Final Post for MEDI 259!

Well here it is, the final post for this project, MEDI 259 The Experiment Project.

It’s been a fantastic journey creating something I’ve always dreamed of doing but first I shall talk about the exhibition before getting all gushy about my dreams and stuff haha!

The exhibition was a really great experience and so exciting to see everyone’s work as for the past 2 weeks we’ve all been keeping to ourselves being busy making final touches to our work.

But now that it’s all done it was a truly great day to see some incredible work from everyone and see everyone in general!

I particularly liked Anastasija and Joshua’s piece on Milk used to make clothes as I remember her saying about doing it back in December but they have truly outdone themselves as it’s incredible.

I also loved James Wright and Andy Warren’s piece which was gruesome but so well done you loved it haha!

These were only two mind of the other brilliant work shown in Scott building and I cannot wait till next year when we finally begin year 3 and move on up into the world. Gulp!

But before we go there, I shall sign off this project’s blog by saying I have had a really enjoyable time working on this project from day 1 as it has always been something I’ve wanted to do and I am over the moon with the result and the praise it got. In fact, It was voted the third best video of the exhibition by my coursemates and though prizes were only given to the 1^st and 2^nd places, this doesn’t bother me what so ever as I am truly thrilled to have come in the top 3, let alone the top 15 it was chosen out of. :)

So here at last is a link to my Vimeo account and the page for “Professor Marble and His Music machine” which I uploaded today:

http://vimeo.com/23913478

Note this post was made after the hand in deadline but I hope you can forgive me as I wanted to talk about the exhibition and also I have re-edited this post to include the link to the video. The video was uploaded today (18^th May) so to cause any confusion the post here was made on sat 14^th may after the exhibition, but the link and video are recent. :)

So there we go! It’s had ups and downs, stress and enjoyment but overall I loved every minute of this project and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have making.

Again a special thanks to all who have helped me along the way to making this piece, and in particular (even though it’ll embarrass them should they ever read this!):

John and Lilian Hill

Eden Bluebell Peskett

Jane and Steve Mercer

8WT

Jane at Cheatwell Games

And again, everyone who has helped out on this project.

Until the next project, take care and thanks for reading. :)

Professor Marble A.K.A Joe.

Extras Bits I forgot to Add to Last Post

To celebrate it’s finality, here is a final video of me explaining the piece once more before it was dismantled and put away, which took over 2/3 hours until the room was back to normal!

I've also included the production stills of the video clips I used for you to see in closer detail.

These photos also show the close-ups I included by zooming in on the original film then adding a black border around it and playing them in sync.

Check back soon for my final sign off for this project after the exhibition. :)

Take care,

Joe.

Editing and Final Exports! IT'S FINISHED!

Hello and sorry for the delay in posting it has been a massively stressful and busy period these past few weeks!

But, on the absolutely fantastically positive side, I HAVE FINISHED THE FINAL EXPORT OF THE FILM AND IT IS 100% COMPLETE!!!! :)

I am ABSOLUTELY over the moon with the final piece but here I will explain the monstrous journey it took to get here!

Editing itself wasn’t too hard as I was able to use my expertise if you can call it that with playing drums to move pieces into the right tempo etc. but the main thing was getting the visual to sync up correctly with the audio when I had to manipulate pieces.

This was VERY stressful as having to hear something so repetitive as the guitar sound over and over and over again was a task like no other! What began to happen was the visual was all lined up perfectly and looks great, almost the final cut for the visual I reckon. But the problem was the audio and drums went in and out of tempo due to the timings of them being shot etc. so I had to spend a lot of time cutting the drum audio and recorded drum track in the environment to fix this problem and make it smoothly play. I had to do this for most of the piece as bits and bobs had higher and lower volumes on the video and so I essentially re-mixed the song as a proper song, and then added the visual to put it all in sync again.

As you can imagine, this was pretty much double the amount of work as I made the piece twice technically but never the less once it was done it was the most wonderful feeling to know it was sorted.

But as with everything there is always room for improvement, but staying your hand is a wise move too. I say this because as I exported it for the final time, as I viewed the video in Full Screen Mode, I noticed that as the CD player is turned on, the music plays but in the next clip the CD isn’t moving.

The horrible moment when your stomach lurches is exactly what happened at this moment as this was luckily noticed very close to the deadline.

So once again I went back into Final Cut Pro and had to re-edit my perfect order/mix to accommodate this continuity error.

This took longer again and once it was fixed, I re-exported it and realised it was still 2 seconds out!

So repeated the fixing process, exported again and it didn’t work again!

This carried on until 8^th time lucky It was fixed properly, no continuity errors for this part, no glitches just smooth edited movement from one scene to the next and at last I slept.

I still cannot get over how long this took and overall in this project I’ve realised I REALLY need to organise and plan much more than I already am because this was cutting it too close for comfort.

Never the less. IT. IS. DONE. And I am exceptionally proud of the end result. :)

That’s it for now until the actual exhibition. Unfortunately having left this so late/been unprepared in too many parts I haven’t had time to create my idea of a mini marble run turning on the TV and playing my film.

So for the exhibition I will be now be showing this on the show reel, hence the titles at the beginning instead of just starting as I’d first thought of doing once the marble hit the “Play” button.

I’ve also added Jazz influenced music and text to hype up the piece and then the viewer come to find that the film is not as epic as the music and text make it out to be. This all adds into the tongue in cheek science experiment feel of it all, along with the title I have finally decided on with help from friends and family, which is:

“Professor Marble and His Music Machine”.

I worked with a lot of titles for this piece such as “Marble Run Music” and “Music, Marbles and Machinery” but this one I find sums up the playfulness of the piece as well as retaining a scientific feeling to it. :)

So that’s it for this post but check back soon for my final sign off for this project and a link to the final piece on my Vimeo plus find out how the exhibition went (although technically this is after the deadline I hope you won’t mind!). :)

Take care,

Joe.