FILM:Digital actor simulations, characters

and animations

Film is…

A series of images projected on screen in a speed so fast the images are in motion. Hence the alternative titles “motion picture” or ‘MOVE-y’ (Movie).

How digital Cinema works

Digital cinema is just a new form to show and film new movies. Instead of chemicals being used on film, bits and bytes are used instead to record,

transmit and replay.

It works faster and cheaper for the movie-makers. Specialised digital camcorders is made to shoot like

film cameras.

Normal camcorders shoot interlaced fields at 30 frames per sec. whereas Film cameras shoot

complete frames at 24 frames per sec. Another difference is the image quality.

This Sony HDW-F900 HDCAM camcorders with high-end Pan vision lenses can shoot both

Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) are used to convert incoming light from a scene into an electronic signal, and an analog-to-digital

converter to turn this signal into a stream of 1s and 0s.

Inside the camera, a beam splitter separates the light into red, green and blue light. The camera

records each color of light with a separate CCD to capture the full color range.

When you recombine these colors, you retrieve the full color image. Low-end camcorders use

a single CCD to capture all colors of light, which gives a good image.

http://microscopy.fsu.edu/primer/digitalimaging/concepts/ccdanatomy.html

Digital video technology and compression

Compression is the conversion of data into a format that requires fewer bits, so that data

can be stored or transmitted more efficiently.

This is reversible, however Lossy data compression, usually affects Images.

-Example on Left.

The better the redundancy within the data, the more successful the compression of the data.

Digital video contains a great deal of redundancy and thus is very suitable for compression.

12,249 bytes

1,869 bytes.

The development of lossy data compression specifically for Images have contributed greatly to the realisation of digital video applications. E.g. Video conferencing, live access to content

and HD-TV based cinema.

There are three main Compression techniques used for digital video:

General purpose compression techniques can be used for any kind of data.

Intraframe compression techniques work on images.

Interframe compression techniques work on image sequences rather than individual images.

AnimationsAnimations are sequences of Images or cartoons displayed one after another.

There are eight different animation techniques that are used. These are:

Object animation –basically a puppet animation; filming object and sending them through the process of pixilation.

Pinscreen – a white screen that is pierced by hundreds of thousands of pins that can slide back and forth, in its own hole. When lit from the side, each pin casts a shadow, and when all the pins are pushed out, there is total darkness and vice versa. But when pins are pushed in, their shadows are shorter, and the black become grey.

Paper cut outs- the cheapest for of animation, this is when you cut out characters and move them on a background to form a shadow.

Rotoscope- Painting, drawing or overlaying images on to the frames of the movie

Animation stand- is a camera that can move up and down to film animations, the paper cut outs needs this.

Pixilation- used to blend live actors with animated ones

Computer animation- when you use a computer to produce a animation frame by frame sequence. Tweening is essential to this.

Animated drawings- When you draw the same character on different pages of paper with different positions.

Drawing and etching- When you draw and etch directly onto film

Behind the scenes of ‘The Incredibles’

The Greatest Challenges faced by the animators when creating the movie were:

Simulating the movement of cloth and hair

Simulating every human aspect

Making simulations very realistic

Muscle movement

Character movement

Being Simple (Simplicity didn’t not work it had to be complex)

Light and shadow on the skin

Clothing change and the behaviour of clothes

Simone –the virtual actress

The Film Simone was about a virtual actress. Simone was kept a secret for so

long because it made her avoidance made her more famous and popular to the

people.

The advantage for Al Pacino for using a virtual actress was so that he could edit and manipulate Simone in anyway he

wanted to in the film.

He could adjust the amount of tears Simone had and have additions to her face

and clothes as well.

Areas of Impact

STAKEHOLDERS: Movie-makers Movie-viewers Actors Production company.

Advantages:

Digital Cinema is cheap (long-term) for the

movie makers and producers

Better quality films

Good reputation for the production

company

Creativity can be expressed to a greater

extent

Disadvantages:

The price to watch the movie will be the same

for the consumers

Technology changes the role

of actors

Higher expectations on

films

Social ImpactsEconomically- Digital Cinema is beneficial for the

movie industry as movie-makers are using a device that is efficient and cheap to use, which means more dividend for the movie industry.

Legally – Films and other visual/audio content is constantly being shared over the internet.

A man in Hong Kong was fined and sent to jail for distributing Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss

Congeniality illegally. However the file sharing rate did not decrease.

Psychological- Movies are fictional. They could be based on a true story but what happens in the movie isn’t real. People

may think that it is real.Like how children thought they could really fly after they saw superman

For example, Pixar Animation ‘Finding Nemo’. In Disney land there is a projection of the character Crush the sea turtle in

the tank. Through Voice recognition and animation this turtle can have a conversation with you. The children may think it’s

real.

Glossary Morph – Morphing is when you transform e.g. a

Bat into a Vampire.

Tweening – Tweening is an animation technique that fills in the frames from the starting shape to the ending shape (back)

Redundancy- Some Elements within data that are more common than others and most compression algorithms utilize this property. (back)

Lossy data Compression- the more you copy an Image and/or compress it, clarity is lost everytime (back)

Bibliography

http://howstuffworks.com http://www.nfb.ca/animation/

objanim/en/index.php?PHPSESSID=5d656b67e7e521a7bccec4be5fb9d829

The Incredibles Movie Simone Movie http://answers.com