rrobinsonfiction2018

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

critical evaluation

At the start of this project, I was really interested in contemporary surrealist filmmakers such as David Firth and Winston Hacking. I loved the way they presented bizarre imagery accompanied by strange sound design. This gave me an idea to make a film that followed a peculiar narrative. For a while I was struggling to think of ideas for a narrative until I re-read a favourite poem of mine ‘An Almost Made Up Poem’ by Charles Bukowski. I’ve always felt emotional reading the last lines of the poem which read –

“…if I had met you 


i would probably have been unfair to you or you


to me. it was best like this.”

I’m fascinated by this idea of loving someone you never reach – this led to my idea of a tale about a man who is hopelessly in love with the moon. As mentioned on my blog, I thought of styling the protagonist like a 60s era jazz crooner – primarily as I’ve heard a lot of romantic jazz songs which speak of the moon for various metaphors about love. I also styled him in this way as I wanted to write a short jazz-inspired song which would be sung from the man’s perspective, singing to the moon. In making this film I experimented with some animation techniques such as working with 35mm film stills as well as printing out individual frames from a piece of footage and drawing on them before scanning them back into my laptop to sequence together. I really enjoyed working with these techniques and will definitely continue to use them in future work. One of the main criticisms I have of my final film is primarily about the narrative. I really like the concept, but I think I definitely could’ve shown more progression in the narrative as my film is quite short, so therefore not a lot happens in the storyline. Part of the reason for this is me slightly underestimating the time it takes to animate in the approaches I used which meant I was less focused on the narrative and more on the visuals I was creating. In future I want to work more on developing storylines - perhaps making more storyboards will help with this as it will give me a clear layout of the direction my story is going and what story elements I want to include. Another thing I want to improve on is the coherence between my sound and visuals. I’m happy with a lot of the sound I made for this film but there are points where I feel it doesn’t quite fit with the visuals. Overall I’m happy with how my film came out – I’m pleased with its lo-fi visual aesthetic through working with analog animation techniques and I enjoyed presenting the concept of a man with a strange love interest. I’m eager to take in the lessons I’ve learned through working on this project in order to improve the quality of my future moving image work.

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

song for the moon

i wrote a short song written from the perspective of the protagonist, singing about/to the moon. it’s inspired a lot by jazz artist chet baker for reasons that i mentioned previously - in terms of the chords i used and the singing style. i recorded it using my tape recorder in order to get a vintage sound. i also altered the pitch of the recording so the voice doesn’t sound like my own actual voice..

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

end scene

i want the ending scene to show the man’s legs lifting up out of shot, suggesting he’s floating off into the sky, then to cut to the man sat inside the moon. i want to do this by shooting footage of me sat against a white backdrop, starting close up then the camera gradually moves backward. i’m then going to use an application software on my computer called adapter which lets you convert video footage into a sequence of images (frames). i printed out approximately 6 images per second of footage so i ended up printing about 37 frames. i then drew around the man (me) and the rest of each frame with a black posca pen to portray the black night sky. i then scanned each frame back into the computer and sequenced in premiere.

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

to accompany the animation i’m going to record a voiceover as a young boy speaking to the viewer about the man. I’ve scanned in a page from my notebook which is roughly what i will be saying as the boy. when recorded i’ll manipulate the vocals to be higher-pitched to mimic the sound of a young boy’s voice. i’m not necessarily aiming for it to sound realistic, more as a suggestion that the voice is someone other than myself.

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

i’m making an animation sequence near the start of the film using 35mm negatives shot on a point and shoot camera. i’m then scanning the negatives into my laptop using my scanner and sequencing each frame in premiere. i also intentionally exposed the film at points to achieve those orange-hued lightleaks which i really like the look of.

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

lo-fi test

this is a sample of how i want to edit my video footage in my final film. i achieved this lo-fi look by making a grainy overlay through printing out grey pieces of paper then scanning them back into my laptop and making a short video sequence which i then use as an overlay in premiere. i also lowered the frame rate of the footage and made a separate ‘moving’ border by sequencing borders from 35mm film photos together so that the film doesn’t have just a static border.

[rrobinsonfiction2018]

jesse james - jfse

i really like in this music video how it was edited to look as if it were shot on film using a slow frame rate or as if frames were printed onto paper before being scanned back into a computer and animated. i want to try recreating a similar lo-fi look in my film.