Creative Media Practice - Final Project Presentation

Today I had to present my work all together in a presentation explaining my development, planning and the final outcome. I really don't mind doing presentations and I have always been okay with speaking in front of people from my drama days in 6th form to my course representative duties.
I believe that my presentation went smoothly; I had a script to give me direction if I stumbled and it directed me through my Prezi presentation with ease. I like using Prezi because you can get creative with your work and you don't have to put lots of text on the screen you can simply put an image and then talk about everything related to that when its up on the screen.

Here is my Prezi presentation that I presented to the 2 lecturers on this module this afternoon.

As you can see from the Prezi I had a journey sort of template which allowed me to show the stages that I went through in this whole project. Here is the script that I wrote to go along with it (although I pretty much didn't use it because I knew the general outline of what I needed to say).

Script for Creative Media Practice Project

So my final piece for Creative Media Practice is called 'The Little Lamp'.

In the beginning I had a few different choices and ideas like timelapses, animation, a love story; but I eventually chose to do a stop motion. I decided to make this because I quite like animating and so I wanted to do this infused with the triptych technique that we learned. The main reason for me choosing to do a triptych was because I was off ill most of the other sessions so didn't really get to experience the YouTube annotations, QR codes and Isadora enough to use them in an individual project.

For the original triptych project my group made a stop motion with cups called 'Love Triangle' - here is a reminder of it.

From this I wanted to make something with better quality and an increased frame rate for more detail. I gathered some research which included videos I found mainly on YouTube for inspiration.

The first is Luxo Lamp, which was one of the first animations made by Pixar and is now featured at the start of all their features. Here is a reminder in case you don't know what I am talking about.

The next video is a Q&A video I found that John Lasseter did for the Disney/Pixar YouTube channel. The question and answer illustrates exactly what I wanted to achieve in his words.

Finally, this is just a short stop motion that I discovered by a YouTuber called TheClayLord.

So you can probably guess a running theme through my research. I love Pixar, and I also like using stop motion; so I decided to animate... A LAMP!

Animating inanimate objects makes for a straight forward individual project because I could do it in my own home and at my own time scale fitting around other projects.

So I needed a main character. Who should I choose?

I looked at various lamps in my house to animate and basically went through the goldilocks process - too square, too stiff, too bulky, too fragile, juuuusssstttt right.

And then I had to think about where I would shoot it. Of course I would be using my house but what rooms would I use? I decided that it would be nice for the lamp to venture in to different parts of the house to give the shots and scenery some variation.

Developing the short story was the most important process because it needed to show emotions in the inanimate object and also be realistic for me to be able to move the lamp about. Here are the basics.

I then moved on to a sort of story board process. I haven't gone in to a lot of detail with this because it was just to give me an idea of how the triptych would work out in after effects rather than actual camera angles and stuff. When I was shooting I just used the angles that gave the best light because even during the day I struggled for light because of the bad weather and dark sky.

The storyboard just goes through where what and when things would be on the screen during the short film. Its divided in to 3 at all times so that I reminded myself to use various options within the triptych.

I had to work out different factors for the film during development. things like - what time of day would I shoot it? (this became a tricky factor because as I mentioned the weather has been horrendous), how would I have it lit?, what paths should the lamp take on his journey through the house?, what camera should I use for shooting?, should I use my own equipment for editing or come to uni?, how will I use the triptych technique? and finally what sound will I use, if any?

For the sound I searched on the royalty free websites such as SoundCloud, Free Music Archive, Incompetech and Newgrounds. I eventually decided to just use a song for the sound and not have sound effects. I don't think I would have had enough time to also record sound effects for the lamp and also not many are really needed with the content I have so it might have sounded bare. I found a simple song on Newgrounds in the end.

During the edit I focused on using the triptych much like we did in the original project. I used variations in how many screens there were and also changed the sizes and placement of the screens. I questioned myself about the triptychs and then throughout the edit I was able to see what worked and what didn't, especially corresponding with the stop motion detail.

Future development of this project ties in nicely with my final production project this year because I am making a stop motion animation with inanimate objects. I have used this experience to develop my skills and hopefully will transfer them to the production project. I think that if I ever had time after uni I would carry on these short stop motions either with the lamp again showing other stories of his little life; or just general object animations set in my house so they tie in together. Either way, any content I make involving stop motion and triptych techniques will all be on my YouTube channel eventually, like this film and also the cup animation I mentioned earlier.

Just a quick tip if anyone ever does a stop motion - lock your pets out of the room your working in. They can get in the way a bit.

So that's everything really! Here is my final short stop motion animation film using triptych techniques called 'The Little Lamp'. Enjoy and I would be grateful for feedback and/or YouTube comments.

I am definitely happy with the final outcome of my project and I will do a full evaluation in another blog very soon. But for now, in case you can't be bothered looking through my whole Prezi; here is my final triptych stop motion animation for Creative Media Practice.

Speak Soon!