Monday
Going into the production section of the project, I didn’t have a massively clear idea yet about what my final film would look like however because I had built up lots of tests to reflect back on, I felt confident in the process of creating my film.
As I had explore a few different materials I wanted to make a decision on what to move forward with. I chose to further explore the receipts and to experiment with incorporating the paint into the piece.
Monday was mainly spent playing around with the camera and trying to zoom in as far as I possibly could. I had a bit of trouble as when the camera zoomed in all the way, it struggled to focus properly. I also played with using the push in mask on dragon frame and this was very useful to get even closer, past what the camera could do.
I found when exporting it came out slightly grainy, which I actually thought worked well. It had a slightly hazy feel and you could really see the texture of the receipt. However I had to be careful as there were a few moments where midway through the test the camera would lose focus and I would struggle to get it back to its original state.
Wednesday
Now I familiarised myself with the camera setup I was happy with, on Wednesday I was able to just jump straight in and get on with some more shots.
I wanted to have another go focusing on the barcode elements of receipts. As I had gathered lots of different receipts I noticed how they have different sizes, lengths and width of the bars; so I wanted to try and play with that.
For this test I wanted to be mindful of the cropping, to see how it would look if the composition was all lines and there was no context of the rest of the receipt. I also found that a lot of the receipts had creases and folds in the barcodes, and instead of flattening it out, I wanted to see how that would add any extra movement to the shot.
I found this to be extremely effective and I really like the added element and wanted to embrace this for the future shots.
Another test I did was using the whole of the receipt. I used loads of different receipts and, similar to my previous tests, wanted to create an overwhelming build up of visuals. My idea was to find blank parts of the receipts and slowly start revealing more and more of the receipt, random numbers, symbols, then letters to words. I thought it would be interesting to play with the idea of the audience not knowing what they’re looking at until it is slowly revealed.
I feel that this test was very successful and I was pleased with the outcome.
Whilst I don’t think my initial intention worked as I wanted – I should’ve made the build up even slower if I wanted there to be a ‘reveal’, however I still think this test revealed something interesting that I wanted to build on.
Friday
To end the week, I wanted to revisit animating with paint. I wanted to see how it would look transitioning from receipt to paint and vice versa.
This time I was set up at the multiplane, so I spent some time fiddling around with the lighting and camera to see what worked well. I ended up using a Lightbox and putting the perspex over the top and so the light was coming from beneath the paint.
I did a few short tests expanding from my original one. My main focus was looking into the texture of the brushstrokes and how I could manipulate them. In one test I started to use cotton buds for a variation of line and this made an interesting composition.
Whilst I think I came across some interesting imagery with these tests, I don’t feel they work well with the overall film. I put the receipt tests and paint tests onto a timeline so see how they transition from one to another and it was not as seamless as I had wanted.
I decided to just stick solely to working with the receipts. `However had I have a longer project, I think I would revisit the paint and mixed process element.