Saturday, March 26, 2011

Updates and GOOD NEWS

Okay. So it has been a few weeks since I last updated this blog. Off to a rocky start I guess.

The good news is I have about three hours of recording with Girly. I have her playing restaurant and teacher with my father, girlfriend, and me. She was priceless. She seemed to thrive off of positions of power when we role-play. She sets the rules and all of us who play with her have to follow. I wonder what she'll do if I set the rules and she must follow. I may get some weird stuff from her then.

I've been having talks with my advisor and he wants me to explore more of the "show and let her tell" technique I somewhat stumbled upon. If I show Girly a short video, and she likes it, she will start talking about it. Sometimes, it is as simple as recounting the story in her own way (cute enough as is). Other times she'll talk about how she would rather the ending go.

For example: I showed her an animated short I had completed for school in ten weeks. It's about a bunny who tries to eat some mutant flowers but the Momma mutant flower catches him and chases after him. She gets about halfway through, when the chase is happening, and begins to say, "I think it would be better if the Flower just wanted to be the Bunny's friend." For everyone who hasn't seen my short film, that's what happens (in a matter of speaking). The flower is only chasing after the bunny because if "wants" the bunny to shower its affections on. My plots are so predictable a 6 year old can figure them out.

Moving on, I wrote up a draft of my proposal, had my advisor look at it, met with him last thursday for feedback and I sent him a new draft earlier today. Just wanted to write that down somewhere as a reminder. I will also have a budget and schedule set up soon. I'll be posting my schedule as another reminder.

On to the GOOD NEWS. This summer, while I am recording hours upon hours of Girly, I also plan on working... sort of. I want an internship for the summer and have been kind of timid and sluggish about the search. I finally emailed the company that my advisor recommended and 14 minutes after I sent the email the guy called me. On the phone. It was great. And terrifying. I am going out there for an interview on the 8th of april. Oh out there, right, I didn't say where. Hmm. I guess I'll keep my mouth shut until they "hire" me. Okay, quick thing about this internship. It won't be one. Due to how the state I would be in for this internship, the boss can't say I am an intern unless I pay for the school credit that would go along with that; however, I am not made of money. As the alternative, I will be listed as a "volunteer". Sketch? Yes. Worth it? You betcha.

I'll have more updates after this internship thing gets sorted out.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Recording My Little Sister

About a week or two ago, I started doing some test recordings of my sister to see what I would be facing this summer. I plan on doing some more practice recording in the weeks to come. I'm learning quite a bit through this process, especially about how much noise is just in my house. There is almost this constant tap in the recordings from the dog on the hard-wood floors. I'll either have to take her out of the house or make a sound booth in her room with some blankets.

Which is exactly what I'm testing this weekend. Whether I can set up a sound booth in her room AND if she'll be comfortable in an interview setting as appose to something more freeform (such as on the couch watching TV).

I had a meeting with my advisor and he seems really enthusiastic about my project. He also asked me whether I wanted to be part of the interview in my movie, along with my sister. I'll see where the recording takes me but in the mean time I'll just focus on some more testing and writing up a solid treatment.

ON a slightly related topic, I am trying to finish up my last short animation in the next few weeks. It is in a "completed" form already but there is some tweaking that needs to be done in the audio and, even more importantly, I have another scene I never got to animate that was intended for after the credits but was still important to the story. Hopefully, I get that done before april.

That's it, just wanted to update things a little. I'll probably post again after this weekend depending on how the new tests go.