Barf

- Usage of stills, zooming in and panning through them
- Layering multiple images, fitting text in between them
- Simple piano song playing in the background
- Idea that these people come from many backgrounds, are extremely different: end title sequence (start movie) with something happening to make them all equal, a situation of emergency in which everyone becomes the same
- Physically drawing out the scenes and images to use, panning through them
- Animating the text specifically so it moves and undulates with what's going on around them
- Go into a busy restaurant and record the sounds, conversations
- Animate so that it appears like a child is drawing out the scene
- Sounds from battlestar galactica scene, and beginning scene of waking life?

Childhood images

A Single Line

For the animation portion of my film, I want to use a single line that morphs into different scenes, traveling through the lives of the childhoods of several different characters.

I think for the conversational audio part, it'll be of multiple adults talking about their childhood in different ways. The animation won't directly represent what they're talking about, and will generally be giving a happy, upbeat vibe while what the conversation describes won't always be so bright...

I'm going to experiment using audio from different films also, that incorporate dialogue that speaks about childhood. I have one that I want to use from the TV series Battlestar Galactica, when Starbuck is in a hospital on Caprica, and the doctor talks about the x-rays he took showing scars of how each of her fingers was broken in the exact same place. This will eliminate the camera use and allow me to use a pretty dramatic dialogue that's already been recorded.

Make a film without a camera?

Make a film without a camera about Ariadne’s childhood. Hint: animation, or...?

At first I was completely bewildered as to how I'd make a film without a camera. Isn't that the most basic instrument? Then I realized that the computer would largely be my tool for this project, kind of locking the entire film process in the post-production phase. It feels like something endless, infinite... yet I'm comfortable with it.

I'm not too keen on the idea of using a mythical greek goddess as the main character to my plot. I'm hoping to change it to something more general, like the childhood of a character I make up myself, or of multiple characters.

I would really like text and audio to play major parts in this film, as well as animation. I feel like sound plays as big of a role as you want it to, and can largely set the tone and tell the story if you want it to. I'd like to craft this movie into a collage, of sounds, songs, still photographs, previously recorded footage, animation techniques, and possibly physically manipulated film. I read about an avant-garde director named Stan Brackage who imprinted butterfly wings onto film to create his movie, and am very inspired to research the possibilities of techniques like this.

The scene I'm inspired to start out with is in a crowded place, with the garbled murmur of indiscernible conversations blending into one. I don't think I even want the images to directly represent what actions are taking place in the story, but to maybe represent sound frequencies or something of the like. Then I want to zoom in with the audio on specific conversations, describing events of the lives of people involved, depicting the personalities and character of each.

This project will take me getting pretty familiar with Adobe After Effects. I've worked with the project some, but have done further research for resources to help me. One is the catalyst webpage:

http://catalyst.washington.edu/help/video/aftereffects/index.html

And have placed a hold to pick up "Creative After Effects 7: workflow techniques for animation, visual effects and motion graphics".