Production Diary

Day 13: Editing| 15th May 2010:
This will be the part that consumes alot of time. i have managed to edit a vast majority of the footage which has allowed me to see where i need shoot some more footage if needs be. the idea of me doing the editing so late was so that i could get every bit of filming perfect to how i wanted and also to allow me to film the way i wanted to portray my project in. i have alwso decided to shoot the film with a glow instead of bleach bypass as i think it gives a better effect and the bleach bypass didnt really fit in well with the editing, i felt that it made the whole footage appear all gloomy and rather dull. therefore i decided to give it a glow to bring out random colours that the camera wouldnt neccessarily pick up. Apart from all of that i finished the editing in a suprising 5 hours during the exam time. this allowed me to take my time and enjoy editing as i do like doing it.

Day 12: Nearly Done| 13th May 2010:
The entire film that i have put together over the past few days is nearly done, the only part that i have left is to edit the last piece of the puzzle. The entire film as anticipated is around where i would of liked it to be. It contains all of the elements that i wanted to have in it and i am pretty pleased on the way that most of it has turned out. the only part i have left to change is the ending. im not entirely sure on how im going to end it. because of the story, (which isnt alot) just alot of dominoes falling over and repeating the process over a vast array of bumps and slopes. Yet i have a slight idea on how im going to end it, i have nearly decided that i would like the dominoes to go back to where it all started, and have a start finish line. there will also be at the end the entire film reveresed and have the dominoes going up instead of falling down. So in two ways it shows a Rythme and a Cycle, which is the a near literal sense of the task at hand.

Day 11: Stop Motion Day 1 | 11th May 2010:
There has been a small technical glitch in the department. the printer has temporarily stopped working and i am working hard to source a second printer. the idea to do a stop motion from the printer is slowly wearing thin and although the idea is still a good one, i am not entirely convinced that i want to go through with it. mainly because of the time elements and also the fact that im not entirely sure that the story that i want to show is going to be relevant to the dominoes and the whole cycles and rythmes task.  i will have to contemplate using some other story or just completely scrapping the idea of the stop motion, again cause of the time restraints and the technical difficulties that may arise again with the printers.

Day 10: Filming Day 4 | 10th May 2010:
All is going well, i have now filmed around 90% of the whole domino scene and the next task will be to take the pictures for the stop motion. i am yet to come up with a storyline and whats going to happen in the stop motion yet i have a rough outline. the idea is after the domino falls onto the printer, a small figurine will walk around in search of where the dominoes started falling down. the idea is most likely going to change depending on the ideas that come through when  doing it. yet i am still confident that everything will go to plan.

Day 9: Filming Day 3 | 8th May 2010:
Early start for a hard days filming. Hopefully today and this time the footage wont corrupt leaving me to re -capture the footage again. fingers crossed. besides this, my next task is for me to try and get the domEF3inoes to fall on a printer and print out a one of the below pictures. (bush or burning american flag). This will be the most difficult part of the entire filming. The rest will be nice and straight forward as its only dominoes falling in random consessions. so unless anything technical arises then nothing will and can go wrong.

Day 8: Filming Day 2 | 1st May 2010:
There has been some complications with some of the footage that i shot on the 12th April. Unfortunately some of the footage was corrupted and was completely unable to view the content. so that was a minor set back, yet i am still confident that i will be able to get all of the footage ready for the exam period which starts in just over 2 weeks. I am quite relieved to know that fact that there will instead be 3 weeks to finish the final major project instead of 2. Of course i think that the 8 hour period to finish the entire project is a well timed duration and will be good as it will stick me to a deadline instead of being too relaxed about it and taking say 30 hours to complete.

Day 7: Filming Day 1 | 28th April 2010:
The filming has begun and is full underway to becoming around a 1/4 of the way done after just 3 hours of prep work and 2 hours filming which is a result in my eyes. i am looking to have the entire filming done in around 10 hours. the reason it is going to take a while is because of the dominoes falling. they may not fall in the way that i want them to fall or in the order or there may be complications etc. however these will all be overcome with the simple use of editing the footage that ive filmed with either Audicity or Adobe Premier Pro/Soundbooth. However, there is a small matter of the picture taking. i am yet undecided about what sstory i want to carry on in the stop motion of pictures, yet i am confident that i can overcome this by sitting down and analysing what i want to achieve. The footage that has been shot already is in bleach bypass which was the original aim for the footage.

Day 6: Getting Better | 20th March 2010 :
After talking to a teacher on my course (Richard Mills), i have taken into account the idea that he had, which was left in a comment. The basic idea of it was that the dominoes could be attached to photographs of buildings, skyscrapers, tower blocks, or perhaps trees. The symbolism could be interesting. I was also set the task of researching into two other sculptures of Jennifer Bolande and Leo Fitzmaurice, which i have done. Overall, i wasn’t in truth, overly persuaded to use them and incorporate them some how into my idea.

Day 5: Hmmm | 19th March 2010 :
Trick shot idea is fully out the window. the amount of time and dominoes i would need would be way too much of a world record attempt than a photography project. However, there has been quite a development with the whole filming aspect of the Rhythm and Cycles concept. I will now be contemplating shooting the dominoes falling down with a vast amount of cutaways.The two main reasons for me doing this are:

A) Reduces the amount of dominoes that i would need and also reducing the amount of time that i would need to spend to set up all of the dominoes in a story like fashion.

B) It makes the whole video look more like a movie than a stop motion video, which is what I’m trying to avoid by any means necessary.

Personally, this would make the whole story look more, story like, in the sense that it would be produced like a short film rather than a plain video. The ideas i have put together, without giving too much away, will be a prefect example of what i want. Firstly, The dominoes will be set out in a line going down a set of steps. As the dominoes fall down the steps and reach the bottom, it will then send another line off which will then go back up the same steps. once it reaches the top, the idea is to have either a mouse trap to shoot a domino and start the next line, or have some kind of catapult/contraption that will do the same job just not as dangerously. Once this domino has been shot, the aim is to have the domino his a print button on a printer. This printer will the print out a full a4 picture (yet to be decided upon). The picture will display some kind of anecdote or reference to something funny or serious. For some absurd reason i want to have a picture of George W. Bush with his middle finger up, as i think this is quite an influential and controversial picture for many people.

(http://petro.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/bush_finger_web_2.jpg)

Or i use a picture of America’s flag being burnt by a person. This picture specifically though i like because burning a countries flag, to me, symbolizes hatred or disgust for a country, thus the expressions on peoples face should be that of either hate or angry, yet this picture, the person seems to be enjoying what he’s doing. Its also quite a high resolution photograph that i think would print well.

(http://grahamkozak.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/flag_burning_simpleton.jpg)

Day 4: Fine Detail | 18th March 2010 :
The amount of videos that i have watched has hurt my brain by giving me so many ideas that I wouldn’t mind incorporating into my final major project. For example, the idea of using a pool table and balls came in to play. I was contemplating making up a trick shot to set off the dominoes and then film that with the uses of other features.

(image source http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7GA3ySz4el4/0.jpg)

Something towards the extent of this but not as complicated or big scale. As i have a pool table in my house i thought this would be the perfect place to video it, as i would have no disturbances or background noises to effect the audio and video. I have chosen to film the footage with a bleach bypass filter that will be added in on the production after. Bleach Bypass is where the saturation of the footage is removed slightly, decreasing the colour vibrancy and making the contrast alot crisper. I think this will make the footage look alot more professional and more original compared to just filming normal film.

(original image source
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3418/3223987628_42292f2c7c.jpg)
| Image was then later edited |

Day 3: Deep Analysis | 18th March 2010 :
The testing went badly. The dominoes would need to fall at the fps rate i expected in order for me to make the story. I dont want to have the video looking like a stop motion so the idea of me sticking the pictures to the dominoes is over. However, during the research that i did on Day 2 i found a video that intrigued me. There were 30,000 dominoes that were arranged in towers and simultaniously fall down in a horse shoe formation.

(see link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eXWPrgWJ0)

This video made me think of doing something along the lines of this, just without that many dominoes. As well as this, i would keep it to a single colour scheme. maybe black or white, with a black background. Arranging the dominoes so as they fall there would be a pan/birdseye view over the top to show a bigger picture to do with the photography subject. Possibly a musical note like a double cleff or something more simple like a single cleff. All of the video will have some form of audio over the top to fit the video.

Day 2: Facing Reality | 17th March 2010 :
The added feature is out the window. After some extensive research overnight the chances of me being able to video the story being told on the pictures is very small. This is due to the fact that the dominoes fall at such an exponential rate that the only way of me being able to achieve this is by slowing the fps (frames per second) down to a very slow fps. Probably around 4/5 fps.

The problem with me doing this is that it would then start to become and give the appearance of a stop motion video, and I’m not entirely sure that i want this. Therefore i shall continue to research and test out how slow i would need the dominoes to fall in order for me to be able to tell the story through the pictures.

Day 1: “The Domino Effect” Concept | 15th March 2010 :
The topic for all of us to try and comprehend is “Rhythms and Cycles”. A semi difficult topic for some to be imaginative and express themselves in the way of photography. Yet i feel as if the topic doesn’t do justice to that of the colleges students.

For my final major project in the subject, I’m going to try and deliver a certain aspect of rhythms and cycles using dominoes. Dominoes, to me, represents a constant cycle, where one domino falls down and the next follows etc. The message I’m trying to get across is this,

“the phenomenon of small events causing similar events leading to eventual catastrophe“.

My idea is as follows and with the uses of visual techniques and video recording equipment, i want to recreate a cycle. Using as many dominoes as i can get my hands on, I will video the dominoes falling over consecutively over a period of a minute. The added idea i had was to stick a collection of small pictures approximately 2 inches in height, 1 inch wide in width to each domino. As each of the dominoes falls, a new picture in the sequence will show. Effectively showing a story as each domino falls in concession.