Reflection

What is going well and what isn’t going so well and why?

I'm glad I have been organized with my assets because the more I made them, the more I realized how easily confusing they can get because there are so many models and all look very similar. This is especially critical during filming because I need to know what I need immediately in order to make use of the limited time I have to film at school with the rostrum before the holidays. However, Dragonframe just refuses to run properly no matter what I do, and so I wasn't able to finish filming before the holiday, which put me incredibly behind schedule. Luckily, I was able to borrow a phone stand, which was able to largely solve my problem during filming. Instead of using the grid to align a shot as I do with the rostrum, I use masking tape to tape out an area that would be perfectly straight and ripe it off before every shot to avoid the tape being seen on film. Though the biggest hurdle I have encountered is with lighting, other than lighting problems with using a desk lamp, I've found that the lighting within a shot changes because the place I'm filming is heavily influenced by the direction and amount of sunlight outside. My first thought in trying to fix this issue was to film in spots with the most light and avoid spots of shadow, but I realized this wasn't possible due to the building layout, some places will always be in shade. And so my other solution is to film at night, by filming in an overall darker location, I can manually brighten the set using a lamp, and then further brighten the shot in post.

How do I feel about how it is going?

I think that everything that I have done to create the best conditions possible to film has been worth it because I am happy with the raw footage I got. Although they aren't perfectly lit, I feel like I could be able to brighten them in post. Not everything has gone to plan due to many things outside of my own control, but I feel like after a certain point, as much as I want to create the best outcome to show my audience, I also have to accept making compromises during the creative process if I want to have a finished product.

What am I excited about in my work and where could this lead?

I obviously want to see the final film because the more I've worked on this project, I came to realize even though I often think lowly of every individual part of the process, when they're put together, they do result in an outcome that is greater than the sum of it's parts, which I'm relieved by. I feel like this project has been very high risk, high reward where the end results determine the quality and no matter how good I make every part before its finished, if the end product is not good, it would have invalidated the whole process. I'm also excited to record the audio because playing around with sounds and recording myself making noise with specific objects sounds like mindless fun that a child would have but this actually has a purpose and I find that quite amusing. Recording audio would also be a good break from filming or animating as it forces me to think of something else entirely. I foley to be very unique because instead of thinking in visuals, a sound designer thinks. in noises, and is something I am quite interested in.

Filming + cel animating

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