NFT- Recording & Editing

Our initial idea being that the subject would walk through doors, transitioning from one time period to another did not work practically due to the layout of the house in which we were filming. Instead, we had her walking just from one frame to another across the screen which actually created smooth transitions.

To start with, we picked out the three most successful videos which were about ten seconds each and cut them down in order to create the smooth transitions we hoped for. These clips were placed together and we started from there.

The first clip consists of our subject, Caitlin, with a bowl and a whisk. She walks towards the centre, puts the bowl down and picks up a suffragette sash and puts it on, then walks off and into the next scene. We chose to make this clip black and white to reference the time period as much as possible. In the background there is empowering music playing as well as a separate quote for each clip being spoken by a women of the time about women. For this particular scene, a women reads ‘the ministers suffragettes who form the women’s social and political union are engaged to meet him to win the right to vote for women of this century’

We are then led to the second scene, where the colours are dull but not fully black and white. In these scene, Caitlin walks into the scene, puts on a jacket and proceeds to pick up a woman’s rights- she then pauses, takes a breath and marches on into the next scene. The short quote that is played in this scene reads… ‘We now have ten million women backing this particular measure before congress, that’s ten million women who are united through their organisation.’

In the last scene, she is happy and ‘bouncy’. She walks in, looks at herself in the mirror, turns around and smiles at the camera, then exits. The quote playing is, ‘Whatever you’re going through as a woman, you have the choice to make for yourself for how gentle and kind you are with yourself.’

We also gathered images on the internet of womens protests, and played them through at a fast pace at the end of the video to send a powerful message.

The title we chose is ‘WomanKind’, which is a play on words referring to ‘mankind.’

Animation In Blender

For my groups NFT Film, we decided to use animation as a part of our video. I made all the aminated clips in Blender. I started off by finding low-poly art models of Sketchfab. then imported them into blender. Once in Blender I used simple animations to move the location of the scene, to give off the impression of the character walking.

This screenshot shows the timeline for the character walking. Every dot/diamond is a different movement of the character to make him walk. The character doesn’t actually move, it just walks on the spot. So I would have to animate the background. He walks on the spot as it makes it easier to only move the direction of the arms, legs etc, instead of the movement and lactation of everything. So the character and camera are stationary.

This is the scene, everything highlighted in orange is what is animated and included in the scene. I added 2 keyframes to the timeline. The first keyframe is where the buildings start, and the second is where they will end after the move and slide backwards. It slides backwards to give off the effect that the character is walking forwards. Each 2-3 second scene takes an estimated 8 hours to render.

This is the node setup for the lighting. I used a HDRI which is a spherical photo taken in real life, and the program works out where is sun is and creates the same lighting situation for inside the workspace. The orange box is the HDRI which is connected to the right two default boxes, then I added a remapping node to make the horizon of the world line up with the horizon I made in the workspace, so there aren’t photos of trees floating in the sky.

The Street Scene

Overall, the street scene is quite small. The scene is colourful which adds lots of contrast. All the scenes use depth of field to blur the background more as the character walks forward.

The left side is the object view, without the colour. Where as, the right side is the rendered, with colour.

The Farm Scene

This scene is more complex, as there is more shapes and objects. There is also larger range of colours, ranging from red to green, etc.

The Mansion Scene

This is one of my favourite scenes, as it features our main character walking outside his mansion. It is visually pleasing as uses a lot of dynamic shapes and contour.

The Beach Scene

This is one of the most colourful scenes as it uses mostly topical/beach colours. It contributes to having a diverse location for the 5 scenes.

The Space Scene

This was one of the harder scenes to make as I had to add a space helmet to him, however it is the most extreme scene as the character is in outer space.

The Zoom Out/In Animated House Scene

This animation was made to replace the original shot idea, to use a drone to zoom into a house, but we couldn’t do it due to privacy rules. So we used amination as a replacement as it fits in with the online/offline format and style.

This is what the scene looks in blender. The greyed out screenshots are the view in shader view, where as the coloured view is the rendered view, which is what it looks like when it is finished.

The camera is animated with 3 keyframes, both for location and rotation. It ends still to let the clouds move in, which allows for a clean transition from this clip to another, using a white fade transition. Overall, this clip took 12 hours to fully render 120 frames in blender.

Overall, this scene is good as it ends with a clean transition, of the clouds covering the screen. The camera is mostly smooth which follows the exponential curve, which allows for fluid movement.

STORYBOARDING

To plan our NFT short film we drew up a story board to allow us to know step by step exactly what to film. This was really helpful in our filming process and definitely saved us time.

We plan to start the film with an opening shot of a door to signify the beginning of the journey of feminism and the metaphorical doors about to be opened for women such as the right to vote. Our second shot was of a woman in a kitchen cooking as she puts down a mixing bowl and puts on a ‘votes for women’ suffragette sash and then walking out the door. This is symbolic for after world war one when homemakers were beginning to join the fight for women’s rights. Their involvement on the home front made bounds for the women’s rights movement. Our second shot is of our model walking across a room, picking up a sign saying ‘WOMEN’S RIGHTS’ and walking out the door. This shot is inspired by the 1960s so the room and model will be dressed according to that periods style. This is inspired by the second wave of feminism where women participated in protests for equality which were made more prevalent with civil rights protests happening at the same time. In the last shot, the model, dressed glamorously, walks across the room, looks into a mirror and then directly into the camera and flounces away. This shot is inspired by the 3rd wave of feminism which alleges that feminists have achieved all that they wanted and women and now equal to men. According to this, the model is carefree and is emancipated from her sexuality. She looks into the mirror to show vanity. which is allowed by 3rd wave feminists as she is taking control of her own image. By looking into the camera she acknowledges the audience for the first time. This shows her confidence with her new persona and awareness for the current state of the modern world where women are free to be who they want

Contextual study 1: NFTs and digital art

Beeple, Everydays: The First 5000 Days. Sold for: $69.3 million

What Are NFTS?

Collectors and speculators have spent more than £200 million on an array of NFT-based artwork, memes and GIFs in the past month alone (March 2021). NFTs are best understood as computer files combined with proof of ownership and authenticity. NFTs have unique valuations set by the highest bidder.  Artists who want to sell their work as NFTs have to sign up with a marketplace.

Examples Of Famous NFTS…

NFT – FINAL OUTCOMES

We have two final outcomes for our Final outcomes, a 20 second video/animation, as well as as an image which is a montage of the different animated scenes included in out video.

While editing the video, we decided to make some changes that were not in the original storyboard. These were mainly additional edits, cuts, video effects and sound effects to create a more lively and fact paced overall video.

Below are the final products for the NFT project:

Image preview
NFT Image

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/7f2e5973-fc97-435e-8d97-632fd5209787

Summery

I think that our final outcomes for this project were successful as they carry out what we planned in our aims at the start of the project. The overall message of the video is to show the difference between online and offline worlds and how they can come together to become part of peoples social life. The metaverse is shown through the animated sections of the video along with the virtual reality headset worn by the characters. We displayed the metaverse similarly to real life, but with more freedom and ability to do what you want. This is also shown in the still image where the animated side is split into 5 different scenes showing the possibilities of the metaverse in the future.

Tapestry Research – occupation Tapestry

The Occupation Tapestry was the biggest community art project ever made in Jersey, and made by Islanders for Islanders.

Some parts of the tapestry are about a specific parish:

It was conceived in order to tell the story of what life was like during the five years of German occupation. The original idea of the tapestry came about when, in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary of the Liberation, suitable projects were sought which would have a enduring life after the anniversary –

The tapestry was a collaborative project between Doug Ford, working for the jersey museum, and Wayne Audrain, a local artist. The tapestry started off with two panels and had expanded to the full 12 panels that is is at today, each showing a sense of what life was like in jersey during the German occupation. Every panel was designed by Wayne who gave a guide on the colours used within the panels to keep consistency throughout the whole tapestry when seen together.

The Occupation Tapestry was first shown by Prince Charles on the 9th May 1995. After being displayed in the Jersey Museum for a year it was moved to a purpose built gallery in an old quayside warehouse on the New North Quay.

Today the Occupation Tapestry is still in that gallery. The thirteenth panel was created and added to the tapestry on the seventeenth anniversary of Liberation in 1995. This commemorates how islanders continue to remember acts of heroism and the victims of Nazism.

NFT – Recording and Editing

Our recording location was an open field on the coast. We chose this location because of the space to get wide shots and use the drone to record specific scenes. We recorded most of the real-life shots at this location other than the first scene of the second person where we shot it inside a house.

After completing the animated scenes we put them all into Adobe Premiere Pro and cut, cropped and ordered them to fit our plan and storyboard. We used sound effects, video effects, transitions and speed remapping on videos to create a successful final video.

Here are some screenshots of videos from our shoots:

NFT Storyboard

For our animation video, the concept is that half of the video will be videos that we record in the real world, and the other half will be fully animated in Blender.

Our plan is to have 12 separate shots to span around 30 seconds in total when edited. The first shot will be ‘person 1’ putting on a virtual reality headset while outside. The camera will then zoom out upward with the use of a drone. The video will then cut to a split-screen with one half being a real-life video and the other half being animations on blender. There will be 5 of these animations cycling through to show what the potential metaverse could look like in the future. It will then cut to an animated zoom into a house, where ‘person 2’ is seen with another VR headset on holding a controller. The person takes off the headset as the video cuts to both subjects meet in real lofe back outside. The final scene is a zoom in shot of them sitting on a bench together.

The idea of this animation video is to show how the metaverse could help people come together and could be a part of peoples social life.

Here is the storyboard for the animation video:

Image preview

digital image experiment

For this experiment, we decided to edit some of the photographs from our NFT shoot in photoshop to make them more interesting and engaging for the viewer. To edit these image, we duplicated the image we wanted to use and then used the FX tool on the duplicated layer to erase the both the blue and green channels on the layer. We then shifted the original layer slightly to the left in order to create the blurring effect.

Graphical user interface

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A screenshot of a video game

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A screenshot of a video game

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A screenshot of a video game

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EDITED OUTCOMES

Film Still Images

Whilst shooting our film we took the opportunity to take stills of various scenes, allowing for more photographs that tell our story of the crossover between the Religious and LGTQ+ communities, as well as our studio images. These photographs include scenes such as the couple in the church practicing Christianity whilst also feeling as if they have to repress part of their identity. Aa well as this, there are also still images of the dream sequence in our film that showcase the couple running through the field in a idealistic world for them, in which they are free from restraints. Here I have gone through the images in Lightroom and sorted through which images I thought were best in the sense that they best conveyed our message and were clear and in focus. After this I went on to rate each of these best selection of images, rating them out of five stars. Once I had done this, I then proceeded to edit the still images that I had rated 4 or 5 stars.

Editing and Developing

This still image shows one of the girls practicing her religion, reading through the bible, presenting another important part of her identity. This establishes a personal relationship with Christian religion for the character. In order to edit this image, I started off by slightly decreasing the exposure and increasing the contrast, causing a more dramatic setting which will later show a juxtaposition to the lighting of the dream sequence. After this, I then went on to adjust the shadows, highlights, whites and blacks within the image, by increasing the highlights and whites and decreasing the shadows and the blacks, further creating a larger contrast. Finally, I increased the dehaze and vibrance in the photograph, allowing for the earthy tones in this image to be enhanced.

This still image displays the scene in which the couple are separated due to fear, still however sharing glances at each other. This conveys how in some instances people belonging to these two communities have to conceal part of their identity in order to be accepted. We are aiming to disprove this notion that such communities should exist only separately. Here I have edited this image in a similar way to the previous scene, in order to maintain consistency in tones during the scenes within the church.

This photograph is a still image of one of our establishing scenes for the dream sequence. This is as the wide shot foregrounds the dream like and scenic setting, due to the castle in the background and vibrant green grass. Here this colour grading contributes to the film by matching the mood to the vibrancy in contrast to the dark slightly duller tones in the church. For the dream sequence I edited the still images by decreasing the exposure due to the large amounts of sunlight already in the photograph. In addition, I also increased the contrast and adjusted the highlights, shadows, whites, blacks and saturation within the image.

This sill image taken from a dream sequence scene displays the two characters holding hands, demonstrating their freedom to be true to themselves in this idyllic world, something they fear to do in a religious setting. I edited this image in a similar manner to the previous dream sequence still, to maintain consistency in the tone and warmth throughout the dream world setting also, in order to provide a thorough contrast to the church scenes.

Here this still image also from the dream sequence showcases another scene in which the couple posses freedom of expression in their sexuality, as they are seen holding hands once again in the doorway of castle ruins. By having a scene in this castle structure with the sunset to the left in the background, it reinforces the idea that this is a fantasy and unfortunately not their reality. I also edited this image with the same process of the other stills from the dream sequence, however this time only very slightly decreasing the exposure and increasing the whites in the photograph. This is due to the small amount of light entering the frame as it was taken at sunset.

This final scene of the dream sequence displays the couple holding hands again, feeling at peace with both sides of their identity, walking through the vibrant, green setting into the sunset. This again reinforces the idea of an idyllic world that the characters are imagining for themselves. In order to edit this image I followed the same process as the other dream sequence photographs, although this time decreasing the highlights and the vibrancy as a result of the large amount of light within the frame, making sure it is not over exposed.

Edited Still Images

These are the final edited versions of the stills taken throughout the shoot for our film, each showing a different stage in the storyline, mostly corresponding to our original storyboard, excluding the scenes of protests and riots which we will take from real documented events to add authenticity to our film. These images also allow for a deconstruction of the cinematography, costumes and props in the shot. For example, the scenes in the setting of the church, we made sure the characters were wearing white clothing to symbolise purity through the eyes of Christianity. In addition, for the dream sequence, the characters were clothed in more comfortable and flowy outfits, to foreground their freedom in self expression further.