Critical review - The Transport Museum in Glasgow, Zaha Hadid and the Tall Ship

I spent the weekend in Glasgow and visited the Transport Museum, designed by Zaha Hadid.....and the Tall Ship 'Glenlee' which is situated directly outside the entrance of the museum.

The two attractions, look at first sight, as if they have nothing in common....but having found the concept top shot (as below) I can see how the Transport Museum looks to be an interpretation of waves, water and refracted light, leading to the shore where the boat is moored.

 I didn't get that impression whilst inside the building, but the concept, now having seen the exterior top view, makes more sense.

First we had a look around the Tall Ship, which is moored directly adjacent to the entrance of the museum. It reminded me of the contrast of the Royal Yacht in Leith, being situated directly alongside the Debenhams department store!

I was taken aback once we had gone below deck, as the space was enormous, and the curvature of the hull was extensive. The interior was so huge compared to the size of the deck that I wasn't entirely convinced that we were still inside the actual boat. Dr Who's Tardis came to mind.

The smell of varnish was wonderful, and I loved the contrast of one minute being surrounded by waxed timber, wooden beams, sugar sacks and jute, to the next minute being surrounded by molded ceiling panels, glass and steel.

The interior of the Transport Museum has been treated in a very specific pale green. All moldings, handrails, vents, air conditioning panels, conduit, ceiling panels, no matter what the finish, are all coated in the exact same colour.....pale Hospital Green. The colour reminded me of the 1920's and 1930's and sanitoriums and war museums. Interested to note that this colour, whilst definitely making a statement, didn't detract from the displays. The atmosphere it created only added to the 'historical' context of the transport showcased inside - and made the exterior completely contrast to the interior.

I particularly love this shot, where the Tall Ship is reflected in the glass, and the 'waves' (almost like sound waves, or heartbeat waves) crash over the top....

Critical Review - The Heat 2013

As part of my ongoing reflective practice, and following our lecture on the three C's of Cinematography, I have been studying and reviewing movies....from all genres, tones and styles...

This week I watched 'The Heat', which is a buddy cop comedy with Sandra Bullock and Mellisa McCarthy...

The editing is great. Very fast and the story moves along at a great pace. McCarthy has not only been given some brilliant and coarse dialogue, but her delivery and sarcasm is hilarious.

It was interesting to note that the stereotypical 'beauty' (Bullock), when portrayed as uptight and rigid, became less and less attractive as the movie progressed.

And conversely, the more McCarthy's character delivered ferocious come backs and took absolutely no nonsense from anyone, the more attractive she became...

I believe that confidence is a key factor in attractiveness. 

Conference Presentation

Conference presentation for our Advance Production module.

Good feedback today on the conference presentation; with a possible idea for a future event based in the heart of Dundee...!

Lip sync - shot 8. Going Live!

Lip Sync for shot 8....on Easter Sunday.....what a funny bunny....

Ongoing reflective practice, interviews and external examiner feedback

I had some great feedback during my one to one with our external examiner Han Ter Pak and Brendan Body this week.
I can see that it can all feed into and form part of my ongoing reflective practice.

Brendan said he'd been thinking of an idea to incorporate into my final film...... a seed that drops from the flower, that the child offers to the ice people....and that seed, in turn, grows into the flower as seen in the final frames of the film....

As part of our ongoing reflective practice, I've also been reviewing and making a transcript of the interview I held, with Steve Sweeney of Barnardo's Rollercoaster Service in Dundee. They help children deal with bereavement.

This week we are to present our final conference ideas in the lecture theatre; and our conference presentation includes all of our findings and objectives to date. It's been interesting to review my interview notes and to see that the valid points that came from that, can tie in with Brendan's idea and my ongoing ideas...
I am going to do some 3D CGI tests, as part of my practical research methodology, and will experiment with CGI sunlight shining through back lit ice.
I am particularly drawn to the idea of the ice people having a sunlit spot in their forehead and heart, as visual metaphor to represent 'spirit' and an ongoing connection between the bereaved and those that have passed on.
This visual idea will also incorporate the 'four tasks' involved in 'mourning', as noted below in my slide, that Steve Sweeney mentioned during the interview....

Lip Sync for shots 23, 26 and 27a - Going Live!

Lip Sync for the Baby Sylvanian Family Rabbit...

Great fun today animating the primary animation for the lip sync shapes, and then the secondary animation for the pacifier...

I was able to copy paste the previous key frame for the pacifier and adjust it slightly on all three 

X, Y Z axis, using the graph editor and also by eye, to make it jiggle around and move in and out of the rabbit's mouth; independent to the lip sync shapes (Pacifier in Outliner, Perspective view and graph editor circled in yellow above). Key frames are indicated by the red lines, shown on the timeline, along with the green wave file of the audio.

The blend shapes for the mouth lip sync and facial expressions are great...plenty of them and lots of options for animating...

The three following clips took about 45 mins each to animate and lip sync....

Maya, me and the Power Loader!

I expected that changing from using AutoCAD to Maya would be similar to say, driving an automatic car for years and swapping to a manual gearbox...

No.

Welcome to Formula One racing!

And today.....I found that I was actually 'driving' (animating) without thinking about which labyrinth of menus I was in, which interface I should have selected, which drop down menu I happened to find myself in, which attribute channel; lambert; node and hypershade vortex I needed to be in, what layer activation should be on, which general editor tab I needed to be in and which audio import command I should be using....

I must have done some of it automatically and Maya wasn't the threatening, mysterious myriad of complexity that it usually is...

I feel like Sigourney Weaver's character 'Ripley' in Alien, when she climbs into the Power Loader and says to the Alien "Get away from her you b****"!"

Ha! Oh Maya!!