Eno - The final Title sequence

Above is the final title sequence, set to widescreen (16:9), as it would be displayed when aired. If the TV the viewer had was only 4:3 aspect ratio then the show would be set in a letter box. I feel this is appropiate to the target auidence and a channel that shows world cinema and art film. The BBC Four logo is included to give the piece context. The Sequence is bang on 20 seconds or 500 frames. I wanted to achive to this to show that I can edit within a set parameters. This is key to media within TV which have very tight slots of viewing time. If this was a film title project, I wouldn't have to work to these constraints. tj -x-

Making the Animation more dynamic

I'm happy with how the animation works. But as it is it's a bit boring, within the title sequence I have to keep the audiences attention for 20 seconds so their has to be a certain dynamism to it. I'll ac hive this through camera movement.

My first test just panned out completely, from right up close to the distance the camera was originally set at. I also experimented with the type positioning.



When watching this back the most interesting part was the close ups of the animations so in my next series of tests i experimented with going right in close and panning back ever so slightly, allowing the shape of the generated image to dominate the screen. I also panned and orbited the camera (ever so slightly) to the left, this left an obvious space in the right hand corner for the type.



Watching this back It was clear that I could go even closer to the image still. This is my final composition, where the camera pans out ever so slightly, keeping pace with the soundtrack and allows the animation to create a dynamic by dominating the screen before fading off to the left and leaving the type to take centre stage at the end.



tj -x-

Eno - Music Bars and Font Consideration

In my sketchbook I've toyed with the idea of having the the generated string like lines in the animation as bars in a musical score. My sketches included using the treble and bass cleft as motifs, but I think that's not subtle enough, I want to hint at elements, not show them entirely.



This animation is slightly more complicated than the previous animations. Instead of using the combined channels bass and treble to create the two particle generators, I needed to create six to create the three layers of strings seen in the animation. To do this I split the music into left, right and combined channels. I then split these into bass and treble creating 6 waveforms to extract positions from.

The same process of converting the waveforms into positional key frames and applying them to the particle generators within set parameters based on the high and low point of the waveform remains the same.

I also changed the font from Century Gothic to Frutiger Ext.



I like century Gothic I really do, but i want a font that has some sort of tie to Eno, however tenuous. I decided on Frutiger for the simple reason that Eno is famous for "Music for airports" and frutiger is a "typeface for airports". The Ext version just seems to fit nicely.

Being a modern Sans Serif font it also has the potential to be used across the series, and tie all the sequences together typographically.

tj -x-

Eno - generative images

Moving through the electrical landscape was all very well, and i could have gone further with it. But to me it doesn't say anything, theirs no real concept to it other than illustrating electrical circuits and the idea than Eno used electronic beats, which is nothing really unique to Eno. So I've decided to go back to using music to generated images. I'm doing this because its a play on Enos techniques.

Eno used to generate music from random elements - So in Turn i'm generating an image from Enos music.

The first thing I changed was the track. The previous animation used 1/1, which although was groundbreaking in Enos career, when i asked a few people they had no idea what who it was by. So I looked into Brian eno his ventures into mainstream popular culture, I considered using the spore soundtrack but that's a generative piece that doesn't repeat, Or the windows 95 start up sound;



But that's one; too short, and two horrible.

Eno tracks have been used in movies and the track that people recognised the most was "An Ending (ascent)" From 1983s Apollo atmospheres and soundtracks. People didn't recognise that it was Eno, but rather it was "that track from 28 days later".



I plugged that track into the after effects expressions I had created previously and created a generative animation.



Like Enos work its minimalist black on white with a subtle title on the bottom right hand corner, hopefully this will appeal to both Enos fans and BBC 4 watchers.

tj -x-

Target audience - BBC Four

To proceed with appropriate visuals i need to consider a target audience. The hypothetical documentaries on contemporary classical composers will be aired on BBC Four. BBC Four is a channel aimed at

a wide variety of programmes including drama, documentaries, music, international film, comedy and current affairs ... an alternative to programmes on the mainstream TV channels

The channel broadcasts a mixture of art and science documentaries, vintage drama (including many rare black-and-white programmes), and non-English language productions such as films from the Artificial Eye catalogue and the French thriller Spiral. BBC Four further supports foreign language films with its annual World Cinema Award which has been running since 2004.

So BBC 4 aires an alternative listing to the mainstream BBC 1 and 2 by targeting a demograph interested in the arts, sciences and politics, one of its previous slogans (which it has now dropped) was "Everyone Needs A Place To Think", so BBC 4 could almost be considered the thinking persons TV channel.

I will create my animations with this audience in mind. So they'll need to be 'artsy' sophisticated and more importantly different to the kind of title sequences seen on the other BBC channels.

I also need to target people interested in Contemporary classical composers directly. I'll do this by using a very minimalist pallete, and minimal, yet sophisticated animations that have a concept behind them. Hopefully the concept will shine through, creating a prelude to the tone of documentary to come.

tj -x-

Eno - Electrical circuit Tests and Failures

The above animations are tests into moving through a electrical circuit landscape.

In all honesty I'm not to happy with it all. It has the 'After effects look' to it (panning cameras and visuals that look like postcards), something i think i should try to avoid.

The soundtrack is also a problem, I've used "1/1" from music for airports as i've been told its a "trademark track" of Eno and i want to animated my title sequences to familiar pieces by the artists featured. But its very slow boring and quite uninspiring to animated to. Another problem is that I want to hit the 20second mark dead on with each animation and with such a minimalist piece i think it will prove difficult to create a pace throughout the animation (even though minimalist pieces are Enos forte).

tj -x-

Eno - Electrical circuits

The Album Discreet music was famous for Eno early experiments in Generative music, the method of recording is explained;

"liner notes contain a diagram of how this piece was created. It begins with two melodic phrases of different lengths played back from a synthesizer's digital recall system (the equipment used in this case was an EMS Synthi AKS, which had a then-exotic, built-in digital sequencer). This signal is then run through a graphic equalizer to occasionally change its timbre. It is then run through an echo unit before being recorded onto a tape machine. The tape runs to the take-up reel of a second machine. The output of that machine is fed back into the first tape machine which records the overlapped signals."

See Diagrams





... and a stylised version of the diagram.



With this in mind i'm going to create an animation than moves through a landscape of circuit diagrams much like the animation below moves through a painted landscape.



tj -x-