Close-up, Mid, Wide, 2-shot

All from Dynamo ep.1, by Karma Pirates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6AqhT9quA
(Everyone should watch this (particularly the first sequence, and the last episode) several hundred times)

So.
Close-up (1:42):

Mid (7:12): 

Wide (1:47): 

Wider (couldn't resist) (9:07): 

 

And, finally, 2-shot (12:21):

Film Review #9: Goats (feature film)

Dunno if I've reviewed this yet, but hey, new year.  Haven't seen it in a while, but that might make this more interesting...  Time boils memories down to the essentials, the memorables, and the general assumptions/gist.
K, so Goats is about this super-stoner kid who grew up in a little house with the hippie version of Fox Mulder and the kid's hippie mom, and Mulder's got all these goats, and as a family they've got a bunch of goats.  Then the super-stoner kid goes off to some normal-ass school, and he gets judged and whatnot for being such a country super-stoner, and there's all this stuff with family issues and tension and school and keeping your shit together, ya know, life.
All in all, I remember liking it, though I'm pretty sure Fox was running around as a naked old man for a bit, which was a bit unnerving.  The X Files ...  it just doesn't mix well with my mind.  Good film, though, and funny.  Goats are terrific.  Fact is (I think) it's relatable to most people, in some odd, twisted, metaphorical way.  So there, there's my short-ass review.  You know what?  It seems like I don't have to do more than this.  So the rest of this will probably be...  A brief rant/tangent about Occupy.  Yeah, that sounds nice.
I wanted to go to the after-school movie showing thing.  That's why I brought the damn guitar; I thought I'd be sitting around for three hours so I needed to kill some time.  But NO, Occupy has to go and (pardon my French, but goddamnit, this is MY REVIEW) fuck everything up by coming around and protesting n' whatnot.  Honestly, I thought Occupy had died off.  C'mon, we all know it, we've all debated it.  They had a purpose and then all the stoners, anarchists and party people showed up, shit went to hell, and then everyone started hating Occupy because they just became burdensome to society and kept squatting on people's gardens, crushing flowers and leaving a slight marijuana miasma in their wake.  Then they all puttered out and disbanded, and for the past... What?  A year?  Two?  All I've seen of 'em were a couple of old guys down on Solano sitting outside Bank of America or something for weeks on end with signs.  Maybe the only ones holding true to the original purpose...  And now "Occupy"'s back?  What the hell's going on?  No, goddamnit, I wanna watch a damn horror movie.  Instead I got stuck at home with family watching About Schmidt from the library until it got too boring/depressing for us (I'm sorry, I've had a long damn week, I don't need old Jack's problems plaguing my mind too).  Then there's the fact that everyone effectively yelled "DUCK AND COVER" when they heard the word "Occupy".  That's a sign, people.  Everyone's afraid of Occupy.  Clearly, they're a bit lost, at this point.

What I worked on today

Basically, I'm making a short animated film about a naked guy with a beard who fights for dimensional freedom from an intergalactic space-time bone dragon by pole-vaulting on its back and making it eat itself, hence creating a dimensional loop and overload that ultimately obliterates it.
...
Yeah, that's about it.  So today, I worked on a couple storyboard frames (not much, thus not going to show) and some CG stuff (I've been scoping this out for a while, so I already know how it's really gonna look).  No dialogue, really basic, stylized color scheme (mostly B/W, maybe some water-color-y shit thrown in there).  So, CG stuff.  First, created the basic model for the Dragon's head...  It's basically a giant empty-eyed skull, roughly avian, with multiple sets of beaks, the bottom-most of which has three hinges.  Its mouth is a dimensional portal (spatially speaking.  Like 1D, 2D, 3D).  So:

And here's our guy.  Really polygonal, naked with a beerbelly and maybe some flappin' junk.  Eh, we'll see about that.  He's gonna be more skinny than this.  A bit like Fox Moulder in Goats (2012), but skinnier, more austere, etc.  It's gonna be kinda insane.

I'm bringing in stuff tomorrow to work out soundtrack (all gonna be recorded with an electric guitar and some pans, most likely).  I'm thinking gritty, Western-esque music...  Lots of noise and distortion.  Some real Dead Weather kind o' hard, mean riffs.

Shutter Speed/aperture proj

Yep.

Vocal Rush concepts

Yep.  I was goin' for a groovy, slick 80's look (note "80's"; hence, difficult to pull off).  Then disco balls.  Then Marilyn Monroe.  I perpetuated that whole face thing two more times, with... other faces.  Then another slick one with a fancy hand, half-spread, like someone was doing a spread-eagle standing up on stage with their face up, mouth open singing, and eyes closed.  Yeah, and that dude's hands would look just like the one in the design.

Film Review #8: Pacific Rim

Yes, an actual FEATURE FILM.

So, I could go in depth about what makes this movie good and bad, but really, depth would just mean perpetuating the same sentence or two over and over.  What's good?  Stringer Bell, cool CG, giant monsters, awesome fights, good plot initiation (mostly), body (mostly), and ending (mostly).  What's bad?  Thinks too highly of itself and thus slurs everything in an overdone virtuous epic-music soundtrack (which can be really great, but not in every damn scene from beginning to end.  IE, Flyboys.  Awful movie.  Someone should burn for that.)  Plus lots of predictable, cliche plot elements.  Not very well-thought-out, depth-wise.  Everything's made overly clear to the viewer, like he/she's a 4-year-old with severe ADHD and deafness in one ear (IE Inception.  Great, until you realize how much it's attempted to appeal to idiots by blatantly explaining every even remotely implied thought/gesture/meaning).
Now, what's my real problem with this?  It's a classic half-decent big-budget film.  The fact that it's big-budget means it's made by a company with a ton of money, with a massive fanbase.  Unfortunately, these fanbases tend to consist most generally of hipsters and obsessive movie-goers who go less for the movie so much as for the vanity of seeing a movie, along with plenty of normal people.  All of these groups consist widely of people who simply don't appreciate films that require thought, and thus won't attempt to understand (if they're even capable).  This effectively means that while they sit in their seats monologuing about some awkward dinner with a friend two nights ago to the people in their general vicinity (not necessarily even acquaintances, just random people) they'll subconsciously perceive the general amount of loud classical music and explosions and the occasionally uttered statement thrown in that explains the past ten minutes of the film that they've managed to completely ignore, but nothing more.  Then, when they walk out of the theater chewing on over-"buttered" popcorn and sipping their Fanta soda, they'll reflect: was the film good?  What will hence come to mind is a sensation of bewilderment determined in intensity by the amount of loud classical ("epic") music their sugar-jacked minds have picked up on within the past two hours...  And this bewilderment and awe is what they will use to determine what they thought of the movie.  The louder the music, the more subtly deaf they will be, and they will sink into the delusion that they've been drawn into themselves by the deepness of the film, and somewhat closed off from reality in awe (though, of course, they're really just a little deaf).  Hence, big movie companies, to maintain these fanbases of noise-crazed, garrulous cretins and thus money flow, must make their films very loud, very "epic", and very obvious in meaning/plot.  Pacific Rim was one of the better ones of these.  All around, they didn't painfully draw out the movie dialogue by throwing in little summaries of what had just happened, and though the epic music/happenings were maintained throughout the film, there were breaks, and the epic music actually corresponded to a plot that worked.

So, yeah.  It was a decent film.  Not amazing, not mind-blowing, not deep, but cool.  Very cool.  Not necessarily genius...  Just...  Just entertaining.  Yeah.

Film Review #7: Grand Theft Auto V (videogame)

Ok, ready?  Ready?  READY?  GTA V is the single greatest game ever created, and here's why.

The entire thing is brilliantly designed.  I'm not going to go through every single wonderful thing about the game, because that would take hours, and hundreds of pages.  Bottom line is, it's ridiculously fun...  If you've played GTA IV, GTA V is like that, but bigger, prettier, more immersive, more intuitive, more insane, more expansive, more diverse...  I could go on.  Basically, they took the world simulation and blew it out of the water, turning the world into a massive clot of different biomes and weather systems (all dynamic), populated by numerous AI people going about numerous activities, with different attitudes, situations, and possibilities of response to the player, and driven over by numerous planes, helis, trucks, cars, ATVs, bikes, boats, and submarines.  Vehicles take finely detailed dynamic damage that can affect aesthetics as well as handling and physical ability (banging a wheel will deform that wheel on its axle based on the angle and velocity of impact, and then this wheel will operate differently based on this change, which means jamming in some situations, slower RPM sometimes, changed turning radii, etc.)
People are just as fun to mess with as before, what with the Euphoria dynamic muscle/balance/self-preservation ragdoll simulation engine running to the max.  Plus, when airborn, you can hit a button (B on the Xbox) to enter flop mode.  Effective for sending your character through windows and windshields, into people and vehicular cockpits, off ledges, onto distant, normally unjumpable locations, etc.  It's absolutely terrific.  Shooting mechanics have been tuned for greater intuition and fluidity, and hand-to-hand combat has been massively expanded (dodging, low/high attacks, etc.).  Driving's still a bit arcade-y, but nonetheless very fun, especially with the new hood cam.
The game has a massive set of primary and side missions, along with little events you can tie into if you want (impromptu getaway driver for two robbers, per say, or maybe vigilante and returner of stolen wallets).  Heists can go any number of ways, just based off what the player designs for in the plans.  I could go on.  I really could.  For ever.
Multiplayer is absolutely insane fun, plain and simple.  A stupid number of diverse, interesting game-modes, from traditional deathmatches to heists to Jets-vs-Bikes (look it up, it's wonderful).

Now, complaining.

1.  Multiplayer is buggy.  Expected, given it just launched and the servers are handling millions of players.  They're actually solving it quite quickly, which is awesome.
2.  Lag.  Can sometimes get below 20 FPS, but that's because I'm running on a goddamn pathetic excuse for a gaming platform christened the Xbox 360.  Doesn't take away from gameplay.
3.  ... I forgot.

Well, there you go.  It's the greatest game ever made, and you should play it.  I'm serious.  This isn't one of those games you play for two months and then begin to forget about.  This is Just Cause 2 level.  Hell, above that.  This is legitimately probably the greatest game I have ever played, on a big-budget scale.

I might post another review of this when I've had more time to complain and build grudges against the game, but...

Monday: Auguste and Louis Lumiere's Cinematographe (and other stuff)

K, guys.  Sorry, didn't know this was due at 1 until it was too late (my mistake), but if it means anything I was busy recoding an entire game to work in a newer engine, and pulled it off too.  Excuses, excuses...  Well, there's mine.

So, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, they're, like, bros, ya know?  'N their dad was making dough by makin' photography stuff, you know, for development and stuff, 'cuz it was really expensive and time-consuming and stuff back then.  So then, they see Edison, and his, like, Kinetoscope, which was like a little peephole TV, ya know, but, like, more like a projector-flipbook thing, right?  And Edison was making some real stacks sellin' em, ya know, but the Lumieres were like, but, it's, like, so lame, cuz it's so big and heavy and inconvenient, and you can only, like, watch it one person at a time, which really blows for, like, family occasions and stuff, or, like, anything with more than just you, ya know?  So they built their own little movie machine, right, called the cinematographe, and had it all finished n' stuff by early 1895, and it was, like, a camera, printer, and projector all totally fused into one mega-movie machine, right?  Because, at the time, right, such a thing was, like, crazy to most people, and they were all like, "WHOAH BROS!  HELLA CRAY-CRAY!"  But they were, like, smart, because they went and kept it all on the down-low until they had, like, a patent for it, so no one could steal it.  But they weren't done inventing, right?  So they, like, had made a lot of really cool, revolutionary stuff, and would make more.  Like, in 1907, they showcased Autochrome coloring, which, like, used transparent colored grains to filter color, so it was, like, a colored transparency.
    William Friese-Greene was another inventor of the same era and field as the above-noted Lumiere brothers.  He ran multitudes of experiments and experimental designs, seeking progress in the photographic field... but without much success.  He had made a relatively high-framerate camera before the Lumieres perfected their cinematographe, using a rotator pulling film in front of an exposure port via little pegs, but it only managed a measly 5 frames per second, making it rather ineffective and thus unpopular, whilst the Lumieres employed machinery somewhat similar to that within a sewing machine to alternate frames, creating a much faster framespeed.  He did, however, develop methods of stereoscopic imaging (early 3D) and coloring (Biocolour) which would ultimately bring fame and outshine the Lumieres in these particular fields.  He's disputed as "the father of cinematography," though this debate has proven precarious and heated.

Sources:
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/118046/Cinematographe#ref260592
    http://www.earlycinema.com/pioneers/lumiere_bio.html
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/457919/history-of-photography/252871/Colour-photography#ref416536
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/220320/William-Friese-Greene
    http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/508948/

Film Review #6: PARKOUR!demo.blend (my old game thing)

Yes, I'm reviewing my own crap.  It's just about as alien to me as a new film, just because of how long ago I created it, so you know what?  I think it's fine.

Anyway.  The PARKOUR!demo.blend file is a Blender v.2.49b file, made way back in the day.  It's an experimental parkour simulator in which one runs about, jumps on and off walls, slides along floors, throws knives, and punches or drop-kicks things.  It's entirely physics-based, with no pre-set responses to any circumstance other than standing upright on a surface given the opportunity.  To play, one uses WASD to lean, SPACE to jump, SHIFT to run, and E to teleport to a surface.

All in all, it's extraordinarily clunky, difficult, inconvenient, and horribly scripted... By which I mean haphazardly, inefficiently, and buggily.  It's a monstrosity of game design, really.  And you wanna know what the worst part is?  I was obscenely proud of it, to the degree of outright bragging and insult to the reader in the "Notes" section.  Along with that, I threatened anyone who dared to use any of the code, meshes, or anything else without my permission (weird, given most of the scripts weren't mine, those that were were obscenely primitive and terribly written, and the meshes were just cubes).

Thing is, it's not all that bad a game.  It's ridiculously fun, in a terrible, imbecilic, suicidal way.  Bugs, lag, and just general negligence in the composition make it absolutely horrid in an assemblage critique, but just running around is fun, and it works.

It has no value as an actual finished game-- the only way to restart is to exit and re-engage, there are no real goals in any of the levels, there's no menu of any sort, etc.  Just a physics experiment, really.

Anyway, I'm trying to redo and revamp the entire thing in the new version of Blender (incompatible code, etc), to hopefully make it somewhat decent.  I'm not gonna give you a link to it because A) it'll probably offend you on so many levels, and B) nobody who knows what they're doing has 2.49 anymore anyway.  I'm not even sure you can still get it.  Well, you probably can at the Blender site, but hey.

Now, some demo videos...  You might be able to find a download somewhere there.  I apologize, they're horrible.  The whole having-been-about-14-or-something-and-way-too-proud really shows.  Anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkz4OtbFGI4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogtjwt8CaJg

Story notes

As requested.
-
Protagonist- main character- has to want SOMETHING
Antagonist- "villain"/opposition
    *There must be a barrier between Protagonist and SOMETHING.

~Complexity~
    -Character's needs do not equal wants
    -Protagonist changes the most
  -EMPATHY-

Now, ACTS in a PLOTLINE.
Act 1: Status Quo state of circumstance
    *Thus, when change occurs, audience recognizes it
  -Inciting Incident: the thing that happens to character or the thing that character does that forces them out of the status quo.

Act 2: Majority of story ("why we came")
    Journey of character (figuratively or literally) towards the goal/breaking point

Act 3: Resolution
    "Brings the dark night back to day (most of time)"