Development

This week has began with readings around 'media democracy' and the 'press and popular culture'. The 2 books that I have found particularly interesting are:

A particular quote that stood out to me:

'The public sphere has been transformed as a result of changes in the mass media communications, a process that embraces newspapers, television, the Internet and the 'masses' themselves; in short, the ways in which public communication itself has been reshaped by the influence of the media'. (Meyer, Hinchman 2002:1)

I also continued looking at various examples of the 'motion comic' and found the animated film: A Scanner Darkly on YouTube. I found it particularly fascinating in blurring the boundaries between the animated and the reality of the 'real' people playing the characters such as Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves). The animated style enables effects such as the blurring of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) at 1:01 is aesthetically pleasing, playful and an effect that would be quite difficult to achieve visually using just HD footage. Therefore the animated style creates a more visually creative piece that at the same time, removes itself from reality (animated effect removes the 'real' element compared to HD footage') despite being situated in reality. The power of effects and postproduction!!!

Starting to think about which medium to use for my motion comic. I'm starting to like the idea of using still images for the background and using video for the 'moving' part, for example a person walking. I'd achieve this by using a green screen and using the Chroma Key effect in Premiere/Final Cut Pro.

I did a quick test in looking at the video effects in Premiere... and exploring what I had to my advantage!

Using just a quick clip of stock footage I found, I added the 'cartoon' effect to the clip. I'm really pleased with the cartoon style and it reinforced my idea to use both still images and moving images:

Exported Footage: mpeg

Print screen of footage in Premiere

I do however need to think carefully on which format I'll use to export the final piece, so I will need to conduct further experiments to establish which has the greater quality and best suits the visual style I'm aiming to produce.

My next experiment will be comparing and contrasting the effect used within a sample of still images and moving images. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be constructing a storyboard and detailing which 'parts' will be the still images or moving images so that I have a clear guideline to work with. This will also be part of the process of constructing a solid narrative for my production piece. 

I'm starting to even play with the idea of experimenting in changing the saturation to black and white like the traditional comic style such as The Walking Dead:

Talking to Phil today has helped me alot in acknowledging that I can use Premiere to create the 'cartoon comic' effect for both  the still image and moving image (layers in Premiere) rather than using After Effects. I will also experiment using After Effects to see the otions and quality it can produce. Thinking about the end product and how the user will navigate through the motion comic, I'm liking the idea of including interactivity within the piece where the user clicks to 'turn the page', so this can incorporate the page turning effect. This would be a possibility  if I export the finished file as a Flash file (FLV).


I'm going to spend the next few weeks reading the works of Chomsky as well as watching him 'in action' during his interviews to get a better understanding and also to gain further inspiration! I'm also going to research the 'movement' in a range of different motion comic, films and animations such as A Scanner Darkly, Archer and Watchmen to establish the different effects available to me as well as understanding the importance and the usefulness of green-screening. 

A New Beginning...

The beginning of third year and it already seems like there aren't enough hours in the day!

Over the summer, I've had time to reflect on my project... Not as much as I'd hope but still it's progress! My idea for Independent Production is based on critiquing Chomsky's theory of media control as well as addressing my fascination in the relationship between the media and its audience i.e. contemporary society and how media democracy can shape/influence the information (mass media) that society receives. We feed off and are reliant upon the information that is given to us whether it be the news, what's trending on yahoo or even feeds or updates on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

The society in which my motion comic will be set, will be a very pessimistic and bleak one, where media control has gone to the extreme. The question I want the user to leave with after viewing my piece is to ask themselves can they relate the now to the fictional world that I create and are we already living in this mixed up world??

From reading Chomsky's media control (2nd edition), the following stood out:

'The role of the media in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of a society we want to live in, and in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society'. (p9)


'The United States pioneered the public relations industry. Its commitment was 'to control' the public mind'. (p22)

I started to think how this project could be realized in a poignant yet challenging way. After scouring the Internet and hours laid awake in bed thinking about it... the idea of presenting my project through the medium of a motion comic came to mind.

An example that influenced my decision was the work of  Stephen King:

Work of Stephen King Motion Comics


Comic Motion Trailer (Stephen King)

The mix of animation techniques, visual effects, sound and narrative used is exceptional. The motion comic as a form addresses the idea of remediation. The traditional comic is being reinvented where conventions are being played with and explored using new techniques that are changing and adapting the definition of the 'comic'. Motion comics are relatively new to the media scene, and have arrived at a time where they are becoming increasingly popular amongst media producers and the audience alike as Albrecht article addresses entitled The Rise of the Motion Comic.

Another influence was that of the Watchmen series:

The style acknowledges the traditional style of the comic through the conventions of speech bubbles in particular, yet brings the narrative and characters to 'life' in terms of voice overs and movement for example that contributes to a cinematic approach in remediating the traditional comic form.

I am yet to decide on whether I will use photography or video to portray each scene, so over the next few weeks I aim to experiment with both to acknowledge which form is more suitable to work with. I'm aiming to use After Effects in order to animate my production piece using a posterized/animated effect, which will quite challenging yet creative in itself!

Currently, I'm toying with the idea of presenting the motion comic in the traditional comic style and creating an online motion comic with a page turning effect:

Comic book cells

Example of a page-turning effect

My only concern with this is that, within each cell, there will be different things going on i.e. movement and sound. Realistically, this wouldn't work as the pages would look too busy and almost messy. The user would not be able to make sense of the narrative... This could possibly be beneficial and I could use this to my advantage to reflect the notion of media control and its effect on contemporary society. Nonetheless, I feel that the motion comic would be best presented in a film sequence to get the best audience reaction as well as creating a visually creative piece. 

For my Birthday, I asked for this book , so I'm looking forward to reading it over the course of the next month!