#or focus on pacing or how to accurately track characters through a space/scene

[bethisblogging]

It’s really funny to me that everyone is talking about fanfiction in an almost mainstream way.

When I was in college (c. 2016/17) I wrote an essay on how it was an underrated form of media that had a lot of benefits for both the creators and the consumers, and discussed that basically authors had been writing fanfiction of other works for hundreds of years.

Flash forward to 2024 and I could not tell you the last time I read or wrote fanfic. The desire is just. Gone.

[jmsebastian]

Project Zero 2: Wii Edition and the Remake Dilemma

I’m a firm believer that remakes are typically losing propositions. There are cases that buck this trend as there always are (Resident Evil comes to mind), but when it comes to games that can be considered landmark titles in their respective genres, or just superbly made games, the benefit of a remake is limited to its availability on new platforms. This is something a port could accomplish with significantly less risk of messing with the integrity and intent of the original creation. Sometimes, though, games are completely overhauled for one reason or another. Project Zero 2: Wii Edition falls into this category.

A remake of the 2003 PlayStation 2 and Xbox release, known in the US as Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, Project Zero 2: Wii Edition uses two basic templates from which it forms its mold. The first is the original game. Fatal Frame II was a pretty big step forward from its predecessor. It maintained the basic underpinnings of exploring haunted old buildings and fighting ghosts by taking pictures of them with a magic camera, but it added some significant and interesting changes. In Crimson Butterfly you don’t go through the whole house of horrors alone. Your twin sister often tags along as your AI companion. This means she can alert you to the location of ghosts, and can also become the target of their attacks. The mechanics of camera combat are tweaked as well, where your proximity to ghosts is used to scale your damage up more than the time multiplier used in the first game. Because of this, ghosts often have jittery animations that make getting close to them risky and capturing them with combo inducing fatal frames difficult. The explorable area is also expanded out to several sometimes connected buildings and the space between those buildings in a small village compared to the single mansion that made up the first game.

Wii Edition borrows Crimson Butterfly’s structural framework practically wholesale. The level design in almost unchanged, the combat parameters are pretty much the same, and your AI sister manages to get in your way just about as often. What’s different is everything else. Shedding the fixed camera angles so common in survival horror games, Project Zero 2 takes its presentation from its console release cousin, Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen. Released four years earlier in 2008, Tsukihami no Kamen completely shifted how the Fatal Frame games were presented to players and how players interacted with them. The camera went from fixed and set tracking to being pulled in over the player character’s shoulder. It became dynamic, the player could direct it with a certain amount of freedom to focus on what they wanted to in the environment. Motion control was also introduced to more accurately convey the feeling of aiming a flashlight and camera around. It was a complete break from what the series had been doing up until that point, and Project Zero 2: Wii Edition fully embraces these changes.

The mix of classic Fatal Frame level design with modern Fatal Frame camera angles and control schemes produces mixed results. For lack of a better term, the game is clumsy. This manifests itself in some interesting ways. First is the unoptimized menu navigation. As you explore the Lost Village, you come across a variety of objects that reveal lore. Most of these are paper documents of various types. Picking one up will open the article so you can read it. To close it, you first press B on the Wii remote to stop reading, then press A to close the text. This might not sound so bad, not adjusting the purpose of a single button to match player intent in context-sensitive ways makes quickly navigating the menu both confusing to learn and quite difficult to do quickly. While the backstory to the Fatal Frame games is interesting and worth taking the time to investigate, repeat playthroughs don’t always require that you read a seven-page journal entry again. The menu system actively works against playing quickly or efficiently. Considering how much time players have to spend in menus, missteps here can add up to some significant time loss.

Time lost to players doesn’t seem to have been a concern for Koei Tecmo when developing this game as it also features unskippable cutscenes. Wii Edition is not a game that is overwhelmed by its pre-rendered scenes, but they are frequent enough that they disrupt play in regular intervals. For first time players, they probably aren’t something you’d want to gloss over as they provide guidance on what to do next but they are far, far less important for those who have played the game before. Not being able to skip these scenes is especially odd considering the odds that many people playing the remake of Crimson Butterfly also played the original and are familiar with the story already. Forcing players to watch cutscenes always ends up feeling like the player is having control taken away from them, and it’s especially painful here due to the more general issues with player control.

Perhaps the easiest target with regard to player control is how it feels to move the player character around. Unfortunately, Mio and Mayu feel very slow. Slow movement on its own is not a problem, but the game does not feel balanced around the movement speed. A prime example is the sluggishness of the quick turn. What was a snappy animation that turned you around 180 degrees in Tsukihami no Kamen became a set piece of animation reorienting the character that feels as if it’s playing back in slow motion. The animation itself isn’t even particularly slow, but the built-in delay to the starting of that animation makes the whole thing feel unnaturally labored. It’s a much less useful technique because of this. Timing it right during combat becomes more a test of how well you anticipate a ghost’s actions rather than how quickly you can react, which is unfair to ask of players when ghosts spend so much of their time hidden from player view.

The slow movement might have been the result of the game taking place in such tight quarters, a problem created when spaces aren’t redesigned to match the other changes. The slow animations feel like a safeguard against players running themselves into walls constantly or rushing past something they were supposed to pay attention to. This is taken to an extreme in one particular room where the player can walk through a pair of hanging curtains. Going through them triggers an especially aggravating animation of Mio nervously pushing the curtain back before stepping forward. These animations are triggered by proximity to the curtain rather than the on-screen prompt to press A like in nearly every other interaction in the game. It’s a particularly bad moment. If you just to happen to be ambushed by a ghost while doing this, suddenly you can rush through the curtains at full running speed with no issue, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of Mio’s movement limitations. Unfortunately, the forced pace feels like it creates more problems than it solves. Players just have to suffer through everything taking a bit longer than it probably should, with backtracking or getting temporarily lost compounding the problem.

Getting ambushed here is about as dirty a trick as the game can play.

Combat also suffers some unexpected clunkiness. All Fatal Frame games are a bit clunky when it comes to wielding the Camera Obscura, though this has the express purpose of making the game both challenging and tapping into the fear of the player, who might perform the wrong action due to a panicked state. In Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen, the imprecise motion controls of the Wii were mitigated by the lock on mechanic. One could argue this made the game a bit too easy, but Project Zero 2 for Wii goes very far in the other direction. The lock on keeps your camera in the vicinity of your nearest target, and the player must adjust their aim within the lock by rolling the Wii remote to either side or pointing it up or down. Locking on happens quickly and is accompanied by a satisfying shink sound that provides the player with positive feedback. Hearing it, you get the sense that the hard part is over and now it’s just a matter of waiting for a fatal frame chance.

Really, your photo album efforts are just beginning as the ghosts can easily disappear out of your lock on, reducing your spirit energy levels back to nothing. What you’re supposed to do is lock on, then diligently follow along, making minute adjustments to the position of the Wii remote in order to keep the ghost centered in the viewfinder. This is no easy feat, especially if your Wii remote calibration is off or you have a less than ideal location for the sensor bar. The semi-automated lock on and precision aiming feel at odds with one another. Adding in the analog stick of the nunchuck on top of that for turning your character around and you have three methods of controlling the aim of the Camera Obscura, all of which just get in each other’s way. Its lack of complementary components is all the more surprising since it had worked so much better in the previous Wii effort. While Tsukihami no Kamen’s combat could certainly have used some fine tuning, Wii Edition reduced that complete package back down to its individual pieces without remembering how they were supposed to fit back together.

The game really forces you to upgrade as much as possible since your basic film does very little damage and getting fatal frame combos is quite difficult compared to the other games in the series.

A quirkier addition for combat scenarios is the blacking out of the screen during certain encounters. There you are, tracking a ghost as it glides around the room while you charge your spirit meter, when suddenly the room goes completely dark. You lose the ability of your filament to point you toward the ghost’s position right along with the ability to see anything. It’s supposed to add tension, maybe even give you a fright. The first time it happens, it gets close to accomplishing that. At the very least you’ll be surprised. That raising of the stakes fails to deliver once you figure out that the underhanded tactic of your spectral enemy goes away after a few seconds and in the meantime, you can just run around to avoid getting caught unaware. It’s a fun new trick to see once, but it doesn’t force the player to reassess their predicament or use new strategies to deal damage to ghosts. The same exact methods of evasion work just as well, you simply have to wait until the lights come back on to hurt your foe.

Since the game was released in PAL regions, it did receive localized voice acting in English. What might be a surprise to those of us in North America is that the dub was done with English voice actors, meaning it differs wildly from the original English language dub that was produced for North America and PAL regions. For those familiar with the original game, it’s quite off-putting to hear these new voices. For a game so rooted in being Japanese, non-Japanese voice acting always felt a little strange. To their credit, the actors who worked on Project Zero: Wii Edition did a fantastic job, and once you’ve become accustomed to it, I find that it often outshines the original English dub. Sadly, the English dub is the only one you can choose from despite its release in multiple European countries and featuring several language options for the subtitles and menus (I played the Italian release, complete with box art and manual, printed in Italian). The Japanese audio isn’t even available, which is a real shame, as it would have been nice to give the characters their presumed native language to give it that much more coherency. Of course, multi-language tracks were still uncommon in 2012, so you take what you can get.

Aside from getting an English dub, the greatest thing about the PAL release of Wii Edition is that it made the game available to a wider audience. If you only happen to have a North American Wii, however, you face the same kinds of problems trying to play this game as you do trying to play the fourth game. Without a PAL or Japanese console, you can’t simply pop a disc in and start playing. If you don’t want to invest in another console for a single game, then the easy answer is emulation. Wii emulation is in a very good state, so the game is easily playable on PC, though you are likely to get some audio stuttering and maybe a bit of slowdown. You can even get a USB sensor bar and pair your Wii remote with your computer to replicate the control scheme exactly. If you want to play on your North American console, you can also do that thanks to the robust homebrew community for the console. Bypassing the region lockout using sideloaded applications means you can play the game on actual hardware exactly as one would expect, and it works flawlessly. If you really want to, you can also track down an undubbed version of the game which features the original Japanese audio with the texts of the various PAL region languages.

With so many available options to play it, the question really becomes whether or not it’s worth playing. For anyone who loves Fatal Frame, the answer is easy enough. Yes. It’s interesting to see the game redesigned for a completely different perspective. It’s fun to hear the extremely different voice acting, and at its core, it’s very much the same type of game that all the games in the series are. You can’t really go wrong with it in that regard. For those who might be coming late to the series, I’d have to recommend the original over this version. Crimson Butterfly is readily available, can be played digitally in HD via the PlayStation 3, and simply holds up better as an overall package. If you love motion controls but only have room in your life for one Fatal Frame game to try, then you’re better off going with Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen. It’s more responsive animations, more appropriately designed locales, and tighter Camera Obscura mechanics make it the obvious choice. It also incorporates the Wii’s motion control gimmicks in interesting and surprising ways that truly enhance the experience, something Project Zero 2: Wii Edition curiously omits. For a remake, Wii Edition doesn’t make much of a case for itself being the definitive version. It acts more as a companion piece to the original, a super new game plus, almost. It’s one to come back to only once you’ve made your way through the rest of the series and still want more 

[jellyfax]

Voltron: Legendary [Deeply Flawed] Defender

To be honest, I’ve never been much of a fan of Voltron. I’ve probably seen more parodies of the franchise than I have episodes of the original show or any of its adaptations and spin-offs. Not too long ago, I had regret my lack of fanaticism for the cartoon because, since its release, Netflix’s 2016 remake, Voltron: Legendary Defender (VLD), has received plenty of good press. According to numerous critics and fans, the animated series is a stellar revamp of the original 1984 production. This praise sparked my interest, so I watched seasons one and two (a grand total of 24 episodes) to see what the fuss is all about.

PREMISE

The premise of the series is simple and the 1-hour pilot episode skillfully establishes the world the characters of VLD inhabit. Five young Earthlings (Shiro, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Keith) unwitting stumble upon an ancient mech in the shape of a lion and they are jettisoned into a cosmic battle against the Galra Empire, an oppressive alien regime which has colonized much of the universe. After a 10,000-year slumber, two survivors of the Galra’s genocidal onslaught of the planet Altea, Princess Allura and her guardian Coran, are awakened. Now the last remaining Alteans must teach the five Earthlings how to pilot five color-coded mech lions. These lions can combine to form the most powerful weapon in the universe: the giant humanoid mech, Voltron. With Voltron, our heroes are the only ones who stand a chance against the imposing Galra threat.

Given this synopsis, my first concern is: how can Voltron be the greatest weapon in the universe? Now before I tackle this issue, I must say that I’m aware that this claim originates from the 80′s series (it’s titled Voltron: Defender of the Universe for a reason). While this proclamation is a staple in the 1984 Voltron, in the 2016 remake the assertion comes off as outdated and out of place. Let me examine. What may have been an acceptable in-universe motto in the 80′s when general audiences were likely less familiar with the mindboggling scope of space, doesn’t work for viewers nowadays. Audiences of the 21st century are more acquainted with the implications of the universe through three decades of fictional media and scientific discovery. That being said, in the universe of VLD where space is filled with scores of intelligent alien lifeforms, it’s difficult to believe that only the Alteans and Galra have the capability to wield unfathomable interstellar power. The cosmos is immense, and due to its vastness, it can be sensibly assumed that there are people who have designed weapons that are far more advanced than anything either the Alteans or the Galra have produced. After 10,000 years, it’s astonishing that even the Galra are unable to match the supremacy of Voltron. Throughout the series, aliens are represented almost exclusively as peaceful or, more accurately, as people so downtrodden they can’t hope to oppose the Galra Empire. It can be expected that millenniums of subjugation by the Galra Empire would cause many civilizations to become too hesitant to cause an uprising. However, as previously stated, the universe is beyond enormous and there would more than enough people to prevent the Galra from gaining such a tight hold on most of the universe.

Aside from “because the original plot says so,” the series gives us no real justification for why team Voltron and the Galra are the most powerful forces in the entire universe. This assault on the viewer’s suspension of disbelief and deeply contrived storytelling reflects VLD’s inability to truly revive the Voltron franchise. Voltron received a remake not only to appeal to lifelong fans, but also to introduce new viewers to the franchise. The only problem is that the writers of the new series aren’t adjusting aspects of the story’s original premise to the new world they created in VLD; it isn’t enough to add glitzy CGI fight scenes, snarky characters, and edgy redesigns, the original plotline should have been retooled a bit more too. Maybe the whole “strongest in the universe” thing made sense within the context of Voltron 1984, but in Voltron 2016 it makes very little sense in an established universe that’s populated with legions of complex alien life.  Overall, VLD doesn’t fully transform, reimagine, or contest Voltron’s status as the greatest weapon in the universe. Thus, making for a somewhat stale rebooted premise which simply copies the original premise instead of refining it.

CHARACTERIZATION

As the saying goes, a story is only as good as its villain, and if that saying is accurate then VLD is a very flawed story. Emperor Zarkon, the ruler of the Garla, serves as the main antagonist and it’s his motives that genuinely drive the plot. In season two, it’s revealed that he had collaborated with the Alteans to create Voltron and that he manned the lead lion, the Black Lion. In Zarkon’s eyes, Voltron is rightfully his and he is on a mission to reclaim his weapon. And while that may sound exciting, it all plays out as if Zarkon is a jilted lover who can’t stand rejection. Every time we’re confronted with Zarkon, he’s never terrorizing his dominion like a horrible tyrant, because he’s always fixated on acquiring his precious Voltron. He’s not spurred on by xenophobic hate, he’s not a well-intended extremist, or even a demented power-hungry dictator; he’s just motivated by a grudge and he wants revenge. How captivating. Granted, he states that he can unlock Voltron’s potential and conquer the universe, but conquering the universe never seems to be his main goal. After 10,000 years, you’d think Zarkon would move on to bigger and better weapons. Or even want to destroy Voltron more than anything to prove his might, but no he’s just a petty, pathetic, and uninteresting nincompoop. In the finale of season two, Zarkon has the opportunity to kill Princess Allura and effectively destroy Voltron’s headquarters, but he ignores this opening, attacks Voltron instead, and ultimately fails to defeat his enemies. In the end, it’s his singular interest in Voltron that spells his demise. While that might seem like cliché yet reasonable writing, his tactless actions are just an easy way to have the heroes win the battle. In short, Zarkon is yet another case of a villain who’s comedically inept, because the writers can’t be bothered to challenge the protagonists of their story.

Flimsy, out-of-focus characterization is the norm in VLD; characters are bland, one-note, and they don’t really develop over the course of the series. The writers never try to disguise the fact that each character is simply a plot device and nothing more. Although, the characters can be enjoyable at times and some are even quite likable, that’s likely due to the expressive voice acting. The voice performances of the cast are truly excellent with the valiant Allura (Kimberly Brooks) and funnyman Lance (Jeremy Shada) being among the most memorable. The actors do well with what they’re given, but even their fantastic acting can’t save the show.

PACING

The pacing of the narrative is also poor. Generally, a program with episodes that progress naturally, without interruption are fine and VLD is intended to be binge-watched, so it’s only appropriate that it flow so well. Even so, they flow to the point that episodes become indistinguishable and indistinct from another. This isn’t helped by how the writers choose to reveal information about the setting and its characters. Certain reveals overstay their welcome and when this happens the narrative is clearly stalling for time. Oftentimes, the stagnation of revelations only serves to make the protagonists seem like their sabotaging their own mission due to incompetence. For instance, it takes the first several episodes of season two for the characters to accept that Zarkon can sense their coordinates via his mental connection to the Black Lion, a connection they learned about in the finale of season one. Despite knowing this very relevant information, they denied the possibility that Zarkon could track their whereabouts for six, whole episodes! Even without filler episodes, the series still manages to somewhat derail itself.

FINAL VERDICT

It feels as if the experienced writers of VLD are just going through the motions and are simply writing the cartoon in their sleep. All that said, Voltron: Legendary Defender isn’t a bad series, but isn’t exactly good either; frankly it’s mediocre. Although it has highlights, it’s stunted premise, lackluster characterization, and pacing issues prevent it from being anything more than serviceable. Let’s hope that season three amends the follies of its predecessors.

[mi6012alexanderprice]

Rough Treatment 1 - 'Slowing Down'

INTRO

In an exaggeration of the modern world, a woman with too much on her hands has an unexpected encounter with someone that seems to be completely relaxed, with hardly a care in the world. The platonic development that grows between the two leads to greater introspection and self-realisation than she ever expected - or wanted.

CONCEPT

‘Slowing Down’ was created out of the idea that, with a seemingly unstoppable storm of various socio-political issues raging and swirling over the youth of today, modern life is pretty chaotic for a lot of people. My original intention was to subtly frame my film around one of these issues (disguising it as something nonspecific), but I realised it would be far too blunt and ‘macro’ for a short film of this nature, so I adjusted the perspective to something more personal and ‘micro’.

    In spite of this, the real focus is still on the relationship between the two characters, how it grows, and how it changes them. The pacing and mood will change as the characters do, both visually and sonically. There will be an emotional climax point (not the end) where the protagonist realises she cannot live like this, and her companion is right. The protagonist has a very overdesigned, extravagant outfit, an outward reflection of her insecurity and fear. An example of her physical change would be her outfit simplifying at the end to represent a change in her mindset.

    The environments are also designed to represent a disparity between their attitudes. When outside together, a soft, generally appealing colour scheme is employed, and they are generally seen in an open, comfortable space. When in private, the protagonist’s home is portrayed to be just as dishevelled as she is, conveyed through design, colour, and cinematography.

TECHNICAL

Primary characters will be modelled, rigged, and animated in Autodesk Maya (all 3D). They will have hand painted textures, created in Adobe Photoshop.

Where applicable, 2D backgrounds will be painted in Adobe Photoshop.

In instances where they are required, some 3D background assets will be created in the same ‘3D with hand painted textures’ pipeline as the primary characters.

Secondary characters could be made one of two ways: whichever is more appropriate: either simplified 3D models (rigged & animated in Maya) with minimalist, flat textures, or low detail, hand animated characters (software currently undetermined).

All compositing will be done in Adobe After Effects, since there is no frame tracking that I’d need alternative software (e.g. NukeX) for.

Audio mixing will be in Adobe Audition, and music production will be created in a currently unspecified DAW. (This is admittedly expecting more than what I’m capable of. I am no musician. I only have experience composing music with a chiptune sequencer. However, I don’t think I’d be satisfied looking for royalty free ‘close enough’ music.)

AUDIO

I have different aural themes and genres conceptualised for each character, but bear in mind neither of these are final. [Protagonist]’s aural theme is upbeat, but slightly overpowering music, vaguely equivalent to the more pulse-pounding work of Max Coveri or Hideki Naganuma (or even some coarse FM synth), but slightly softer in tempo and instruments (to maintain sonic consistency and not be too jarring). To summarise, think ‘simplified instrumental Eurobeat’.

[Deuteragonist]’s is something of the opposite. Her music theme is slow and soothing. Existing examples would be the more chill work of Jeremy Soule or Yasunori Mitsuda.

Some scenes may feature even more heavily exaggerated interpretations of the aforementioned general themes, when the film reaches appropriate emotional highs/lows.

RESOURCES

These are all rough estimates based on my skill level and prior experience creating animation-ready characters.

The two primary characters should have their creation pipeline (model - texture - rig) within two weeks, from there they should be ready to animate.

Hand drawn background production time depends on how many shots and scenes there are (I have no storyboard or animatic as of writing, so I can’t accurately determine this yet). However, each individual, full background should take no more than a few hours to illustrate. To offset the amount of backgrounds needed, I intend to illustrate certain assets individually so they may be reused across multiple backgrounds, where appropriate.

Depending on the run time, I suspect the animation process will be lengthy, presumably a couple of months at least. I can’t accurately estimate this until I have an animatic complete.

Compositing should be straightforward, that should take no longer than a week, given the complexity of what needs to be composited.

SUMMARY

My goal in conceptualising and producing this film was to hopefully meet the general audience on their level emotionally. It stands to reason that a lot of people could relate to the protagonist and their apparently futile struggle to stay on top of everything going on in life, as well as teaching/reminding people that they should be open about how they feel (without being pandering or preachy).

[agraphicdesignernamedjessie-blog]

Evaluation

The first puppet making workshop took place on day one and was led by 2017 BCU graduates from the collaborative illustration group, ‘We agree on Eggs’. This workshop instructed each of the newly formed groups to create one puppet as a team. This puppet did not have to have any thematic significance  as the main aim of the task was to create a functioning puppet collaboratively. I believed this would be important for our group to decide on a theme straight away and make a puppet prop that we could utilize for our final performance. I thought this because Jo had mentioned in a previous presentation that our narrative module was fast paced, therefore required immediate creative action. We productively brainstormed many ideas holding the 1968 focus and we all seemed to agree on the idea of portraying a summarised narrative of the life story of Martin Luther King Jr, the movement he created and the legacy that he left behind.

 To kick of the group research and get moving with the project, we each had a look into different approaches to puppetry. Shadow puppetry seemed to be the one approach that we all agreed on and saw the most potential in.

For me, the simplistic aesthetic of the shadowed figures was significant for our groups focus in particular. We wanted to highlight a visual tension between Black and white significance that would bestow a solemn and serious message. This is why the age old characterised approach to puppetry such as stuffing/painting may have looked inappropriate. We wanted the silhouettes of our puppets to be simple enough not to be overly decorative, but detailed enough for the audience to know and understand what each image would represent. It was all about getting the right balance.

 We moved on from this by allocating and delegating our roles. We began to find out each other’s strengths and also what we each enjoyed doing. I believed it was very important for everyone to have a role that they felt confident in, as the more you enjoy doing a task the more confident your craftsmanship becomes - therefore the more accurately the work develops.

 Myself, Mikayla and Jada made all of the handmade puppets individually. I did all of the detailed illustrations for characters as illustrating is my strong point, also something I enjoy doing. Jada made the Martin Luther puppets in order to keep the individual stylized effect and Mikayla cut out all of the large scale handmade puppets.

I wanted to start the story boarding process quickly, partly to get a head start and partly because this is the way that I most effectively go about creative projects. If I have an image to work with or a picture in my head, it’s best for me to get it down on paper in order to re-affirm the strength of my original ideas. It also helps me to communicate to the other team members. Additionally,I  found that when you are trying to explain a creative concept to other creative people it is important to describe an idea with as many visuals as possible.

 Deciding on a Narrative

 We put our heads together and brain stormed by researching  some of the most significant events revolving around Martin Luther King Jr’s movement and life story. We initially picked far too many events to re-tell, so with some difficulty managed, to reduce them. The one thing that we all agreed on, is that we wanted the events that we picked to somehow intertwine and flow like a narrative.

I wanted to create a professional level story board, but knew that carrying out this process for every single frame would take up too much time. Instead I decided to pick a key scene, the ‘I had a dream scene’ and mock up how I wanted it to look.  I did this digitally on the tablet which allowed me to directly transfer it onto my blog. I found that this illustrative way of working was useful, so continued to draw on the tablet throughout the rest of the process. Once we had each scene sorted, we knew who would create what.

 Thinking about how we would perform

On the Tuesday of the second week, Jo asked each of the groups about what approach of puppetry they planned to take forward. This short talk became very significant to the progression of our project. We found out that the majority of the groups planned to do shadow puppetry.

This meant that we had to have an idea that would make our show different from the others. At the start of the module, tutors said that we shouldn’t limit our aspirations for the project and encouraged us to ‘Think Big’.

I had an idea to create an enlarged version of our original theatre. I thought that the scale alone would be very impressive, but alongside that we could get members of the audience to partake and get active with the props that we would make and provide for them.

We have picked two key scenes from our final performance and plan to make ‘human size props’. We plan to set up a tripod at the front of our enlarged theatre so that any member of the audience can film themselves, or their friends experimenting with our props. The concept of the large theatre challenges the audience to ‘physically’ and ‘metaphorically’ take a stand and get involved in the movement that we are exposing them to.

 Practitioner research

 During this process, I came across the Altered Scale Theatre Company, a progressive puppetry and theatre company founded By Artistic Director and performer Austin Mitchel Hewitt in March 2014. I know Austin Mitchell through mutual friends and contacted him and informed of our brief. Austin has worked on many projects around the city of Liverpool, hand crafting puppets and performing with them for a number of collaborative shows. I corresponded through email with Austin a couple of times, asking him questions about how to progress with our project, asking about the work he has done and just enquiring about general tips and tricks of the trade.

Austin proved to be very helpful and some of the work that he sent me further progressed some of our original ideas.

On  my first email to Austin I expressed my concern about background and how I  would go about padding out the screen. This was during the making stage of  our puppets and we hadn’t actually had time to experiment in the shell with  all of our puppets and props. All we had done in terms of experimenting with  the shadow theatre, was using the frame that Lee had set up in our work  space. Austin advised me that “SIMPLICTY is the key to puppetry… if  you have too many visuals all at once… the audience finds it difficult to  follow…"

Once  my group had practiced and experimented with our own theatre space and used  all of our puppets and props in conjunction with one another, I completely  understood what Austin was advising. 

We really wanted to try and portray the  significance of the message and story of Martin Luther King’s movement and if  we were to over complicate this with overly elaborate puppets and props, this specific significance would be lost. 

 I think at first, we thought that shadow puppetry would prove to be simpler than it actually is. We have also found that it takes a lot of time to make something so small. We have decided to incorporate human shadow puppetry for some of the scenes to add a different medium and to reduce the number of puppets that we have to make.

At times, we thought we had created a background prop that would work,  but we realised that it had blocked out some of the major detail in Kings body. When Kate and Sam came back we discussed the possibility of using the laser cutter and vectors to create some puppets that had proved to be difficult with paper. We did eventually do this and it did work effectively.

The filming process

On Tuesday 27th of Februarys from 5-9 we had booked the shell, to perform and film our smaller scale shadow puppetry that we are going project onto our cinema screen. We managed to work really well together and naturally found the roles that best suited ourselves. Kate took charge filming, Mikayla, Jada, Sam and I performed with the puppets.

Because we had planned out how we wanted each scene to flow, it was actually a really fun experience. During the process, we found that some angles worked better than others and some original ideas had to be scrapped, but anticipated that.

We were very glad that our filming did not include natural sound, as an essential part of us effectively working together was down to the fact that we could speak to each other from different sides of the theatre and instruct one another on what was working well/what wasn’t. 

Despite the fact that we had a really long day and were all tired, I actually really enjoyed the filming process. I learnt skills that I otherwise wouldn’t have known doing my graphics course.

  The sound track process

 On the Thursday after filming me and Kate stayed back to begin the editing process. We decided from the beginning that Kate would edit the video footage after it had been filmed and once she had done so, I would refine the sound track/sound effects that I had put together on Logic Pro.

For a long time the career path that I wanted to pursue was music, in particular film score writing. I have studied music for a number of years and have learnt how to compose music digitally. So, from the start of this process I put myself forward to do this task. The thing that was so important about our sound track, was that we had no script, therefore wanted the music to relay a narrative. I didn’t want to just put a song together, I wanted to convey a message, so I decided to combine facts with music.

I found a number of significant news reports from the scenes that we re-enacted through puppetry and combined them with music that I considered appropriate. Before starting on the sound track,  I instantly knew the tone and mood that I wanted to create and how I would go about writing it. However, I knew I needed the footage next to me when refining timings. 

One of the most difficult things I came across when creating the sound track, was getting the timings for sound effects right. For example, the scene in which Martin Luther is assassinated, Sam stands behind the screen and shoots our gun puppet that we made on the first day. It was really hard to time this action with the sound effect of a gunshot simultaneously.