My name is Ryan. I am a senior at UC Santa Cruz. I’ve been using blender for about 4 years. I’m a film and digital media major. So anyway, I made a short film for a class. Its about the relationship between 3 construction workers and their individual subject positions as told during a single accident on the construction site. To go along with the short film, there is a website that has the film posted and an interactive section were visitors can journey through the story, and explore the site using multiple images maps which I also created in blender.
Keep in mind, I only had 10weeks to make the film and the website and I’ve only just started doing character animation about 7 weeks ago. So, I know the animation is a little rough. Thanks very much, and I look forward to any responses.
you really know your way around the camera I see… nice story, good voice acting… you kept the story together nicely, and it was interesting right to the end.
animation was a bit stiff, but this didn’t bother because of the clever use of camera angles and fast cutting.
it’s definetely worth of five ztonzies…
:Z :Z :Z :Z :Z
Ok, so in the interactive portion there is an overhead view of the construction site. Now, when you click on a zone, the window on the right changes to show a more subjective view of the selected area. Now, in that same zoomed in area there are more image map links, so you can continue to travel through the site (though it is limited).
So the point of the “Interactive” website is to present the same story that is in the linear narrative (the film) in a non-linear fashion. Thus, when you select a character, in their bio-section there is an “activate” link. This turns on the time window. At this point the user can select particular times in the narrative and make choices as if they were the selected character. Now, the end result is always the same but the user can choose from different lines of diction (word use: To be sassy, or not / to move to location A or B). So, sorry the site is not that interactive…its just a different mode of experiencing the same story.
In the end, its all about the unreliable witness. When watching the film, the audience is in the subject position of Ronda, the reporter, because the audience is hearing the story as Ronda hears the story. Now, because we are seeing things different from what is being said or two characters are controdicting each other, its hard to know what really happened. However, it is the job of the reporter to take all the information and produce a story. The final shot is the super-abridged report that Ronda the reporter gives. So this story is also about how every product is a compromise of time and resources and that what is presented is often only a glimpse of what was.
Basse, thanks for your review. I definately need to work on animating characters.
Shoot. You know I don’t have a making of section. But perhaps in the near future I’ll add one. In the mean time, please ask me anything you want.
How long did the movie take?
Well, here at UC Santa Cruz we have 11week quarters. So, it took about 2weeks to plan the project. About 3 weeks to model everything and 5 weeks to key frame and render everything. In all I rendered out about 140 - shots (some were not used in the final). It was really a rush job for me. I worked alone. In the future I would like to colaborate with others to make a more elaborate project, but I don't know anyone else who is in to this kind of work here in Santa Cruz.
Yes, the film is visually simple. I really had to make everything as simple as possible so I could tell the story and finish by the due date.
If anybody is interested I'm going to post another film I made last spring. In this film, "FERGUS", all the shots are done with live actors infront of a green screen. All the scenery, except for a outdoor sequence, is made entirely with Blender. I hope to have that uploaded in a few hours.
Nice job. In times of “Bug’s Life” and “Finding Nemo” the characters were rough and the animating nothing too exciting (not that I could do any better) - but you prove that good story telling is where it is at. Plus, as was mentioned previously your camera work makes it all work so well. Keep up the great work!!!
the codec is not a problem, but for linux users it requires a little bit digging up the html source because page is made up so that movie is played via windows plugin…
so, you could have a simple URL that points to the movie files somewhere on the page too to help people out that don’t have quicktime player plugin.
oh, and on linux, mplayer played the actual movie just fine. (for downloading I used wget once I had the url figured out)
The file sizes are listed. On the web site. SITE 01 comes in 27mb and 42mb. FERGUS is 50mb. Hey, but I’ll put on a dial up friendly version in a few minutes…
SOME HAVE REQUESTED ANOTHER FORMAT. I AM UPLOADING AN .AVI FILE RIGHT NOW. SHOULD BE DONE IN 12MINUTES. Standard issue right click, save as. I think this file is about 21mb.
Great effort! Bravo!
A COMPLETE MOVIE!
The story is well illustrated, in a classic, fluid way.
The movie is well edited ( nice sound)
It’s not important the “not good” animation (unless you want
to compete with Pixar)
A single man in 7 weeks can’t do much better
I like much the building site “atmosphere”, nice colors
and movement
What i dont like: most camera movements and 1/10 second plans, but maybe you’re a MTV fan
Keep Blending
Bye
