introductiontocreativeplay

[introductiontocreativeplay]

Foley

Foley (named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley) is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to film, video, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. These reproduced sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. The best Foley art is so well integrated into a film that it goes unnoticed by the audience. It helps to create a sense of reality within a scene. Without these crucial background noises, movies feel unnaturally quiet and uncomfortable.

Foley artists recreate the realistic ambient sounds that the film portrays. The props and sets of a film often do not react the same way acoustically as their real life counterparts. Foley sounds are used to enhance the auditory experience of the movie. Foley can also be used to cover up unwanted sounds captured on the set of a movie during filming, such as overflying airplanes or passing traffic.

The term "Foley" also means a place, such as Foley-stage or Foley-studio, where the Foley process takes place.

History

What is now called Foley is a range of live sound effects originally developed for live broadcasts of radio drama in the early 1920s in various radio studios around the world. Because no effective recording method existed in those days, a sound effects person had to create all sounds for radio plays live. Jack Donovan Foley started working with Universal Studios in 1914 during the silent movie era. When Warner studios released The Jazz Singer, its first film to include sound, Universal knew it needed to stay competitive and called for any employees who had radio experience to come forward. Foley became part of the sound crew that turned Universal's then-upcoming "silent" musical Show Boat into a musical. Because microphones of the time could not pick up more than dialogue, other sounds had to be added in after the film was shot.[3] Foley and his small crew projected the film on a screen while recording a single track of audio that captured their live sound effects. Their timing had to be perfect, so that footsteps and closing doors synchronized with the actors' motions in the film. Jack Foley created sounds for films until his death in 1967. His basic methods are still used today.

Modern Foley art has progressed as recording technology has progressed. Today, sounds do not have to be recorded live on a single track of audio. They can be captured separately on individual tracks and carefully synchronized with their visual counterpart. Foley studios employ hundreds of props and digital effects to recreate the ambient sounds of their films.

Uses

n this article, Foley complements or replaces sound recorded on set at the time of the filming (known as field recording). The soundscape of most films uses a combination of both. A Foley artist is the person who creates this sound art. Foley artists use creativity to make viewers believe that the sound effects are actually real. The viewers should not be able to realize that the sound was not actually part of the filming process itself. Foley sounds are added to the film in post production after the film has been shot. The need for replacing or enhancing sounds in a film production arises from the fact that, very often, the original sounds captured during shooting are obstructed by noise or are not convincing enough to underscore the visual effect or action. For example, fist-fighting scenes in an action movie are usually staged by the stunt actors and therefore do not have the actual sounds of blows landing. Crashes and explosions are often added or enhanced at the post-production stage. The desired effect is to add back to the original soundtrack the sounds that were intended to be excluded during recording. By excluding these sounds during field recording, and then adding them back into the soundtrack during post-production, the editors have complete control over how each noise sounds, its quality, and the relative volume. Foley effects add depth and realism to the audio quality for multimedia sources, and simplify the synchronizing of sounds that would otherwise be tedious or downright impossible to manage.

Foley artists review the film as it runs to figure out what sounds like they need to achieve the desired sound and results. Once they gather the material and prepare for use, they practice the sounds. When they accomplish the desired sound, they watch the film and add in the sound effects at the same time. This is similar to the way actors re-record dialogue, lip-syncing to the video or film image.

Scenes where dialogue is replaced using dubbing also feature Foley sounds. Automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) is the process in which voice sounds are recorded in post production. This is done by a machine that runs the voice sounds with the film forward and backward to get the sound to run with the film. The objective of the ADR technique is to add sound effects into the film after filming, so the voice sounds are synchronized. Many sounds are not added at the time of filming, and microphones might not capture a sound the way the audience expects to hear it. The need for Foley rose dramatically when studios began to distribute films internationally, dubbed in foreign languages. As dialogue is replaced, all sound effects recorded at the time of the dialogue are lost as well.

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Go inside the history of the travelling mattes (now called chromakey) and learn the history of visual trickery used by filmmakers from the earliest filmmakers through to the modern day.

There are several terms used in Green Screen filming. Colour Keying, the less commonly used 'colour separation overlay' or for  ease of use CSO. CSO is more commonly found in weather maps on the news

Compositing is a description of blending elements and footage together included chroma key footage. Green or Blue screen is used as a solid background colour, ideally as different as possible to the foreground subject of object. Mainly used in Film and TV as a way of reducing the cost of building sets, moving expensive actors and crew to exotic locations. Green Screen technology has increased the possibilities and reduced budgets and can add such depth and dimensions to simple corporate pieces too.

Early Experiments

Early forays into film making special effects heralded the era of the matte effect. Using double exposures on film stock created never before seen film magic and those early principals have been developed up to this day. In the 1898 film by George Melies 'Four heads heads are better than one'.

Used a matte technique called multiple exposures. Small of sections of the film strip were not exposed to light. This would involve painting over a piece of glass over the lens. This small part of the film strip would be unexposed to light hitting it and would be blank throughout. The glass is removed and replaced with a negative version of (what were once black squares blocking light are now the only window allowing light in).

The sections once shielded from light are now the main focus point of and the same film strip is run back through the camera. This time ONLY the sections, previously blacked out, are seen. In this instance the film maker removed his head several times and repeatedly shoot the same actions to look like his head was being removed. A great movie moment was born and multiple exposures opened up many possibilities for the Film community.

Following on from that saw the use of the glass shot. A piece of painted glass was placed between the subject and the camera. The glass would normally be used to paint grand landscapes, extend the scale of houses or add in completely new vistas. This technique was very costly and time consuming and would involve a lot of set up time. In later examples the painting was done after the shot was taken and the painting replaced with the multiple negative technique described above.

The use of travelling mattes were a great leap forward in not only technology but also in producing and planning. These techniques attracted a lot of attention and made them stand out in a new wave of Hollywood action films that were able to utilise this technique best. Then, through many experiments and mistakes came digital compositing.

Modern Green Screen (Blue Screen)

Chromakey and compositing has come on leaps and bounds since the early days. Computing power has increased dramatically, as it has needed to. The advance of 4k cameras and shooting RAW requires a load of hard drive storage space and someone to manage it. Gone are the days of tape stock and the safe management of it. Nowadays numerous takes can be used to get the right shot and talents and scenes can be filmed as separate entities and merged together saving money in locations, time management and the cost of extras.

The late, great, Larry Butler first created and successfully utilised blue screen on the Oscar Winning 'The Thief of Baghdad' for which he won a special effects award. He combined the travelling matte technique with a blue screen. Ideally for the brand new Technicolor films of that new era. Following on from that several experiments were undertaken using ultra violet travelling matte. Blue screen had come along way in the 40's and 50's and some of the greatest developments can be seen around the turn of the 1960's.

Background footage is shot first with the actors portraying their scene against the specially made blue screen. The subject must be separated from the background , removing any traces of blue screen so the subject is like a cardboard cut out. This specially made 'actor sized' hole can be overlaid onto the intended background footage and placed into a specially-made "hole" in the background footage. The blue screen shot was re-shot through a blue filter so that only the background is exposed. A special film is used that creates a black and white negative image. Male and female mattes, as they are better known are the cutout and the hole. You are removing what you don’t want from one layer and adding in what you do want in another layer and combining the two.

Now, we have a huge array of pixels to play with, 6k recording, higher frame rates, better native ISO for more depth and more possibilities for easier and quicker post production work you can acheive amazing results for under £1k. Editing has become much easier too with improved workflows, better rendering times for reviewing and sharing cuts and takes with people all over the world to comment on has opened up a new world of post production opportunities.

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Chroma key

Chroma keying is a technique used for combining two frames or images by replacing a color or a color range in one frame with that from the another frame.It is often used in film industry to replace a scene's background by using a blue or green screen as the initial background and placing the actor in the foreground. The principle behind chroma keying is that the color blue is the opposite color of skin tone, so a distinction between the two is very clear, making it easier to select the color without worrying about any part of the actor being included in the selection. The whole blue selection is then replaced with another frame as the background.Chroma key is also known as color keying and color separation overlay; it is also commonly called blue screen or green screen.

How Does Green Screen Work?

Through the magic of video effects and technology, you can superimpose your subjects onto virtual backgrounds, place them over animated digital backdrops or transport them to a desert oasis. You can shrink down a full-grown man so he can stand on a tabletop, use visual effects to make him fly through the sky like a superhero or simply simulate your own TV weather report. But to do it right, you’re going to need a lot of green. No, we’re not talking about money. The green we mean comes in the form of a green screen. The secret to pulling your subject out of the real world and placing him or her into a digital domain is chromakey, and that means going green. In this article we’ll cover all the essentials you need to know to pull off keen, clean keys and composite digital backdrops and virtual backgrounds into your edits.

What is Keying?

Keying is the process of isolating a single color or brightness value in an electronic image and using software to make that value transparent, allowing another image to show through the affected areas. Luminance keying, or lumakeying, is the process of keying out a brightness value or range, like black or white. Luminance keys are often used for applying mattes. Color keying, or chromakeying, identifies a specific color to remove.

Why Green?

Many people use the terms chromakeying and greenscreening interchangeably, but the principle that powers chrominance keying is not limited to the green parts of the spectrum. In the visual effects world of Hollywood, blue screens are far more common than green. In fact, you can key out any color; red, yellow, purple or pink, blue and yes, green. So why is that odd and ugly shade of green the hue of choice for television and video? The biggest factor is contrast. In order to isolate one area from the rest, the background color must be distinctly different. Bright green beats blue partially because it is not a color commonly worn by talent. Any clothing that matches the background too closely will also key out, punching a hole in your subject’s body, or making him invisible altogether. We narrowly escaped a chromakey crisis a few years ago when I was working at a Northern California TV station. One St. Patrick’s Day our wacky weatherman showed up to work dressed head-to-toe in a bright green leprechaun suit. Fortunately, we quickly pointed out the flaw in his logic and he was able to find a change of clothes before it was time to go live.

Lighting

Lighting your subject independently of your set. This is important for two “key” reasons: shadows and reflections. Part of keeping your wall evenly lit is keeping your subject’s shadow from falling across it. To do this you need to position the talent at a distance of at least a few feet from the screen, and light him separately using three point lighting.

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Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947) Once described as the greatest movie not  made by arch cynic Billy Wilder, Tyrone Power gives his finest performance as the fairground hustler who works his way into society by fair means and foul, including murder. But Power’s fall is every bit as precipitous as his rise as he ends up back in the fairground as the carnival geek in this remarkable and disturbing movie.

The seedy underworld of the travelling carnival is the setting for this cautionary tale. This is an excellent example of the film noir genre; Film noir explored the darker side of society, in addition to looking darker on film. No one could be more of an outcast than a carnival geek, although this film was not as lurid with reference to the geek as I expected. It is really more of a morality tale, a cautionary expose. The key is the line that's repeated at the beginning of the film and the end: "How did he get so low?, he reached too high." Tyrone Power excels as Stanton, an opportunistic sociopath chewing through victims, taking advantage of everyone he meets, and Colleen Gray is "electric as well." What a beauty, and clad pretty thinly for the time!

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Pivoting

“Pivoting” is a familiar word in the startup world.  When your first business model isn’t working (and this happens more often than not), the CEO and team pivot to plan B” 

But pivoting doesn’t necessarily mean desperation.  It can be a tool to discover additional growth--growth you might otherwise have overlooked. Businesses can grow beyond their initial dreams by re-imagining their assets and talents, thinking more broadly about the customer problems they solve, and accessing growth capital to seize the new high ground.

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Incremental model

In incremental model the whole requirement is divided into various builds. Multiple development cycles take place here, making the life cycle a “multi-waterfall” cycle.  Cycles are divided up into smaller, more easily managed modules. Incremental model is a type of software development model.

n this model, each module passes through the requirements, design, implementation and testing phases. A working version of software is produced during the first module, so you have working software early on during the software life cycle. Each subsequent release of the module adds function to the previous release. The process continues till the complete system is achieved.

For example:

In the diagram above when we work incrementally we are adding piece by piece but expect that each piece is fully finished. Thus keep on adding the pieces until it’s complete. As in the image above a person has thought of the application. Then he started building it and in the first iteration the first module of the application or product is totally ready and can be demoed to the customers. Likewise in the second iteration the other module is ready and integrated with the first module. Similarly, in the third iteration the whole product is ready and integrated. Hence, the product got ready step by step.

Diagram of Incremental model:

Advantages of Incremental model:

Generates working software quickly and early during the software life cycle.

This model is more flexible – less costly to change scope and requirements.

It is easier to test and debug during a smaller iteration.

In this model customer can respond to each built.

Lowers initial delivery cost.

Easier to manage risk because risky pieces are identified and handled during it’d iteration.

Disadvantages of Incremental model:

Needs good planning and design.

Needs a clear and complete definition of the whole system before it can be broken down and built incrementally.

Total cost is higher than waterfall.

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Fail fast

Fail-fast fundamentals

Assertions are the key to failing fast. An assertion is a tiny piece of code that checks a condition and then fails if the condition isn’t met. So, when something starts to go wrong, an assertion detects the problem and makes it visible. Most languages have built-in assertions, but they don’t always throw exceptions. They’re also usually pretty generic, limiting expressiveness and causing duplication. For these reasons, I usually prefer to implement my own assertion class, as Figure 1 shows. However, it’s tough to know when to add assertions. One way to tell is to look for comments. Comments often document assumptions about how a piece of code works or how it should be called. When you see those comments, or feel like writing one, think about how you can turn it into an assertion instead. When you’re writing a method, avoid writing assertions for problems in the method itself. Tests, particularly test-driven development, are a better way of ensuring the correctness of individual methods. Assertions shine in their ability to flush out problems in the seams of the system. Use them to show mistakes in how the rest of the system interacts with your method

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Egg drop

so today we had a bit if an introduction about some key words we need to research and also a woman named Trish came in and did a little talk about how she was here to help if we had any questions about the design industry.

seen as alaster was leaving we had to draw a face on out eggs to make them look like him they we were put into groups and mixed with the animation class and then give the task to build a tower only out of paper that had to be able to be moved from one table yo another and also has to be able to hold the egg at the top of the tower for 15 seconds as well as competing with the others for hight

here is an image of the tower my group made that got us 3rd place.

then for the second part of the day we had to drop the egg from the 3rd floor onto the drop zone without the egg smashing. this overall was a really good lessons and I nice way for us to all get to know one another but it mainly got the point across of don't be afraid to fail. change your idea adapt it not everything you do is going to be an improvement sometimes you just need to try so.thing and if it dosent work then you can simply just change it again.

below is the drop zone

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Introduction

we had a talk off a woman from the BBC and she talked about her journey through college to university and then went on to get a job. persona: a fictanl person made up of data collection and gives you an idea of who what you're designing is aimed at. we also did exersices of user experience where the user in this case me would eat and yoghut and my peers would write down my experience of eatting the yoghurt an example of this is when I pulled the lid back it ripped and didn't fully come off so a solution someone came up with was to make the lid out of a more sturdy material. we also did  bouncesing ideas off eachother and working as a group for this exercise we looked at a tram user and looked how we could improve their experience as a tram user.

above is the example of us writing about the user and what their journey was like.

here we did rapid fire ideas of ways we cloud improve the users experience on the tram such as:

a quite carriage

 app to show you where the tram has stopped at and where it will be stopping at.

a next stop sign on the tram

an app to book seats near the window

a leaflets will all the tram stops listed 

a carriage for children and prams 

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creative play intro

 to begin with we talked about the brief and covered everything that we'd need to do and achieve. 

DUE 10TH JANUARY

 knowledge and understanding

 demonstrating familiarity with, and an ability to 

employ an appropriate visual language to communicate outcomes

experiment and innovate as part of a design process

evaluate and assess project outcomes 

transferable/key skills and other attributes

 team working 

creative risk taking -creative play

visual communication 

creative problme solving