Reflection for the Soundtrack and Foley in Love (2014)

In this post,  I would like to introduce you to the people and some process behind the amazing soundtracks and foley in Love (2014).

To create the Music, Sound Effect and Audio for Love(2014) I worked with Lawrence Solon and Ellis Coopey for the music; Peter William for the foley, audio recording and editing. Both Lawrence and Peter used Avid Protools to create the music, editing and recording where else Ellis used Logic.

As the director, I made the decision to mix both the soundtracks that was created by these talents. I've used the soundtrack that Lawrence Solon made from the beginning up to when the bank became really quiet, and used Ellis Coopey's soundtrack from the robbery up to the end. By combining both their sound I was able to achieve the emotions I wanted for the film through the soundtracks. Also, the soundtrack that was used on the credits was initially made by Lawrence, for the crying part in my film. It was really good and I felt that I could use that for my credits although it was not used for what it was made for.

For the foley I have spent quite a lot of time experimenting with different sounds. I took inspiration from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. My inspiration to have some anxious breathing at the end, came from watching this movie.

I experimented recording the sound from different objects for my film. The coin sound towards the end of the film came from marbles. The breathing sound was me breathing anxiously into the mic.

Quite a lot of time was spend in the studio recording my voice and and editing the sound together. I manage to achieve a really clear and professional sound working with this talented people and using the recording studio in Middlesex University.

They were all very busy people, I really appreciate their time and talent to create the sound and music for this film. It was also an experience for me, to learn to work with other talents, and an opportunity to improve my directing skills to create what I wanted for the film, through the help from others.

Time-Lapse of Animating the Bank Robbery Scene

             What you see on the screen beside me, is the live view of the camera on Dragon Stop motion software. As I was animating the objects, I manually zoomed into the shot by bringing the camera down. This scene is the part where the man "robber" that was next to me came really close to me. I used shapes made of buttons and perspex. Colour coordinated to represent myself and the robber. The friendly circular shape slowly evolved into an unfriendly sharp-pointed shape coming towards the screen to portray the danger and terror.

GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY !

The picture above shows the calligraphy reference

that I wrote for a scene in my Graduation Film.

The 5 chinese characters in the middle 

from top left to right and the middle

is said in Cantonese, 

Bei Sai De Qin Gor - GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY !

I was inspired to use text to represent the dialogue in my film,

from Jonathan Hodgson's film, The Man with the Beautiful Eye,

it is when the man speaks to the children.

HEY little gentleman, having a good time I hope?

This is the result of my animation, done together with my assistant Stephanie Sohail.

We animated this scene using iron fillings.

Iron fillings are "not poisonous" but must be handled with care,
do not consume, or touch your face to avoid contact with your eye,

to be safe wear gloves and wash your hands after used.

This is my advice now that we didn't follow then.

So, after animating for almost two hours,

we felt really sick and dizzy,

probably from inhaling too much iron filling.

We not only needed to animate with a stick,

and control the movement using magnet

but we had to blow through the straw

to create the effect and transition that we wanted.
At times we were touching the iron fillings with our hand as they tend to stick to your hands.

However, after hours of animating we were really pleased with the result and considered this experience a success.

Poor Steph had to bare with my crazy experiments.

Hope you had fun though.

Thank you again.

Traffic in Malaysia

The GIF below shows the delicate but fun process of setting up my scene,
 on Dragon stop motion software.
I adjust the pieces on the grids and
draw lines on the screen using the tools in the software
to guide me while I am animating the objects.

In the search of materials to represent Kuala Lumpur,
the capital city of Malaysia, 

I decided to use metal objects to represent cars,
and create the bad traffic in the city. 

For the set-up of lighting, I didn't want to use silhouette this time,
As I wanted to show the chunky metal and nature-unfriendly "cars" in the city.

On the picture above,
you see a soft white light shining just slight from the top of the set.
There is also a light box below to give the scene a natural glow.

Kuala Lumpur Cityscape Lights (Failure)

This was my initial idea to represent city in Malaysia during night time, 

The design interest me and I really wanted to try the technique like this video.

I had to discard this idea because of the limitation of this material I had-MDF board with holes... There wasn't enough holes to design both the twin towers that I wanted. I would need to reconstruct the MDF board and I felt that it would be too time consuming for this project.

While playing with MDF Boards from the workshop I made an interesting graphic, 

I wanted to use them for the bank scene.

and a little selfie of Pam and Charlie testing out my "Home-made" 3D glasses.. 

Sensing fear

This is the process of animating the shot, "Then... he came really close to me..."

I really enjoyed re-aimating this scene. I had a digital animated version, that had flashes of red colour to show the intensity of the moment, but I found some plastic circles both red and blue, and a sharp red cog, which I thought could represent me, the man and the dangerous situation.

Emotional battles in my film

 I face emotional challenges in the process of making this film, because it brings back a very personal and traumatic experience.

Hence, my faith points me back to the book of Psalms in the bible for inspiration and comfort.

Also, I thought of promises from the book of Revelation in the Bible concerning God's new creation.
 God's words in this verse gives me eternal hope because we live in a broken world,

 This is my idea, to leave my audience with an everlasting hope that I know of instead of despair.

Almost everything from the old testament concerning Jesus has come to pass in the new testament, but the new testament have new promises from God, and
the idea of the new creation seems quite vague to people I have shown my film to,
probably because we don't share the same faith, or some say that it is talking about a totally different story,
so, I am searching for a way,  to communicate hope,
when we face difficulties in life, that could be universal to all.




I am writing this in my blog, to document the process of writing the finale of my film. 

The 12 principles of animation

I found some of this principles quite helpful to improve my stop motion animation.


The illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.

RAWRH!

This is me pretending to be my predator, the robber in the bank. 

I used this as my P.O.V. when the robber tries to grab for my money.

Therefore, it would look like the robber is grabbing the audience.

Shapes and meaning

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/genis-carreras-complex-philosophical-theories

My film uses shapes to communicate the situation at some scenes. My research on shapes led me to this  graphic design posters.

The strong iconography allow viewers to instantly guess what is the poster trying to communicate. I think that is absolutely related to my film. Each composition and colours have to communicate the emotions.

I am trying my best to keep the film really simple and representative of the situation it is really difficult to keep that. I feel my film have developed into something else. For the better or worst.

Diamond in the Eye

In search of materials to represent, the sadness I felt after the robbery, 

I decided to use some jewellery beads, that I savaged from house keeping in my last summer holiday. So glad it came handy!

My animation assistant, Steph was there to help me with this scene. 

At first, we were quite sceptical as the beads kept rolling around. 

I had to draw some guidelines so that we know how to animate the tear.

Diamond in the eye...

forming droplets of tears

and the ripple...

just notice that it took us nearly 3 hours to complete this 3 shots. 

KUDOS to Steph and Pam! 

Thanks for your help Steph!

Material Test :animating Malaysian Coins

Material Test for scene: The floor was covered with money.

I am searching for the right material to animate and represent this scene. A Malaysian friend, who is an air stewardess has been collecting coins for me from Malaysia. I think it may be too literal but I have to keep finding and trying new materials.

I did a couple of test-shots but I don't think it is working very well for this film. Help!

An abstract representation of Trapped-In-a-Corner

These images are my processes to create the atmosphere using the lights and colours for 

the scene: "... I was trapped in the corner and he charged forward to reach for my money.."

I decided to create an abstract representation of this scene using found sharp slates (enemy) and round objects (me).

On my way to uni I have walked pass these sharp broken slates on the road.
I passed it so many times on my way to uni for a few months, one day on my way to uni I couldn't resist to pick it up, put it in a bag and brought it to my studio.
I left it in the shelf for days maybe weeks...

 I decided to use and animate them as an abstract representation for this scene today!

I attempted to use the lights to create the shadow and highlight on the edges of the object.  It was quite difficult to light up the slates in an interesting way as they are not very reflective objects. However,  the slates projects a strong silhouette and the sharp edges portrays a gripping effect of danger.

In addition, I tried to bounce coloured lights on a textured MDF board to create an interesting texture for the background of this scene instead of just using coloured gel on top of a Lightbox. 

I am quite pleased with the end results. If I have more time I may come back to animate this scene again and try to improve on the lighting of the object.

Stop Motion Animation of The Malaysian Flag

I have found an object to create

the Malaysian flag called Jalur Gemilang. 

In English, Jalur Gemilang means the Stripes of Glory. 

The idea to animate using paper clip happened 

while I was searching for materials to animate. 

I chanced upon these colourful paper-clips in a box;

a Malaysian friend left with me when she returned home last year. 

The blue, yellow, red and white colours caught my attention, 

I had to search for a symbol to represent Malaysia and this was perfect to create the Malaysian flag. 

It looked fun and brilliant to play with! 

It took me almost 8 hours to animate the flags. 

I had to carefully move each paper-clip frame by frame 

to make it morph to a plane then the Malaysian flag. 

I am quite satisfied with the results however I could have save more time, 

if I had uploaded the key positions as reference on Dragon Stop Motion.

I was animating straight-ahead, whereby the object is animated based on the influence of where each paper clip was positioned at the start (randomly) and moving it's position to where it needs to be finally. 

Stop motion Kuala Lumpur skyline Research

 Searching for materials to animate !!

I came home late that night and saw some pearl-pebbles on the table;

My housemate washed them and left it on the kitchen towel to dry.

Then I was folding my laundry and hey! I spotted the Patronas Twin Towers.

I call it the Socks Twin Towers! :P

Bank Scene - danger & Violation

Animating another bank scene today.

using these pictures as reference of pain and danger.

This is my set-up for my experiment.

The layer is increasing and I am having to animate higher and higher. Four and a half layers.

I wonder if it needed be so high but I actually kept needing another layer in between. 

No Eye Deer!

I'm so impressed by PES. The sound, the objects, and most importantly the animation and timing! It's so perfect and real. I hope i can master my timing and make my stop motion animation believable. I need to focus on creating the mood...

http://www.youtube.com/user/PESfilm

colour mood for robbery scene

Giant Episode 2 Sun from Celine&Yann on Vimeo.

The Man with the Beautiful Eyes

The Man with the Beautiful Eyes from Jonathan Hodgson on Vimeo.

http://www.screeningshorts.org.uk/pdf/the-man-with-the-beautiful-eyes-poem.pdf

The director of The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (2000) Jonathan Hodgson, brought a poem (same as title) written in 1992 by Charles Bukowski alive, through a series of beautiful images. The gaps in the narration allows the audience a breather and an opportunity for the characters to be introduced in their environment. The transition for this animation is very creative and interesting. Each scene is carefully designed, placed, build and animated for the scene following after.  Sound in this animation plays a vital role to enhance audience's experience. The  ambience sound in each scene helps us to engage with the story as the poem is being narrated even more. This animation also inspires me to work on my transitions and to use text in my animation where dialogues are found in my story. In my opinion, this is a really good example of making an animation based on a story being narrated from a poem or script. 

Sudden realisation

The story is about myself. The character is me.  I could share everything about me. And I don't need to hide myself.

Hush_001

This is a compilation of footages I have done so far. Hush is an abstract interpretation of an event that happened to me when I went back to malaysia for my sister's wedding a few years ago. This animation hopes to emphasise the height of emotions as I recall my memories using forms, colours and movement. The sound will play an important part in creating the emotion too. Currently in this video the background music is absent which my composer ellis is still creating for me.

Colours and shapes