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)
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”
So this is my first attempt of what I am sure will be many Stop Motion Vines to come ahead of Tuesdays lecture and the future beyond. Whilst making this was frustrating and tedious (I have always lacked patience for fiddly things) the end product wasn’t too bad. Points I could improve on have already become apparent, use my space better so my subject doesn’t end up of camera, perfect the transformation and make sure that the structurally integral blue tac is more hidden. All in all though, I’m pretty happy. I also tried to do this shoot DIY style so without booking out any equipment, the only equipm
ent I did utilise was my own tripod as you can see from this picture.
Its term 2 of 160MC module and the wind is beneath my wings as myself and my group; Michael Moser, Karen Jensen-Clark and Chris Caswell, began our project by heading out into the streets of Coventry in search of a story. What ensued was a series of meetings and greetings that have opened more doors than I could have possibly hoped for. As an individual piece I chose my subject and with the help of the group set out to capture what would become my one minute pitch video.
During my time of lost hope, when I had given up on my pursuit of a media career, I had the pleasure of working side by side with many interesting people and one of them was a young chap named Simil Gurung. He came from Nepal at about the age of 20 years old. During his time there he would tell me stories about his youth in Nepal and always say to me that if I ever made a movie he would want to star in it. Before he left for the greener pastures of London to pursue a career as a chef, we shook hands and agreed that I had the exclusive rights to a film about his life story. It was all fun and games back then because I had no intention of picking up my own career goals back then. Fast forward a year or two to the classroom of 160MC term 2 and a light bulb went off in my head.
My vision for this piece was to tell an almost rags to riches story but based more around career success than wealth or finance or emotion. It occurred to me however that the restraints of three minutes might make this problematic. Visually I imagined shots of Simil working in a kitchen with some slow mo shots of flames blazing and food being tossed in a pan. Perhaps some close up slicing whilst the voice over was talking about the rough upbringing in Nepal youth society.
I arranged to meet with Simil on Monday afternoon with the group to shoot what would become my one minute pitch. We met in a pub restaurant named The Cedar tree. We found a nice large bay window to let in natural sunlight which also highlighted the unique fabric of the seats that created a warming glow. The difficulties came from the fact our subject would be shown in front of the window, creating heavy shadows on the face (something we attempted to correct using iPhone flash lights) and the loud noises of the locale which we couldn’t do much about. The interview lasted about ten minutes during which time I relived the stories I had been told those many years ago and discovered new things that had been occurring in his life since. It was an extremely productive day and I’m confident about my one minute pitch.
The Journey Begins 