Objects At Rest

explorations in audio and moving imagery

Category: Music

  • Vitruvius Music Scoring

    In between trying out the new Zigview video assist and doing other things I’ve started working on the musical score for the Vitruvius film. The motifs are being constructed in the key of G Sharp Minor and in the Dorian Mode. Why? Because that is the scale with 5 sharps and the mode that includes all 5 accidentals or “black” keys…and five is a structural device of the film. The themes I plan to explore will utilize the first five chords of the key. The MP3 sample is the progression from the tonic to the dominant chords of the scale.

    UPDATE: I think I was wrong about the Dorian mode. Apparently G sharp minor uses all 5 accidental keys in its standard scale so the Dorian mode may be irrelevant. However, the Dorian mode in G sharp minor takes on a nice symmetrical shape of the keys which appeals to me for this films architectural theme. Plus the overall sound is more interesting than a standard minor scale so I may keep it or use various modes always based around G sharp minor.

  • Vitruvius Prologue Stage Photos

    photo photo

    A couple of quick behind-the-scenes photos of the Serlio prologue stage sets. I’m in the process of shooting footage with the Serlio books and will finish the set design for the Serlio puppet when I begin shooting those scenes next.

    You can see my set framework in these photos which is constructed with pine wood, screws, and bolts and then stained a dark brown with a water-based product. The whole thing is then bolted to the wire rack. So far that design has worked well since I can wheel the sets around and the set frame is still flexible. The same design is used in the main set which is partially visible in the second photo.

  • Man Drawing a Reclining Woman: Screening at Portland Indy Festival

    It looks as though my short film “Man Drawing a Reclining Woman” screened at the Portland Indy Animation Festival. I don’t have other information at this time except for the online schedule which lists my film and my name.

  • Updated: Applied Flash-based Choreography

    I used the Flash pre-visualization test (see previous post) to assist with a very short test using my actual set and objects. I printed out the Flash movie as a series of small thumbnails on 8.5″ x 11″ paper. I then used the printed sheets of individual frames for visual reference when animating the objects, very similar to a storyboard.

    photo

    This is a small sample of the actual prints which take about 3 sheets of paper. I also wrote notes on the paper such as the tops of the objects and rotation heading so I could keep track of which way to move things with each shot. I discovered I needed to do that in the middle of shooting when I forgot which way something should be turning!

  • Updated: Pre-Visualization and Choreography With Flash

    I spent [another] hour with Macromedia/Adobe Flash tonight to experiment with animation timing and choreography of multiple objects. The result is the clip you see above. I used motion tweens to smooth everything out and added rotation to the objects to make the movement more dynamic. View the first version which was has very rough motion.

    The idea is to work out a sequence ahead of time and to know when to move each object or character throughout that sequence when there are multiple things going on. I can see some benefit to this especially if I had a second computer running the Flash file for frame by frame reference. The Flash document settings for this clip are set at 24fps [originally it was 15fps which is what I am currently shooting at but I may move to 24p] so theoretically I could advance it one frame at a time and use it as a guide for taking each shot with the digital camera. I suppose this would be some kind of “action assist” for multiple movements to supplement the more common video assist and gauges for visual placement.