Discuss about shooting postitions

The shooting crew asked me to help them. I advised shooting positions, acting and camera actions.

I was not participated in the editing process so...no, I did not know how the movie will be like until they give me the file. Some parts seem a little boring (the scene the guy drives the motorbike on the way home repeats 3 times)+ the length of the movie is too long (>6 minutes).

I think some of the shooting positions can be improved in some scenes.

For ex: the scene when the "house breaker" sneak in from the front door.

Suggestion: the better way to shoot it is that we can locate the camera on the floor (in this case) or the upper corner of the room. The reason is that both positions will give the viewers a strongest feeling of watching the scene through a security video camera or the realistic feeling at what they are watching.

It was: in this video, the closed-distance camera positions may give the viewers a less realistic feeling of what they are watching or a feeling of being a second person in the room (which is definitely not what we want to deliver to the viewers).

The most, best, awesome shooting position is when the "house breaker" run out from the building and accidentally hit by the "bike theft". Simple but maximum the effectiveness.
The first camera position, which is the actor carries the camera and shoots while he is acting, in this case was perfectly applied. This is how I explain this shot: "he will run, like he has never been run faster, he escaped (bright light from the outside gives that feeling), he got hit, and he felt, for real (the camera is roll down on the road to give the sense of something felt).

In addition, in my opinion, they can take several close-up short shots rather than long and wide shots. If the actors, as viewed on video screen, are acting something that viewed can guess. For example in this case, the "house owner" walk out from the house, walk along the hall and go into the elevator. The camera position should be changed to reduce the waiting time (wait for the "house owner" end her walking) and increase the feeling time (viewed can see the feeling of the "house owner" when she picks up her cellphone at the front door - with close-up shoot - and the "house breaker" when he waits for her leaving).

It is a very sensitive issue to put the name of the one not belong to the group in an assignment so it is ok for me!

Rating

This semester is about to end so I decided to use a poll from www.xatech.com to let you guys vote for "the most fascinating and elaborated post".

I pick only the good ones and you guys can also vote for posts that are not listed.
I hope you guys will me critical selections and use this POLL on all your blogs. If this POLL is on your blog, I promise to vote and let you know which post that I think is the best of yours.

Thanks in advance!

Get your own Poll!

Photo Editting

Sometimes, taken photos are not satisfied you. A little dark, a little red, too much light, etc.
The following slide shows are pictures that I took from my Nikon Coolpix 5700 (SLR, 5MP).
The first is the edited pictures and the second is the original pictures.

Compare them as you view!
Enjoy!

Photomontage

"When you face with both front and back edges, do not forget your friends"

This is the message I want to send along with the photomontage that I made.

Iwould like to share a little experience while doing this image:

1. This is how the background part look like (from the original image)

But how I made the whole background of the image? I copied the layer, produced more similar layers and put them into appropriate positions. The background consists of 20 smaller layers, which had been merged into a single layer later on.


2. Realistic:
To make it more realistic, there were 2 things that I have done:
First, the nearest hills (from the background) are zooomed to create close distance objects.
--> Result: the image look more real because there are "closer hills", "far away hills" and blured moutains.
Second, using lightning effects on the rocky walls
--> Result: makes people think that there is a direct sun light from from the above.


3. Frequently used tools:
1. Zoom Tool
2. Magnetic Lasso Tool

3. Lasso Tool
4. Clone Stamp Tool
5. Blur Tool
6. Eraser Tool
7. Magic Wand Tool

Processed in 5 hrs!

The World of Music

Figure 1. The Word of Music: 2D layout of artist-artist similarity graph

*Click on the image

Description:
The World of Music is a visualization graph made by David Gleich (Standford University), Matt Rasmussen (MIT), Kevin Lang (Yahoo! Reasearch), and Leonid Zhukov (Yahoo!, Inc.).
The aim is to create a visualization graph based on music artist rating data from Yahoo Music service.


Data:
From the 250 million ratings on 100,000 artists from 4 millions Yahoo users, during a 30 days period.

Figure 2. Data points embedded on the surface of 3D sphere.

Method: Layout Generation
1. Construct the nearest neighbor similarity graph.
2. Embed the graph on a sphere by solving an Semidefinite Programming (SDP).
3. Unroll the sphere for a 2d layout and visualize.

Figure 3. Zoomed in view of several clusters in layout.

Implementation:
Follow the link for further explanations http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~zhukov/infovis/The%20World%20of%20Music.pdf


Visualization Results:
Figure 1. Shows the layout generated by the system for Yahoo! Music services.
Figure 2 .Demonstrates the intermediate step with data projected on the sphere.
Figure 3. The enlarged version with some artist labels shown.

Provided information from:
http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~zhukov/infovis/world_of_music.htm

Moon

With a normal KTS digital camera, it is difficult to take such closer shots like the following pics.

Manual mode
-Shutter: 1/29.9
-Aperture: F4.2
-Focal Length: f284 mm






-Shutter: 1/2.0
-Aperture: F4.2
-Focal Length: f256 mm








-Shutter: 1/2.0
-Aperture: F7.4
-Focal Length: f256 mm








This is my most favorite picture! A clear Moon's shape can be seen through this picture.

-Shutter: 1/125
-Aperture: F7.4
-Focal Length: f256 mm



*Using Nikon Coolpix 5700 (5.0 MP, SLR digital camera)

Focal Length: The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly it converges (focuses) or diverges light. A system with a shorter focal length has greater optical power than one with a long focal length.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_length)

Assignment 2A

This is my assignment 2A for the Electric Imaging & Design.
I illustrate myself as a train. I have to carry many woods at a time so I start firing!
I little messy with the woods and the skin.

Water Beauty

I used the Nikon Coolpix 570o to shot the water stream. Last time, I only shot a single dropping water, so now this time I took a shot of a water stream.

PLEASE! Click on the image (to enlarge the picture) and you will fully understand why I took the tittle "Water Beauty" for this post!

Dropping water

I used to play around with my Nikon COOLPIX 5700 and this time I play with "WATER".
I found that water can create/become/turn to many beautiful shapes.

I tried several times before but no picture is qualified (shaking images, blurry), therefore this time I put the the camera on a tripod.

These pictures are not easy to take while I have only 2 hands, one hold the camera and one hold the light tube).

A few pictures below will express the proves for the beauty of water!



Figure 1. This is the best "shot" that I had ever took!
The main focus is the water drop above the water, which has created a pretty nice shape of a "p..".
This is 100% natural - no added photoshop effects.





Figure 2. For better illustration, zoomed focus area is provided.





Figure 3. My second favorite picture!
The quality of light and clear focus point of figure 3 is > than figure 1.
The only reason that makes it my second favorite is because it contains unsurprising shape ^-^ !





Figure 4. For better illustration, zoomed focus area is provided.
But how could I make such a nice light reflection on the dropping water?
Answer: using an one meter-white-light tube as the main light source + flash light from the camera, 50 degree and 1 meter away from the dropping area.





Figure 5. In this picture, the drop above the water is focused and make it the most natural (circle) dropping water ever!
Because the dropping water is focused + blurry background results in viewers tend to look at the dropping water other than the dropping wave.
The light sources makes real shadows for the dropping water at the back.





Figure 6. This time the camera focused on the dropping wave, thus provides a very beautiful dropping wave.
There is only one light source: flash light from the camera. As the result, the picture is looked darker and do not have a long light reflection on the water, except the flash light which showed the dot light at the bottom of the dropping wave.




Figure 7. The best wave-out from all the pictures that I took.
Two light sources as above but the light tube is 2 meter away.


Experts, please give me some comment on this!
Share your thoughts!
I hope you all will like it!
^-^

Practice with Fonts

The exercise aims to improve the way we choose appropriate fonts for each circumstance.


Figure 1. Font: Chiller. Horror theme!
To make it more realistic, I used brush to make "the bleed" on the grass.





Figure 2. Font: PlayBill. Wanted type!
You welcome to use this! Remember to put your own portrait! ^-^


Figure 3. Font: terminator Real NFI 1.0
I used the images from the referenced address to design these two pieces.


http://www.illuschoen.net/termy/termy_files/image002.jpg
http://www.tokyohobby.net/store/images/m1887_shop.jpg

CMA_Academy

I came to Nha Van Hoa Thanh Nien for the Graduation Showcase 2007. Chatsworth Medi@rt Academy perform this event from he 2nd to 4th March 2007.

"In this event, 14 students from CMA School of Communication & Design exhibited their commercial advertising works, which featured the corporate identity of the products and services of their choice, the advertsing design and their applications such as editorial, packaging, outdoor advertising and etc."
(http://www.cma-academy.com/Graduationshowcase/graduationshow.html#studentexhibits)
www.cma-academy.com

These are pictures that I took. You can come and check out at their students'works (quite nice) at http://www.cma-academy.com/Graduationshowcase/graduationshow.html#studentexhibits

Panorama

"... a panorama is any wide view of a physical space. It also come to refer to a representation of such a view - whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model."
(Source: Panorama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


This is my 1st panorama image (taken 2 years ago at a cemetery in Washington). It looks terrible because the position of the camera had changed during the shot.
This image was made from 5 images.


This time, I tried this.
This RMIT panorama is almost perfect except the corners of the image. All 4 images was grouped and really can not see the connecting lines.

I used "PanoramaMaker 3.0" of ArcSoft Software. I think it is the easiest tool to create panorama images.

You can try doing this by using the sample pictures below! ^-^

University Idol

There are a few comments I want to give for these designs:
This logo is design by a design company for the "University Idol", presented by Student Club.

The positive points of the logo are:
The sound wave was transformed into columns of colorful rectangles: fit with the theme of the event.
The starts above "i" contains a metaphor: the winners are starts.
The border - the pink line - has gathered all parts of the logo as 1 piece rather than an combination of many design pieces.


Designed by design club.
This is the front of the ticket for the final round.
The designer forgot to grid the logo (above the 2 starts, there are no spaces to breath).


This is the poster for the event. This is ok, I think!


Based on the main poster, I had rearrange and made some changed to fit with the advertising stamps size.


Is there anything that need to be fix, or any comments on the theme, info, color..., please let me know!

Veronie logo

I made this logo for the Veronie team (Coca-cola Apprentice).
As the lecture said about practicing in design, I tried to play with layers, filters (combined several options), and blending.

The first image is the 1st version of the logo but I think it might not work well with "gray and white" so I made the 2nd version.

Hate the Moon

Have you ever look at the sky at night, concentrate on the Moon, and jealous with its beauty? ^-^. It is white, light, warm and also bring a feeling of peace.
Can we hate the Moon? How would it be like, the feeling of jealous, of hate with such a beauty?

Lightning in movies has been used to dedicate dark side, bad things, so I decide to use lightning to express the hate!
The same with previous design "The Sun and the Moon" but different in: Filter/render/difference clouds.

The Moon was taken from the previous design. It was located at the center to catch eyes of viewers .

The Sun and the Moon

We lives on earth for so long that make our point of view to the Moon fixed. When think about Moon, we think about how it looks when we look at it from earth, so why not from the sun ?

I used the Filter/render/clouds to create the fire and the smoke. The moon originally is taken from a real picture that I took and it has been processed by using an combination of several filter options.

If anyone want to know how to create something like this piece, just let me know! ^-^ cheer!

The Sun and the Moon (An Inuit Sky Tale)

Sun and Moon were sister and brother. They always took part in the copulation games in the young people's house. But one night, as Moon was trying to decide which girl he would try to find when the light was dimmed, his eyes fell upon his sister, and he thought she was the most beautiful of all. He noticed how her clothes were made, and when the lamp had been put out, he found her by feeling his way.

He did this many times. At last, Sun became suspicious, and she took a little soot from the lamp upon her fingers. During the copulation she pressed her fingers against the forehead of the man who took her. And when the lamp was lit again, she saw her brother Moon with soot on his face.

Sun became red and hot with shame. She took a whisk of moss from the heap by the lamp, dipped it in the blubber and lit it, and she ran out.

Moon wanted to follow her, but he was in such a hurry that he didn't get his moss lit very well.

"We must run far away and never see each other again," said Sun. And at the same moment they became spirits and were lifted up in the sky, where they continued their flight.

But Sun has the stronger warmer light, because her whisk of moss burns clearly. Her brother Moon, who pursues her but never can catch up with her, has the weaker colder light.

-taken from Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimos.

In my design, I use black and white background to indicate when the sun and moon on the sky. The color of the sun is not truly red - to indicate shame - but lower tone to have a better recognize the "female" identity. The colors of moon are white and light grey with lines shapes over the surface to indicate two things, the male identity and the false. In addition the moon has been placed in a lower position because the moon can not catch up with the sun.

I used "Plastic Wrap" + "Craquelure" and others in filter tool to make the Sun and Moon.

Links: http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/alaska/eskimotale2.html

The Endless World 2

Our world is a billions-years-live library that contains all things that we can learn. Thus there are things that we should do to "get what we can".

As a designer, especially, RMIT designers, we should keep desinging things and posting things until the DAY comes (Well, after that, you on your own, I have no recommendation - I do not mean post things on blog is a duty but is a thing we should do to be good designers).

This Blog is reserved only for Electric Imaging & Design.
I also has another blog which is used for DIM2 named "The Endless World 1".

Enjoy my works and do not hesitate to comment them!