CrumpArt

I’ve been working my arse off on the animated short film all week. I had my crit on Friday, which seemed to go well enough, although the RMIT network was down and I couldn’t log into any of the computers to scan in the rest of my storyboard so that people could see the scene I shot as part of a whole. I could have stayed at home and done it, but didn’t want to risk being late to class.

Here’s the clip I showed. (Edited to add: there was actually another bit to the clip I showed, but I must have exported the wrong file when I made the streaming video… but you get the idea…)

I shot it on the coloured cardboard with the intention of keying different coloured out-of-focus photographs onto each different colour. I want the whole thing to have an otherworldly, ethereal feel, as the story is based on an old star myth. I finally figured out the keying thing in Final Cut Pro last night… and it looks like shit. The photos lose all their punch and beauty, and the keying really only works on the cutouts that are in focus. I’m shooting with the digital SLR so that I can get better quality images that have more control with focus, light and depth-of-field. The whole thing with that is destroyed with the colour keying.

I worked for ages just to get one frame to that quality, and eventually gave up. I’m shooting at home with the camera on a tripod, two 60-watt halogen globes in my desk lamps and another fluro desk lamp. The colours of the cardboard change slightly with the shadows, so instead of getting one blue, I have about five different shades of blue to key, and the same with the red and the yellow. I’m losing too much of the quality in the prints and the shots just by doing one set of colour-keying, let alone exporting the movie file and importing it to do the next stage of the colour-keying.

The plan now is to either use solvent transfer to get my images onto 300 (or so) gsm printmaking paper, or to do a bunch of hazy monoprints instead, and then reprint the lino on to that and reshoot. I think I’ll go the monoprint option, as getting colour photocopies for the solvent transfers will cost me a small fortune, and I have no money already. I will lose the flexibility that the original plan of colour-keying gave me, but it will look so much better this way.

Edited again to add: the upside of reprinting everything? I now have a whole bunch of adorable cows and the patterned prints that I can use as thank you cards when people buy stuff from my Etsy shop. Give me all yr moneys plz.