Final Product

Well, tomorrow is the due date and I think our movie is as done as we can make it. It's posted on youtube for mass viewing (I've sent the link to my brother so he can have fun making fun of me for it--what are siblings for?) here.

The film quality goes down a lot in the posting, but the larger file size version we'll be playing in class tomorrow is much nicer. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with--some of the bits and pieces I saw around the classroom the last few weeks looked pretty neat.

I am looking forward to moving on to the next project--building funny little bugs sounds much more my cup of tea. I like actually manually making things.

--The Wombat

Actual Editing

Editing, Day Two:

Ahhh!!! Time consuming! And complicated. I've spent huge portions of class today trying to get two tiny little things done. I did eventually manage to record and transfer the audio clips we needed (after using three computers, two people--Stella and me--and a thumbdrive and a whole lot of shuffling about) and I figured out how to download a youtube video and import it into iMovie '09 to edit out the part we needed, slow it down, and then export it to feed it to Nick's laptop so it could be spliced into the rest of the movie. Blah.

Here's the link for the nifty video download/conversion site--easy as pie!

And our elevator now sings old Scottish ballads. Kinda fun.

--The Wombat

Editing Video Woes

We did more filming before the week was out (and I didn't remember to bring my camera for stills, but as I was crawling around on the floor and stuff, I wouldn't have been able to take pictures anyway), and now it's time to think about editing.

I had started to watch the lynda.com videos for imovie, but then I realized that they were for imovie'06 and the computers in the lab have imovie'09 on them and they don't look at all the same, so videos telling me where to find things in one seem pretty useless for the other. It looks like our class lynda.com membership only lets us watch the particular videos listed for our course so I couldn't get any of the '09 tutorials to play. But Apple's website has a handful of online tutorials--just getting the general idea sort of things, which is just the right speed for me. I also just poked around on Google for any other tutorials and checked those out. This one wasn't bad. There are heaps of them on youtube, most of which seem to be made by wee little boys--it kinda cute. I liked this one and this one. I think I remeber what I watched, and I'll find out tomorrow in class (I've discovered that my computer won't accept any relatively recent version of imovie--its video card is too old? The message that popped up when I tried to install it from my ilife CD said something to that extent).


--The Wombat

Filming!

Well, we filmed today. We had a good, long block of time and we actually got quite a lot done--we did most of the work for three sketches. Filming in a public elevator was a bit trying--for some odd reason other people kept wanting to get in.....go figure. But I think it's going to look good--the fisheye lens (Monday's forgotten equipment) really makes the scene look appropriately weird. We did the ATM shoot next (again--too many darned people!). It took a while to work out the logistics of camera placement, and we ended up doing something a bit different than we originally thought, but it came together and we had fun (we got to spray Stella in the face with a squirt bottle and scramble madly on the ground for cash!). We left campus for the automatic windows shoot and used Nick's (very large--I really had to climb in) truck. We managed not to actually cut my head off (yay!) and discovered that corn syrup blood is very goopy and messy. And people on the street look at you funny when you're hanging out of a truck window making weird noises.

We had been talking about perhaps splicing some footage from some other source of an ATM spitting cash, and I found a clip from the first source I could name (I know it's a common routine--I've seen it lots in movies and TV programs, I just couldn't tell you what most of them were, so that's not much help):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U8U7j23YjI&feature=related

There are a few more shooting get-togethers planned before Monday, I shall try to remember to bring a still camera along for the next one so that I can post visuals....

--The Wombat

More Storyboard (TV)

More Storyboard (ATM)

More Storyboard (GPS)

Here's the board for the GPS sketch.

Must remember to blog.

Must remember to blog. Must remember to blog.....

Maybe if I type it over and over again, like writing lines in school, it'll stick. This blog reminds me of long division in the third grade--it's not actually all that difficult once I just sit down and make myself do but I have a major mental grudge against the idea of it. That goes for digital art in general for me--I just don't like using computers. I'll have to get past that. Must remember to blog!

Right--that said, we got off to a rocky start with the filming this week. We had a plan, we had props, but come Monday we were short a person, a piece of equipment, an essential prop or two, and a location (being repaired--figures). In other words, we didn't get very much done. Alas. But we're meeting up before class today to get an early start and we have plenty of time blocked out outside of class for the rest of the week and weekend so we should be just fine on time.

We're going to be working on three of the shorter sketches today--elevator, ATM, and car window. I've got a heap of props piled up front of my door to haul off with me--a big clock with hands we can turn, some clean trash, ingredients for fake blood, stuff to clean up after fake blood (which I have a feeling is going to be harder than we think). I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing--filming and acting (and let's not even think about editing quite yet...), but it'll work out.

--The Wombat

Sketch 3

The Blackmail Sketch. Be nice to your computer or else....

Sketch 2

The above is the Self Defense sketch--a.k.a. Death By Automatic Window.

Final Storyboard 1

Our video is a series of sketches bound together to look like an old monster movie--"When Technology Attacks!"--complete with the dramatic music and the dripping letters font.

This is the board for the Mad Elevator Sketch.

--The Wombat

More Video Research

So now that we've narrowed our topic down, most of my earlier research is inapplicable. What I really think I need to be looking into now is AI (artificial intelligence), since our series of sketches revolves around the idea that the everyday technologies that we interact with have their own conciousness or sentience. We as humans want to make machines that can do things on their own to make our lives easier, but the more complex and effective they become, the more likely we are to fear them. I want to look at our ideas about AI, both realistic and fantastic.

The first thing I think about when I think about machines that can think is Isaac Asimov--more specifically his three laws of robotics. I'm posting the Wikipedia link giving a good overview of his concept here. They reveal something important about what we as humans want out of technology--servants that can't complain and can't hurt us. If we were to give the things we use everyday the ability to "think" so that they could interact with us, it would be a bit like making slaves. It's not unreasonable to imagine that things that we created to think the way we do might grow to be unsatisfied with that role and revolt.

Here is a link to a nice FAQ sort of thing regarding AI today--what it is, what it might be used for, and so on:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/

Here are the results of an informal survey (on somebody else's blog) regarding the fear of intelligent machines, and the dialogue in the comments afterwards is pretty interesting:

http://www.thinkartificial.org/web/the-fear-of-intelligent-machines-survey-results/

And lastly for now, here is an essay about human fear of intelligent machines in literature which I thought was interesting.

More later.

--The Wombat

Storyboarding: The (Very) Rough Drafts

Our group has narrowed our video topic down to everyday technology going bad as a result of (somehow) having a mind of its own. We want to put together a series of small sketches of varying length and complexity, but all dealing with the same overarching topic.

We went home from our last group meeting with the assignment of roughly sketching out our best ideas and putting the storyboards up here on our blogs. I don't have a scanner and tried to just photograph them with varying results......

The three sketches I've come up with are "Self Defense", in which a poor, abused car fights back via automatic window; "Elevator Music", in which an elevator traps its victims between floors and drives them mad with awful musical selections; and "Blackmail" in which a computer gets what it wants by threatening to send its owner's scandalous vacation pictures to all and sundry unless.....

--The Wombat

Video Brainstorming

We got our third assignment for ART 74 on Monday--we're to get into small groups (done) and make a 2-4 minute movie with the the general theme of technology gone wrong.

My group decided we'd all spend a day or two making list of things that we thought would be interesting and doing a bit of research on our favorites. We're all going to post our research links on our blogs so we can easily show them to each other in class today. Hopefully we'll be able to narrow down our focus and pick a topic.....

The three things that I think are most interesting as possible video topics (trying to keep in mind the actual feasibility of filming said ideas) are:

Nanotechnology, as applied to medicine--the idea of tiny little machines running around inside of our bloodstreams has so many possibilities, some wonderful and some horrible. It is a field that is being actively researched and developed--ittty bitty robots altering our bodies may not be that far off in the future.

One of the things I found was speculating about nanotech being used to rewrite DNA and reverse aging--sounds impossible, but could make for a great tech gone wrong video....

Anyhow, here are a couple of started links regarding the subject:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7288426.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3920685.stm

And a really long link to a google book that I'll shorten by doing this.

Next up on my list is robots/androids--human looking and acting machines. Japan has been doing a lot of work in this field with some amazing results. I think it would make a good video because people can be used as our props and there is a whole lot to explore--benefits, dangers, ethics, etc.

Here are my robot links:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,279383,00.html

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bbd53bd17a5713678ea8bea533d92910.1bc1&show_article=1

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2008-03-01-robots_N.htm

http://paro.jp/english/index.html

Definitely watch these two videos of the robot baby:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE2VCwYDjx0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyIHzCsbA_w

Lastly, I love the idea of the everyday stuff that we surround ourselves with getting a little bit more complicated and developing personalities of their own. I mean who doesn't argue with their computer, yell at their microwave, curse at their VCR, etc.? Now what if they talked back? Wouln't that be fun to watch?

I had been thinking it would be fun to do a scene in which a toaster was arguing with its human--turns out it has already been done (and in a Red Dwarf episode I've somehow never seen too!). But this is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZslRQvv5zM

http://www.the4cs.com/~corin/cse477/toaster/FAQ.shtml

Right, that's all for now folks,

--The Wombat