The Dolly Zoom

"The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a "falling away from oneself feeling", feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes him to reassess everything he had previously believed."

Wikipedia - Dolly Zoom

This is the filming technique I was describing for the Gorilla-activation shot. I think storytelling wise its a great fit because it creates that jarring 'unreality' we want associated with the mind-world right away. Most people use the effect simply because it 'looks cool' but we actually have a need and purpose. If you've never actually tried it with a real camera, its basically done by dollying out your camera (a tripod with wheels) while zooming in or vice versa. Here are some examples:

Visually whats happening is the 'subject' remains the same scale and position in the frame while the background changes perspective and scale. This shift is unnatural to the human eye thus creating that unsettling feeling. I've never seen it done in animation - but everything is possible! (except sleeping 9hrs a day)

I'll play with this for the final leica reel - it should totally be in it. Hopefully this clears things up.

friday meeting

Hi all,

Tomorrow (friday) we will be having a meeting after story class to discuss the remaining rough designs.
If we have time after that we will go over any other characters (if they have been revised since wednesday) The purpose of this is to see what works, what people like/don't like and give suggestions so it can be revised for the design pack. (also as consistent as we can get it for those working on the Leica Reel)

Speaking of Leica, I am planning on working on it on saturday for a fair amount of time (giving myself sunday to study terms and such for World Lit) If the small group of Leica Reel people are able to meet on that day it would be good- basically to take the suggestions as given by DQ and Peers, and see if we can plan out how to make the story clearer and perhaps even do some panels up on the spot if we can.

Nate

Workshop

Nathan and I just wanted to let you know we'll be attending the After Effects workshop Wednesday at 1PM-2PM, hand in hand. We will definitely pass on any little tid bits we pick up.

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NOTES FROM THE WORKSHOP

1. Save all images for Premiere + After Effects as .PNG

Why? Because it:

a) is loss-less, meaning it retains good quality no matter what
b) retains transparency; no green screen needed!
c) smaller file size

2. Do not work off the network.

We already knew this part before, and for the Leica reel its ok - but as we get going on the more serious stuff we'll definetly want to work off a shared hard drive. Nicolas was telling us that he and Mario are working to setup completely seperate GROUP LOGINs for each group. That would be super sexy.

Thats it.

~Jeremy

tracking sheets

ALERT
Tony's email says:

TRACKING SHEETS REMINDER

I will be checking tracking sheets next Wednesday during the Production meetings.

At the end of this semester you will be asked to hand in a copy of your completed tracking sheets.

Everyone is responsible for their own tracking sheets. As explained at the beginning of the year you were expected to keep track of your contributions to the group project. There are 3 tracking sheets that you are expected to have filled out:

1. Storyboard tracking sheet
2. Design tracking sheet
3. MISC tracking sheet

Please use the columns in each of these sheets to identify your contributions to each area. If a task you devoted time to is not on the sheets use the misc. columns and the notes sections at the right of each tracking sheet to describe the activity and approximate hours worked.

Assistant production Managers are not expected to fill out any additional sheets but I will welcome any type of document that was used to keep track of workflow and group activity.

I don't know about you guys, but I haven't filled anything in. let's all bring our tracking sheets on monday and spend 15 minutes after DQ's lecture to fill in everything. make up stuff if necessary ahahha.

design pack assignment

Remember, rough design pack must be done by Wednesday, November 26.

Thanks,
Ran