Project 4 - Programming ALMOST Done!

After hours of tedious programming trying to communicate arduino with processing I have finally succeeded in my mission. This aspect was the main feature of our project because without it, the flex sensors would be absolutely useless. I found out that there is a huge different in arduino between the ports A0 and 0, including A5 and 5. When i was using analogRead to record the values, it was generating a string that was vertical in the arduino serial console. This did not coincide with my processing code because my processing code was looking for a string that had a horizontal structure similar to this: xxx,yyy. This is why I could not convert the string into 2 int values within processing. I feel as though i have a much broader understanding of how programs talk with each other  Before this project I didn't even think it was possible to do something like this. Using these values from the flex sensor we can now feed them into a 3d pixel program that I have altered. By doing this I hope that I can change the intensity of the 3D illusion. The code is based on color intensity and vertexes. If I can find a good use for the variables I can convert the texture of surfaces onto the video which will give us a point of view of the city from the materials that are put together to make it. I think this is a great idea and I think it will be easily done from this point onwards. All we need to worry about now is the physical visual presentation rather than the video side of the project.

Project 4 - More Research WITH SUCCESS

Today I did a lot of research in regards to the video that we are wanting to present. Not only that but we also talked about a physical presentation that we wanted to commit to. In regards to the video, we were mainly focussed on Max Msp. However, although this is a program mainly based on video processing, it is very limited in the fact that you cannot dig deep into your artistic imagination. Vertex shaders are also very hard to use and there is little about them on the internet, thus creating a texture on our video as I wanted would be almost impossible. Numerous posts were made on the cycling74 forum and not a single one was answered. And so I swayed more towards Processing itself. I was unsure of how to run videos in it but I found that there is a library that can be used to process live video feed to be altered. I wanted the pixels to jump out at you depending on how rough the texture is. I found a video on youtube that did exactly that. It turned the pixels into 3D squared that changed depending on color. The intensity could possibly be altered using the data we collect from our flex sensor. In regards to the physical side of things, we thought that we could construct a jenga tower that could be shaken by the data being read to symbolize an earthquake.

Project 4 Programming Progress

Today we started the day completely lost as to if we were even able to communicate Arduino with Max Msp. After doing a bit of research and digging deep into my prior electrical engineering knowledge i decided that using a voltage divider would be the best option to set up the 2 flex sensors. We walked up to surplus electronics, purchased a few components such as resistors and wired and headed back to AUT to piece it all together. Looking at a simple diagram I set up the breadboard and hooked it up to Toms Laptop to test it out (as my Max Msp has conveniently expired its trial version...) After consulting the teacher of Arduino we had an idea of how we would use the serial of Arduino to talk with Max Msp and send through the voltage values to be used as variables. We found an example in the program that could do exactly what we wanted called 'analogue read.'
After a bit of tinkering and an hour or two of staring blankly at the screen we finally had the variables printing on Max MSP.

Project 4

Today we were asked to do a kind of stop motion exercise similar to the bullet time effect in the matrix. We were asked to experiment with the idea of time and space. We chose to align our laptops in a semi circle to record in real time. I chose for my action a back flip. Because of limited amounts of laptops being available for our use we decided not to do the full circle and instead turn around and try imitate what we had done exactly the same but facing the other direction to give the 360 degree perspective.

I felt as though we could have improved a lot on our technique by using 1 camera to take a lot more photos in smaller increments to give a more matrix-like effect. However it was an interesting day experimenting with camera styles that we don't usually encounter. I wish we had more time to take advantage of the green screen  more as none of us actually got around to putting a background behind our videos.                                    

Project 3 - The Wearable Interface

Upon receiving the project I was very unsure of what I was supposed to do both conceptually and on the programming side. I just couldn’t get my head around how I could relate to the film with a piece of clothing that would be creative but also sensible and user friendly. During the brainstorming process I went through a variety of ideas and ultimately I decided that I definitely did not want to recycle my entire short film as I thought it would lead me down a very boring one way street of retelling the same story and it did not leave me much room to explore and expand upon my ideas. Instead I decided early on that I wanted to convey the same message as the film but from a different perspective. In our short film we had four gangsters as the main characters. We portrayed them as hardcore criminals and in general, just bad men. But the film did not show how they strayed so far from being innocents to becoming murderous tyrants. And this is where my idea was born.

I wanted to show the audience that we all can fall victim to the same path as these men have taken. To do this I decided I would place 2 videos over the top of each other, one video playing a dark scene of crime and drugs and the other playing a video of innocent children. On top of this was played audio with children talking about their aspirations in life of what they wish to accomplish and achieve. The track ‘bad world’ was also played over the top to generate a mood of sadness which is also what our short film tried to convey. With the press of a button on a petal you could browse through different audio tracks and different contrasts of children and crime over the top of each other. In the end I did decide to use a small section of our film that was during the cemetery scene when the gangsters were discarding roses towards the grave of their loved one that was murdered. This was done because just like in the short film, it represents the loss of innocence, each rose discarded shows that the 4 gangsters have given up the last thing that gave them any sense of humanity.

When each petal is pressed on the rose it shows a snap shot of each rose being dropped at the grave. This all relates back to the final video that is displayed when the 5^th petal is pushed. The video show a man in a body bag being zipped up over his head. At the same time, a video is faded over the top of petals that are falling the ground along with a rose that has been stripped of all its petals instead of children playing. This is done to show that the lifestyle they lived has evidently killed them, just like in the short film where the gangster’s lifestyle of crime killed red riding hood, representing the gradual decay of human life. The metaphor of the rose is used throughout the film for the exact same reason as the videos of the children. It contrasts something as horrible as death with something as beautiful as a rose which also relates back to the underlying themes of red riding hood in regards to rebirth and the loss of innocence. I encountered many problems along the way to the completion of my project that I had to overcome. The main problem was with MAX MSP itself. I never had an idea in concrete and because I didn’t have a solid idea to expand on, it was very hard to start programming what I wanted to accomplish. I originally started with a clock, so that when the second hand ticked it would create connections at each second and in turn activate something on MAX MSP. Evidently I didn’t have enough connections to do this and I realized that it wasn’t very interactive or relevant to my short film, so I decided the best idea was to go with the rose as not only did it relate to the film but it was easy to use, straight to the point for first time users, and allowed me to program what I wanted without the constraints of a ridiculously designed item of clothing that had no purpose. From here I started the video side of my presentation using MAX and Jitter. Originally I wanted to run 4 different windows within 1 window using jit.scissors but this used a lot more CPU power and every time I tried to run my program it crashed my laptop so I was forced to simplify it down into one jit.window. Because of this I had to make major changes a day before the presentation but overall I think I managed to convey the idea I wanted to even with one jit.window being used.

Reverse Cinema

Immediately after getting our assignment we all decided as a group, before doing any conceptual work, we would all watch our favorite mafia/mobster movies. I though this would be a good idea because it would give us inspiration of the kind of camera techniques used. After watching my favorite movie snatch I knew that we should somehow incorporate a stop start motion that this movie had adopted. It gives the impression of a ruthless and untamed atmosphere which i believe is vital to what we want to portay within our mafia short film. Not only did we watch snatch but in my spare time i watched lock stock and two smoking barrels, another classic and also a personal favorite of my own. I loved the gritty nature of the film as it showed humanity at its worst. However the atmosphere of all these English films is very modern, loud and fast which is not what I want our final film to look like. I also watched sin city at home, and from this movie I had the idea to use its color filter. All the environment colors are washed out and dismal while particular colors are emphasized. Since red riding hood was the short story we were focusing on, it would be a brilliant idea to use this technique to use the color red as symbolism within our short film to enhance the idea of innocence.

Since nothing was getting done after watching our movies I decided to kick start the project by going to my local cemetery and filming some footage in order to show the group the idea I had in my head for the introduction of the short film. I put the footage together on adobe premier and thus, I was unanimously decided by the group to be the editor and soon to be many other rolls. This was exactly what the group needed as it gave us a starting point and from there we began to plan where and how we were going to record.

Our story is about a group of mafia men called 'the wolf pack.' After a  little girl is killed they gather to her funeral to mourn her death. Upon finding out the address of the man who killed her at a poker game they head out in seek of revenge. In the haste of the act they mistakenly shoot someone inside the hotel apartment where the man was apparently staying. Ironically it turns out that they shoot the little girl who was suppose to be dead. It turns out that an ex wolf pack member had faked her kidnapping and death in order to protect her from the gang life that she was exposed to. This conveyed the strong messages of red riding hood as it shows that innocence has been robbed from her. It also conveys the themes of rebirth as the men realize that the lifestyle they lead has lead them to rock bottom and evidently the death of someone they loved.

 

After much deliberation we finally put together a very brief story line that related to red riding hood in a very modern perspective. On our first day of filming we went to the graveyard on Symonds street to record our opening scenes. We decided to out and film regardless of having virtually no preparation as most of the group had a tight schedule they had to meet. Because it was so hard to find actors to act on particular days we decided that we ourselves would act in our film. However things began to fall into place as we developed the film over time. I felt as if we could have done a much better job of the film if we had taken the time to re shoot some scenes but since our main character was going overseas we were unable to capture what we truly wished to convey to the audience.
                            
                                    

On our second session of filming we went to Reuben's house to record the poker scene as he had a gambling table that we could use. We used a separate camera than the one we used to the cemetery that had a separate megapixel value, and once again, because the Yogi (our actor) was leaving the country the next day it made re shooting very hard. We also shot the kidnapping scene and the murder scene that same night. However, the person who was in charge  of bringing the storyboard forgot to bring it so we once again, had to re invent what we had created during studio to the best of our ability. All in all, it was very hard to edit because of the contrasting camera megapixels that we used. However i tried to use this to my advantage by exploring new and interesting layouts within adobe premier to mask how pixelated it was. An example of this was how I used smaller boxes to compress the resolution so it wasn't so obvious but also tried to maintain an artistic perspective. Overall, i think the idea was great, the story was great, but we should have used our storyboard to help convey the meaning behind what we were showing. We didnt want to create some cliche shortfilm to entertain, we also wanted to convey a message to the audience and have an impact.