Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

A shot of the walkway next to the Health Center and Art Building

Martin Luther King Library

A shot of myself next to the campus rose garden

Extra Credit:

Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

Original Photograph:

Recreations:

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

Scene Set Up

One Point Lighting

Two Point Lighting

Three Point Lighting

Special Effects in Animation and Live Action

My first two term paper scores were 90 and 95; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline of Third Term Paper

Outline of Third Term Paper – Fire in Films

I.                    Introduction

a.       Although special effects have become more advanced and realistic with the advent of the computer, the craft of special effects has been around since the early days of film.

b.      There are certain effects and elements that must be manipulated separately from the actors themselves.

c.       Special effect being discussed: fire

d.      Films being discussed: Gone with the Wind (1939) and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

II.                 Body

a.       Gone with the Wind (1939) illustrates that special effects are not limited to miniatures or a computer with its “burning of Atlanta sequence”

                                                              i.      The fire was created and then controlled with a series of valves; any footage shot had to be perfect on the first take.

                                                            ii.      The special effects supervisor filmed footage of burning sets and then literally cut and pasted a collage of fire footage in with scenes of the actors.

                                                          iii.      In a lot of ways, this was more tedious and far more dangerous than if the scene had been created using miniatures or computers.

                                                          iv.      Because the flames were real, and scaled as they would be if the scene was real, the realism of the scene is heightened.

b.      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2009) illustrates how far a digital special effects team can take the element of fire into a story and make it something unique.

                                                              i.      In the film, Professor Dumbledore casts a firestorm spell, and in fact can manipulate the fire in a way that is impossible to do with real fire on a real set.

                                                            ii.      Up until this point in time, the special effects artists did not have the ability to create the type of fire required for this scene, so the technology had to catch up to the concept.

                                                          iii.      The filmmakers also had to deal with the fact that they had never done photo realistic fire before.

                                                          iv.      According to the special effects team, rather than running a 3D simulation, they stacked a series of rectangular, two-dimensional slices of a 3D grid.

                                                            v.      The techniques used were in fact effective in creating a sense of magic in the already fantastical world.

III.               Conclusion

a.       Although both of these films use the element of fire in their stories, it’s used in very different ways and manipulated with different techniques.

b.      In many ways, the burning of Atlanta sequence in Gone with the Wind is more effective at creating a realistic environment than the cave scene in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

The fact that Gone with the Wind is more affective at creating a realistic world is proof that using a computer to create  a film’s special effects does not guarantee its being as successful at realism as actually creating the special effect in reality.

Stop Motion Character Animation

For my stop motion character animation, I first had to find a subject for my animation. This was a little bit difficult for me, because living away form home, I don't have a lot of posable action figures or stuffed animals. Of the few ones I brought up with me, I selected the stuffed animal that was the most posable. To make it easier on myself, I decided to keep the story of my animation simple: a dog waking up and looking for a bone. I was able to pose the dog beyond sitting and laying down by using embrodery thread, turning the stuffed animal into more along the lines of a puppet. Once I shot everything, I took all of the photos into Photoshop to edit myself out of the pictures (doing this also helped me keep the shot even, because I sometimes had problems keeping the same camera angle from picture to picture.) Once all of the photos were edited and turned into .gifs, I combined all of the scenes together in Premiere Pro.

Scientific Fact or Cinematic Fiction

   

     Movie Physics - Twisting Laws to Suit Scenes

     Movies are fantasies, and most films bend reality in order to tell a good story. Because animation is a more malleable medium than live action, most of the films that bend the laws of physics involve animation. In fantasy films, one of the laws that is most often bent is the Law of Acceleration. The law of acceleration explains that “objects always change their velocity in the direction of the unbalanced force”. In addition to that, there are multiple other things that fall under this law. In the interest of heightening the story, filmmakers will often break this law, especially if there is an element of fantasy to the story. The films Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, and Sherlock Holmes illustrate how often filmmakers violate the law of acceleration.

                            

      Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland  takes place in the fantastical realm of Wonderland, where animals talk and humans grow and shrink with the swallow of a potion. Because of this, it makes sense that the laws of physics would be broken often throughout the film. Although this film begins in the real world of Victorian England, the law breaking starts the second that Alice gets transported into Wonderland:

     

An object (or person) does not fall down; it's pulled down by a force, and according to part of the law of acceleration, “when a force pulls in the direction that an object is already moving, the object slows out.” This doesn’t apply to this scene, however. If this was a realistic movie, Alice would not only fall at a constant rate, but she would also probably die from the fall. Instead, the filmmakers use the speed of the fall to showcase the confusion and chaos that Alice is falling through. There are times where Alice seems to slow down, almost as if she can control how much force is exerted on her. For instance, about halfway down the rabbit hole, Alice runs into a piano, and she recoils back from it. If this was done realistically, the way she shifts her weight back should have affected the direction (and maybe a bit of the speed) she falls. Instead, the encounter with the piano only illustrates the fear Alice is experiencing as she falls. 

Although violating the law of acceleration often happens in comedic or action scenes, violations can also occur in a scene that doesn’t involve either of those things. Aladdin (1992) has plenty of scenes that break the laws of physics, but the most interesting example of this happening occurs during a scene that is somewhat unexpected. During the A Whole New World sequence, the audience is focused on the story but actually, the law of acceleration is violated during this scene:

      

     Although speed and acceleration are different, they are in some ways intertwined.  If something needs to get up to a certain speed, it’s the acceleration of it that accomplishes this. If an acceleration is slow, a fast speed can be accomplished, it will just take longer than something with a faster of acceleration. Aladdin’s “A Whole New World” sequence takes place over the course of three minutes, during which Aladdin, Jasmine, and Carpet travel from the Middle East to the Imperial City. Although Carpet starts off by accelerating faster, this isn’t done to get up to a logical speed for the journey; it’s only done to illustrate the thrill and romance of the scene (the rapid acceleration also matches the tempo of the music). These two locations are more than three thousand miles apart, yet Aladdin and Jasmine seem to be going no faster than someone who is driving down a freeway. In order for Carpet to have realistically traveled to where the scene ends up, he would have had to accelerate at a much faster rate to a much faster speed, which hardly illustrates the romance of the scene. 

     Sherlock Holmes (2009) may not be set in Wonderland or Agrabah, yet because it’s a Sherlock Holmes story, there is still an element of fantasy to it, and as such has the ability to violate natural laws in a way that the audience accepts. The law of acceleration is violated in a very basic way in this scene because it addresses the fact that objects always change their velocity in the direction of the applied force:

 

     One of the most interesting parts of this scene is the way that the dry docked boat’s chain reacts to being released, and how it affects the boat. Although the dry docked boat is held in place by thick wooden posts in addition to the chain, the posts become ineffective after only four are knocked down, and once the chain is released, it’s almost as if the posts are not there. Additionally, the chain reacts in a way that doesn’t match up with the weight that it has; this is done to enhance the drama of the scene, but it is still unrealistic. Instead of the length of chain pulling the spool straight forward, the chain flings the spool around the dry dock as if there is another force affecting the movement of the spool. The speed of the chain is affected by the filmmakers desire to heighten the drama, because although the boat slowly sinks into the Thames, yet the speed of the chain is so great that it endangers Holmes and Watson in a way that could not have possibly happened in reality.

    “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories rather than theories to suit facts.” This quote from Sherlock Holmes illustrates what happens when the laws of reality are changed in movies. Filmmakers are notorious for “twisting facts (in this case, the laws of physics) to suit theories (scenes of film)”. Although the filmmakers may have done illogical things in their movies, they do make sense in the reality of the film and are often used to enhance the story or scene. In each scene described, the laws are broken to raise the stakes: Alice travels to Wonderland, Aladdin and Jasmine fall in love, and the mystery that Sherlock Holmes faces deepens. We as an audience accepts a less-than-realistic- take on the physical world if the world is somewhat magical, whether it takes places in Wonderland, Agrabah, or Holmesian England.