Inside The Monkey's Studio

More stop motion coming soon...

Bakewell

Here's a possible location for my client project. There's a nice variety of different looking woodland areas all quite near to each other, and whilst walking through there I found it really easy to visualise the viking going on a quest through here, there's plenty of oppurtunities for some really nice shots. The downside however, is that Bakewell is a good two hours away from Nottingham by bus, and then this location is roughly half an hour away from the bus stop. Travelling out here with crew, equpiment, and an actor, could be problematic, but is not entirely out of the question. I'll try and scout out some nearer places but Bakewell is a definite possibility.

Filming The File Sharing Frenzy

I filmed my footage yesterday in the Arboretum, and it went pretty well. I have pretty much all the shots I need, and it was fun to film too. Big thanks to Will, Matt, John and Realexis who helped out as both cast and crew!








And here's another version of the first edit, but with a different soundtrack. I'm not sure which I prefer really at this stage, but I think the first is maybe a little more succesful.


Annoyingly enough, in the second shot, where the file sharer is shown buying a CD, you can see the other table in the corner of the shot. I'll see if there's any way of hiding this, as although not enormously noticeable, it's quite an irritating error on my part haha!

Locating Locations...

Here are some shots of an old railway track up by the Butler's Hill tram stop. I think this would be the perfect setting for the scene in the future where Roger meets the robot. Having them walk down this abandoned rail way as the robot tells Roger what's happened to mankind will make for quite a striking image.

Time Machine

I started making the time machine for the film, by painting up an old water pistol. I gave it a layer of white first to help the silver paint show up -


And then added several layers of silver paint -

This should be dry by now, so I can add more details in pen, and I'm thinking if I can find a clock face to fit in the back of it this would look pretty cool. It'd also mean as Dr. Tipler uses it on Roger, he could dial in the time by moving the clock's hands around, which would be cool!
I started painting a mask for the robot too, I was thinking if I get like a cheap bike helmet from somewhere, I can paint that silver too and it'll start too look more robotic. This mask still has a way to go however, it needs all kinds of wires and maybe some LEDs slapped all over it -

Filming Shots

Here are some photos I took whilst we were filming the documentary in Raunds -

Flashy Possums And The 'Conference Of The Birds'

Today, I learnt a little more about how Flash works. My interactive game/video/thingy was entitled "The Adventures Of Percy Possum", a nice, imaginary Game Boy game.



I managed to finish this off, but couldn't quite get my head around rendering, as per usual. I made it into a Flash animation file, but can't seem to play this on anything, a Windows Media file that just played through the frames at superspeed, and as a series of still images. Maybe I'm just being dense, so point me in the right direction if this is your particular area of expertise.

Secondly, I thought this was worthy of a mention, the album art from the band Om's album 'Conference Of The Birds'.



Now, I'm not totally sure (I couldn't even find the name of the photographer! Another reason why leaving your CD collection at home and bringing a hard-drive of music instead sucks) but I think this is done using similar kinds of pin hole magic that we used. It perfectly fits the still, meditative nature of Om too. No title, no words, no ego, just a glimpse at the fragile balance that lays at the centre of things. Or hey, maybe their low frequencies are just making me come over all pretentious? Their new album 'Pilgrimage' has just come out, so keep 'em peeled!

Pinhole Cameras

Alright! I'm Kez, and this is my first blog post, which I guess is quite an historical occasion...

Anyway, here's the photo I took with my Guinness can camera -

Embarrassingly enough, this was actually my best attempt. The first was just a blank piece of paper with a little black smudge, and the second was a kind of big grey smudge with little white speckles. The object in this photo was actually a pretty modern looking bike stand, but here it looks like some kind of giant, ethereal floating sausage. Interesting fact - The little spots and smudges all over it were caused by my own grubby little fingers and the final dregs of Guinness lurking at the bottom of the can!