Hey there friendos!!! Here is my final work for our third 4D project. ‘Impossibilities of Being’ required us to create a minute-long video about our first encounter with a certain place, and the place that I chose was the Night Safari!! Because my time is a scarce resource I decided to do a video that was entirely drawn out (also after our first consult Lei wanted me to do that so!!) instead of trying out cinematography (don’t think that’s my thing but idk).
Here’s the final video:
VISUAL ASPECTS
The visual parts of the project were the most heavily emphasised in my work. It was the starting point of the entire video and there was not a lot of change from the Lo-Fi storyboard to the Hi-Fi storyboard (which was basically my video). Here’s my Lo-Fi storyboard:
Honestly I have nothing much to say other than the fact that it involved a LOT of drawing, probably around 10-13 hours of drawing. Idk actually that’s a rough estimate, but each key frame for the final video took maybe 30 minutes to an hour on average, and I have 69 frames in total. :’)
RHYTHM
There doesn’t seem to be an obvious rhythm in the work itself, but it is present in the way the character is running, and especially in the scene with the stampede chasing after main character. But mostly the scenes are varied and the situations constantly change for the character, making the rhythm generally irregular to create a sense of anticipation for the character and her plight!!!
Also, the background rhythmic and tribal music lent a sense of urgency to the chase scenes, whereas it stopped nearer to the end to show the lack of continuation and thus, created confusion.
MOVEMENT
Generally, the frantic running of the character away from the predator, and running or flying movements of animals are the main movements in the video. However, the sudden stillness of the tiger near the end of the video shows a contrast to the rest of its movements, and thus provides a sense of confusion and shows a turning point in the story.
CAUSALITY
Causality is the principle that everything has a cause and effect.
It is a key element that is both narrative , which is an account of connected events (sometimes referred to as story), and non-narrative works.
I think my video contains much usage of ’cause and expectation’ , where the expectation of seeing something happens creates a sense of expectation.
For example, the scene where the main character dives into a cave would lead to the expectation that she is sheltered safely, but there turn out the be dangers in the cave as well!! Apart from that, there is also the ending scene where it is expected that after the girl is cornered, the tiger would have eaten her, but tiger starts becoming disfigured instead, creating confusion.
In my work, causality is pretty easy to track as it follows a linear plot with clear links between each scene (until the last part)!
DURATION
Duration had to be limited to around 1 minute, but I thought it was a minimum of one minute and everyone would go past it so mine ended up being 1:45 min. :))) Overkill!! Anyway I think although duration wasn’t a focus of this piece, the one minute allowed me to try and squeeze in a fast pace of action to fit in the many experiences that the character goes through in the plot. :>
OTHER NOTES
I also wanted to point out the usage of the end credits scene to assist with the audience’s understanding of my location, which was not the Night Safari in the conventional sense, as I wanted to create the video without any prior knowledge of the real atmosphere of the actual place. So it was just punny. :)))
AUDIO ASPECT
Not much to say about this one because I basically didn’t record any of the sounds myself so no bonus points for me. 🙁 It was mostly due to the outlandish location and the exotic sounds from the Night Safari that prevented me from recording any sounds. People told me to visit the place but like WHAT’S THE POINT it was an eighty percent chance that I wouldn’t be able to record any of the sounds in mind, and also the Night Safari is expensive and I truly don’t have the time and resources to go on a leisure trip. 🙁 Sounds like I’m making excuses whoops. I really wish I could’ve at least recording more of the orthodox sounds like falling over or the alarm ringing. Nevertheless credits to www.freesounds.org for providing me with all the sounds I needed!!
I put everything in Audacity and for many of the sounds I had to adjust them to fit the duration I needed. For example, the gloopy sound when the tiger was melting had to be longer than the clip, so I copied and reversed the clip and connected them so that they sounded like one continuous sound. Apart from that, I couldn’t find some of the animal’s sounds, like a rhino sound, so instead I just took a dog grunt and adjusted the pitch to sound more rumbly. :’)
I think my process in mixing audio and visual was quite interesting?? Or unique! My visuals came first, with me creating the Lo-Fi storyboard then placing the sounds I needed in the storyboard. However, after that, when I started collecting the sounds I detailed in the storyboard, I had to adjust my Hi-Fi storyboard (final artwork) to fit the audio that I couldn’t control, for example the extra loud stampede. Thus, both visuals and audio impacted each other in my process of creating the video.
I put everything together using iMovie, nothing top fancy schmancy. I really hope to be able to able to learn how to use AfterEffects or Premier Pro though, probably after this semester. 🙁 🙂
On hindsight I wished I had put in more effort for the audio seeing how everyone put in so much effort to create their own sounds and do things like Foley. Makes me feel sad. 🙁 However I can’t say I regret carrying out all that drawing!! Made me more familiar with drawing and painting on Photoshop which is damn bomb hoohoo. For some frames I feel the quality of the drawing could’ve been better/the animation could be smoother but.. limitations, what to do. 🙁 Anyway! That’s the end of the post about the final project. It’s a lot shorter compared to my other final project posts, probably because this one was a lot simpler in the concept and just tedious in execution.
See yall aroundddddd!!
-Niki