Updated

1. Motion Graphics and
Compositing:
Case Study
Robert-Ryan
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2. 2
Critical Discussion

3. Motion Graphics
1.Motion Graphics is a piece of digital animations and images that have been used in film and
Television. Motion graphics originated in the silent era when they where used for nothing more
than titles that book end the film while at the same time used for dialogue to as the only
available recourse for sound was background music.
2Thanks to the advancement of technology, artists and filmmakers have been utilizing this
method to great effect throughout the last century and so on. Just like the silent film era but a lot
more complex. Examples of this can be seen in the James Bond Era which has some iconic title
sequences. One example of this is the title sequence for Goldfinger which has shots of a woman
covered in gold in a dark room with clips of the movie in the golden woman to give the audience
an idea of the tone and information on what to anticipate later on.
3.
Opening title sequences have become a thing that has been hasn’t been used in film recently but
a recent examples of it being utilized well can be found in Stephen Speilberg’s Catch me If You
Can which is about a FBI agent trying to catch a young con artist who is travelling state to state
pretending to have many occupations. The film is essentially a chase and the animations in the
sequence attempt to portray that through the quick animations and the fast paced music that is
present in the sequence as well.
4. Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang contains animations that give the audience an idea on what
the story line is and what Is going to come into play later on.

4. Silent Film Cards
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Title Card
Dialogue
Ending.
1.

5. Goldfinger
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2.

6. Catch Me if you Can
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FBI agent looking down at little man who is the con artist.
Big FBI agent and little con artist.
Meaning that he is closing in on him.
3.

7. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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4.

8. Motion Graphics
The advancement of modern technology has also made motion graphics accessible
to young filmmakers and artists seeing how intro’s for YouTube video’s and short
films contain a lot of motion graphics that are either pre made or made by the
people who make the videos. In many contemporary use many business have
utilized motion graphics in order to create advisements to help promote their
business, as well as YouTube intro’s Youtuber's use motion graphics to create fact
driven videos with meaningful and informative videos. A perfect example of this
can be found in a video called “WATER Our Precious Resource” which goes into
great detail about why water is important and why we should cherish it. The visuals
are exciting and pleasing to look at which is perfect for capturing a viewer’s
attention and everything that the person presenting is saying shows a couple of
animations that perfectly fit into what he is saying. The visual presentation and the
voiceover match very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaw5mCjHPI link to WATER Our precious
resource.

9. WATER Our Precious Resource
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10. Visual Effects
Matte paintings where a major part in creating stunning visual effects and landscapes to
bring audiences in to the world that any big blockbuster at the time would take place in.
The term “matte” means to block an image in the background. For example when a film crew
build a lower half of a set of a building but can’t afford to build the rest of the setting, including
everything around the building such as the grass and trees ect. A static camera would film the
Matte painting and the scenes so that the two things blend together simultaneously. One of the
most iconic uses of Matte Paintings can be seen in the early Star Wars movies. This is when the
technological advancement of Matte paintings allowed artists to create scenes that looked
convincing on screen. An earlier example of matte paintings can be seen in George Melies’s
Four Heads are Better Than one where he used a glass pane painted black to create a matte,
shoot and rewind the film. Because the matte was painted black it would not be exposed to
light, leaving parts of the frame empty. This technique is known as double or multiple exposure.

11. Four Heads are Better than one
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Multiple heads of the same
Man made possible through
Matte paintings.

12. Matte Paintings in Star Wars
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13. Visual Effects
By the time the 90s hit matte paintings became a dying thing and special effects artists were
now able to master digital special effects. Thanks to this progressing change in technology,
filmmakers and visual effect artists use a wide range of 2D and 3D software such as After
Effects and Photoshop to create more realistic looking effects that would cost a fortune to
master practically. The digital matte painting would then be later be placed into pre-recorded
scenes that would replace the green or blue matte with the illusion that the filmmakers are
going for. This method carried through every single mainstream film since then.
Matte paintings: Digital
techniques
Before
After.

14. Travelling Matte.
A problem with matte paintings was that the camera had to be static
and no action could cross the white line. The original method was to
record actors against a black background and create high contrast
negatives. That way it would create a black and white silhouette this
created a travelling matte, because it moved throughout the frame. In
1927 a film called Sunrise by F.W Murnau was one of the first motion
pictures to use this technique.
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Sunrise: A song of two humans. 1927

15. Blue Screen and Mattes.
In 1930 a new method called The Blue Screen method was developed at RKO radio
pictures. This is were filmmakers would remove the color range in the foreground
allowing the effects to be placed. Blue was used as it’s the only color that’s further
away from skin tones. 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad was one of the earlier examples of
this method being used. Unfortunately there were issues the separation to create the
matte and the final results would look obvious. However Hollywood continued to
experiment with this method over the next 2 decades along with other variations such
as UV and the yellow matte, this was infamously used in the animation sequence for
Marry Poppins.
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The Thief of Bagdad
1940

16. Chroma Key
The Chroma Key was the proper breakthrough for visual
effects. A keyer is a mathematical process that would take
a range of colors of a video signal and make them
transparent. Blue was predominant until the late 90s
where green became the norm. Green is easier to use
because its brighter in electronics and it is less common
in costume design. Advanced uses of green screen and
CGI can be seen in major Hollywood blockbusters such as
Marvel’s The Avengers in 2012 as well as many other
marvel films that have come before and after The
Avengers. Chroma Key has become the main crux of using
special effects and CGI in film
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17. Chroma Key
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18. CGI (computer generated imagery)
• GGI is now the norm for special effects usage in Hollywood and has been for over
2 decades. Any creature or landscape that would be impossible to create and film
a team of experts would create that creature in landscape in post and would try to
make it as photorealistic as possible. One of the first uses of CGI can be seen in
Michael Chriton’s WestWorld from 1973. A particular example of this is a scene
where a character is being chased by a robotic gunslinger. We see the androids
vision which was essentially a pixelated infrared vision. Each frame of footage that
was recorded before hand was colour-separated and converted into blocks for
individual colouring. 1982’s Tron took this technique to a different level by utilizing
it to create the digital world in side the arcade game this film takes place in while
also creating sequences that used a huge amount of 3D which was huge a
marketing gimmick at the time when this film was being advertised. In 1984 Pixar
used CGI for their first animation (which is also a LucasFilm co production) known
as The Adventures of Andre and Walle B. Pixar would then later become the
multimillion dollar animation company that its known as today mainly through
their computer generated animated films. 1993 saw the biggest breakthrough in
CGI Steven Speilberg’s Jurassic Park which utilized this technique to create
dinosaurs that at the time looked very realistic to the general public and won the
effects department an Oscar for their work. Ever since then Filmmakers have been
influenced to use CGI in more big budget Hollywood films ever since then.
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19. CGI (computer generated imagery)
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Westworld 1973. Androids vision
Tron 1982
The Adventures of Andre
& Wally B.
Jurassic Park 1993

20. 20
Analysis

21. Motion Graphics Sequence
Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 2005 has a very 60s retro silhouetted title
sequence that establishes the overall tone to the viewer as well as give a idea as what is
going to happen in the plot as it contains animations of scenes and locations that are
going to come into play later on in the film. This title sequence in of its self is a homage to
crime shows set in LA seeing how the film itself is a crime investigation film set in LA the
title sequence intertextually uses that style of animations what was well used in opening
credits for crime shows to pay tribute to that genre as it is a dying genre that is hardly
used for film and TV. The animations in this sequence gives off details through colour to
Dark Sleazy alley way shot.
Establishes a more gritty and serious tone
Silhouettes of gun men holding
guns. Red blood marks indicate a
sense of murder and danger.

22. Motion Graphics Sequence
The James Bond series is well known for its title sequences and one that gets a lot of praise by
fans of the series is the opening to Casino Royale from 2006. Just like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang this
contains a lot of silhouetted people but given the main theme of the film involves gambling the
backdrops in this sequence are patterns you would see in a gambling card. You see silhouetted
bad guys dissolve into hearts as a silhouetted bond beats them down (warning the viewer of the
violence that comes into play in the film) Queen of hearts and Jacks keep popping up into
backgrounds which is what can be found in gambling cards. While showing guns and fighting
remind the viewer that this is a spy action film. The Bond movies add a lot of details in their title
sequences to give off the overall theme of them but this one of the most effective of those
scenes.
Card patterns in the background.
Gun targets. Meaning it’s a sniper aiming it
Jack and bond holding guns that shoot out heartstrings
Queen of hearts.

23. Visual Effects
One of the most acclaimed effects scenes of all time is the Tsunami sequence from The Impossible From 2012.
The film is based of the boxing day Tsunami of 2004. Most of the scene is done using actual moving water
with a blue screen back ground But one aspect of that scene that stands out to me the most is its use of
miniature’s. The part where the wave crashes through the hotel was all done practically with no CGI what so
ever. This part of the scene is condensed to one or two shots but the fact this was all done in without any
computer effects makes this scene that much more gritty and effective. This scene was also shot on a green
screen backdrop simply for the sky. This shot also used a huge water tank for the wave to fully engulf the
miniature. The use of miniature’s in this scene is something you don’t see very often thanks to Hollywood’s
over reliance on cgi mainly in disaster films. Mainly the one’s directed by Roland Emmerich such as The Day
after Tomorrow which also includes a Tsunami sequence but it was all done using cgi which by today’s
standards looks very dated. Miniatures where the norm in creating disaster sequences mainly back in the 50s
in movies such as when Worlds collide which includes a very iconic flood scene. Roland Emmerich used
miniatures before moving to CG in Independence day in 1996 where the mother ship blows up New York.
The explosion was all done using miniatures of both New York and other major cities such as the white house
and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll1VKuZy
Yrs The Impossible behind the scenes.

24. Visual Effects
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The Impossible behind the
scenes.
When Worlds Collide
Miniature of the white house before
It was blown up. Bts of Independence Day.

25. Screen Ratios
Screen ratio’s for film mainly ranges from 1.85:1 to 2.40:1 However for television it mainly goes up to 1.77:1 (16:9) and
for Web use such as Youtube and vimeo they primarily uses 16:9
Resolution
Due to screen ratios, this can effect the resolution. As a rule of thumb, the higher the resolution, the better the image
quality due to the number of pixels present 4K: 3840x2160 Full HD:
1920x1080 HD:
1280x720 SD:
720x576
Frame Rate
The use of frame rate depends entirely on the usage of the final product. For Film its projected at 24fps however on
Television in the UK its projected at 25fps Internet/web use goes up to 60fps
Video Format
If videos are uploaded online and are not exported as 16:9, pillarboxes will be added automatically to the sides of the video
Many students choose to add letterbox bars to their short films to create the 2.40:1 effect. This means adding letterboxes to create
1920x800, and exporting at 16:9. When filming, this removal of the top and bottom of the frame needs to be taken into account.
Compression
When exporting your finished pieces, you should always take into account what the preferred playback method is. If it is
a theatre, you should find out what their favoured codec and wrapper is At college, you primarily will upload files onto
YouTubeThis involves using Format: H.264 and the present “Vimeo” or “Youtube” at 1080p 24 or 25p The higher the
bitrate, the better quality, but also larger the file size.. so be aware