Team Name & Film Title Finalised

Each day gets more productive than the previous one.

Firstly, we talked about our team name and film title. Everyone did their jobs of researching and brainstorming for a good team name. As for the film title, we came up with a few names such as voyage, odyssey and journey as our video is about our journey through year 1. It was hard to decide between voyage and odyssey as all of us liked both these terms. We were talking about "The Voyage" as our title and were thinking whether we should make our journey like a sailing voyage with CG ships and waves. And then we were like.. wait a minute! CG ships? CG water? Isn't that too ambitious? CG ship perhaps, but then compositing actors would be an issue and CG water is definitely hard. Then Jem suggested this cool idea of using miniature Tamia model ships and filming them like how they did in King Kong and Titanic and spending more time on CG water and then compositing the two together. This sounded very cool and interesting as this was a totally different technique. But then again, comparing to the amount of work we have to do on the rest of the video, we decided to avoid this complication of advanced compositing., because if the compositing is not done properly, the audience is not going to buy any of it.

Then we went onto thinking about the word odyssey and we thought of having this title "The Odyssey." But Greg felt that it was lacking some "oooofff" in it, some kind of impact it was supposed to make with the music. He suggested we have something foreign in it, like play with the words to come out with something interesting. See one thing I love about each of my team members is that they're freaking daring to try something they haven't done before and constantly pushing themselves to get the best brainstorm possible, and this is why I'm so proud to have them in my team. =) Anyway, we surfed the net to research more about this word and found out that it came from the word "Odysseus," which was actually the name of a Greek king who was returning home after a 10-year war with the Trojans. Immediately, the word "Odysseus" caught our attention and Greg came out with this title, "D' Odysseus", which actually means The Odyssey or The Journey. Perfect. All of us felt that this was very related to our concept. I suggested to add on to the title and put small text below the main words - "An Epic Journey." And we tried to visualise this with the opening titles sequence together with the background music - D'Odesseus: An Epic Journey - and it suit well. Everyone was happy. I could see the inspiration and motivation in everyone's eyes after finalising the title.

Next, we had to decide on our team name. Jem came out with this interesting title, "Crewsade". He derived it from the word, crusade which actually means any vigorous, aggressive movement for the defense or advancement of an idea, as quoted by http://www.dictionary.com/ . But as witty as he can be, he played around with the words and changed it to Crewsade, which emphasized on the word "crew" and also had equal significance on the fact that we as a team do get aggressive for an advancement of any particular idea and would try to push it to our limits. After a little discussion, we decided to call ourselves "Crewsade, Inc." to have it an official shine. We checked the internet for this word and we found that it's perfectly original. Perfect!

Oh, and did I mention? Wendy is doing a wonderful job as a scribe and taking down the minutes of each session. She's patient in listening to all our ideas. She would be in charge of making an animated 2D character when introducing animation works.

Next, we went onto discussing our basic structure of our 10 minute film. Although we had all the ideas listed down all over the place, we still had to piece them up together to form the skeleton of the film. Thus, we finalised the opening sequence with the graphics, leading upto the opening scene and transitions in between scenes and the final ending credits with the relevant graphics and background music. Jem came up with many interesting framing and camera composition styles which we would use in the scenes in the midst of our film. He also came up with this cool idea of having moving vectors in the background when introducing our works. Greg came up with interesting ideas of transiting from one scene to another while still maintaining the epic flow of the video. Wendy will be in-charge of 2D animation as mentioned earlier. She'll be making character designs and animating the final character. All these techniques are really hard to describe in words, thus I'll upload the animatics by the end of our pre-production process.

We still have some rough audio planning to discuss and a rough timeline of our entire process from pre-production to post-production. We would also be paying a lot of attention to our audio as well.

One thing I realised about our production, personally, is that it's kind of ambitious. The elements that we plan to have in our 10-minute film, are a hell lot. It's heavily based on graphics and integration and blending of CG elements with live action footage. But I think it can be done by the end of 2 blocks. I kind of have it visually in my mind, but nonetheless, I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Some words for my dear team mates:
Jem:
Keep up the good spirit. Keep ur creative juices flowing bro =)
Wendy:
Don't stress alright? Get well soon. You're already doing a good job in researching. Keep it going =)
Greg:
Bro, keep your ideas, enthusiasm and laughter coming! =)

Guys, keep this spirit going okay? Obstacles will come, so will criticism and the frustration that follows. Don't let it kill the positivity in you! A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity whereas an optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity. So be an optimist if we want everything to come out on screen just like the way we visualised it =) Good luck!

Inspiration

We had a mass lecture in LT 25 today.

Basically, quite a lot of us had misunderstanding when Alan mentioned that we had to do something like a documentary for our final video. So to clarrify that, Alfie lectured us and informed us that we did not have to approach the video in a typical documentary way but it should have a documentation of the journey that we underwent in the entire year 1.

To further elaborate what he meant, he showed us a couple of videos such as Lord of the Rings by National Geographic and another one which I can't really recall the title but it was something regarding mountain climbing expedition. I liked the opening sequence for the Lord of the Rings clip as it started out by sumarising the story before actually getting deep into the making of the film. As for the second clip, although some did not like it, I particularly liked the style of editing, especially when introducing the characters by blurring and adding grains to people in the background and leaving the main character in focus. The music suited too and although the sequence was a little shaky, I liked the the way they fast-forwarded the clip and then slowed down for the sake of emphasis. I felt that was quite effective.

Next, Mr. Ronald showed us some opening titles and graphics for certain movies for the sake of inspiration. Yes indeed it was inspiring, and as much as any of us would love to use those professional techniques of making graphics, I guess it's a little impossible to do so due to the complexity of it and the duration we have to complete this project. I may be wrong, who knows. Well, let's see how things go.

But other than that, I'm definitely sure that I don't want to have rolling credits for my ending sequence. Since we are doing something epic, we might make use of motion graphics and make the ending look epic-ish with the relevant music. I do have a few pieces of music in mind that Greg introduced to me today. Apparently, Greg and I have similar tastes of music, so there's that advantage in a way.

No group meeting today as we all had our own individual committments to attend to. More updates tomorrow.

Drafting out the Concept

It was a very productive day today.

On my way to school in the late morning, I was listening to music. I like to listen to film soundtracks and orchestral music (the type which has climaxes and anti-climaxes). Thus this morning, I came across this soundtrack which sounded so cool it gave me goosebumps, and immediately, I started visualising the opening titles and graphics sequence. It all fit perfectly with the music and I was really excited to share it with the rest of my team.

The class started out by sharing each others' blogs in class today. It was pretty interesting to know how the other groups approached this project through the use of different themes. Everyone gave good feedback on each other's blog, after which Wahidah told us each to list out two main things that we would like to bring out as a message in the production. This was quite confusing at first as many of us presented the style of our video rather than the message we were trying to bring out. After clasrrification, my group came out with a few messages. Mainly, the message that we wanted to convey was that the whole of year 1 was a kind of a difficult journey that we underwent and along with it, we went through numerous ups and downs. Not getting the results we wanted, hundreds of wrong turns, meeting deadlines and accepting negative criticism after the amount of hard work put into the work are just a few to name. After that, I made my members listen to the soundtrack that I was listening on my way to school earlier on in the day. They liked it as much as I did and we decided to use it for our opening titles.

Class ended after this short discussion. We met up at 6 to discuss further on our project. This I felt was the most productive part of the day, though it was only for mere forty-five minutes. The whole point of the meeting was to have a draft concept ready for our final video, and by the end of the meeting, we met our objective. We roughly knew that we were approaching the production in an epic way by showing a journey. But we weren't sure of what content to show. Thus, we each brainstormed and came out with an idea each and then fused everything together. We also planned a rough duration and the kind of motion graphics we could use for our opening and closing titles, although that may change as we progress through this project. It's kind of hard to explain through words, but we might be doing rough animatics, so I'll upload that once we get that done.

Homework for each of us today - think of a team name so that we could use it as our production studio name and secondly, to think of a title for our short video. I believe everything must have an identity, for that will keep the team and production spirit going.

I guess that's it for today.

The Journey Begins

The first day of MOI Project One.

The day started by us attentding a lecture in LT 25, conducted by Alan. To the least of my expectation, the assignment was to come out with a SD video of our journey throughout year 1 and what we learnt so far. From what the seniors told me, they had to do something with advertising and marketting for their Project One. So that was roughly what I was expecting. But the assignment surprised me. I guess it varies every year. Anyway, so he briefed us on what the requirements for the project were, after which we proceeded to our individual classes for group formation and further briefing by our lecturers.

Once we reached class, we formed our groups of 4. Initially, it was difficult to form groups because we all wanted to be together. But after much thought and discussion and making things clear that friendship shouldn't be interfered with work, we finally chose our own groups and decided to give our fullest committment to our group. My group consists of Wendy, Jeremy (Jem) and Gregory (Greg). Greg was absent today so the three of us had to make do for the time being.

We started brainstorming about what we should do for our project. Initially, all of us were quite unsure about what exactly were we supposed to shoot and which style to approach, although we knew that the overall video must show our reflections on what we'v learnt in the whole of year 1. After clarrifying with Wahidah, we came to know that it was more of an "open concept" and we could approach the production in any way we wanted, as long as it delivered the message of a form of reflection on year 1.

Thus, we started out by listing our strengths and how we could contribute to the group. Jem mentioned that he had a good eye for camera and could handle all the camera equipment. Wendy is amazing with drawings. Knowing her since day 1 of school, I just don't understand how she can get her fingers to control that piece of lead so perfectly to create those amazing pieces of artwork. She is also quite good with 2D animations. So she would be in charge of conceptualising, storyboarding and 2D animation. As for me, I am more inclined towards the post-production side and am pretty comfortable with After Effects and basic 3D animation. As for Greg, none of us are sure as he was absent today but recently, he was showing a lot of interest in animation and his drawing is pretty good too. So I guess Greg and I could be working together in post-production as post-production would have a lot of areas to settle. Anyway, that was just a basic brainstorming session we had as to what roles each of us should have. Things may change and all of us will help each other out in our roles as a team.

Next, we brainstormed on the concept. We came up with a few concepts as to how to approach our final product, some which included fast camera moves with special angles like that of Transformers, showing a kind of an epic journey that we went through in year 1 through the use of warm colours like that of 300, filming ourselves in locations which don't exist through chroma-keying, filming a skit through the use of flashbacks and black and white photography. We did not want to approach the cliche look of giving each of us 2 mins of screen time, after which the next person would take over and have his 2 mins of screen time. Since it was an open concept, we decided to think a little out of the box and come up with something that would interest our target audience.

Our braistorming session is still in process. We still have yet to hear from Greg and his ideas tomorrow.