cool video - How to break into animation

This is a great video from a speech by Steve Hickner - Dreamworks Director/Producer. Here are a few things he talks about:

•  you may not be the smartest/talented, but if you're disciplined and stick to stuff until you get it, it pays off.

•  another thing that counts a lot is attitude - animation is a very collaborative process, so that counts a lot, you need people that can contribute with optimism and great attitude

•  if you want to get into the business, you have to take the iniciative and do stuff nobody else would do

•  he tells some funny and inspirational stories, like the guy that found out where the sound people got their pizza - he wanted to work at a sound place in hollywood - and got a job at the pizza place at night, so he'd deliver the pizza to them. And after a while delivering he told the guys he wanted to work there and he got hired! Gotta think outside the box :-)

•  you need to watch movies to get better, everyone is influenced by other people's work, the best people are.

•  never turn down a combat mission...it might lead to a great place (even if it doesn't look like that)! He did that...it's great to see him tell his story.

Ok, I'll stop with the bullets, just watch it, it's worth it and he's fun to watch :-) Very inspiring and motivating!

Camera cuts

This week in AM we learned some basics about camera cuts. I found it very interesting, so I thought I'd just share a few things I learned.

The idea in a video is giving the audience the „best seat in the house“. So for a scene, we might have to show views from different angles so the viewer can see everything that matters. For that, we may have to cut the scene from one camera to another. For example, we could first show a person saying something and then cut to a different camera to show the listener reacting to that. The cut should happen seamlessly so the audience doesn't even notice it.

When cutting, it's important let the action end. When something moves, usually the following steps ocurr:
1. Element is at rest
2. Reaches maximum velocity
3. Slows down and keeps constant velocity
4. Full extension/Impact
5. Recoil/Bounce Back

And to cut, we should wait for this whole cycle to end, or the audience would feel interrupted, which we don't usually want. Of course there are exceptions: like horror movies, were the idea is actually interrupting the audience's thoughts, frightening them, etc.

One example that was given was about ballet dance. There are lots of moments were the arms/legs extend and that pose is kept for a little while. So, if you want to cut, wait for that moment to arrive, include a couple of frames to let that image sink in the viewer's brain and then cut. You could make a cut in the middle to zoom in to the arms reaching out for example. But we didn't go into this too much, as it's more like an introduction to the theme.

Another example I think I should mention too is when cutting a walk, we shouldn't cut when the foot reaches the floor: let the body go up a little so that movement is completed.

Dialogues!
When cutting on dialogues we also have to find a point where the idea has been „closed“. There are 4 rules for cutting a dialogue:

1. You can cut on a period. One could make an analogy to the silence of the period with the element coming at rest again. So that's a place were you can have a clean cut. Remember to cut 1 to 3 frames after the sentence ended – they call that giving it a bit of air.
2.  Cut on a comma, which could be considered like a small period in the middle of the sentence. Then you could cut to the interlocutor to show the reaction the speech had on them while the speech goes on in the background. Like before, let a little bit of air before you go to the next cut. 
3. You can cut in the middle of pauses that last long enough.
4. Cut on a plosive. That would be a powerful more emphasized word in a sentence. It was explained that for a split second, there's some disorientation in the brain because of that strong word, so while the brain reorganizes itself, we can cut to a different angle. This usually happens in the middle of physical action scenes and very agressive verbal utterances.

So, except for the last rule, let pause hit, some air settle and make the cut. This way the audience always follows well what's happening. These are just the basics, but when you see movies try to notice how those rules are applied :-)

Well, this was only a part of the lecture, I'll come back to this theme soon!