BSA303, 100 hours complete! 21 October, 2017

21/10 Tale Enders     2 hours 25 minutes   11-1:25
14/10 Tale Enders     5 hours 15 minutes 11-5.15 with one hour for lunch
That's it for now!  I will come back and do more internship hours after classes have ended.  I've learned a lot doing the Tale Enders internship and I'd like more experience with Maya, cameras, shotgun, and editing.

Today I playblasted all of the cameras Rachel set up with the proper background and all bits like cameras and rigs turned off.  Only the relevant frames were re-playblasted with the proper aspect ratio set up and those clips were loaded into premiere pro for rough editing.  Rachel will have a look at it next week and decide if there are any gaps in the story.  The next playblasts and all big files, like Maya and Premiere Pro, were loaded into shotgun.  It is AMAZING how much Shotgun holds. 

Screenshot of Maya set up with camera and timeline views.

screen shot of Shotgun Scene 21

BSA303, Tale Enders internship, 14 October, 2017

Protocols:  keep everything off SIT computers so nothing gets lost.  Use Shotgun to hold everything.  Load it up, no matter what state it is in so we have a backup.  Rachel uses these to make reports to funding bodies and other partners.  Leave notes on the file so people know what's been done.  Manually upload thumbnails. 

today: Hamish
540-580    selfie with Lucy
650-700    open gate and shut it
700-750    walk down path to steps
800            on steps
850            Dan "come on slow coach"
870-950     light arm touches
950-1000   Hamish into house
1000-1200 Dan closes the front door
clean up everybody getting past Dan and the door

Ruby's instructions for Naming conventions
maya folders: 06_Scene
Maya files: S06_03 (scene and shot number)
If there are shots added within a shot, put a letter next to it.  eg. S06_03a

Playblasts: S06_03_PB
premiere pro files: Scene_06
Exported edited videos Scene 06 clip
In Shotgun:
Each playblast goes in its corresponding shot number.
Maya files go in the first shot number in their name.
In description and Version name write MAYA FILE when + version
S06_04_05 goes in shot 4 and not into shot 5
Premiere Pro files and the edited scene clips go in the first shot of the scene.
In description and version namewrite PREMIERE PRO FILE.
Upload a thumnail of the playblast screenshot when you're done.

End of the day:
Don't delete anything off your computer personally.
Ruby will copy everything onto my hard drive and then delete off the computer.

SAVE SAVE SAVE


Hours:  11-5.30  lunch one hour, 5.5 hours

BSA303, Genius CV idea! 12 October, 2017

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/05/design-graduate-andy-morris-lego-minifigure-cv/








Marketing me, marketing show, marketing my mate Helen.  This gives me loads of ideas.

BSA303, internship hours update, 9 October, 2017

30/9 Tale Enders       5 hours  11 to 5 with one hour for lunch
16/9 Tale Enders       5 hours 11-1.30, 2.30-5 one hour lunch
2/9 Tale Enders         3.5 hours 12-4.30 with an hour lunch.
19/8 Tale Enders      5 hours 10.30 to 2, lunch, 3-4.30
12/8 Tale Enders      5 hours 11.10-5.10 with lunch
21/7 Spoon               7 hours Thursday, 10-5.30, with half hour lunch
20/7 Spoon              5.5 hours Friday, 10:30-4.30, with half hour lunch
19/7 Spoon             6.5 hours  10.30 to 5.30 with half hour lunch
12/7 TV3                4 hours 10-12, 1.15-3.15
11/7 TV3                5 hours 40 minutes 7.50am -1.30pm
10/7 Spoon             6 hours 25 minutes 10-5.25 with an hour for lunch
7/7 Spoon               5 hours  10-4 with one hour lunch break
6/7 Spoon               8 hours       8:00-4:30, with lunch break
5/7 Spoon              7 hours     10-5:30, with lunch break
4/7 Spoon              6 hours 45 minutes  10-5.15, with lunch break
3/7 Spoon               7 hours  10-5.30 with a lunch break.


92 hours and 20 minutes complete! 

If I can work for Tale Enders for two more weekends, that'll be me done.  I've already asked if Tale Enders needs summer interns.   I'll be happy to go back and intern for them after I've finished up my stuff for graduation.  I'm learning a lot and it's time well spent.  I may only be able to get a seasonal  job during the high holiday season and then nothing in January.

BSA303, Tale Enders internship, 30 September, 2017

Today I kept working on scene 21 and focused on getting reactions between Dan, Izzie, Amelia and Lucy as they go into his house.  It's lots of tiny moves and timings to get it working.  I loaded playblasts of the earlier part of the scene up onto Shotgun.   

Rachel may have a play with the scene to get cameras in or to tweak the movements.  I have to say that this week's moves are very messy on the timeline.  Probably because there are so many itty bitty moves that have to counteract each other.  I hope that's the reason things aren't cleaning laid out every 10 or 20 frames. 
5 Hours:  11 to 5 with one hour for lunch

BSA303, Tale Enders internship, 16 September, 2017

11-1.30, 2.30-5, 5 hours
I've been working on the kids coming up the walk to Dan's house today.  Lots of extra movements added in, Lucy's selfies, Dan opening the door, the gate swinging open, etc. 

BSA303, Tale Enders internship, 2 September, 2017

12-4.30 with an hour lunch.

Scene 21 has lots of people, more than I've worked with before, and they've all got reactions and interactions with each other.  I didn't get much done today.

Everybody admires the lights on Dan's house

Sam says "fleekalicious!"

They follow Sam up the walkway to the house.

Hamish nervously trailing behind the rest.

Hamish and the gate need some basic movements and everybody needs more secondary reactions.  I won't be able to do internship hours until we get back from Auckland.

BSA303, Tale Enders Internship, 19 August, 2017

10.30 to 2, lunch, 3-4.30
Tony, Hamish's dad, has been modelled and rigged.  The chubby big stand-in model has been replaced with the real thing.

They're going to work full-tilt to have a 30-second promo done for a show 'n' tell in September.  That's going to require some scenes to be fully modelled and animated and rendered.

https://www.the-blueprints.com/ for car, gun, and more blueprints.

Ha ha! LOOK!  My old car!

They have furniture, too.
I animated Tony looking for his keys at the door.  At first it was too long and slow, so Ruby had me shorten it.  Then it needed more time with him hollering through the door, so I added 50 frames onto that.  I tried for a door kick to show he's super pissed.  In the end, it's the camera that decides what goes in: These two camera angles together gave Rachel the drama she was looking for in the scene.

camera 2 (s17_01)

camera1 (s17_02)

Rendering of Tony shouting through the door in the animatic

I set Tony into the Hilux and put it on the road for scene 20.  Now it's ready for Jan and their daughter to go into it. Kirsty went into the back seat and Jan will go in as soon as she's ready.  Then I'll get to animate them next week!

BSA303, Tale Enders internship, 12 August, 2017

11.10-5.10 with lunch
I worked on scene 14 with Ruby and Rachel.  Hamish's dad Tony is working on his car and bumps his head when he hears the dog barking.  His son and his friend Sam run by as he reacts to bumping his head and then he says "what the" when he sees them running down the drive.

I put preliminary movement in and then Rachel set up the cameras and edited the shots in Premier.  Ruby coached me through a second pass on the movement.  The three cameras were separately playblasted and loaded into Shotgun.

11 August, 2017, 30 minutes helping Ash with the screen for the animation film screening.  He said round it up to an hour.  Will see if that's necessary.  Between the two days, now up to 75 hours!  Yay!

BSA303, Spoon internship, 20-21 July, 2017

Thursday, 10-5.30, with half hour lunch

Watching Quentin today as he's editing in After Effects.  In the morning, a 60 second film for an anti-domestic violence campaign that will be played before a major sport effect is refined with the client.  The event manager says that they something called NZ clearing house to get their research data from the police He gave me contact details for their kid's team and I will be able to interview her regarding my research question and find out how they make this difficult topic easy for kids and adults to talk about.  In the afternoon, more ad work; new product packs and word changes to the ad plus a future project costing so they can give the client a quote.

Friday, 10:30-4.30, with half hour lunch

I made a logo for Spoon!  Based on what I've seen Quentin do and what I've done myself in After Effects, I brought footage from past Spoon projects into an assets folder specifically tied to the project and into a composition.  I trimmed out the extraneous bits and put the clips into order.  I separated the clips by time lapse and gently moving camerawork.  I made a "keyhole" cut out in Photoshop with an arbitrarily black background.  When it's imported into AE, it will sit on the top layer and the footage will play underneath it. Natalye liked the gently moving stuff and after tossing out two clips that didn't look good under the Spoon logo, I ordered them from white to blue to darkest green.  Natalye wanted the Spoon to "grow" in so I keyframed the end and beginning sizes on the timeline. I had to resize the canvas in photoshop because I couldn't quickly remember how to mask out the now too small sides in AE.  It's only a 6 second spot and may get clipped down some more before going into their showreel.  Hooray!  

This is a frame from the beginning that they may use on their print materials or on the "ident card" that they send to the tv stations at the beginning of their TVCs.
And here's a tutorial I found online based on the title sequence of "Dunkirk" by Christopher Nolan.  They show you how to do it directly in Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro X.
So that's 69 hours and 5 minutes (out of 100) done in Auckland!

BSA303, Spoon internship- learning to use Illustrator, 19 July, 2017

Quentin took me downstairs at Spoon (they rent out a suite to other companies) to chat with Sam from Onepost Media. They're a video production and animation service.  Sam says they job out their animation to an illustrator in Wanaka who uses Illustrator and recently a guy in the Phillipines.  They then edit the images they produce and finish them up for the client.  He's very excited about Puffin Rock, a show that is in my Netflix queue, and wants to learn their software: Moho.  Here's a webinar of how they structure their pipeline around Moho to make the show.  This company also made Song of the Sea and The Book of Kells.  Ha ha!  They use Shotgun and not pieces of paper tacked up onto a wall with check marks on them.  Who would have thought?  (That's sarcasm, in case it's not coming through.)

Cartoon Saloon's pipeline.  More of this in their webinar.

Now Quentin has me on a side computer learning Illustrator.  Another piece of software I can practice on in anticipation of getting out into the job market.  Natalye and Christian said I can help make a logo for Spoon's latest showreel tomorrow!  Whoo hoo!  So this could be very timely.  They make new showreels once a year, when it's quiet, of their most recent stuff.  Every time I asked for specifics, like how or what they choose, Quentin would whip off his glasses and say, "that's an excellent question."  No answers today, maybe tomorrow. Ha ha! 

What I made using one of Adobe Illustrator's online tutorials:  Side Slice logo. In spite of their step by step instructions, I couldn't get the cheese drip shapes to go from rectangles to curve edged shapes and had to join rounded rectangles with a rectangle at the beginning.  I learned how to set up colour library (very helpful) and how to take the finished logo and save it into that same library so I can throw it around whenever I like.  VERY helpful.

What I made for myself trying to use techniques from the tutorial.  I found a reference pic of a cute unicorn and a fighting leprechaun mascot for the arm positions.  Horses can't really clench their hooves into fists and there had to be a compromise.  This is the first thing I've drawn without a cintiq tablet is years!  Just used shapes and a very nice pen tool that smooths out when you finish the line.  The anchor pen points work really well sometimes, and other times I can't figure out how to make them smooth out.  This was made using layers, and the anchor point pen tool and the blend objects? function.  The unicorn is supposed to look like it has got it's fists up but sort of looks like it's about to use it's hooves as mouth puppets.  I may have to settle for a "knees up" leg look instead.  When I moved it over to Photoshop to do some more shading, all of my layers got packed down into one blob.  Lots more to figure out.


https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-retro-fox-illustration-in-adobe-illustrator--cms-20733

 Here's a tutorial in progress.  It's teaching me how to the effect- warp-bulge functions to create beautifully curved shapes out of triangles.  Which are made by selecting the polygon tool and choosing how many sides and how big the object should be from the screen that pops up!  VERY VERY helpful.

Hours:  10.30 to 5.30 with half hour lunch.

BSA303, Tips for website redesign, 17 July, 2017

http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/how-redesign-website-best-practices/

BSA303, Job hunt, 17 July, 2017

https://www.facebook.com/NickArtist/photos/a.346013458773357.79792.150099485031423/1568869179821106/?type=3&theater

Ha ha!  And a very useful Ted talk about defining your fears instead of your goals.

A comic about hard work and depression

BSA303, Internship hunt, 11 July, 2017

Nicky MacDonald very kindly got in touch with Rob Steele at InMotion Post

They produce videos, social media, and animation.  I've sent them an email.  I need to email 6 other people tomorrow so I'm sure of getting somebody to intern with next week.

BSA303, TV3 internship, 11-12 july, 2017

Tuesday:  I went in to TV3 today to do some hours with Jamie. He edits, directs, does all sorts for the "Jono and Ben" show. He had me shadow another editor from 10-12. Ben went out to a press junket overseas to film interview segments with Hollywood stars promoting their movies. The film company arranges to have two cameras running (one on the interviewer and one on the actor) and the interviewers get 5 minutes to ask questions then: next! They get their data cards back and off they trot.  An intern editor did the first pass and isolated the sequences that Ben the interviewer wanted featured, then the editor I shadowed pulled out all the pauses and added in clips that supported the actor's anecdotes.  Jamie will do the third pass and will do sound editing and any other refining that needs to be done.  The editor says they bank about 25% of their material ahead of time and the rest is created week to week to fit the topics of the week.    Jamie's directing a sketch tomorrow and asked me if I was available to drive the van.  Having that full licence has paid off.  It's a weird as hybrid van that used to be manual but is now automatic but handles weird, so Max the PA took me out for 15 minutes to get acquainted with it before tomorrow.  There probably won't be parking so they're going to jump out and have me circle the block until they're done.  Lol.  Max took me down to their prop/costume room and some of the costumes I made for Jamie and Ben's other shows were down there- ET, the Miss Piggy puppet, and Swear Jar which I had completely forgotten I made.  hours: 10-12, 1.15-3.15
Wednesday:  Well, I drove the crew from TV3 to the courier depot and then got replaced as driver.  Ha ha!  The screaming must have been on the inside.  Jamie took over the driving which was actually the right call because he had to follow the borrowed courier van driven by Jono and Ben through traffic to locations that I would have needed constant coaching to get to.  It was all very quick: park on a sidewalk, film, jump back in the van and go.  We did this from 7.50 until 1.30.  I did drive the van around the block during one stop but other than that, I just minded the van while they ran out and did their thing.  That's showbiz!  I did get a very nice muffin, hot chocolate, and gourmet cupcake out of the deal, though.  hours: 7.50am -1.30pm

BSA303, Spoon internship, 10 July, 2017

It's the final day(that I know of) at Spoon and I got to make an ad! Or so Quentin says, very kind of him, I'm sure. Using new elements from the client and bits from previous ads, we put together a 15 second TVC for a Scandinavian chair maker. Quentin showed me how to reuse the old TVC by duplicating the composition, clearing out extraneous files, and repurposing assets. For a short spot, it required lots of text, logos, and graphics to support the voice over. Which reminds me, Nicky took me along to the recording studio Radiate on Jervois road to watch her record VO for the food producer video. David the sound engineer was able to carry on a conversation with her and edit the new recorded bits into the video at the same time. It was over and done with in an hour. Nicky is going to contact a company she's worked with in the past to see if they need an intern next week. If Jamie at TV3 doesn't have much for me to do I have the OK to go back and do more hours with Spoon. 10-5.25 with an hour for lunch with Quentin and Nicky.

BSA303, internship hunt, 8 July, 2017

Kaleidoscope

Daryl Spooner from Spoon suggested these guys.  They're who he calls on when they need 3D animation done.

Nikola has heard good things about Assembly.  They make games, animation, and commercials.

BSA303, Spoon internship ,3-7 July, 2017

Daryl wasn't sure if they'd have anything to do as they don't use 3D animation very often at their ad agency, but he was nice enough to let me come sit in and watch Quentin the motion graphics editor work and Q is letting me try some stuff in Aftereffects.  They're a full-service ad agency which means they shoot, add motion graphics, audio, and edit in-house.  So there is PLENTY for me to learn.

Monday 3 July, 10-5.30 with a lunch break.
Turns out I've met Q before. I did some work for his wife Nicky MacDonald years ago and met them both at a Spoon BBQ. Today He made an ad for a major TV manufacturer and a cleaning products company. The turnover is really fast and clients come in to collaborate with the creative staff (I will find out exactly what Daryl, Natalye and  Christian call themselves). Q does a rough cut and then they'll come in with suggestions and requests. Its a very collaborative process and he mostly uses AE and Photoshop. They use nothing but Macs and reckon most ad agencies are the same. I'll have to get up to speed on soft and hardware if I want to go into advertising. Q let me take a crack at making a 3d object in AE for the TV ad. He had trouble getting it to rotate but managed to come up with another solution after consulting with Daryl. There are always multiple solutions to any problem as long as you know enough tricks in the programs to draw on. They make TVCs for the same clients over and over so there's a big asset collection to refer to or reuse. And new things can be whipped up pretty quickly. Natalye walked Quentin through the changes to a TVC for a cleaning product company that changed it's packaging and needed to show off the new look.

Useful tip of the day: In Photoshop, if you select something with the magic lasso and it doesn't grab enough, you can decrease the tolerance settings to 30% so you don't lose low contrast areas.  Make WIP (work in progress) folders so everybody knows what's in play from day to day.  Jobs come in and go out everyday and without good folder discipline, working would be a nightmare.

Tuesday 10-5.15, with lunch break
Today Quentin made TVCs for oven and fireplace manufacturers, and recipe instruction videos for a national cafe chain.  Q has a very clean folder system and keeps the files on the AE timeline very tidy, too.  Any footage or graphics that have been put into place on the timeline get put away in the composition folders.  I got to press some buttons today!  Ha ha!  I actually pushed too many buttons when Q had me cut apart the footage for the recipe video.  I thought that each step had to have it's own segment to correspond with the text and graphic move, but he only needed the product bookends separated from the making portion of the video.  No harm done.  Cutting it apart also meant Q could size up the footage to 110% to cut off the dark parts of the under table that had gotten in the shot. In the fireplace ad, Q added a parallax effect and made still images look like footage.  It's a brief spot, 15 secs, but the trick was very effective.  First, he masked off the door of the fireplace to reveal footage of a fire burning logs, then he animated the picture to slightly rotate and move forward to make it look like the camera was coming into the room. He added another good move to the spot when he had a cast iron pot "grow" into the from and dropped a "$325" from behind some text.  That masking tool is VERY useful.  The mask behind the text was hot pink so he wouldn't lose it in the background.  He turned it off and locked it in place (or was it the other way around).  I got to make the mask.  I mostly sit next to him and talk to him about what he's doing and occasionally there's something safe to let me try my hand it.  I really appreciate that he's trying to find ways to for me to get some practical experience.  He's offered to let me go off into an editing bay to mess around with AE but right now I reckon I need to see what's possible.
The ad for tvs was okayed by the client so Quentin walked me through the procedure for getting it on air.  Adstream is a company that checks over TVCs to make sure they're legal and of broadcast quality.  Legal means that they're not too loud (in NZ that means -24 hz) and the colours and blacks fall into a certain range.  Each check costs money so Quentin runs the TVC through Blackmagic software and makes adjustments.  Getting it "legal" in the blacks make taking out the corrections he made to the first part of the ad where compression had left the theatre seats "blocky".  There's not much he could do as the footage was badly compressed somewhere in Australia before it got to him.  Adstream will decide if the quality is good enough for play on broadcast television.  When they find problems, they email the agency back so things can be fixed, if possible.  Since the problem came from the client, nothing can be done and it will go on the the network to be played this weekend.  Ads go out fast!

Useful tip of the day:  In the oven ad, the client's logo is surrounded by an oval swirl.  As the logo grows on screen, it changes from the name to the full swirl logo.  Q made this in photoshop by chopping the logo into 3 layers then set up a tracing path mask in AE and got a stroke to follow the path which then revealed the full logo and looked totally animated. Smaller composition groupings can be made within the made composition.  This is useful if you're repeating a set of animations or graphics.

Wednesday 10-5:30, with lunch break
Nicky hired out the editing suite and Quentin today to do a corporate video for a food industry client.  She purchased a template from vb
Nicky asked if I have any graphic design training, which I don't.  Again, if I want to go into advertising, there's a lot of upskilling I'll need to do as turn over is fast and there's no time for researching stuff during the day.  But I DID get to make some graphics after all!  Nicky asked again about my Photoshop skills and said she needed a globe graphic made.  I had a short think while she and Quentin were popping files into the right places and thought about photo collage... and the client's logo uses photos of green beans and blueberries, so I suggested a globe made from fruits and vegetables.  Nicky liked that idea and using a thin white line to outline like the client logo.

Globe graphic that I made for Nicky's corporate video

I also made what made some icons to represent business elements in the presentation.  That required some duplicating a pre-existing graphic and find photos with google image search.  I got to try out Quentin's pen and stroke technique in photoshop but the line I made was too thick.   I was going to retrace the path but Nicky was able to figure out how to fix it eventually.   Nicky had me keep each layer separate AND copy off groups (icon, image and text) and merge the layers into one object, all in the same file.  I can definitely use that in the future to cut down on how many files I have to hunt through to find things.  Quentin said that when you make multiple icons or elements in Photoshop to bring over to AE it's important to stack the layers on top of each other so the editor doesn't have to place each one individually.  It just speeds things up considerably.

Useful tip of the day:  Keep every layer and don't worry about the drive getting full until the drive gets full!  In one PSD, you can keep all your layers AND a combined version of the graphic.  This keeps the overall folder system tidy and makes it easy to lay your hands on what you need.  Also, don't beat around the bush- name files what they are and fully plus put in a date for good measure so you and everybody else can find things again later.

Thursday 8:00-4:30, with lunch break
Today I went with Christian and Daryl to shoot footage for a series of promo spots for a training college.  Daryl is doing a shoot with a skeleton crew to keep costs down for a consultant who can potentially bring in more clients.  They always give clients the choice of having Spoon arrange everything for them (casting, location scouting, storyboards, etc.) or letting the client do most of that for themselves to keep the prices 4 times lower.  The consultant wrote the script (script template: My name is ______ and I study _______.  I want to do ___________  but I don't know how.  (cut to "After") Thanks to ____________college I have the skills to get a high paying job in the __________ industry.), recruited students to be filmed, and scouted locations around the campus.  Daryl and Christian lit a blank wall and placed the students in front of it.  I did some minor powdering for shine, smoothed stray hairs, and put my jackets on people who needed costume changes.  Lol.  That made me wardrobe department for the day.  When we moved from set piece to set piece, I held the boom mike and helped shift gear around.  Daryl did the filming and listened for sound quality and Christian coached the talent and read the lines to them for them to repeat instead of having to memorize.  I'm amazed at how that blank wall looks like a clean white screen in the footage- the people totally pop out.  It was a long day but everybody was very pleased by how it went.  

Christian and Daryl checking out the equipment and setting up for the white wall shots.  

What kind of camera is this?  It certainly looks impressive.

Setting up a shot to look like a logistics and export/import sort of job situation for the man in the hi-vis vest.  

Interns shouldn't be standing around taking selfies, so this was the best I could manage.  Ha ha!

Friday 10-4 with one hour lunch break
I started the day watching Quentin make some time lapses and "boomerangs" of cafe recipe preps that will go on Instagram.  Then he let me practice cutting footage from yesterday in Avid, the Apple editing software.  The keyboard has a special cover that sets out the key shortcuts that work for the program easier to find.  JKL stands for reverse play (J), pause (k), and forward play (L).  Tapping the J and L buttons makes playback faster so you can scroll through the footage until you see the talent talking.  Just before they start, you hit I for in and a bracket pops up on the timeline, then O for out after they finish and b to send the bracketed section down to the timeline.  I got through about 5 of our 7 actors before the next task popped up.  Russ Taylor is animating an ad for Spoon for a rent to own company.  It's done in the style of Bro Town and he uses a Mac, Wacom Cintiq, Flash and After Effects.  He said that he's heard alot about Toonboom but doesn't want to pay that kind of money (yet) when Flash still works so well for him.  I can't argue with that because what he's doing looks really good.  Daryl, Christian and Russ watched the animation, gave feedback and then sent Russ on his way to make adjustments.  The spot needs to be finished for client approval by Monday.  They sent me along with Russ to check out his home work station and to talk more about his process.  He started out in print then moved to digital.  He hasn't had any formal animation training but picked stuff up on the job (he worked for M&C Saatchi Sydney and did banner ads at one point in his career before moving to Auckland) and watched videos in his own time to upskill.  He recommended a video tutorial site that has lessons from beginner to advanced and said that people who say they can't usually aren't interested and people who say they can do because they are extremely interested.  I watched him work Flash for two hours and then called it a day.   I showed Russ my prototype pitch bible and got feedback: he said that my illustration and photoshop skills are strong and that I'm very close to having a children's book with what I've got done already.  Nice to hear!  He was also very interested in seeing examples of my mascot work so you never know- I could get work through him someday.

Russ Taylor loves his work!

33.5 hours at Spoon this week.  I will go back to Spoon Monday and then off to TV3 to do work for Jamie L. at Jono and Ben.  They're in the pre-production phase of the show but he was very kindly told me he will find me something to do.  Hooray!  He will always be one of my favourite clients.  And if they run out of stuff, maybe the news department or somebody else will need a graphics intern.  It won't hurt to ask and show my portfolio around, too.  Fingers crossed, I hope to get 33 hours in with Jamie/TV3/Mediaworks next week which means I will need to find another provider for my third and final intern week up in Auckland.  I will also apply for hours with TaleEnders and Sit Pro back in Invercargill so all bases are covered and I am also giving back to local businesses.

BSA303, Spoon 30 June, 2017

I called Darryl today and he said come on over Monday!  They use After Effects and Cinema4D for their 3D so he doesn't think he can offer me anything BUT is happy for me to sit in and watch his editor work.  And he's going to think about what sort of stuff he might be able to use me for.  I did tell him that this is an opportunity for me to try new things and see what I really might like to do.  We'll chat more on Monday.

BSA303, Pop-Up Workshop visit, 29 June, 2017

I spent an hour and a half talking to Jeremy Dillon, creator of The Moe Show, and a tour of the studio.  I got to hear about how he came up with show, worked with their commissioner, and have continued to evolve the show over the 5 years it's been on the air.  And he looked at my pitch bible and gave me some feedback!  It was really awesome.  I got to see the set where they film everything (it's built high above the ground to accommodate performers with puppets raised over their heads), edit and hold meetings.  They took over an old fabric warehouse so they'd have filming and office space.  It's a nice space.  They avoid post -production fixes by doing everything on camera: what I thought was a green screen and animated scenery is a giant scenery painting, suspended cotton wool clouds, and tree branches that wave in the "wind" thanks to a strategically placed fan.  The clouds are pushed along during the show so it looks like things are changing naturally outside.  It's a little touch that he reckons makes hte world more real for the viewer.  The puppets are made by Pasha in Texas.  They have had to replace them over the years but try to avoid it as it's very hard to get exact duplicates.  They mostly have a pull tab that operates eyelids or wings and Gilbert is the most mechanical of them all.  When their mechanisms break, they get sent back to Texas for a fix up and the schedule gets switched around to cover their absence.  Pasha is coming out to NZ in October for ten days to be on set while they're filming the Christmas special so they can keep to schedule.  

These are some of my take aways from Jeremy's comments:

On what he learned from doing his shows:
let your characters have insecurities.  Perfect characters are boring!
Really think about what life was like for you when you were a kid.  Think about what's a problem for the kid, in their life, and not what their parents think they should be learning.  ex. Can you do a show about eating your vegetables?  Kids see right through that.

He started with Moe then brought in the other 3 characters, and they've  now developed to the point where they host their own segments of the show.
Base your characters on someone you know and let them grow from there.  Gilbert Gecko is based on Jeremy's cousin with short man disease. lol
Animation is more expensive than filming puppets.
Find a character who kids can relate to as their own best friend who nobody else has:  he thought about Elliot from the original Pete's Dragon, ET, and a labrador puppy when he was designing Moe's look and personality.
Be open to things changing from the original idea.  changes can comes from the outside, commissioner, or the inside, puppeteers getting a better feeling for their characters.
Fern the Fairy has developed from a girl who whines when Moe doesn't do what she wants to do to someone who says "your loss!" and goes on her way.  He said they struggled for a long time to take her from being manipulative to independent, which he feels is the right message for girls to take away from the show.  She and Moe are best friends who also disagree.
Frank is a fantail but people mistake him for an owl, which has become a running joke on the show.
The funding process is changing and they're developing a new show, too.  After 250 episodes, Moe has pretty much seen as much of New Zealand as he can.
Gilbert's character was going to be a stoat but the commissioner pointed out that NZ kids are taught to hate stoats because they kill kiwi birds.  So he became a gecko, a lizard that lives on the Coromandel Peninsul, the setting of the show.

On what he saw in my pitch bible:
 Get your main character (Jellybean) sorted and figure out how the others react- what do they bring out in each other?
How can your show's premise be expanded so it's possible to make a 5 year series?  Networks want a hit and you may be out of material after 7 shows if you cover one emotion per episode.  If it's the choice between sinking money into a one-year or a five-year show, the 5-year show wins.  Jeremy's idea:  make it a problem solving show where they can deal with emotions or math, or learning, or anything in the world.  Jellybean takes the girl to the Imagination Warehouse where the crew helps her figure things out.

Keep thinking about things from a kid's perspective and find a core story from your childhood to help ground you.  Jeremy referred several times to a memory he had of being afraid of the hydroslide and not being able to admit it or to try it when he got more comfortable with the idea.  His dad pretended to be nervous and asked Jeremy to go down the slide with him.  Jeremy got to "help Dad out" without the risk of looking bad and didn't miss out on doing something that he had changed his mind about.

Moe with Jeremy in the art department