John Lasseter, Gorge Lucas and Ed Catmull, described in this interview as a band of revolutionaries talking about Lucasfilm and how he came into the world of CGI.
So you were like a little band of revolutionaries.
Well, we were a very small group, led by Ed with a visionary – George Lucas – funding it. It was remarkable. I’m the very first traditionally trained animator in the world who worked with computer animation. And I just blossomed!
After my experience at the Disney Studio of just being squelched, Ed had gathered together the world’s greatest young minds in computer animation. I asked him, ‘How did you get all these amazing people?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s easy, I just try to hire people who are smarter than myself.’
This site gave me an amazing insight to the world of CGI and it’s history. Knowing where it all began is an important thing to understand, CGI has been around for more time than what people may think. Animation started in ‘71 with a short example ‘Andromeda Strain’ according to the web site it is arguably the first example of ‘Computer Generated Imagery’.
The main part of this history that caught my attention was its relevance to Lassester and how he may have been influenced. In 1977 The well known movie ‘Star Wars’ was released and this was one of the first films to use CGI, the film was directed by Gorge Lucas who had already had his taste in special effects. What intrigues me is that this was one of the first companies and institutions to this and also then go onto creating CGI for other other films (Young Sherlock Holmes 1985). At this stage John Lassester was now a part of Lucasfilm and contributed to this animation creation, getting his first taste for CGI. You can that this environment, being around the technology helped adapt and develop he’s creative mind edging him slightly closer to he’s revolutionary change in animation, giving the world a new niche.
Today was a very productive and gave us a good sense of what we are approaching, int terms of filming and our challenges. In the process of making some very short demo’s we saw a variety of different obstacles that we shall be encountering. We made a small demos trying out different techniques, ranging from panning to focus pulling. We knew this would be difficult as we were using still images and stop motion. One of the main difficulties with panning was that keeping the movement and motion smooth, the tripod we used had a full motion tilt head this made it a struggle to keep the camera level whilst panning. From this we know understand that we need to acquire a tripod that has multi-movement functions that are separately controlled, this will eliminate the the problem of the camera going of level.
The problems we had with focus pulling only really came around when we wanted to have objects moving during the focus change, we had lots of things to think about and it will take a lot of planning to get right. Normal focus pulling with stationary was very simple an fairly quick to do.
One of the main obstacles we encountered today was camera movement, we are aiming for a fluent motion. So practice and new skills will have to be applied to gain the best effect and quality we aim for.
Videos from today’s session will be uploaded and embed into the post.
Most examples of stop motion animation that is contained on the internet keeps to a light entertainment suitable for most ages. Our film will not feature any explicit or foul language along with anything else that might change the allowed viewing age. An institution such as ‘PES’ uses some of their short animations for advertising.
This film is particularly popular on youtube, a Web 2.0 interactive social networking community site. The video has aired and been viewed nearly 3.5 million times, making its one of the most popular stop motion animations on this particular site. The video has no real story to it and has a main purpose to entertain to the viewer as apposed to selling them anything.
The rating for our stop motion short film will be PG, as we see it fits all ages. From our reactions from the test, all ages had a pleased and entertain reaction. We are hoping that this will be the same reaction from our full feature length.
This video is an e-bay stop motion viral add, made with the main purpose of advertising e-bay and their services. Again i wouldn’t say it was aimed at an exact age but more to just who ever see’s it. As its purpose is to advertise, they want to keep a versatile add that will please all ages and catch the eye of most ages.
Most industries and companies set out with a specific audience in mind, using common codes and conventions to attract this audience. For example if you wish to make a film to attract the female teenage audience, you can use common conventions that this audience would be attracted to. In relation to a major industry such as Disney, their attempt to attract the older audience as well the younger is the use of a male actor who would appeal in an ‘attraction’ sense. This then helps get them more audience and more success. It’s the same principle with music videos, if you’re making a music video for an metal band you would struggle to see them same conventions as you would in and r ‘n’ b band. Setting, location, actors, props all of these things would have a vast difference in the videos.
With our animation it is difficult to select a certain audience, we are making the film for general entertainment. A very wide overview observation from my research of stop motion animations i have discovered would suggest that many of the highest rated short films don’t have much purpose other than to entertain, acting of more as a short story or advert. So from my research i have gained a good understanding of stop motion and their purposes, many of the most popular videos on youtube aren’t aimed to an audience and don’t have any advertising purposes.
So the aim for my video will be to attract an audience of all area’s, the genre of the film will be Romance which normally has more of a female attraction but i have a small feeling that this film will attract more than females.
This video is a good demonstration of the style of video we aim to create, obviously the genre differs vastly but the whole aim of the video is similar. This video in my opinion is a youtube viral, a video that becomes aware to many viewers by a community, an online web 2.0 community. My aim would be over all, to achieve this sort of status with the short film. To appeal to a community is hard, seen as this is a large and contrasted group of people according to internet statistic (http://www.quantcast.com/youtube.com) male to female ratio is 50:50. The highest percentage age gap is 18-34 which is 35% of you-tubes viewers, followed by 13-17 years of age. This is is a small surprise for me as i would have guessed that the majority of user would have aged between 15 and 22, but obviously the age gaps used by that site are different. I think a key thing to remember when appealing to the You-tube community is ‘Niche’, if you can find that small gap in an area of entertainment or an idea that is original then you can gain your audience. I do feel our idea has this potential but i am fully aware that it wont be simple or easy and we are going to have to make it look as professional as possible.
My main focus for the auteur study will be John Lasseter and his reinvention of a Genre, finding that new niche in a market.. He’s thoughts and imagination were revolutionary to the world of film and technical operations, Starting out with Lucas Film animating on basic levels. I will look into how it all started and Pixar as an institution, relating to the technical side of it all and also how Lasseter’s tenacity achieved their goal to make a feature length animation. He’s had a major influence on animation as a genre and taken it to new levels.
I will gather information from books, interviews, the internet and all different mediums. My main focus film will be ‘Toy Story’ For the main reason that this was the film that changed the animation industry. My second film will be ‘Finding Nemo’ as this was the most successful Pixar film. Although it was directed by Andrew Stanton, i still feel it’s a good film to look at in terms of Pixar’s success as an institution. My 3rd film will be the newly released ‘UP’, i will be able to get recent reviews interviews and much more access in magazines for this film. Also from a look into the gross it has made an impressive impact of the American film industry.
From the added suggestions you can see a theme forming, we’re trying to aim for an old style romantic song. More of the 50’s and 60’s era.
More suggestions will be added as we proggress wiith planning, but for the minute these are the songs that we shall forn the style and the basis of our film.
Looking into the film studies course work i have strongly considered many different options and angles i can approach my auteur study. I have looked into Directors, actors, institutions and many other aspects of the film industry.
My main interests lye in the animation sector, mostly with Disney and Pixar. 2 amazing companies with a brilliant history and brilliant minds, with ambition, creation and a drive for creating something new to entertain. I think my studies will be controlled around Pixar John Lasseter and his team. I shall look into the creative minds of the following and relate studies to the company as an institution and how these minds have revolutionized film and animation…
Today we looked at our ideas for the different stop motion movies. Our main main idea consists of a dinner table which is set in a romantic setting with mood lighting and candles. The plan is that we aim to use stop motion to make it appear as though all the different things on the table are coming to life and moving around, this then creating a romantic setting.
For example the 2 salt shakers that are shaped to hug will dance around the table avoiding all the obstacles on the table. it will be accompanied by music. The music we want to use is something along the lines of Frank Sinatra and the 50’s style music scene.
There’s a few other things that will happen in the video, which will involve movement in many different objects and creating the same srot of effect. the romance in a dinner setting.
Posted by Elliott 
Posted by Elliott 
Posted by Elliott 
