Blog Post 4: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

I'll start with some very exciting news... I have finished my final product! All drawing, photography, editing, and music-ing has concluded.

"About time," some of you might be thinking.

Well, I'm planning to upload the video to YouTube on Wednesday night, which is the night before my presentation (what a slacker, right?). This way, the video will be new to most if not all of the audience during my TED talk.

Editing the whole thing was surprisingly quick (albeit monotonous). I had planned out the length of each little clip prior to shooting, and this turned out to be very helpful in the post-production phase. I'll give you an example of one of my plans:

"1 sec: Balloon enters

1 sec: Zoom out, boy is standing

Draw --> 4 sec: Zoom in on boy's face, head turn

1.5 sec: Zoom out... "

And etc... I don't want to give too much away!

I think what I'll do now is post a few pictures and briefly describe some of them. The first picture below shows some cutout sunflowers I used in the second scene (that's the last one I shot). I initially drew these with watercolor markers and scanned them into a computer. After doing so, I printed six of each out and arranged them accordingly on my background.

Next is my uncolored character model sheet for a farmer (also in the second scene). Here, the character doesn't do much except scratch his head and frown/smile. So, I drew individual frames for his facial expressions and designed a sort of "action figure" for the farmer to scratch his head. The figure on the far left is essentially what the figure would look like put together. The figure directly right of that does not have the arm and was to be taped on top of the third figure near the head and the lower body. One arm, which has a sort of extension in order to keep it from falling out, will be placed in between the middle two figures and can freely rotate. I positioned double-sided tape so that the arm could rotate around a "joint", yet I could take the arm out when needed. 

This is a shot of my "movie set" (a.k.a. a small section of my basement) near the end of filming. I've got to say, even with all of the stress it brought, this project was extremely fun. That's right: extremely.

Next, I'll upload some stills from the video to give you guys a closer look before seeing my presentation (if you aren't in the morning classes, I'll post a link to the video in an update soon after my presentation). 

That should be enough until Thursday! Onward...

Now comes another issue... what am I actually going to say for my TED talk? I've already thought out most of my script, and I'm going to try to avoid repeating the content in my blog too much. My current plan is to have a 3-minute presentation and a 1-minute video, as well as some room to breathe and answer questions. I'm going to try my best not to go overtime.

Some topics I may or may not cover are:

- Struggles

- Initial thoughts and their changes

- What I learned

- Application of what I learned

- Stop motion in the movie industry

I have to say I'm a bit nervous. The presentations I've seen so far have been funny (sometimes accidentally... I'm looking at you, Noah), well-organized, and informative; the bar is high, and I have some work to do to reach it. Although my genius project is not a stand-up routine, I think it's necessary to have a few good jokes to loosen up both the audience and myself. Humor will make me less nervous, I think.

One final thing... I need all of your opinions. I've been debating about whether I should include a random joke about McPerlman. It seems that most people are doing it within the first three slides or so. By the time I present, at least 10 presentations will have had some reference to McPerlman, so I might just not put one of those jokes in. Serious stuff, guys.

I look forward to talking to you all on Thursday!

Comments for this blog (not even sure what cycle anymore):

- Kenny (Yellow)

- Jessica (Orange)

- Dani (Orange)