Eno Revisted

Turns out, there was a slight bit of clipping on the left hand edge of the Eno piece in the final animation, so i've adjusted the camera angle accordingly



tj -x-

Tan dun - The final animation

Below is my final piece, the only real difference from the last video in the last post is a slight alteration of type size and position.



Sadly this blog doesn't support Widescreen, so to see it properly you'll have to view the CD supplied. If you don't have the CD, it'll be on youtube shortly, and i'll post the link when it is.

tj -x-

Tan Dun - The creation process

The following post outlines the complete creation process behind the Tan Dun animation.

I added type to the animation, Century Gothic.


As with the Brian Eno animation, I opted to change the Type face to Fruitger Ext. This keeps a consistency between the two animations. The striking difference between this version and the version about id the colour correction, this was done in after effects. The original animation clocks in at about 24 seconds, this was too fast for my self allocated 20 second slot to complete the sequence in, so to try and fix this i sped up the animation. I liked the way the original animation moved to the music, so I sped up the music too. This didn't really work, the music obviously lost its haunting quality and the sped up version complete destroyed the pace of the piece. I also added the BBC four logo to keep the sequence in context.


The colour correction above really destroys the quality of the video. So i begrudgingly changed it back. But this wasn't the end of the battle!


I got the animation down to 20 seconds here, and kept the score normal speed. I think it works quiet well. I also changed the export settings to wide screen as that was that format i wised to work in. Annoyingly, because of the size of the photographs, my animation was stretched.


so i changed it back


Again I took a stab at the Colour correction, and this time got it right! It was applied in after effect and was simply a case of 'auto colour' and then adjusting the saturation and contrast to make the red really "pop" but without washing out the shadows around the paper.


Struggling with format problems I opted to zoom in on my animation and then set the composition to wide screen. I think this enhances that animation. As with the Brian Eno animation the bigger you can make the image, the more striking and dynamic it becomes.


tj -x-

Tan Dun - Colour correction

The set up I had used to take the original Photographs wasn't the best in the world. This gave the animation a yellow hue as it was lit properly. I attempted (using final cut pro) to colour correct the piece to be more in keeping with the Brian Eno piece - white background contrasting animation - but it seemed I'm not very good at colour correction. The disasters are displayed below.



After speaking with my tutor he said he didn't think it needed correcting, but it did grate on me that the two animations didn't 'match'. Its definitely something I want to go back to maybe using after effects a program I'm comfortable using.

tj -x-

Tan Dun - Music

As with the Brian Eno animation i wanted to use a track by Tan Dun thats recognisable as Tan Dun. The Hero soundtrack has won many awards and most people have seen the film and would atleats recognise the score even if they didn't know Tan Dun. I Opted to use 'For the World' from the hero soundtrack.





tj -x-

Tan Dun - Setting up the animation

Tan Dun is famous for his movie soundtracks, but his more interesting and forward thinking work takes form in his water and paper concertos - pieces created with water and paper respectively. Its the paper concerto that has inspired me to create a piece using Origami, the art of paper folding originally a Chinese art.

I decided to animated an origami lotus flower over say a crane or a swan as I think the Lotus flower has a greater sense of symbolism.

The lotus flower has a unique characteristic in that it blooms and sheds its seeds at the same time. In the context of Buddhism, the theory of karma says that, just like the lotus flower, our life is made up of cause and effect. Every cause -- be it action, word or thought -- will imprint an effect that can be seen in this lifetime or in future lives.

Cause and effect was something i used extensively in the Eno animation - the Music was the cause, the animation the effect - and John Cage was heavily influenced by 'Ching' - the Chinese book of changes, a symbol system used to identify order in random events, explaining a cosmology centred on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change. By using a Lotus flower I hope to link all three artists with the notion of, random chance and cause and effect.

Previous post show the research onto how I could set up the animation. I decided wall mounting the paper with masking tape and blue tack would be the way to go, as at the time i didn't have a tripod set up.

The image below shows the set up i used.


At 12 frames per second I opted to have the animation consist of around 240 photographs for a 20 second piece. I took about 220, the remaining 20 frames were left to allow room to create reversed animations on some of the folds. after a few test shots





The end result.

tj -x-

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-