Speech Video (so far)

Im a bit slow when it comes to After Effects, so this about half of the speech!

Get Inspired: Motion Graphics

Saul Bass's work on the title sequences for North by Northwest, Psycho and Oceans Eleven set the tone for the whole movie. He uses music that he believes will give the viewer a feel of what is to come. Like in Psycho, where he uses upbeat and suspenseful music, since Psycho is a horror film. His graphics all have their own theme, but once that theme is established, he does not stray far from it. Like in Ocean's Eleven, the whole story is about robbing a casino, so Bass saw it fit to make all the graphics out of the bright lights you see in casinos. The type is the part where you have to be careful. The names of the people who made the movie happen is important, and the whole reason for the title sequence in the first place, so it is important that there is some readability to it. He really did not play much with the text except how it entered and exited the screen, which I thought was a very nice way of handling it. The two title sequences that I thought played off of each other a lot was North by Northwest and Psycho because they both had a grid they followed and it was mostly line work and how the text came into the screen. The Ocean's Eleven sequence strayed a bit because it was more flashy and involved than simple lines. They all fit their movies character though. The moods were suspenseful and eerie, grand and rushed, and sneaky and upbeat. Bass had a pretty minimalistic theme when it came to his title sequences, except for the graphics in Oceans. The music in all of them though, was pretty minimal, just a series of staccato notes played in a pattern.

Mariene McCarty has an interesting style of her own. She uses real life video scenes from the film as her title sequence, in most cases at least. In some cases, like American Psycho, the first minute or so has the red liquid dropping down the screen, but it still goes into the beginning of the movie, while the credits are still running. This is an interesting way to go about it, because it takes a little bit of the focus away from the names, because the viewers are trying to see what is going on in the movie, while also looking at the names. She does a good job about remedying this though, with the placement of the text on the screen where the viewers would most likely be looking, and also having whatever seen she is playing not have a lot of dialog playing at the same time. The music she plays seems to have a lot more instruments involved than Bass's sequences, which makes it a fuller sound, but does not necessarily take away from the impact of the way the music makes us as the viewer feel. The moods very, like I feel disgusted when I see the American Psycho trailer, but the Safe video I feel more melancholy and a little lost. She does a great job of picking opening scenes that portray what the movie will be like, but wont give anything away.

For my own inspiration, I chose Monsters Inc.'s Title Sequence. I absolutely love this opening because the music is upbeat, the words and graphics follow right along with the beat and the transitions are seamless. The graphics in here are so fun and quirky that you can't help but to get excited about this movie. I really like how it jumps around from scene to scene, but it does it in a way that you can follow the entire scene and not wonder how one screen jumped to another. Granted, this is also one of my favorite movies, so that could make me bias to this opening too :)

"Still I Rise" storyboards

I had a tough time with the storyboards, just because I am not to familiar with after effects and what all can be done with it. I like some of my individual ideas, but the reality of me being able to do it will sure be an interesting adventure. Another thing that I will have to think more about is the transitions. I think I made my storyboards more like the book, and I really need to look at how one section will fit together and transition into the next section.

"Still I Rise" refined book

These are a couple of spreads that I revised from a last class. I received a lot of good feedback, mostly about tweaking certain things. So far, I have really enjoyed this project!  

This is the title page of the book. The original page was very big and flashy, and I received the comment that the title page should not give away or take away from the rest of the book. Because the old title page was as flashy as the last and most important page of the book, the title page took away from the last page. I like this composition a lot more because it is simple, but still has the rising effect that I put in all the other spreads that used "still I rise".  

In this spread, the old copy had lines connecting from the last line of text under trod, to the word "dust" on the next page. I decided to take away that line, as well as the one that connected up to the "I Rise" because it did not add any real meaning to composition or any added aesthetic value. I decided to tone down the phrase "and just like dust" on the second page also, because i wanted the emphasis to be one trod and I Rise.  

I also tried to simplify this page. Before, walk was repeated in a gradation, and oil was also repeated to made a bolder , more jagged, oil. I decided to delete the other walks, and just stick with walk being a bit bigger than the rest of the sentence, and then I changed oil into a bolder font, instead of duplicating it a bunch of times. I think this makes a cleaner interpretation of this page.  

This page has given me some troubles, but I think I am close to getting it. The critique I received about this spread was the word "broken" on the top and bottom was unreadable. I switched up the spacing of "broken" and I think it tuned out a lot better. The only thing I am seeing now is where the question mark is broken up, and now there is just two dots on the bottom right side. Not sure if that is to distracting or not.

this page has not changed to much from the last revision, I just deleted the little tear drop illustration and moved the soulful cries sentence down on the right side page to match up with the lowest sentence on the left side. 

again, I have done a couple different takes on this spread, and I think I found something I like. Before this, the HaHaa's took up the entire page. I think it makes it stronger with just the one row of it. Because Angelou did not write in the laughing part, she just laughed in video of it, i though it was appropriate to have it fade into the background, like an afterthought, but still have it big enough that people know it was actually said.