Please Let The Writing Be Over...

Right. Time to get my head straight. I've spent the last four days writing up projects - I'm sure you can imagine how mind numbing that can be. I've also got three days to finish my self negotiated project (the one with all the projection stuff) and I haven't been able to work on it for about six weeks (bar a couple of days the other week) because of various fuck-ups, the most recent being a useless bunch of fuckwits selling me something they "don't actually have sir, oooOOoo, it's virtual stock, you see". Honestly, I do despair sometimes.

Anyway, hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow morning (I've ordered it from another website now) just as I wake up, fresh for three days of stress. I'm going to really have to push it to get some decent results before the deadline. This project hasn't made me any the wiser as to how I'm going to apply this technique so far, so I need to try some decent stuff out so I can think about it over the break.

The plan is to try out the two most ambitious ideas I've had for the project, CONCENTRATE AND THINK ABOUT WHAT I'M DOING, be patient, and take my time to do some decent animations while I'm at the factory. The first one is the one that's storyboarded a couple of posts below - I've developed it a bit more in my head though. The other one will involve cubes hanging from the ceiling instead of triangles. Much more complicated and time consuming to sort out but, like i said, I need to push it.

On a side note, these three videos are really good. I want to combine all three styles, plus my work, in future. God knows how though.


ch'ien belgique from depart on Vimeo.


Etienne De Crecy Live 2007 Transmusicales de Rennes from Clement bournat on Vimeo.


Animal Collective - Leaf House from benjamin ramirez on Vimeo.

Sound Re-design - Finished

I heard this for the first time on the proper mixing sound room set up since I'd made quite a few changes the other day, and made the decision not to make any more changes to it. It's sounding good, I reckon. Certainly a lot better than I had anticipated being able to achieve. Here it is...


Sound Re-Design - Finished from Retchy on Vimeo.

Certainly a lot more subtle than previous versions, the changes from the last version I uploaded are probably too small to be noticeable on normal computer speakers though. The main change is in the sound of the repeating, throbbing noise - I've layered it up with two other sounds to soften it a bit, and automated the reverberation and volume settings for each in and out point of every pulse. I've also tidied up the end to make it slightly less unsure of itself, and sorted out the levels for the whole track, which makes a huge difference to the overall feel of the clip - everything just sits together so much more nicely, and the range of frequencies are much clearer now.

More Narrative Presentations

I got to sit and be entertained today and didn't have to worry about presenting stuff, which was nice. There was some really good presentations today, which made me a bit jealous cos I felt like I could have pushed myself a bit more and come up with something more interesting. Oh well. Anyway, Juliet's was dead good - she just had a table and a lamp set up, started some sort of campfire song playing, and proceeded to lay out a camping scene in front of us with little propped up, cut out drawings she'd made. A really random story about people with Goat skulls for heads ensued, but it just seemed to work with the music. The simple black and white ink drawings really stuck in my mind for some reason.

Who else was good? They were all good, but, shit I can't remember her name (Jackie?), she basically managed to make us all feel like we were four years old again. In a good way. She just told us a nice little story about an embroidery needle, and then revealed that the blanket that had been on her knee throughout was actually a kind of embroidered storyboard of the whole tale. Really simple, but extremely effective. I'm jealous of her grandchildren.

Sound Re-Design

Spent a good few hours cooped up in the sound booth today and managed to make quite a few improvements I think. You won't be able to hear the bass on here very well probably, but the mix is all wrong anyway. I'm just working on getting the flow of it right at the moment and I'll worry about the levels later.


Sound Re-Design - Work In Progress from Retchy on Vimeo.

I quite like the start with the tunnel effects as you're outside the car and the change to a warmer, more muffled sound as you join the character inside. That bit was completely underdeveloped until today. I've also taken out quite a few of the rumbles that happen as the lights flash - there was a noise for every single pulse before, and it was complete overkill. All the sounds are recorded from a transistor radio I've had since I was about 8 - it still has the original batteries in it! - and another old '70s one I got off ebay.

More Planning

Now that I've decided to spend all that money, I just want to bloody get on with it really, but I'll have to wait until the thing arrives now. I've set up Modul8 in preparation - I think this is how it will work - the DualHead2Go apparently fools the computer into thinking it has a reeeeeaaaalllllly wide (or double) screen resolution so you can span different outputs across it. I think. So I doubled the horizontal output of Modul8 so that it is 8:3 instead of the normal 4:3 aspect ratio. The left side of the screen will go to projector one while the right side will go to projector two. Again, I think.


Here's a storyboard for the test I'm going to do next week. Hopefully I'll be able to get someone to operate the camera for me, cos this is really a two man job. If you click the picture you'll be able to actually read it.