Legal Acts

Understanding the ethical and legal considerations when working in the creative media sector. 

Laws - Are written, approved and enforced by a particular government. If you break a law you could face police investigation, court appearance and fine.

Ethics - Rules of conducts, responsibility (not the law). If you break as ethical code you may be forced to act with ethical disapproval from your peers or professional body.




Legal and Ethical constraints 

Legal issues have a specific law behind them, which will result in legal consequences if you don't obey it. Example: Murder - Murder will have legal charges.

Ethical issues have no force of law, but are of a nature that affects society around you, or has consequences for the people involved. Example: if someone got a abortion, it is not illegal but will cause you social problems with other people who might have wanted the baby alive.



Privacy Law

• Privacy ;aw is a regulation that protects a persons right to be left alone.
• People are allowed to lead their lives without public scrutiny.
• The right to privacy
• The right to be left alone - harassment and data protection 

Example - The Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal was a very serious case where the British newspapers were hacking into people phones like the murdered school girl Milly Dowler and trying to get as much information as they can.

Copyright and Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual property is something that is unique to you if physically created. i.e. an idea is not your intellectual property but the words you write are.

Copyright is a type of intellectual law that protects your work. 

By knowing your rights and having the right type of protection you can stop people stealing or copying.

• The name of your product or brands.
• Your inventions.
• The design or look of your product.
• things you write, make or produce.

Example - A famous case of copyright was the Star Wars vs Battlestar galactica. Battlestar had borrowed a little too much from star wars as they had been accused of stealing 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. 

Libel Law

To publish or print something that is not true or may harm that persons reputation and may bring hate or scorn towards them.

It must be a statement which claims to be fact and is not clearly identified as an opinion.



Safe guarding

Safeguarding is making measurements to protect people from any harm. An example of this is places that use lanyards so only people who work there can go in.



Obscene publication act 1959

Obscene publication act is something that protects the viewers from certain obscene films that includes extreme violence and sexual content. An example of this would be the human centipede 2 was banned in the UK as it was "sexually violent and potentially obscene", as the British board of film classification said.




Official secrets law 1989
Official secrets law is there to protect things like government information from being leaked to the general public.


When publishing anything that will be seen by the public you need to be careful that you dont say anything that could cause offence to anyone. For example if it contains racism, sexism, homophobic comments or anything like that then it can tend to offend people. There was a case called sachsgate where Russel brand held his own chat show and when he and Jonathan ross called Andrew Sachs basically abusing him over the phone. To stop something like this happening you need to look at the laws on what you are and arnt allowed to say to people as if you say the wrong things it can often get out of hand.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/apr/03/russell-brand-jonathan-ross-bbc-fine  

MediaCom marketing

• I normally here about films from either adverts or people talking about them. But the people talking about them normally also get them from advertisements.
• When i go to the cinema i like the atmosphere and the quality of the picture but the downside is its sometimes hard to enjoy if people are being noisy and loud.
• I normally go to the Cineworld in Middlesborough. And i go with my friends.
• My favourite film is the Martian.

Animation Assignment

Cel based animation

Cel based animation is when you have multiple images on different plastic slides. The plastic slides were transparent sheets of plastic so that you could draw images on the different sheets and the other slides would not be messed with. So if you had the background on one side and a character on another then you can change what the character does without effecting anything else. This is a very classic way of making animation but now that you have computers that do all the animating for the major companies like Disney have stopped using it.

Cutout Animation

Cutout animation is a technique where you get images of what ever you want, cut them out and use them as your characters/props. This is another way of making animation. Similar to Cel based animation you only have to move the bits you want to and you can change certain bits without having to change the whole scene. But it does look a bit different to normal animations that are made with paint/drawings.

South park is a perfect example of Cutout animation as the first couple of episodes were just pictures that had been scanned into a computer and all the different frames were put together to make a moving cutout animation.

Model-Based animation

Model based animation is most commonly made out of Plasticine and some of the most popular animations are made out of this method. For instance Wallace and Gromit is a well known animation that is made from Plasticine and took years to make just one episode.

The picture below is a model i made out of different colours of Plasticine. I did this by making a human like shape and giving it certain characteristics. The one thing that you have to think about when making these is that if you want to make it stand up, you will have to make the legs a certain size so that it can support itself otherwise it will just fall over.

Pixilation Animation

Pixilation animation is made by using live actors that change their movement the tiniest bit with each frame. A example of this is "neighbours by Norman McLaren which was made in 1952, the narrative was that two people who live next too each other get on really well but when a nice flower grows in the middle of each others house, they start fighting over who should get it but eventually killing the flower. 

Time lapse animation

Time lapse animation is a technique that when you take a series of photographs in the same location for a long time, and when you looks back to the clips and play it at normal speed time moves faster. The most common thing time lapse is used for is nature photography as for example if you make a time lapse of the sky from night till morning you will get to see the whole process in minuets.

Persistance of vision 

Persistence of vision is when you mind tricks you into seeing things when it it moving at a certain pace. Videos are made up of moving pictures that have on average 25 frames per second  which trick you mind into thinking that the pictures are moving.





This image is of a victorian zoestrope which has multiple pictures on the inside of the cylinder whilst you look through the little slots which tricks your mind into thinking that the pictures are moving.

This is a kinetoscope and what is once you look through it you would see photographic images and would look like it was moving.

 The mutoscope is a device where series of pictures are flicked by a metal rod and viewed by the person who watches it. Because the images are being flicked really fast it tricks the eye into thinking the pictures are moving.

Trip to the moon was one of the first animated films made. It was made in france in 1902 and most of the time they did not move the background, instead they just made sets for the background and when they wanted to change scenes they would just move the background. It was also the first time that anyone had used the jump edit, they used the jump edit to put the rocket into the moons fac

Walt disney

Walt Disney was and still is one of the most famous animators of all time with a company still worth 5 billion dollars. "Snow white and the seven dwarfs" was Disney's first animated film in 1937 and was made using cel-based animation. A couple of years after snow white was made, the second world war had started. Most of Disney's staff had been contracted into making instructional videos for the military and any other videos that would boost moral support to the rest of the home front. One of the most popular animations about the war was Walt Disney's "Der Fuehrer's Face" which was an episode where Donald duck has a dream that he is working for the Nazis. This won an academy award, but if this was shown today it would probably offend people. After the war, Cinderella came out which was Disney's most popular film since Snow white and it had made fortunes. After years of making films, in 1966 Walt Disney became ill with lung cancer and eventually died from it, but even years after his death Disney is still earning millions of each film.

Georges Melies

Georges Melies was a french film maker that created the film " A trip too the moon. This was a really successful film as he filmed in on a cinematograph which had never been scene before. This involved multiple photographs flicking at a constant speed to trick your eyes into thinking that the pictures are moving. But rather than using drawings he used real people.

Winsor McCay

Some people say that Winsor McCay was the creator of animation as his first big creation was a dinosaur that he drew on sheets of rice paper.
                                                           

                                                         
       

Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is a very famous animator as he has created loads of different characters like bugs bunny, daffy duck, roadrunner and many more. He had a career at Warner brothers and eventually ended it in 1962. He then started working at Sib Tower 12 Productions which he started making more well known characters like Tom and Jerry.

Max Fleischer 

Max Fleischer was also the creator of many characters like Betty Boop and Pop eye. He had his own studio called Fleischer studio in New York city.

Hanna Barbera

The two main people involved called William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. They made the company in 1957 and has made many characters like The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo and the smurfs. 

                               

Matt Groening

Matt Groening is a very popular animator and has created lots of animations that have carried on still today. For example The Simpsons started in 1989 and still carries on to this day, it is the longest running U.S tv show in history. He has also created shows like Futurama and Life in Hell.

                                              

Animation ideas

First ideas

Animation of a man going into space and visiting the moon and seeing if he any find any life. After a short while of searching he finds an alien and has some fun. The equipment i would need is lots of clay and cardboard so i can make the different sets. My inspiration for this idea is "Wallace and Gromit - A grand day out" as they build a rocket and fly to the moon and whilst there they encounter a robot called Cooker

Time lapse of a night sky starting from dusk and ending at dawn. Shutter speed will be left open longer than usual so that it can gather more light. This will be very challenging as lots of stuff could go wrong but night sky time lapses look amazing if i can make it well. i got my inspiration from YouTube videos people have made and some of the outcomes are brilliant.

Animation of a person doing there daily tasks around the house. This could be interesting to see as its such a basic idea but if i plan it out right then it could look really nice. I would film my mum do tasks like ironing clothes, doing the washing, cutting the grass etc.

I chose the night sky time lapse as my animation as i feel like it the outcome if made good could be better than my other ideas, plus a night time lapse is different to a normal one as you have to put a lot more effort in rather than a normal time lapse.

Kit list

• DSLR camera 
• DSLR shutter remote
• Tripod

I will need to find the right location where there is no light pollution and i need to find a night where it is not windy and not many clouds as this might ruin the footage. I will have to do a couple of test runs so that i can find the right exposure times for the camera.

Running times

6 mins = 1 sec
360 / 25 = 15                    1 frame every 15 seconds




30 secs

25 frames

750 images/ frames

Tine to have camera running

7 hours = 420mins

420 x 60 = 25,200

25,200 / 750 = 33.6

1 photo every 30 seconds

http://www.lonelyspeck.com/the-milky-way-in-los-angeles-light-pollution/

Preparation

I need to find a day when there was hardly any clouds in the sky and the moon is hardly visible. This is because if the moon is out it creates more light which might disrupt the images. I plan to film at my granddads house as the is no light pollution, this means that when i take long exposures with my camera it wont pick up any light from near by lights. As i am filming a time lapse i need an option so that the camera could take a picture on its own without me having to click the shutter button, as my camera doesn't have a built in intervalometer i will buy one which plugs into the side of the camera.

 The intervalometer as four main settings:

Delay - how long between pushing "start" and the first photo

Long - how long the shutter will be open for

Interval - how often the shutter is triggered

Number - total number of shots taken

Production

Once i got my equipment ready i set up my equipment outside whilst it was still light, this makes it easier to see what im doing and i can frame my picture to how i want it. When i finished setting up the tripod and the camera. i had to change the camera settings so it is suitable for a time lapse, first i turn of VR (image stabilizer) and turn the focus onto manual mode, this is because if you leave it on auto focus it might focus on something different like a tree when you want the stars to be in focus. Another thing i had to change was the focus ring, i looked through the view finder and focused the a tree far away in the distance then taped the ring so it wouldn't move, the focus is not set to infinity meaning it will be able to focus onto the stars.
I left the camera outside for about 2 hours to let it acclimatize to the cold conditions and once it was completely dark i went outside to do some test shots.

These where the settings for my first test shot:

ISO - 1600

Shutter speed - 20 seconds

Aperture - 3.5

When i looked at the image it was a little bit too light so i changed the shutter speed to 15 seconds, this was better. After fiddling around trying to get the best settings, the images were just getting worse. I gave the lens a wipe and took another test shot, the image was perfect which meant that the lens was misting up as it was in the cold. Unfortunately the only solution to this problem would mean me standing outside all night wiping the lens every half an hour. Also i got a plastic bag and cut some holes in to and placed it over the camera just in case it rained in the night, even though the weather forecast was clear you can never be too carefully. I wiped the lens and started the time lapse which meant by the time i wake up in the morning i could check the images and hope for the best.

When i got up in the morning i went straight outside to check the camera. The battery had died in the early hours of the morning (i didn't expect it too last all night anyway). After i had charged the battery a bit i put it back into the camera and had a look at the images, they looked good but you could see that after a while the lens mists up. Also you can tell in one of the frames i cleaned the lens as it goes from misty to clear.

Post Production


I got all the images from the camera (533) and put them onto the computer, this took a while as they were all shot in RAW format so the file sizes were quite big. I opened up premiere pro and clicked on import media, once you find where your images are kept i needed to click on the first image, click "image sequence" and click the last photo and it should open up all the images as a video sequence. But i had a problem, when i triend to import the photos it was saying the video sequence was only 5:15 seconds long. it had missed out most of the other pictures. After a long time of trying to sort this problem out i realized that it had stopped importing on the image where i cleaned my lens so i imported the first lot of images and then the rest of them.
And as i had 2 image sequences i just put them together and i then had my full time lapse. now that i had my time lapse in place i needed some titles to introduce the clip, i clicked on Title, New title and default still. I typed the title of my time lapse called "The Sky at Night" and dragged it into the time line. I did the exact same for the credits but i also added a fade in and a fade out by command clicking the beginning and end of the title and selection default transitions.
The last thing i needed was music. I wanted some nice piano music in the background so i went onto Free Music Archive and found a nice piece of music that fit well with my time lapse. Also everything on the site is public domain which means that no one owns copy-write so that everyone can use it. Once i downloaded it and put it into my time line i was ready to export. I went into export and media, this gave me loads options but all i needed to do was click on h.264 and then scroll down to HD 1080p 23.976, gave it a sensible name and then exported it.

Outcome

I was very pleased with the outcome of my time lapse as you can clearly see many stars and the music went perfectly with the clip. Next time i would prefer to make a time lapse in summer as its warmer on a night meaning the lens wont fog up and i get a clear picture.

http://freemusicarchive.org/