Hey! So just to say I have began a new blog for my second year as a Media Production student, why not take a peek?
https://grantsnaithyr2blog.wordpress.com
UNITED STATES – CIRCA 1950s: Woman with surprised look. (Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)
Come the end of the year I am travelling to a country that ever since I was a young boy I have wanted to visit, New Zealand! Come September the 1st I will begin my extremely long flight across the world to reach the lands of Middle Earth, the birth of the bungee jump and the most naturally beautiful country in the world. I’ll be travelling over with my dad and meeting up with my Uncle, who calls this piece of heaven home, whilst over in New Zealand and I fully intend to have a camera to hand for every second of it.
Whilst I will be filming and taking pictures of absolutely everything and anything to brag about upon my return I feel its important to at least go out there with an idea or two or what footage I will need to be able to cobble together some interesting pieces for my showreel. So during this blog post I’m going to outline a number of options as a sort of check list to myself for the big trip to make sure I capture enough footage to edit with. Later on i’ll be doing an additional post regarding equipment and technical preparation for the journey.
Travel Blog
My aim is to post a short recap blog of each day as I travel around, these will probably be devoid of pictures depending on how much time I find to post these and whether I get chance to sort through the images. This is obviously dependant upon whether I have access to wifi during the trip which is unlikely at times whilst we are on the road.
Maori Culture
I would like to produce a short film of roughly 3 – 4 minutes length focusing on the Maori Culture coupled with imagery of the raw beauty of New Zealand. I would be looking for a piece of music, if possible as under layer to a traditional Maori chant, that has that raw primal feel to it. Images id be looking to capture for this would include Maori performances, mountains with rolling clouds (perhaps in time-lapse style) and a still lake shoreline at sunrise. The reason I want to complete this project is simply because the Maori culture is so fascinating to me as I know so little about its ideals and teachings. On the minute mark the video below there is a beautiful shot of a sunrise bathing a lake, that and a few other shots throughout this video give an idea for the sort of shots I will be looking for.
Father & Son Road-Trip
I have a lot of respect for all of my family and friends as without them I could not be me and so it of course means a lot to me to be joined on this journey by my father. This project is perhaps more of a personal endeavour than a CV bolstering video, but never the less I will still strive to shoot and edit this to a professional standard. For this project I would probably rely mostly or even solely on Go Pro footage shot. I will then edit this to a currently undecided song so that in me and my father can look back at it years later and remember the good times. I have seen some truly brilliant examples of Road-Trip shorts on YouTube but for my this USA Road-Trip really stood out. It is careful not to use clips that last longer than 15 seconds, preventing the audience from getting bored and its edits match the tempo of the music.
Documentary
Though I never imagined myself finding much pleasure in documentary filmmaking, I did rather enjoy the process during my first year at university so I have come up with two ideas for short documentaries that I could shoot whilst out in New Zealand. The first is “Kiwi”, a short documentary that explores what it means to be a Kiwi and what the natives think of their way of living compared to that of the rest of the world. Id be looking to interview locals from different walks of life as to what they think makes New Zealand the greatest country in the world. My second idea for a documentary, that I am for now entitling “Soldier”, would be about my Uncle and his stories from his time in the army which he has written a book about (providing he’s up for it!). He is currently in talks with industry professionals who are working on a script for a film based on his life stories.
Networking
Lets not forget one of the most important aspects of being a student filmmaker, networking. In this industry it is vital to build up strong network systems across the world with other industry professionals. Though it is often overlooked, New Zealand has a rich history of Filmmaking and Television and I am hopeful of building up some networks whilst in the country. For my third year of study I am currently exploring the options of studying or working a year abroad and would like to gage how feasible it would be to do so in New Zealand during this trip. My Uncle is hoping to introduce me to the guy writing his script who has had work within the TV industry of New Zealand and I am also scheduling a visit to the WETA Workshop where various props and effects are built for big feature films where I am hoping to talk to them about the feasibility of internship, apprenticeships or shadowing sometime during my third year.
As you can tell I am immensely excited to be achieving what for me has been a life long ambition at the end of this year and have so many plans and dreams for this trip that no doubt some of it won’t happen, but that doesn’t stop me giving it my all. And if for some strange reason you haven’t already decided you want to go to New Zealand some day, take a look at this insanely good video!
This Advice From The Pros blog post will actually cover two pieces of advice regarding two aspects of varying filmmaking; Stop-motion and Machinima. Stop-motion is the art of stringing many images together in which an object moves or is altered each time very slightly giving it the appearance of it moving. Machinima is the art of creating a cinematic film through the use of an in-game graphics engine as covered in my previous ‘Web 2.0’ post.
Stop-Motion
During one of my 161MC tasks we had to create a stop-motion vine of six seconds long. I had never done something like this before so I took to YouTube to view examples of good stop-motion films and stumbled across ‘Harris Loureiro Films’ who had done a transformers stop-motion piece. I took to contacting him on Facebook and he got back to me fairly quickly with this piece of useful advice.
“Hi there. Sure! No problem with helping you stop motion use same basic as live film too. With camera angle , lighting, story.. i think you can manage that. For stop motion usually will use the most articulation figure can be its will give you lots of movement in for motion. And for the shooting progress i reco
mend use 12fps or 10fps. 15fps also can can be use too but depend on the movement you making. Dont make a lot of gap in movement or your shot will look stiff. Example with human body. When you about to walk which part move first. As the toe, heel , shoulder, waist, arm. Or with jumping..need to kneel down a bit with the knee and the arm will spread a bit. Something like that”
Machinima
For my most recent ‘Web 2.0’ project with 161MC again we have been tasked with making a retelling a story via the use of a computer and other online tools (see Web 2.0 post). To do this I knew from the get go I wanted to do something different and for me that was Machinima. I had never attempted this before but it was something I had always wanted to do and had researched into how to go about this. To achieve this I decided to do the same again and look for inspiration and I found Surge’s Movies who offered up a really useful summary of using tools such as WoW Model Viewer:
“Hello you can download the last version here : https://wowmodelviewer.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/7503937/WMV_Installer_v080alpha16.exe?version=1&modificationDate=1422491035625&api=v2
You will can find the new character models in the folder Character>namerace>nameracehd.m2
To find the boss or any NPC don’t go in the Creature folder but in the menu View>View NPC, click on Import URL then go search your NPC on WoWhead for exemple Blackhand : http://www.wowhead.com/npc=77325/
Copy and Paste this link into the URL field, click on Import. End then DIsplay and it shows you the NPC.
To dress a character, open a character model. At the right click on each piece of stuff and in the search field enter the name of the object you want to put on.
To animate You can choose different animation in the animation menu (below or View>View Animation Menu). You can change the animation speed. You can put a different animation on the head, legs and chest.
To change the background go to View>Background color (to put a green screen) or Load Background (to put a specific background).
You can’t have two models at the same time. If you want to make a chatting scene you must do one record with the character A then load the character B and record him. So if you must do a scene with many character it’s very long!
Of course it’s just an introduction to the software but you will need to practice to master it. 
I hope it helped you. Good luck with your machinima!
See you
Suge”
The Journey Begins 