Me? a T-shirt Designer? 9:20 am

After great success and a really nice amount of positive feedback from my previous T-shirt design, i was content with my sucess and thought nothing more of the matter. Then a band that we have played with at previous gigs approached me to commission a T-shirt design. There was no real deadline, or work-frame to meet, other than it was as "cool" as the other one. Now my brain has started to tick, if am being approached by this band, is it possible others may follow in a similar fashion? especially if i advertise, and push myself out there? something to consider in the coming months.

The band in the spotlight this time is a local leeds metal act known as "Book Of Job"

http://www.myspace.com/bookofjobmetal

Check them out, there pretty awesome!

Anyway, being the kind fella i am, and knowing the band personally, i designed the T-shirt free of charge, i saw it as a way to assess if i was capable rather than just assuming i was producing a product worthy of charging. Plus it all adds to a portfolio =D

The design looks like this:



The design is made up of some abnormal octo legged creature, a suppose its an octopus, but am not 100% sure to be honest. The creature is sucking on a book, why? who knows! the bands name "Book Of Job" Encouraged the involvement of a book, and what you see is the result hah! In the sketching process, i drew the book before anything else! which is pretty odd really.

2 down now, whats next to come in the band merch saga?

Keeping Busy: Project Metropolis - Monsters T-shirt 3:56 pm

A while has passed now since my first of two graduations, i have played hard since, been to lively Rome, Played my heart out at gigs and festivals. Nice change to the pressure of deadlines. However, no matter how stressful the working environment gets, i soon manage to miss it. As myself and the band "Project Metropolis" have been in good form, and had good luck in recent months, i am on the promotional and merch band wagon to help push us that little bit more.

To add to this positive note, through finding my passion for music again, and with the help of Phil Wall, and his inspiring illustrations, i decided to pick up a good old Berol Fineliner pen once again. And for the record, i quote " It feels Amazing" knowing that after over a year of pure digital creativity coursing through my veins, i can still create a good drawing.

With out any more psycho babble, i present the result of this refreshing voyage:



Probebly needless to say, i think i out did myself. I didn't believe i was capable of producing something of this quality. Some may recognize a similarity to an existing artist out there in the band mech design world. Yes, Godmachine. He has given direct influence with his designs. However, i would like to retain the fact that my design is a personalised approach to the style of Godmachine. Not copying =P If by some miraculous happening where Godmachine manages to lay eyes on this blog. Thank you for being such an inspiration to my revived drawing passion!

iPhone 3GS Photography 9:03 pm

Nice purple flower shot with the iPhone 3GS it's a great camera, and an even better video camera = D

iPhone 3GS 6:55 pm

iPhone 3GS



I have a mission tomorow, the mission goes as follows:

- Set the alarm on my old iphone for the very last time

- Wake up at stupid oclock to make it to the o2 store in crossgates

- hope there is no rush (i anticipate there will not be a repeat of the 3G release)

- Pay stupid amounts of money to own the leading smartphone on the release date

- take it home and spend my morning being all precious and giddy when unboxing it

- play with all the new features, and maybe blog about them

- Upload some nice video examples to youtube or vimeo if the quality deserves it

- Smile for a long time after =D

Editing TIme! Entry 10 10:21 pm

The final countdown!

Deadline tomorrow and approaching fast, the film is currently in a completed state and ready to write to DVD. We spent today reviewing the film for any obvious mistakes and problems we would like to change. In addition, I have tested the film in a private showing with close family, and a few friends. This was probably not the best thing to do, as all the response i received consisted of "wow thats awesome" and "well done, am proud of you" and other quotes of that nature. Nothing critical to aid an improvement of finalization process.

As it stands this evening, we are ready to collate all the pre production materials and other relevant data to add to the hand in DVD. The main inputs i shall be supplying is my editing journal, and other bits supporting that document. We shall cary out the file organization and DVD burning tomorrow morning, ready for the 4pm deadline.

Thats pretty much it for the editing journal am afraid, there will still be much more to come on the succession of additional improvements to the film, and in the bigger picture, a premier (of which i am really looking forward to) Also the process of entering the film into up and coming competitions and film festivals and cinema screenings is something we will be looking into over the summer months, so keep posted for announcements concerning such events.

The project was a great learning cure for both myself and my team, i have most certainly learned great new skills, and suffered at the hands of horrific mistakes. But this as we say, builds character, and moulds a more efficient professional. Its been a great experience for myself, and i hope i managed to share this experience with any reader following this series of editing posts.

Thankyou

Mark Braithwaite

EDITING TIME! Entry 9 6:30 pm

Deadlines closing in, the restriction is slowly cutting off the air supply. Time to get this project put to bed. The next and final process is to treat the sound for levels and broken audio levels in the projects cuts. This process was out of my specialist duristiction, but i still wanted to have some input on the process and learn new skills in the post production field. So I handed this over to james as his skills with sound design better mine. The process involved going through the film, and piece by piece edit the sound levels to avoid any very quiet sections, and more importantly any peaking levels that would sound horrificly destructive in the mix.

By keeping the levels to a standard mid level mix, it slowly turned a mixed up audio mess, ito a perfect sound mix to match the visuals quality. In addition to improove the sound, we applyed a graphic equalizer to all the problematic vocal clips. By changing specific frequencys in the equalizer, we managed to eliminate all the low frequency bass sounds of the boom rattling and the air conditioning scattered around the location. This resulted in the vocal levels sounding crisper in the mix.

As it stands now, we still need to apply a soundtrack for the final scene, this is something that we may have to consider sacrificing for the subission, and take more time over, and be more considerate to the production of a soundtrack ready for film festival entrys and other things of that nature in the up coming future.

Editing TIme! Entry 8 9:52 pm

Long time has past, and many things have been achieved since the previous editing blog entry.

Late last week editing finally started to become a major chore, a feeling i have long been anticipating, but thankfully came much closer to the end of the working session than i estimated. Although i did not intend to spend as long editing the film. Now, finally we have completed the edit, and just need some final sound treatment, and one additional soundtrack for the closing scene to the film.

In the later stages of the editing process i started to run into some workflow issues. These issues occured when we started to apply colour correction and colour application with the "Magic Bullet" plugin suite. It took some serious routing and head scratching to solve the issue. In the end it was my workflow to blame. By exporting the after effects camera edits in the "animation" codec format, it changed the final cut projects sequence settings to custom, and in addition to the file sizes being "HUGE" final cut quite litrely died. Its poor little heart stopped beating, and was replaced by apples multicouloued spinning wheel of death!!



ARRRRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

Anyway we managed to rectify the problem, by exporting a new movie file and using that new movie export as the project move, and resluted in final cuts ressusitation, after an hour of rendering the clip of course! the spinning wheel of death give way, and the cursor returned to alow the scrub of the projects timeline. happy days =D From there on in, it was a matter of matching up color correction and andding a desired color treatment to the films best visual intrest. Started doing this process but was cut of at 9pm as the colege shuts!

Editing TIme! Entry 7 2:04 pm

Tuesday/Wednsday

Pretty much picking up were i left off with the last post, at around 9-9.30pm yesterday evening we took out the XD cam and a tripod to capture some additional establishing shots of the main casino location and the surrounding area. We was intending to get some dusk shots and full night time shots! but to say the least, what i feared and what did become very apparent, May is not the best time of the calendar year to wait around with a camera and a tripod for nightfall to occur as i experienced, and fully well realized that the sun does not set until well after 10-10.30pm. With that in mind, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the XD cam and its censor was not adequate enough to capture efficient footage in extreme low light conditions. So the footage we managed to capture was in more a dusk like condition.

Now seen as we were on track, i decided to try a technique that i had in mind to get a more visually stunning effect in post production. With me being in charge of the D.O.P Job on set, i thought it would be nice to get a set of visually pleasing establishing shots. The technique i had in mind shares a very similar workflow process to that of HDR image processing in still photography. By taking two exposures of an exterior shot, an under exposed composite for the sky, and a correct exposure for the foreground, i would then overlay the two exposures on to separate layers in Adobe After Effects, and mask out the under exposed foreground on the under exposed file. This would result in having a nice exposed foreground with a nice contrasted sky instead of being blown out.

The main workflow for this process was very successful as i did the exposures in a fixed position, however i would like to have done the same with moving footage but to do the same process with moving footage would be impossible unless you have a perfect duplicate of the shot with two separate exposures, plus it would be a nightmare to mask out.

Heres some teaser screenshots of my D.O.P Work in the new film:



To explain the images shown, the first screenshot is from one of the establishing shots to the main casino location and/or the "jazz club" as it is known in the film, were the main character plays gigs from time to time. This is the shot were i used the exposure technique i explained above. plus the addition of some nice color treatment, we have a successful HDR style shot, crediting my cinematography skills! i am very happy with it also! =D

The second clip is of a nice focus blur. it was a spur of the moment thing, that has now made it into he final cut. The shot consists of flickering lights coming in and out of focus, and we have now linked it to the fading career of the main support actor "brandy" so its acting as a visual reference to the life of the films "brandy" character"
In addition to yesterdays progress and todays progress, i have applied the establishing clips into the final cut, and they do a great job of slowing the pace down in much needed places, and setting the scenes moods nicely.

Problems:

I ran into a major problem today, as we started to apply color editing to the clips, Apples final cut, pretty much had enough and grinded to a halt. This fault was being caused by huge files having very heavy effects applied to them, the software had no chance keeping up with the live rendering of the clips. To resolve the issue, i exported the clip and replaced in into the position of the reference clips from he scratch. Not ideal i know, but was the best option available considering the other option would have set the film back a week at least.

Apart from that we now look set to continue with color application, and finalize the sound and soundtrack! then ladies and gents, we may have finished with a bit of luck! fingers crossed!

Editing TIme! Entry 6 7:48 pm

Tuesday

What a long day today has been, and to add to that i am now
Blogging in what i consider to be a break due to having a location shoot at night fall! In the mean time i am sat blogging in the av suite, now thats comitment! I have been producing some of the sound design elements manly ambient background sound to cheat that busy feel to a scene. In addition to that, we went down to the casino location earlier today to capture some roulette table footage (as seen in the picture) this was essential for the story and its flow in the closing scenes. After a few hours and some nice sfx, i managed to slide them into the final cut! So the film is making steady progress, and hope to get the final footage in the next 2 hours! Then i will be tierd! Very tierd! But am still eager for tomorow! Av got a screw loose!

EDITING TIME! Entry Five 6:39 pm

Monday Monday Morning, and i was exited about getting the final cut complete today

I almost didn't get up this morning, and would not have done without knowing why i was getting up!
I have been having such weird sleeping sessions over last few weeks but thats not important!

Right todays editing session was great fun, but tedious all the same! got started fairly well and still had my workflow in great working order after the steady weekend break... well maybe not steady seen as i was either working, worrying about the FMP, or editing the title sequence! of which i shall be moving onto later.

Today schedule was to complete a cut of scene four, and with a bit of luck, complete the ending sequence A.K.A Scene nine. And we did it! we now have a complete rough cut for the film at a staggeringly long 10 minutes 20 seconds. But this is subject to a critical assessment and a second fine tooth-comb cut session later this week. Oh and the addition of some location establishing scenes to split up the pace of the films dialogue sequences.

We are now currently organizing a final shoot to get these location clips, and hopefully some more casino clips, especially of the roulette wheel itself as it seems relevant to the stories structure.

Now the exiting part..

I have been masking away in After Effects to produce the title sequence for the film. Its still not complete as of yet but its looking nice and tight to say the least. I am very impressed with myself on coming up with the idea to squeeze the title in at this point, and the process i went through is something i have been wanting to try for a while now.

Basically its a cut between two scenes, but in this case its to a title and not a second scene. Instead of just jump cutting to a new scene, i have masked an action within the scene to reveal the title underneath. To keep the film confidential, i am only providing film stills at this point in time to avoid any conflict with future entries to film festivals and things of that nature.

Anyway take a look at these stills, not great quality, but provides the point:




Nice? I would like to think so! please comment, and constructive criticism is more than welcome