STATEMENT OF INTENT

My statement of intent for my final year of study in Digital Media Design James Lashmar

Outline Project Dissertation Special Study

Contents
Intro ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Ideas ...................................................................................................................................... 2 3D Projection..................................................................................................................... 2 Short Film ............................................................................................................................ 2 Further Concepts.............................................................................................................. 2 Summary ............................................................................................................................ 3 My Project ................................................................................................................................. 3 Outline ................................................................................................................................... 3 Breakdown ............................................................................................................................ 3 Holism & live action .......................................................................................................... 3 Directing and Cinematography .................................................................................... 4 Motion ................................................................................................................................ 4 Matchmoving ................................................................................................................... 4 Multi Pass Rendering ........................................................................................................ 4 Compositing...................................................................................................................... 4 The Music ........................................................................................................................... 4 The installation .................................................................................................................. 5 Dissertation ............................................................................................................................... 5 Special Study ............................................................................................................................ 5

Statement of Intent

James Lashmar

Statement of Intent
Intro
I think I should start off by explaining a few things that I have being looking at recently and my ideas and thoughts around these sources of inspiration and personal interest.

Ideas
3D Projection This is definitely an area of interest for me, I find it fascinating. This is due to the overwhelming sense of visceral magic that this technique can conjure. Ive seen it used to knock down the walls of a 3 storey building and then fill it with water with a goldfish swimming around inside. After learning a substantial amount in 3D this year on placement, I came to realise how flexible I am as a designer to learning new tools and techniques. This was an area that I was really interested in learning as I believed I could utilise the majority of my skills in creating visuals and really bring them to life and add depth to them using this technique. I decided that the situ that I earlier contemplated using this technique in however, simply would have been ridiculously hard to complete to my personal satisfaction, in the given time frame. Short Film This led me to another area that I was interested in applying my skills to, a short film. This I realised would be something that again despite a plethora of work, could be great. It would entail learning how to direct and shoot a film, something I have not previously undertaken. It would be possible I figured, if I could come up with a concept that involved no actors or dialogue. I decided that this could be something that I could make later in some form, possibly around another idea as a documentation of it.

Further Concepts Compassion Compassion is something that struck a chord in me after watching a TED talk presented by Karen Armstrong, a religious Historian. I started to look at compassion in art and whether this was due to feminism, I wondered how I could use this in some form.

Statement of Intent

James Lashmar

The Theory of Everything A Physicist by the name of Garret Lisi proposed in 2008, his Theory of Everything. This involved some heavy quantum theory with some particle physics to essentially show the possibility of explaining nature through science and mathematics using the E8 model. Depending on what is found when the Large Hadron Collider is next fired, this theory could be proven to be true or false. If true, another 20 sub atomic particles could be found, completing the E8 theory. I found this to be truly incredible. The thought that nature, the one thing that continually shocks us with its complexity, could be explained using science and maths. This on its own would be a bit too far out of the scope of design. I needed something to a new idea conflate this theory into. Music Video All of my aforementioned concepts could have incorporated musically, some more noticeably than others. None of the however really grabbed me as being able to express myself in them whilst still having a strong interest and the ability for me to combine philosophy, culture and concept in a unique trinity personal to me. Summary So to summarise in short, I will be making a music video. The theme of which involves The Theory of Everything, Compassion and Holism, pertaining to nature.

My Project
Outline
Following my obsession for digital, Ill be making a digital music video in full HD resolution (1080p). On reflection of my skills, I aim to push myself further than I have ever done with this project. Allowing for the time I have, the skills and resources, I am now really quite excited to see what I can produce for the final piece. Of late, Ive been really taking on board a lot of information to open my mind up to a wealth of information. Previously, a lot of my work has been purely digital and it has shown. After producing the Final Degree Show Motion Graphics Reel in 2010 with Matt Whitewood and John Walker, I noticed that viewers engaged with the analogue aspect over the digital. Whilst digital media is ever rich, it can be cold. This project is to be in no way commercial.

Breakdown
Holism & live action Based on my theme of Holism, I intend to incorporate some live action footage, this will demarcated at a later stage in the project. For now my idea is as simple as a
3 Statement of Intent James Lashmar

time lapse shot with something organic, such as a flower growing from a seedling. Time lapse and stop motion are two techniques that I understand but until now I havent had much practice with, especially the latter. Directing and Cinematography The live action, time lapse and stop motion aspects will require me to push my boundaries in filming. I aim to capture the essence of what Im aiming for here, to capture beauty in nature. This I realise will take a lot of research to capture the right aesthetic but is vital to the end result. Motion Using the Trapcode plugins, Form and Particular, I am to produce something with an organic aesthetic. This may also be audio reactive using the music to drive the motion. Alternatively as the rest of the video wont have this option, I could edit the rest of the video and the motion to complement the track. Matchmoving When I finish my final year of study, I intend to work in the VFX industry in London. I have been advised by James Fleming of DNeg to include some Matchmoving. This is something that I am quite confident with, as I spent a good 2 months learning how to use Boujou 5 to track a full 360 degree rotation without the use of Lidar (Light Detection And Ranging, also LADAR), filmed with a Canon XLH1. I then took this further and after completing a successful track, I took the footage into Maya and managed to sequence the 3D to the track. The 3D is then taken back in to Boujou and re-distorted to that of the lens used to film the original shot, as cameras in Maya have perfect lenses, unlike that of real life lenses. Multi Pass Rendering During the music video, I intend to include some other footage separate to that of the time lapse or stop motion. If I am to use my Matchmoving skills successfully, I will need to use multi pass rendering with my 3D work for it to look professional and also realistic. This includes rendering different layers out of the Framebuffer of the Mental Ray Renderer which can calculate realistic, physical light. Compositing Whilst working at this level, I believe that you cant just use After Effects for Compositing. If I was doing something similar, I would consider using it as I believe in using the right tool or the job so to speak. Taking in to consideration that I am aiming for such a standard and that I will be using multi pass rendering, I will be using NukeX to composite the 3D work, if not the music video in its entirety. The Music An Artist that I love is Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet. His work is experimental but mainly in the genre of electronica but it does not restrict itself to this, lending influences from jazz, garage, 2-step, folk and more. After an email to him a couple of weeks ago requesting usage rights to his music, Ive had an email in return
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confirming that I can use his work in my project. Ive chosen Hebdens music because not only would it be a personal honour to create visual to his work, I think his sounds embodies my whole concept and theme with its ambience. If he likes the visuals, Im pretty sure he will share them too leading to greater exposure of my work. His work is also non-commercial and non-mainstream, which is something that will be coterminous with my work and also analogous with aspects of my dissertation. The installation Im quite interested in the installation of this piece being slightly out of the norm for a music video. In my dissertation Ill be looking at possible frameworks of music videos and if they have structure if any. I like the idea of my video being spread across four screens or projectors, either playing different aspects of the video at any one time, combining in unison or as a whole.

Dissertation
For my dissertation I will be looking at the history of the music video. Thinking about this media in an evolutionary sense, analogous to the holism theme, where did music videos come from and what were the conditions for their emergence? Also how have they evolved and disseminated? Does the web have a place in shaping the future of the music video? What is the cultural history of the media? Are music videos part of a system like components in nature and are they self-supporting? Also, I wish to elucidate the myopic view of music videos in relation to music television, both of which are commonly mistaken as the same thing. In Channels of discourse, reassembled, Robert C. Allen speaks about scholarship on Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and postmodernism in relation to TV. Can this be transposed to the music video?

Special Study
This is an aspect Im still unsure of at the time of writing. It will no doubt be on the technical side of a discipline that I will be using in my project such as Matchmoving or Composition.

Statement of Intent

James Lashmar