This year I began making short films using a combination of still photographs and audio. I had seen the technique used on the BBC News web site and was immediately struck by it’s effectiveness for presentation on the web. So far this year I have completed three of these short films with more scheduled for production, see the left side menu.

Perhaps it is the Artist in me but I continually seek to extend my skills and develop new techniques. Certainly I am very aware that the technology we have today offers opportunities that could not that long ago only be dreamed of. A good example of this change is the two opening sequences below, before this digital age it would have required optical printing at a specialist film lab.

The first is a fifteen-second logo animation test that illustrates what is possible using a single photograph, two graphics elements, some original music (all my own work), a computer, time and of course, an imagination. It came about through the combination of beginning to learn "After Effects" software and the desire to brand my films with a short opening sequence.

In this second example the animation was generated entirely in After Effects.

Both of these idents required a variety of skills to make and has a show reel page is the place to demonstrate your abilities I have outlined how I made this first one below.

PHOTOGRAPHY

The original photograph of the sun setting besides King Tor on Dartmoor was taken on film using a Horseman FA45 large format camera fitted with a 12x6cm roll film back. The resulting transparency image was scanned at 600 dpi, twice that required for normal print resolution but I prefer save to higher resolution for the original file. I used "Photoshop" to adjust the image for display on a monitor, usually slight changes in the levels and saturation and the application of an unsharp mask. The file is than saved in Photoshop's native PSD file format.

A quick word about choosing whether to work with a film or digital camera. Firstly there is no universally perfect camera or lens. Part of the skill of being a professional is choosing the right tool for the task in hand. Whilst a digital camera will often improve the workflow there are still cases when using film is the better solution.

AUDIO

The audio was recorded digitally and imported into "Audition" for editing and mixing. I use a portable Fostex digital field recorder for location sound recording. With this being a solo performance I used a single microphone, for stereo recording I have a matched pair of microphones - the Fostex is capable of both mono and stereo recording.

ANIMATION AND EDITING

I imported the King Tor photograph as the original 600 dpi psd file into "After Effects" to produce the video in 1024 x 576 PAL Wide screen format. Using the photo as the background I drew the two halves of the logo on separate mask layers using the pen tool to create victor shapes to improve edge smoothness. I animated each layer for the logo elements to come onto the screen and travel across to join and form the complete logo.

Originally I tried animated the text to appear and fly out of the logo to form "The Viewfinder Multimedia Company presents", not for the first time did I wish I had chosen a shorter name for my business! I tried a few variations but finally decided that it was simple taking too long and was becoming more of a title sequence. The idea of the pull focus effect came to me away from the computer as I mulled over what to try next in my mind. An advantage of working with layers for the various elements is that each can be worked on individually or you can replace them separately while keeping the other material.

Pulling focus - bring the shot into or out of focus is a classic camera technique - and once the effect was applied to the background seemed appropriate. I applied the effect to the text layer with a different timing and was pleased with the results. I rendered and saved the composition as a 30 second AVI format file.

I imported both this AVI file and the audio WAV file into "Premiere" for the final edit although I could have done this in After Effects. I did this for two reasons, firstly I am more familiar with editing on Premiere so I work more quickly and secondly After Effects seemed quirkier on my machine running "Vista". On the video I simply cut the video duration down and added the fades to the beginning and end and followed this with a slate. The audio I cut to length and added a fade down at the end. The finished video was then encoded to Flash Video reducing the original size from 1024 x 576 to 512 x 288 for display on the web.

In reviewing this making of a fifteen second video I am reminded of the quote by Michelangelo "If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all."