Existence = Error - Final Film and Evaluation

FINAL EDIT

EXISTENCE = ERROR

by Alice Ball and Danielle Winter

EVALUATION

Research

When we began thinking about how we wanted to make our film, we took a lot of inspiration from the research we had done and the films we had looked at in class. Our concept for this film came from our short film we made on Digital Materialisation. We thought a lot about how the digital world has an overbear on our lives nowadays and how we could visualise this concept in a film.

Looking at films such as Piplotti Rist, Black Ice and Berlin Horse we gained an understanding of what experimental films are presented like and how we could go about beginning our film.

We also did a lot of research into articles surrounding the overtake of digital technology in the 21st Century and how the younger generation is now heavily influenced by things such as iPhones and social media.

We used some archive footage in our film as well, meaning we researched into old television adverts and the way technology was presented as a new life-changing thing.

Planning

As we had clear ideas to what we wanted to produce, I'd say our planning was really effective and made our whole filming and editing process run a lot smoother. We planned out everything we wanted to film so we had a clear check list, meaning we didn't miss anything out or have a lack of footage.

For our voice over we wrote a script of what we wanted to be said, over compensating so that we would have more footage to play around with and decide between. This meant that we wouldn't have to shoot more things in the editing weeks as we had more than enough to use.

Development

From the beginning we had a clear outlook on what we wanted to achieve, however this didn't stop our idea from developing throughout the filming weeks. We started off thinking a lot about archive footage and how we could achieve the concept of a digital overload. This led us to think about using a projector to project glitches and footage onto our own faces and bodies to achieve the idea that the glitches were taking over our minds.

Although we knew what we wanted to achieve and how we wanted our ideas to come across, the constant development of our ideas throughout meant that our ideas were stronger and the making of our film went smoother and we managed to try out a lot of different ideas before establishing what we really liked.

We also knew that we wanted a robotic voice to almost narrate throughout our film, so we did a lot of research and development into websites that would allow us to create a speaking robot with a voice that we chose and decided upon.

Edit

The editing process went pretty smoothly for us. As we had planned out what order we wanted the clips to appear in, it was mainly a matter of putting them altogether on the timeline and cropping them to how we wanted them, so the film wasn't too long and each clip got a fair showing.

We also watched a lot of tutorials to gain experience of how to use Adobe After Effects efficiently so we wouldn't waste time messing around and risk tampering with our footage and not being able to take back the mistake we would make. This sped up the entire editing process as we were able to just get on with creating the glitch effects and not having to mess around trying to figure out how to make them work.

Communication

Alice and I had really good communication throughout the entire filming and editing process. We were constantly discussing ideas and planning things together, so we were both up to date with how the film was progressing. It helped that we both had similar ideas to begin with, so by combining these ideas we were able to create something that we possibly wouldn't have been able to do alone.

We also improved each others weaknesses, as something things Alice was better at and could help me with, and some things I was better at. This meant that everything was flowing smoothly and we didn't really encounter many problems.

Time Management

I think because we had planned everything so well, this really improved our time management as we were really focused on what we needed to get done. We had clearly established our ideas and what we wanted to shoot, meaning we were very focused and able to complete our filming over two days. We also managed to shoot a lot of extra footage in case we needed it in the edit.

The same thing applied in the editing process, we had planned out what we wanted to achieve well enough that we had a clear schedule to stick to, meaning our time management was one again very good.

Editing Day 4

Today we had some major problems we needed to fix in order for our edit to be complete. We needed to finalize the glitch edits we had created in After Effects, however when we ran through our film we realized that one of the glitches stopped moving about a minute in. This would be a major problem as we wanted it to continue moving throughout to have it's proper effect on the footage.

At first we looked to see if it was key framed to stop at any point, then looked at the duration and they both showed that it should continue running throughout. With the help of a technician, he recommended that we render the file as maybe the edit just couldn't keep up with the playback.
Once the film was rendered we watched it through and the glitch still wasn't moving. This was so frustrating as it was the final step to the film being finished, and it was becoming more of a complex problem than we thought, as we couldn't find a solution.

Eventually the technician came back with one final attempt to try and get it to move. He looked at the evolution settings of the fractal noise edit, and reset them. This made the glitch begin to move again throughout !! It was caused due to the equation we had entered previously, causing the effect to stop at a certain point. What seemed to be such a complex problem was solved with such a simple solution!

Finally we had to change the frame size of our project, as we realized that it was slightly too small and didn't fit the entire screen. This was easily changed in Adobe Premiere Pro, and then we just re-imported the main footage back into our Adobe After Effects composition.

We finished the edit by watching the whole film through once more, double checking that all the effects were working smoothly, and the film looked how we wanted it to. Then, once we were happy with it, we rendered the final edit.

Overall, I am really pleased with how the editing process went. I think because we had a clear plan of what we wanted to achieve, it made the whole process run so much smoother and allowed us to be more organised and focused. I am really pleased with the outcome of the film and how it looks, I think it really captures our idea of the digital overload and experimental film.

Alice and I made a great team and we are really proud of our film.

Editing Day 3

Today's mission was to finalize the edit of our film after our tutorial with Anne, showing her what we had created so far. She was pleased with what we had done so far, so we got the go ahead to being editing glitch effects onto our film in Adobe After Effects.

We found a tutorial on YouTube that showed us how to create some really cool effects over our footage, so we followed it closely making adaptions to suit our film.

The video was very complex to follow since it was quite advanced in After Effects, however after a lot of stress and redoing certain elements, we managed to create some glitch effects we were really happy with.

The glitch effects came to 11 layers in After Effects, all using different skills and effects such as:

• mask layers
• editing the hue
• editing the curve
• fractal noise
• CC Griddler
• editing the saturation

This particular tutorial was really good as it showed us how to create the effects for many different glitches, rather than having the same one continuously throughout.

Involved in this tutorial there were some equations we had to add into the program layers, which was very daunting at first as we had never done anything like this before. However from following the tutorial and banging our heads together we managed to make it work and it looked really good.

The screenshots below show some of the red distorted footage glitches we created, that really fit in with our theme of digital overload.
This was achieved by adding in some fractal noise and changing the hue to 100% on red. From the screenshots it almost looks like a horror film.

We are still in the process of finalizing the glitch edits and making sure they run smoothly throughout the film, however so far we are really pleased with the outcome and what we have achieved, teaching ourselves new skills along the way.

Editing Day 2

Today our main focus was adding the audio to our film. Our main audio for our film was a robotic voice over that we planned a script for (shown in a previous blog post.) We had a selection of these audio clips that we had to listen to and decide which ones we wanted to use and which ones were relevant to certain sections of the film.

We also had a backing track that Alice put together on Adobe Audition consisting of old Microsoft sounds that she edited to sound really creepy and distorted. We decided to have this running throughout so that the film has an actual backing track and isn't just silent in places where there is no robotic voice.

After we had organized the audio, we watched the film back entirely and were really happy with the outcome we had created. The next step was to transfer the project into Adobe After Effects in order to create the glitch edits on top of our footage. 

Editing Day 1

Today was our first day editing our experimental film together using Adobe Premiere Pro. We decided the best way to approach our edit was to create some sort of structure for what we wanted to do, so that we weren't going in with no idea how we wanted the film to come together.

We also wrote down the steps as we went along, so we could keep track of what we had done, and what we still needed to do. Writing this alongside the structure of the film was really helpful because it kept us organized throughout.

The beginning of the whole process was to scale all our clips to the frame size. We followed this up by unlinking the audio, as we have chosen an external audio track, made by Alice on Adobe Audition. 

The main focus of organizing the clips was cross cutting between footage to get the structure we wanted. We also played around with layering certain clips on top of each other and fiddling with the opacity to see how weird it would look and what different effects we could achieve.

Our plan to continue editing is to edit some glitches over the top of all of our footage to create the desired glitch effect that we want. Watching tutorials on youtube will help us out with this step. We also need to sort out the audio now that we have the structure of the film, as we didn't want this step to interrupt our structure at first.

Experimental Film - Further Development

During the first day of filming we were thinking about our concept being how the digital world is taking over your life, and how it is invading our minds. From this we came up with the idea of attempting to project the computer screen onto our faces, as it would achieve this idea of the digital world taking over, and becoming a part of us.

We attempted this by plugging Alice's computer into the tv monitor. I sat in front of it to try and get the light projection over my face, however it didn't really work as we had hoped.

Then I suggested that we try using my projector to project the content onto our faces. We decided to trial these ideas before our second day of shooting tomorrow, so we could get a rough idea of what we would be able to film.

We compiled a list of things we would want to project;

• Project social media platforms, facebook, twitter, tumblr 
• Search bar on forehead 
• Play glitching videos over face Become emojis in the end 
• Evie over our face 
• Chat room messages (you can see what theyre writing)
• See you scrolling through sites on their face 
• Searching for help to get away 
• Towards the end show bad sides of the internet and the dark net 
• Weird computer advert Danielle showed Archive footage on face

We then did a trial run of some of these ideas to see if this whole concept would work.

HAPPY EMOJI

SAD EMOJI

HAPPY EMOJI (EYES CLOSED)

SAD EMOJI (EYES CLOSED)

SEARCH BAR ON FOREHEAD

ERROR 

COMPUTER 

EVIEBOT

EVIEBOT

Our trials proved that this idea can work, however when we actually get to film tomorrow we will adjust the angle and the zoom of the projector. We will still glitch this footage in post production, and maybe saturate the colours to achieve our desired effects. 

Experimental Film - Day 1

Today was the beginning of our shooting week. Alice and I had a clear structure of what we wanted to achieve on our days of filming. We plan to get most of our filming done in the first two days and due to the nature of our film it's mainly going to come together in post production, and as Alice and I are the only crew members we don't have to rely on anyone else's availability.

As we wanted to use archive footage throughout our film, we began the day by finding appropriate videos that related to our theme and idea.

1.  A compilation of old tv adverts for the computer company Commodore.

We probably won't use the entirety of this clip, but there are some parts we will take from it and use in our own film. This advert shows the development of old computers and the adverts that were put out to attract the public. It's interesting to hear the selling points they used to try and draw people in, and the simplicity of the technology compared to what we have today. 

2. Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac in 1984

 

This video is useful because it shows how technology has developed over the years. If you look at the variety of Mac's you can buy from Apple nowadays, they are so much more advanced and show a great development from the one presented in this video.

3. Centel first mobile phone advert 1989

Similar to how we looked at the development of the Mac, we wanted to look into old adverts for mobile phones. This advert clearly displays the size of the phone, however I'm not sure if we'll use it in our film just because of how cinematic it is.

4. Gameboy Advert 1992

Thinking about different technology, we also picked a Gameboy advert that features real people but also still images manipulated to be playing with a Gameboy. We thought this would be an interesting advert to glitch as the footage itself is kind of strange already, and glitching it would make it even weirder.

ELEMENT OF GLITCH

Another key aspect of our film that will come together in the post production is the element of glitching the footage to give it a really 'digital overload' effect. We did some research into glitch art videos to get some inspiration for what we can create.

Below are some links for videos we found on Vimeo relating to glitch art;

https://vimeo.com/67177221

https://vimeo.com/42798760

https://vimeo.com/48861899

https://vimeo.com/14702632

ROBOTIC VOICE OF 'GOD'

We also really love the idea of having a digital voiceover that we can manipulate to sound really creepy, similar to the voice of Eviebot that we used in our short film before. 

We searched for several websites that could do this but eventually came across one called Oddcast that not only allowed a online bot to speak what you type, but it also allowed us to add effects to the voice and change the voice completely.

Below is a video showing what this website can do. We used the effect called duration which made her voice sound really robotic. 

 

We proceeded to write out a script of what we wanted to make the bot say, and then recorded this footage.

We wanted her to say things that relate to the idea of a Digital Overload, looking at articles for research to get inspiration for the script.

Script for the AI

• You are being watched
• Slide to unlock
• Digital overload is now central to the human condition
• Our brains are wired
• You have forgotten where the off button is 
• Are you feeling overwhelmed?
• Just check the internet for five minutes
• Control alt delete 
• Escape 
• You cannot escape 
• You have no identity without the internet 
• Who are you without the internet?
• You’re hiding behind a screen 
• Don’t be afraid we’re all watching you 
• You let the world comment on your existence 
• Hashtag no escape 
• You have a notification…
• Share your location with me 
• Don’t you trust me?
• Lol, lmao, omfg, fml

Experimental Film Research and Development

RESEARCH

In order to progress with the coming together of our film I did some research on articles relating to the idea of Digital Overload. Some of the results were really interesting and made me think about different angles we could take for the film, thinking about ideas that are relevant to the current generation.

Why Digital Overload Is Now Central To The Human Condition
https://singularityhub.com/2016/01/15/why-grappling-with-digital-overload-is-now-part-of-the-human-condition/
This article discusses the idea that we are now so reliant on technology that it has become essential to us in every day life.
This is interesting because so many young people now have smartphones and are glued to screens all day long, choosing this over going outside and leaving their phones (etc) behind.  It could change the way the younger generation is growing up, as they are more reliant on technology than ever.

Digital Overload and the Curation Crossroads
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/05/digital_overload_and_the_curat.html
Discussing the ideas of micro-publishing and how there has been an overload of information from so many sources. 

Unplug And Reboot Your Creativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00tTjaC7uZw
Caroline Giegerich's talks about digital overload as it affects our creative thinking. Through her own battle with digital addiction, she lays the stage for the effects on the brain and discusses how to detox to unleash change in our society.

Smartphones Are Really Stressing Out Americans

http://time.com/4680067/stress-smartphones-anxiety/

An article about how people feel the need to be constantly checking their phones and this is raising stress levels. Also the stress that social media creates, and having everything right at your fingertips.

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

We want to create a film that features a lot of digital manipulation and saturated colours, leaving it very suggestive and to be interpreted by its audience, like other experimental films such as Berlin Horse and Black Ice.

Our own concept is to display how we are disconnecting ourselves with the real world due to the fact we are so obsessed and overtaken by technology in our lives. We are also going to take influence from our Digital Materialism short film that Alice and I made previously, as we want this film to almost be an expansion from that.

Our goal is to take people away from reality when they watch our film, and make them feel overloaded by the technology as the screen will be very bright and colourful, with the almost robotic voice over. 

TECHNICAL AND CREATIVE SKILLS

We will probably do all of our filming on a DSLR camera, as there isn’t really any need for a bigger film camera.

In the editing process we will watch tutorials to teach ourselves how to glitch video footage, as this is an effect we want to feature on our final work. We also want to use other effects such as saturating the colours rapidly throughout the film, and also having the screen appear jolty or as if it is flickering. This will help us create the desired effect of a digital overload.

We also thought about attempting the slit scan effect, which we have watched videos on. This could bring a different feel to our video and we are willing to try it out to see if we can make it work.

For sound we might use a voiceover, almost trance like, and edit it to make it sound more robotic to have it repeat throughout the film, like we did in our Digital Materialisation short film. This idea came to us when we were thinking about technology such as Siri (iPhone) and Alexa (Amazon). How these robotic voices interact with us and take commands from us, but are also able to have a short conversation with us. Thinking about how these technologies already exist they are only going to progress and get more involved with our lives, which is scary, so we thought having an almost robotic voice over would be a good representation of these technologies.

SELF MANAGEMENT

Alice and I are very good with our time management and communicate frequently so we can make sure we are following a tight schedule during the filming week to get all of our filming complete.

We plan to make use of all of the filming days efficiently, as our film is going to come together properly during the filming and editing process. As we both have good availability this shouldn’t be a problem.

We have already been doing a lot of self-directed study, mostly presented on our blogs.