A human thing

This took about 200 layers, so real time previews were impossible. I had to work in 2048 X 2048 to avoid a moire pattern, and every line is on it's own layer. Premiere started having trouble doing everything after about 50 layers, so this took a few days.

The playblast from the retreat sequence

The playblast from the retreat sequence

Reaction Shot Take2

My first attempt at the reaction shot was an emulation one of Michael Bay's "Bayhem" shots described by Tony Zhou in Every Frame a Painting. I hoped an iconic cinematic shot with an over the top sense or “epicness” would have a satirical effect, endearing the character to the audience through sympathy, similar to the affection fans of the Charles M. Schultz have for Charlie Brown.

Beyham - "use of movement composition and fast editing to create a sense of epic scale" through "layers of depth, parallax, movement, character, and environment" (Zhao)

The performative function of the reaction shot should be an alignment of the audience with the protagonist and an introduction to the goose's vulnerability through a visible awareness of his own fallibility. The intended perlocution is identification and affection through empathy (naïve demeanor under threat), but early test shots made it clear that the "Bayhem" shots were not going to be effective.

Tony Zhou describes Michal Bay's shots as having a good deal of “impact”, but more specifically there is an awe and admiration for the character who is literally and figuratively standing to face the challenging in a chaotic world. The Bayham primitive is awe generated by a metaphoric link to imagery and conceptual conjugate.

Austin categorized communicative failures, and Ronald Grimes wrote about the application of his taxonomy to ritual failure. The failure of this shot might fall under a “misinvocation” and/or a “misfire” because the act was “purported but void” due to a “misexecution” vitiating the act through flaw. But I think categorization of infelicities in narrative falls outside of Austin's scheme because the projected application of his theory is radically different from the nuances of performative narrative communication. For analysis of multiplatform narrative communication classification of primitives through their relationship to the perlocution would be the most effective tool for the deconstruction, analysis, and construction of narrative performative acts.

First Attempt at Beyham

Multilayered Michael Bay-style hero reaction shot.

Bay Reaction shot with a telephoto lens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view#Focal_length

I don't think Michael bay is using a telephoto lens in most of these shots.

 35mm equivalent

fl 85

diagonal angle 28.6

Vertical 16.1

Horizontal 23.9

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view#cite_note-17

The background is very blurry. If the focal length is 85, the angle of view is approximately 16 X 24 degrees. 

The subject would have to be about 86 feet away (arc tan of 16 degrees) to get 3 feet vertical (it would wind up smaller with the crop factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor). 

With an f/1.4 the background would have to be more than 1000 feet away... 

http://www.photopills.com/calculators/dof

a few Bay shots

https://youtu.be/2THVvshvq0Q?t=1m41s

the reaction shot

I have been out of comission for a few days, and I am on pain medication, so forgive me if my focus drifts.

I have decided to emulate one of Michael Bay's "Bayhem" (I am going to make an orbiting/rising dolly zoom) shots for the reaction shot because they are iconic cinematic shots that give an over the top sense or epicness,
Beyham - "use of movement composition and fast editing to create a sense of epic scale"

these require "layers of depth, parallax, movement, character, and environment"
"lots of things of varying size in the same shot and move the camera to emphasize."

Every Frame a Painting season 1 episode 7 Michael Bay - What Is Bayhem? by Tony Zhou

imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6167228/?ref_=ttep_ep7

direct link to the video 

The layers require a lot of objects and a detailed model, which is a lot of work, but I plan on trying the textured models in a reshoot of the "Text World" shot with a more appropriate font.

Getting unstuck

I don't really understand why I am detailing my meanderings with my theory, so the direction has been a bit chaotic. In an attempt to put words to paper, I am starting with a performative breakdown of the elements and trying to transform it into a detail of how the theory worked in practice.

The Form through the Formula

The technical, visual aesthetic, and formal linguistic (semantic/lexical/phonemic) decisions were informed by the performative function of each element and a counterpoint between the circular form of the goose's (heroe's) journey, interactive paradigm, suggestion of indexicality, character arc, and the indexical allusions of the aesthetic.

The interface changes from a book to an interactive animation at a moment in the story when the protagonist is out of his element. This is done in order to generate a disorientation for the audience and identification with the protagonist through a common experience. In order to be effective, the audience has to expect the interface to behave like a book. For this reason, several of the aesthetic decisions in the beginning of the story and the end are made in an attempt to evoke the presence of a book (my ideas of evoking presence are based on the “aura” described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, but I do not think the actual artifact needs to be there to generate a similar sensation).

Examples of illusory imagery to imply indexicality are in the “book opening” animation, the “vine text” animation, and the sound of a page turning that accompanies the transitions between the scenes when the goose is in the human world. The performative function of the opening imagery, interaction, and animations associated with the experience of reading a book (i.e. paper texture, shading, and sound of paper) is to mislead the audience to anticipate the experience to be similar to reading a story from a book and the dramatic effect when the expectation is broken.

Locution	imagery, interaction, and animations associated with the experience of reading a book (i.e. foliage, shadow, imagery/sound of paper)
Illocution	suggest that the audience is holding a book
Perlocution	suspension of the awareness of the digital medium
Primitive	sound, interaction, and imagery with shading and dimensionality consistent with an object in the viewer’s space
Constative	this is an animation of a book
Explicit Performative Function	mislead the audience (i. e. build an expectation that the experience will be like a book in order to break the expectation for dramatic effect)

Cited:

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

More on Locution vs. Constative

The constative is a conceptual form; it is a statement without implication.

Locutionary concerns include

• spelling and grammar 
• tonal qualities of the music (i.e. that note doesn't belong there because the song is in the key of F)
• technical issues

A distinction between Constative and Locutionary is clear in the performative breakdown of the text in scenes 7 and 8.

Scene 7
Locution	Some of the words with strong syllables waddle across the screen with characteristics that suggest the words meaning. The poetic meter is anapestic with the substitution of a trochee (one long or stressed syllable followed by a short or unstressed) for an iamb (short or stressed followed by a long or unstressed), causing a speeding up (Corn 41). The poetic meter breaks in the words behind, people, goose, and tuba. So he did (soft, soft, hard) Or he tried (s, s, h) And he left (s, s, h) Geese behind (h, h, s) To show people (h, s, h, s) A goose (s, h) With a tuba (s, s, h, s)
Illocution	This is a whimsical story about a goose who thinks he can be a human
Perlocution	A light-hearted tone is established. The stumbling verse is reminiscent of a goose’s waddle, with a stumble for subtle dramatic emphasis (the word goose does not follow or fit into the poetic meter of the rest of the segment).
Primitive	Stumbling verse with a whimsical subject and variation in meter; shaping a lines rhythm so that it will support the conceptual content (i.e. interpreting visual imagery to evoke an emotional response through linking aesthetics with conceptual conjugates).
Constative	The goose is entering the human world.
Explicit Performative Function	Establish character and story as whimsical, and foreshadow character’s problems (The general performative functions of foreshadowing: An audience forgives plot turns when events have a certain degree of predictability (not completely unforeseeable, but somewhat challenging). It adds sense of a master plan to everything.)
Implication	The poetic imagery does not involve a confusion. There is a moment of interpretation, but it is not like a dolly zoom (it does not rely on tension)

Locution - form

Constative - statement without implication

Performative function - how the scene furthers the audience's understanding of the story

Perlocution -  psychological change in the audience

Corn, Alfred. The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Port Townsend, Wash: Copper Canyon Press, 2008. Print.

Locution vs. Constative and Performative vs. Perlocution

Locution vs. Constative
Locution is the form, not a communicative statement to the audience. If someone was discussing the light and dark areas on the scene, the aesthetics, and how it guides the eye, without discussing what is going on, that would be a locutionary examination.
The constative is the element as a descriptive statement, without implication. For example, if someone sees a scene from a movie, but did not know what the movie was about or how the scene functioned to further the plot, the constative would be their description of the scene.

Performative vs. Perlocution
The Perlocution is the audience's psychological reaction to the element.
The Explicit Performative Function is the way a narrative element changes the audience's relationship with the story.

When I am making a breakdown of the illocution into the perlocution through the locution and the constative into a performative with a primitive, I find it useful to look at existing narrative forms that I find emblematic. I often look at the breakdown of the dolly-zoom shot from Vertigo, I think I find it helpful because I knew the shot before I watched the movie, so the constative form is the one I am most familiar with and distinct from my understanding of the movie.

Constative + Primitive = Performative
Locution + Primitive ≠ Performative

Emerging Technology as Blended Media

sources about the problem of new media
Joseph Gordon-Levitt states the problem with narrative on emerging media (specifically VR) at Sundance. This is really close to my statement of new media as a blend, and he starts to talk about the role of the spectator and narrative effect/function.

From this article by Jason Ferguson

https://uploadvr.com/virtual-reality-storytelling-problem-theater-will-save/

Active Vs. Passive Voice

Word is giving me "passive voice" errors.
To clarify:

Active
Subject, then verb, then object or person
John cleaned the room.

Passive
Object, then verb, then subject
The room was cleaned by john.

http://www.whitesmoke.com/passive-voice-in-english

More rough bits

New Pages

The book will run on a tablet, so I am adapting the design for the smaller screen. Only using the foliage on the drop cap and enlarging that letter makes the details more clear than having a bunch of tiny plants on a smaller screen.

I have a rough version of the first few pages.

Rerendering some stuff

I have had to redesign and rerender some stuff (the foliage text needs to be large to be worth the render time, so I am limiting it to the Drop Cap.
I have used so many different versions I am having trouble figuring out which one was the final and getting the lighting to match. THis is the Book Opening, which I am trying to match with the lighting for the first page (there is a paratext page that says "Tuba-Goose Chapter | One: Probably a Goose"), but I do not have the animation for the Paratext page yet.

T Strokes

I got the T curves and strokes
There is a problem with Maya. When I try to render with an image sequence it says it cannot find the images. It works fine for a single image, but not for a sequence.

Role of the Spectator as a Narrative Device

When the audience reads a book or watches a movie, the events are read from the perspective of an omniscient spectator (see Professor Nick Browne's The Spectator in the Text). In interactive media the viewer is a participant.
The game mentioned below plays with this role for narrative effect.

The Stanley Parable (meta Aesthetic game)

Post Structuralism Spreads to Math

Structuralism has trouble with subjectivity

Philosopher Alain Badiou argues that mathematics is a purely human construct, analogous to fiction.

Quotes (from memory)
math is "a fiction of intelligible consistency" (I found this in Ashton, 270)
"mathematics is a rigorous aesthetic" (I am having trouble finding this quote, bit I think it is in Briefings on Existence)

Fictionalism
Mathematical realists believe that math is objective, existing outside human knowledge. But the belief that mathematics beyond what humans will or could ever discover is a faith (counter to science).


Ashton, Paul, Adam Bartlett, and Justin Clemens. The Praxis of Alain Badiou. Melbourne: Re.press, 2006. Internet resource.
Badiou, Alain, and Norman Madarasz. Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Print.

Platomism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism

Strokes

I have started adding strokes to the curves

It is incredibly time consuming to get all the foliage to bloom properly and sill have the letters readable. I tried a few methods over the summer, and though the node editor was a bit quicker for copying and pasting several vines onto curves, they still need individual manipulation to make the letters clear.

Regretfully, I don't see any way to do all the letters by the deadline. So I am just going to slap together a drop cap, and leave the letters as normal text for the review.

It does not look nearly as good as the full test, but there is no way I can complete all of it by the middle of July.

It was my favorite part, but I think it will save me about a month

Reformatting for the Drop Cap and Foliage

I have made maps for all the text in Word, and now I am aligning the curves with the new letters. The process is very time consuming, but the foliage text is one of my favorite aesthetic pieces.

The lettering is organized in Microsoft Word

Then I adjust the curves to rest on the page.

The curves have to be very close to the page, or the foliage growing out of the curves will be floating above the paper.

I have all the curves for the first page on the paper