SPACE/FILM/EDIT

I have been really stressed recently about the whole damn project. The space allocation has not gone as I had wanted. It feels as if Nicola and me have been stuck together to share a place to make sure the uni has as much promotion as pos, rather than being given a decent space. I am not sure if the allocated place is ours for sure as there is now a sound issue. All I want is a nice wall to project onto and enough room for 2 dancers and an audience. We are probably going to have to buy paint or cloth to project onto as the walls we have are crap.
I have done loads more filming with the Sony hdv and logged and captured it last week. I have filmed stills as well as motion and will have still images when the dancers are moving a lot so as not to throw the audience too much info. Some clips are solos, some duets, and I have done a skating clip, sindy with a dog and a pram that rolls towards cam, and plain poses with various dolls. The trouble with the sony though is that the frames are all 1, like a film. I have had to seperate every move, which took ages and now i have to split each of those clips into left and right. It sounds easy enough but when you have 100s of clips, it's rather dooming and you have to watch the clips carefully to catch them before they switch focus.
However, on a good note, the clips I have edited so far have come out really well. I am so pleased, it's taken a load of experimenting, but it's now paying off. Another long winded task i am doing is in FCP. When I have the clips in screen mode to see the 2 clips together, I am now manually adjusting them to get a sharper and more effective 3d image. I have tried to copy and paste motion attributes but the clips are still slightly different. If I want the ghosting eradicated as much as pos then this is what I need to do. I am going to use the footage I have now, and try not to film any more, and spend the rest of the time getting them edited well and choreographing for the dancers.
The music should be done next week and is 10 mins long so that's my length for the show so I can edit the clips accordingly. I have arranged the 1st lot of stills into 1 min, which is how long the drone is at the beginning of the track. My title for the show is called 'PRETTY UNREACHABLE' I decided this as pretty relates to the vanity issue and unreachable are the goals we attempt when it comes to how we want to look.

GOING FOR QUALITY

I have acquired another dancer!! Katie Inns is joining us so I am really happy I have now got 2 dancers. I would prefer 3 but I will have to see what happens.
I have got the Sony cam back as I have decided to go for quality. During the projections I am going to put stills inbetween the stop motion as these seem to work best and the more you look at them the more 3D they seem to be. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when the animation stops as I don't have time to fill the whole performance with film but I also don't want to distract from the dancers so I think having stills will solve this.
Last week I edited some more footage in FCP and did 3d glasses effects in AE rather than putting the filter on in FCP as it seems to create a bigger gap between the left and right, i then end up using the wireframe to try and pull them in.
I am filming today with the Sony in HD and have made the gap smaller between the left and right view. Last week I made a platform to have the camera on so that I could move the cam sideways at the same distance each time. I just used objects with straight edges and sellotaped them to the platform. I bluetacked the cam to a video case so that it didn't move each time I pressed record.
Now I have the Sony I have a remote control which is necessary for precision, something the stills cam didn't have. I have done the same with that, just made the distance shorter, hopefully this will stop the ghosting I keep getting, although I saw on youtube that this was more likely when you have objects moving directly towards the camera.
For the performance, I may have a lot of my Sindy collection around the space, in different outfits, poses, etc to create more of a 3 dimensional aspect. It will bring colour too and will give the audience something else to view before the show starts.
I am having a rehearsal with Kate on Sunday to teach her the material so far then I will be rehearsing with both dancers to get it finished.

STILL PICS

I set up a background of A4 paper for a test shot for still pics. I did a quick edit in FCP, just changed the speed and applied the colour changes,then exported the left and right individually to a Qtime clip. I imported them into AE, 3D glasses effect and balanced red,blue LR to get that purple tinge. The stills seemto be more effective than the animation so I may have a series of stills during performance.
I can't use what I have photographed today as the paper looks crap and shadows, etc so I will do it properly tomorrow.I could photoshop each 1, I cropped them but they were small in FCP and don't know how to sort that, plus it's quicker to re-take the pics. If I can't get exactly what I want tomorrow with the Canon cam I will go back to the big Sony, as the quality is brilliant.

FCP AND NEW STILLS

I took some more pics for animation, using artificial light. It was hard to not cast shadows, there are reflections of the dolls under them but I dont mind those. I edited them all in FCP today. They are mostly in focus and the light is continuous throughout so I am happier with that. As I have done more of the animation during this project, I have worked out what movements are necessary and what I can leave out, and do the rest in editing. I am re-creating my choreography, which at the beginning is repetetive, so I can copy and paste some of the stills. I edited the left eye clips first then looked at the names/number of each clip so I knew which ones to drag in from the right view, to correspond with the left. It took ages because of changing speed and shortening each clip to be the same length, but I enjoyed it.
Tomorrow I am picking up my life-size Sindy stands (if only I had life-size dancers to go in them!) I have been told they have been sprayed too so they should look the part. I need to do some more animation too to start gettin my projections together.

FCP

Today i thought I would edit the same stills I did yesterday but in FCP rather than Adobe PR to see how they compared with the effects. It's nice to work with the dual screens at uni but the MAC crashes, which is really annoying!! FCP is easier to edit with for some things I think, unless it's just that I have used it more. For example, I don't know how to paste attributes in PR and when you have loads of stills you need it otherwise it takes ages to click on every 1 to change speed, filters etc. Also, you don't need AE with FCP because it's easy to change the filters for the glasses and put it into screen mode to view the 3d image.
I am still not happy with the light change on some of the stills. I really need to do it when it's dark and use lights and lamps because there are slight changes where the sun outside is shining stronger. I applied a contrast/brightness effect to all the clips hoping they would all come out the same but they are still a bit different. Also the focus on quite a few of the pics are off. I put the cam on a 10 sec timer so it would have chance to focus after I had shifted the cam over but it didn't work. I think I can lock the focus so I will try that too.
Still only one dancer..booooooo!!! If I need to then I will just have Leah on stage and have myself with 1 dancer on the projections in 3D. I am sure I can get a dancer for a few hours to learn material and be filmed if nothing else!! I don't mind dancing for the cam as I can film it in clips and my knee won't be put under strain, whereas in performance, I will need to perform from beginning to end and will worry that it might dislocate....damn my loose joints...those party tricks as a child were no good in the long run!

I am still looking for 2 more dancers. The 2 I have asked are unavailable for the performance week. yesterday i looked at a space at uni for perf and rehearsals. It's a lovely space but needs to be blacked out for the projections to work. Also, there wont be any professional lighting on the dancers, but I can live with that.
I have re-done the animation a couple of times. Firstly, because the light through the window changed with every snap. Then the camera had a slight movement so that showed really bad. I have now done it with the timer like i did with my camera, the light is still slightly different in a couple of the clips but I can change that.
Greg has just told me that he can order an arrivision lens to fit on the camera, which will be ideal and a lens also goes on a projector to view it properly. I am not sure how the lenses fit onto various cameras though and a specific camera may be required. It will be great for filming movement in 3d!!!