Contexts of Practice BCOP100 - Final Poster - 3rd December

Thursday 3rd December 2015 

Course Module - BCOP100                     Contexts of Practice                    Lecture - Lucy Leake

My Final Poster Concept - Falsem Prison

Poster created by Luke Curno with photoshop assistance by Simon Childe (PCA Student). 

Overall I am really impressed with my poster project and I am glad that I chose to work with someone in order to create what I wanted, I think that I benefited through creating it this way as I was opened up to new techniques, effects, colours and just ways to make my poster look even better. I think that I would have liked to smudge out the outlines a bit more but it does give a pop effect, gives the impression that he has just been chucked on (into prison), not to mention the way that it pops out of the image, giving it a 3D effect. 

References 

Walk the Line (2005) Directed by James Mangold [Film] USA: 20th Century Fox

Contexts of Practice BCOP100 - Poster Process - 3rd December

Thursday 3rd December 2015 

Course Module - BCOP100                     Contexts of Practice                    Lecture - Lucy Leake

Poster Project - Research, Initial Ideas, Evaluation and Pro's/Con's

Research

I decided to start thinking about how I could re-create a poster, using the two Johnny Cash posters that I analysed for my research, as well as watching the 2005 film, Walk the Line. I got thinking about how I could show my chosen theorist Sigmund Freud as the topic that I choose to link back to was psychoanalysis, thought about linking the elements of my poster back to the power of the mind which is the second strongest power next to the spirit. My initial ideas were to create a black and white film poster to represent the past, colours from his previous album covers, I thought that it could enhance the idea behind Johnny Cash being "The Man in Black" From my research through watching the film Walk the Line and doing some searching on the web I worked out that Johnny Cash always wore black, when himself and the ban auditioned they were wearing black, the audition lead to the band being given a record and they always wore black after there achievement as they saw it as a lucky charm which is why Johnny was known as the man in black. 

Initial Ideas

I came up with a lot of different ideas and techniques that I could use to create my poster, taking different elements from each poster and bringing it together with my background research. I knew that I could make a creative poster, with great visual ideas. I started to write down a few of my ideas so that I could get a starting point for my poster, wanted to explore the possibility of looking at existing posters for my chosen area of Psychoanalysis, this didn't bring much luck which in a way made me feel good as I knew that my poster would be my own concepts. I started to think about the choice of colours to represent my theorist, the types of fonts that I could use, what kind of quote would be suitable to link Johnny and Sigmund Freud, I wanted to really think about the way that my poster could be perceived or glanced at, should I give everything away? Perhaps I should have a few hidden messages within my poster, linking back to an issue that Johnny had within the film "Walk the Line". 

One idea that I came up with was to re-create the Walk the Line poster, had the idea behind using Johnny Cash's body and super imposing Sigmund's face onto Johnny's, I thought that the title for the poster could represent Freud, positioned above his head "Could be on his mind" I thought that the Walk the line text could link back to Freud being a lone theorist, lived his own way of life. This would tie in nicely with Johnny Cash, as throughout the film he follows his own way of life which leads to a lot of relationship issues, he turns to drugs and drink "Power of the Mind" as he can't cope with life, needs help and the impact of these choices slowly leads to him crushing his music career and messing his marriage up. This then links onto another element that I wanted to portray on my poster, I have started to think about how and where I could show drugs, money, alcohol on my poster as I feel that within the film Johnny's mind is all over the place, despite having a wife and children back home he flirts with a lot of girls on tour, not to mention the love of his life being June who he meets on tour. Again from doing further research I worked out that Freud had a cocaine problem, chose to take drugs just like in the film with Joaquin Phoenix (plays Johnny Cash). 

Here are a few more ideas that I have come up with but I am struggling to portray these within the poster;  

Bubble Writing - I feel like this could be used effectively to look like smoke, the way that the text appeared on the second poster that I analysed - would link the poster to the film and also in a way it would link Sigmund and Johnny Cash together through there drug addictions. 

I thought about super imposing prison bars over the main character to give the viewer the impression that they are both in Prison, when in fact my idea behind this would be to link Johnny Cash back to the film, right at the end we see Joaquin Phoenix (plays Johnny Cash) in his house looking at the fan mail that he hasn't yet opened, as an audience we slowly realise that the majority of letters are from prisoners, after reading one of the letters we are made aware that a lot of prisoners are impressed by Johnny's outlaw image, they look up to him and want to be like him. This leads to him playing a gig at Folsom Prison, he wrote a song called the Folsom Prison Blues. However, Sigmund Freud wasn't in prison, through my background research I worked out that him and a guy named Philip Zimbardo's linked back to the 1971 Stanford Prison experiment which apparently lead to effects that were so dangerous that the operation had to be shut down after it had been going on for 6 days of the planned 2 weeks. Anyway I think that by super imposing steel prison bar shadows over the top of my image, this could be used to link the film with Johnny and Sigmund and Philip's Stanford Prison experiment together.

I came up with a separate idea of portraying a consistency of red and and shades of black, the red linking back to the romance which I thought would tie in nicely with representation of women (thought about showing an image of June but changing the opacity - fading and blurring the image out and putting her directly in-front of the way that Johnny is looking, link back to the male gaze). I thought that the colour black would signify the dark stages within John and Sigmund's life, which is then being burnt by a ring of fire - on the walk the line poster that I analysed - this would link back to the film when June was disposing of Johnny's drugs and she wrote the song "Ring of Fire" which the two of them performed on numerous occasions).

I have been trying to think about a lot of elements to incorporate into my film poster but I was really struggling to create the poster as I only know the basics of photoshop, through watching some tutorials and working on this poster, I have been made aware of lots of different features that could be used for future creations. 

Poster - Here is the poster, I have also created a separate post to show the poster but this is just a deep evaluation and I feel that by placing it here, everything can relate back to each other, great way to show my whole thought process and the reasons behind my decisions. 

Poster created by Luke Curno with photoshop assistance by Simon Childe (PCA Student). 

Pro's

I really liked the way that the smoke text came out, I used a specific font creator as I wanted the title for the poster to be eye catching and symbolise the cigarette that both Johnny and Sigmund are holding in the dominant image. I think that it looks amazing the way that I stretched the bottom of the F so as to look like a small trail of smoke and then I placed the trail onto the end of the cigarette, looks effective. I liked the title for the poster as well because I decided to put a pun on Folsom Prison, called it Falsem Prison because with the bars I thought that I had created a false prison for Sigmund and Johnny, not to mention that the poster wasn't used for the film so it was a false poster. 

I thought that the bars which were super imposed over Sigmund and Johnny worked really well to tie into the Stanford Prison experiment as well as the fact that in the Walk the Line film, Johnny played a concert at the Folsom Prison with his band. 

The quote that I managed to find worked really well for my poster design as it linked back to Sigmund Freud as it was his quote "We are never so vulnerable as when we love" but it linked nicely back to the film as Johnny was emotionally and physically being vulnerable, attacking himself with the use of drugs over his relationships with both his wife and the love of his life, June. 

Con's

I didn't use my idea of Johnny standing at the front, and then a projection on a wall of a guitar, I thought that this would be a great idea of reflecting that he is a musician. 

I had another idea of using a guitar in the corner of the poster, super impose within the wooden veneer for the instrument a picture of June looking glamorous, this could be quite powerful for the film. I could make the guitar the colour of red to symbolise Johnny and Junes love for one another and I could use the colours red and black for all the elements on the poster. 

I wasn't very good at using photoshop and so I struggled to create the poster, I had all of the ideas but I needed help to put my ideas on the poster, so I had some photoshop assistance from another student but everything on the poster, I have created from my research or I instructed where I wanted it placed. 

Conclusion

Overall I am really impressed with my poster project and I am glad that I chose to work with someone in order to create what I wanted, I think that I benefited through creating it this way as I was opened up to new techniques, effects, colours and just ways to make my poster look even better. I think that I would have liked to smudge out the outlines a bit more but it does give a pop effect, gives the impression that he has just been thrown on (into prison), not to mention the way that it pops out of the image.

References

Walk the Line (2005) Directed by James Mangold [Film] USA: 20th Century Fox

Images

Sigmund Freud


Max Halberstadt, (1921), Sigmund Freud [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Max+Halberstadt&oq=Max+Halberstadt&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.561j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 [Accessed 08 December 15].


Johnny Cash 


Article - James Tait, (2014), Five Horrendous Crimes Committed by Famous Musicians [ONLINE]. Available at: http://howlandechoes.com/2014/11/five-horrendous-crimes-committed-by-famous-musicians/ [Accessed 08 December 15]. 

Practical Screen-craft - 1st December

Tuesday 1st December 2015 

Course Module - BAFI101                         Practical Screen-craft                    Lecture - Stu Bailey 

CODECS/Bitrate/Chroma-sampling/colours/compression/frame rate

At the start of todays lesson, Stu went over the piece of work that he had set us last week to do, based around Codecs, Bitrates, Chroma-sampling, he used the lesson to go through the questions we were asked and to give a deep analysis on certain aspects i.e. different codecs, their uses etc. 

Codec is an algorithm - Compression and Decompression 

Real important to use a codec to make images more manageable

All digital format use a codec 

A codec trades off image quality for file size

Balance between image Quality and File Size 

RAW - Known as uncompressed - 40MB

JPG - CODEC - 4MB

CODEC used in a 600D - H.264 (variations for the codec vary which is called Open Source) Re-work it to suit their needs. AVC CAM, AVC HD etc. It has become the go too codec, it gives very good image quality! 

Pretty much all DSLR's will record to H.264 - Can fit much more footage onto the card - seen as an advantage- 

H.264 IS OPEN SOURCE, H.264 CONTAINER IS MP4 

The newest version is H.265 (supports 4K) 1GB - H.264, H.265 - 100MB - will become the new replacement.


Another CODEC

Apple Pro Res - (Professional Resolution) is INTERMEDIARY - Within the pro res there is a family - lots of different versions.      

CANNON XF100 will give you an approved CODEC - . records in .mxf - MPEG-2 open sourced by cannon for their consumers.

CINEFORM - High end codec that is used by Go Pro but it doesn't have to be used for Go Pro.

If there is a film that is going to be extensive, steer away from shooting on H.264 - you could light up the film on camera with lighting equipment and shoot it the way you want to - You could get away with using H.264, however the colours wouldn't be vivid. 

Convert video - Transcode from on codec to another 

EXAMPLE - PRO RES ---- CINEFORM (Putting our film in a better container so we can do more and get more out of it, great for colour correction.

DVD - MGEG-2

Anything for streaming or for use on the web - H.264 - Codec's need to define video compression 

Bitrate - Decreasing the bit rate would decrease the overall size and quality of the image. Variable bit rate is good to use for motion. 

COLOUR - Chroma Subsampling 4:4:4 - used for red camera's like the alexia, doesn't chuck much colour away. broadcast colour system we use for PAL is 4:2:0. Were aiming for a suitable colour of 4:2:2.

Colour Bits ^ Amount of colours 8 bit/10/12/14   H.264 (4:2:0) 8 bit (28)

Pro Res (4:2:2) 10 bit (210)

RESOLOUTION - SD HD 4K 8K

FRAME RATE - 24/25/30 - FLASH VIDEO 15

COMPRESSION - INTERFRAME / INTRAFRAME - COMPRESS A GROUP OF FRAMES OR A SINGLE FRAME AND COMPRESSES IT, TAKES THE COMPRESSION FROM THE FIRST FRAME AND WILL GUESS THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EACH FRAME, ALL IT WILL STORE IS THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MOTION AND LIGHT, NOT THE COLOUR AS THAT WAS DONE IN THE FIRST FRAME.

^^^ Group of Pictures ------ USUALLY ABOUT HALF A SECOND 11-13 FRAMES