The Annual College End of Year Film –
Each year for the last few years I have been invited to produce our college end of year film. It’s a long and quite complex task because it has to really showcase our department. It needs to appeal to parents, staff and students alike. Unfortunately because it is such a massive undertaking, my research has had to go on hold for a little while. However in a couple of weeks I am due to fly out to Barcelona, so hopefully I‘ll have plenty of travelling time to catch up on my studies.
In the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to document my film making process. Each year I write all of the script, edit all of the video and use character animation software to enable animated characters to read the story’s narrative. Often I also need to shoot my own video in order to help with the story and to fill in any gaps. In fact I’m responsible for it all! Over the last two years I’ve used a character I named ‘Horace ‘Boris’ Hedgehog’ (trust me, by watching the previous 2 films, his name becomes clear), this year it will be ‘Ruby the Robot’. My brief as always is to produce a humorous and light hearted synopsis of our whole year and what our art department is all about. Below are my two films.
South Devon College – End of Year Film 2021
South Devon College – End of Year Film 2022
Beginning the Process
Possibly one of the hardest tasks is starting the process, then secondly securing imagery and footage from students. At this point in the academic year, students tend to be extremely busy with art exams, portfolios and exhibition pieces. Therefore, having to dig around in their files for work is often viewed as an unwelcome distraction. However, recently students (with the help of tutors) have begun producing an amazing annual magazine called the ’Art Foundry Magazine’. This is really helpful because normally there is one student responsible for curating the magazine and I can enlist their help in procuring static images. Films and animations are sometimes a little harder to gather.
Below are the last three editions of the Art Foundry Magazine – I have a feature in each one.
Each year a theme is set for both the magazine and the end of year film. This year Pav, our program co-ordinator suggested ‘Fin de Ciecle’ (End or Turn of the Century). It is a really interesting topic and using it as a starting point the students decided to run with the theme of Ai. So the scene is now set and the electronic invite sent out each year is designed by students. This year I felt that the electronic invite was exceptionally good which is great, but it also means that the accompanying video has a lot to live up to as well. Below is the electronic invite for this year.
Electronic Invite to End of Year Celebrations
Below is the South Devon College electronic invite to the end of year celebrations, designed by a student(s). They had decided to run with the theme of Ai, robots and an Ai takeover. For this reason I felt that my ‘Horace ‘Boris’ Hedgehog’ character needed to be replaced by ‘Ruby the Robot’.
Finding a Robotic Character
Now that the theme had been set for the end of year film, I needed to find a robotic character. I decided to look through the Adobe Character animation rigs to see if there was something suitable. I immediately found I really nice robot rig but as always nothing was going to be straight forward. Unfortunately the character rig I wanted to use was only available in the tutorial section of the software and it always came with a background. Exporting this character with the required transparent background was not an option offered inside the program.
I tried a number of options to get rid of the background including exporting the character using a ‘straight unmatted’ option in the export settings. I also tried a similar approach using Adobe After Effects but nothing seemed to work. Fortunately, there was an in-rig option to add a green background to the character. Therefore, I wondered if I could remove this green background out in Adobe After Effects using the ‘keying’ command.
The keying command is very useful, it can select colours and them remove them as desired. I needed to know if it could remove the character’s green background in order to export it with the transparent background I needed.
It worked! I was now feeling quite pleased with myself for solving the problem. Sadly it has meant a certain level of complexity now exists that hadn’t previously existed with my ‘Horace ‘Boris’ Hedgehog’ character. ‘Ruby the Robot’ was now ideal for the film, just a little more complicated to incorporate.
Collating Material
Now that the central character had been identified the next step was to collate student videos and images created throughout the year. Below is an example of some of what I managed to collate this year. Once people have sent me images and footage I put them all in my pictures folder under a shared album called ‘Film 23’. It is from here that I begin to look for visual patterns in the images that fit with the title which this year was set as: ‘Fin de Siecle’ with a leaning towards Ai.
Examples of Work in the ‘Film 23’ Folder
Script Writing and Narratives
Once all of the images are collated into a folder. The next step is to look for patterns and themes running through them. This year it was decided that we would run with Ai and the ‘Fin de Siecle’ as topics. I found some funny footage of students making robots and I decided to run with a theme of Ai taking over our art department. I imagined what a robotic character might say and I looked for the appropriate images to illustrate this.
Finally after around two and a half weeks sitting solidly at my computer, the scene footage was finally complete. I had wanted to finish the whole film before going on a planned trip to Barcelona, but sadly there was just too much to do. Therefore, I decided to down tools and pack my bags ready for the flight to Spain.
I really do hate leaving work unfinished because sometimes I find it difficult to ‘pick up where I left off.’ However, I knew that I had a backlog of blogging to catch up on so I launched straight back into the film on my return.
It took me an extra 3 days to fully complete the film and as always I felt a sense of relief once it was complete. I do also enjoy seeing it come together as a project, but it always great to see it finished. Now that it is finished I am able to return to blogging and more importantly my research and research paper proposal.
The Final Result – South Devon College – End of Year Film
I’m pleased to present the end of year film I created for our Art Department at South Devon College this year. The film was really well received and raised a few laughs among the students.
