you remember any of the things that you temped with?

HOY: Paul Apelgren the music editor, he was also on Dawn and I’d stayed in touch with him, so when I came back to LA to edit, he asked, “So what music have you been listening to?” When I’m editing I like playing music in the background even though I’m not cutting to it. I said, “It’s a funny thing. I’ve been listening to a lot Ennio Morricone especially his spaghetti westerns and I’ve been listening to Nick Cave, so I don’t know how that works.” And he says, “That’s an Interesting mashup between Morricone and Nick Cave.” It’s a funny thing because as Caesar takes off on this quest it becomes this epic Western. There is a hint of that in certain places which I hope that I brought some of that to it, but I also talked to the director and tell him, “I’ve been listening to this and this.” and he says, “Yeah. I can see that.” Paul also temped with a lot of the music from the Dawn movie, so there was a lot of Michael Giacchino’s music in there, but we also used different composers, like (Alexandre) Desplat. Paul found a wonderful cue from Snow Falling on Cedars.

Sometimes I like to temp the whole picture, but this picture really needed my attention elsewhere, so honestly, I trust Paul. He did an amazing job on the temp score, so I only chose maybe five or six cues. One of the cues I cut in is where Caesar is walking in what we call the trench. After the first battle he’s seeing the devastation on his apes. So I put this piece in there from some Junkie XL who did Allegiance and Divergence. I played it for Matt and he says, “This is a great piece, who’s this from?” And I say, “Junkie XL.” He said, “No!” But that piece stayed in there for the longest time.

HULLFISH: Can you tell me anything about these two scenes from the movie?

HOY: What I find interesting is what both scenes have in common – the lighting. In the scene with Bad Ape, Maurice and Nova it’s lit with flashlights. The performances that were chosen have a natural light to the little girl and our motion capture actors which WETA then had to replicate how the light would interact on Maurice and Bad Ape’s fur and clothing. 

In the scene between Caesar and the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) there is a searchlight moving behind the Colonel in the background.  Only the light hitting our actors was evident in the raw footage, there was no background.   When we began to have discussions about the background we had to determine a believable motion of the searchlights because the interactive lighting was visible on the Colonel’s shaved head and Caesar. 

Also in these two scenes if you were to watch the raw motion capture version and the finished scene you will see the amazing performances of our actors.

HULLFISH: Thanks so much for talking with me today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

HOY: Me too. Good to talk with you. We need to meet some day.

This interview was transcribed using Speedscriber.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews, but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. Oscar nominee, Dody Dorn, ACE, said of the book: “Congratulations on putting together such a wonderful book.  I can see why so many editors enjoy talking with you.  The depth and insightfulness of your questions makes the answers so much more interesting than the garden variety interview.  It is truly a wonderful resource for anyone who is in love with or fascinated by the alchemy of editing.” MPEG’s Cinemontage magazine said of the book: “In his new book, Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors, he gathers together interviews with more than 50 working editors to create a mosaic of advice that will interest both veterans and newcomers to the field. It will be especially valuable for those who aspire to join what Hullfish calls, “the brotherhood and sisterhood of editors.”

Check out the editing on some other big-budget features like Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Transformers: TLK, Guardians of the Galaxy and Wonder Woman

Or if you prefer, some documentaries: OJ: Made in America, or a lower-budget indie: Colossal.

The post ART OF THE CUT with the editor of “War for the Planet of the Apes” appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: ART OF THE CUT with the editor of “War for the Planet of the Apes”

[felicezhukov]

:: Dear Nicolas Jaar ::

Its one of those days, I’ve just spilled my second pint of water, the first was earlier when I was waking up, lowering myself back into bed to write this letter to you, I called myself a stupid bitch when it happened in lieu of the fact my ex wasn’t there to do it, no shouting resounded or escalation occurred, I was alone. I’m clumsy, I break stuff, knock things over, get caught on women’s scarves on buses, or stuck in my ear phone wires at Tesco’s counters, laugh so loud sometimes that people look at me in shock, a couple of days ago my ex said this to me regarding my angel: “You haven’t scared her off have you? The monies still there?” The final countdown before my exodus has started, its less than a week till I move, less than a week till I, probably, throw the majority of my possessions in the bin. I guess when I mentioned the week had been extraordinary in my Friday letter it might not seem to the typical observer that anything particularly special has taken place but my soul and my state of mind have undergone transformative journeys, spiralling left, right, up and down, through anxiety, heavy almost flabby contentment, absolute jubilation, scuttling fearful tremors, in the gaps between these ferocious states I find myself crying, it’s overwhelming. I filmed a performance on Sunday night that seems to encapsulate my current state, which I’ll go in to more detail about a little later, it charts this emotional instability, despite that not being the plan, within it I am every facet of myself, hopefully it’ll be online by the end of this mammoth admin session I’m undertaking today. 

As a performance artist I think thats my schtick, my performances aren’t really so much dedicated enactments but instead just me, raw, frank, channeling all my elements, now I’ve poured over my past in detail to put it all online I notice it’s been the theme throughout my oeuvre. 

Right now I’m paralysed, I can’t do anything I normally do, no dressing up, no reading, no flaneurism. I keep getting the bus, I feel a resistance to my usual routes through the city, there’s something painful in the prospect of walking through Victoria or Haggerston park at the moment, I see shadows in the tree’s of these cherished spaces. Shadows of anticipation, shadow’s of love and savagery, shadows of loss. Give me a week and this should all be a memory, a shadow in its own right, at least I hope so.

It need’s to, and will, change dramatically, last time I moved away from my ex things dipped though and my fear is this will happen again. I’m going to have to start balancing my finance’s, something that takes a lot of discipline for me, I have this issue with money, it causes a violent reaction in me when I have it, a physical repulsion, a need to expunge and rid myself of it, like I’ve been overcome by a demon that needs to be exorcised. The concept of accumulating this hateful element fills me with dread and desire, which must somehow in part explain why I’m so useless at selling what I create and pushing my wares on people. 

There’s this absurd sense of nobility coursing through my veins, I see it in my father as well, I find it the whole concept of marketing myself and pushing myself on others scandalous, I’d much prefer people come to me of their own free will, heart and soul aligned. In a society where the normality is to be the sum of our buying power I feel a sense of pride in this, so much is being sold to us on various levels of our consciousness, cookies, buses swathed in posters, soundcloud adverts, asos emails, suggested everything, marketing is the very air we breath, especially in a metropolis where the eyeline is never not inundated with messages of potential happiness, just a tap away.

But thats not to say I’m not happy to share, that must already be clear in these letters, all my insides are out and on display in various walled gardens across the internet. This sale is just causing me a lot of internal bleeding, now I’ve catalogued the 190+ items it incorporates and uploaded them, I’m drowning, how do I rid myself of these objects in a diligent and respectful way? The restful mornings of self guided education have been replaced by incessant letters to you (these are important for giving this whole thing a soul), answering messages, nagging, tagging, planning, photographing, uploading, editing, despairing, the saving grace of this upward struggle is that I’m allowing myself to do yoga and categorise it by writing everything to you, I need soul food right now. 

As an example this is my to do list today:

* make 6x animations / 6x written pieces / 6x mini videos from pre recorded footage to upload on to instagram (this has been on the list for days, it keeps getting pushed back)

* go to studio, take more detail shots of items I want to put on ebay as this will increase their chances of being sold, items on list include my wedding ring, larger paintings, designer clothes then come home, pay my ebay fee’s so my access is unrestricted and upload everything including necessary details – then post this to my social media accounts

*promote my sale on facebook by linking from twitter and poss instagram, adding to community groups, messaging friends

* pay rent to my studio’s then email them to ask about my move and if I will need to hire a skip

* type up this letter, post to facebook and screenshot, post to twitter, tag you

*answer and correspond with all the beautiful people that are messaging me about the sale, answer questions, like comments and reply

* edit the film I made on Sunday, render, upload to youtube, share on social media platforms, post on my site

* eat? drink?

* do yoga

* wash hair?

* put together synopsis and brief for arts programme I am curating for a meeting tomorrow, consolidate the idea

This is the bare bones of my itinerary, I’ve done 2 of the tasks so far, I know its not unusual for a Londoner to be so busy and I bet your schedule looks like this sometimes, but really I’d just like to crawl in to bed and read and write a little and then fall asleep. This is probably the apex of my project now and there will be a brief reprieve, but before I cast everything asunder I have to do my life some justice so I’m not cursing myself in future years, and I’m working for the next 4 days, 12 hour shifts nearly daily so its the last push before the major haul the beginning of next week.

Relentlessness. 

So then…. Part 3 // Sunday

On Sunday night I filmed myself performing for 6 hours plus, by all rights is was as demanding as the mermaid descent, but it was impromptu, I wasn’t naked, covered in paint, fucking 2 cucumbers, so it didn’t quite have the same edge.

I came to on the studio of my floor rolled up in a blanket on a duvet cover I use as a rug of sorts, thick white make up and glitter caked in my eyes, permanent wine coloured lip stick still reverberating over my lips. I’d passed out re-watching the footage I’d taken of myself staging 7 scene’s, dressed in variously important pieces from my wardrobe, singing some of the my most treasured songs, or stumbling over them in the case of witness the fitness by roots manuva. In the background the sonic landscape was shaped by various mixes of yours I’ve found on soundcloud, bleating from my i phone speakers.

Firstly I crawled around the central space in a turquoise swimming costume, shooting myself coming towards the camera from various angles, trying to make creative use of the runway like black borders which are the echoes of the descent installation. Then I shimmied and pulsated in terracotta sequins, attempting to channel my inner seductress, envisaging jessica rabbit, whilst adorning myself in the bloodletting costume pieces. Following that I hit things with ping pong bats and comically attempted to mc, stumbling over gorgeous lyrics and twerking in my adidas, I was with the mermaids for this and I’m sure they were silently mocking me. Next the black lipstick and adventure time sweatshirt were paraded around, as a backdrop to me turning myself into a human display case, though the actual performance was probably the best. I then threw on my big white shirt (not the alexander wang, but the one I wore to my little brothers wedding), I hugged the unicorn, blew bubbles and sang behind acrylic glass. The penultimate scene saw me dress in preppy tan vintage adidas shorts and a pink silk bomber, clumsily adorning myself in all my jewellery and gratingly bursting through lyrics. Finally at 2am I somehow managed to strap myself in to my wedding dress, read a harrowing letter from my teenage self and blurrily cry through the lyrics of one of the most potent songs I’ve ever met. But I didn’t pass out in my wedding dress, though that’d be a more aesthetic turn. 

The film is as if you’re watching a young girl raid her mums jewellery and clothes collection and film herself in her bedroom, except this girl has the weight of adulthood clearly marked on her shoulders. The developed pains of experience, etched on her face. Having your mixes as a background noise wasn’t intended that night, and in a way it really detracts from my singing, but I was all alone in my studio building and having your music on made me feel less scared. 

It might be that I could of made better use of my time on a more organised aspect of this project, but these performances are the legacy of my life thus far, I’m manically creating them as documentation, because very soon it will all be gone.  I want proof for myself that it did all really exist, and it was beautiful. 

That video should be uploaded later today.

I hope you have something like yoga in your life to centre you when things are chaos.