Director: Liu Xinyun Izzy
Theme
The theme of the film is “Architecture Integrated with Nature.” It explores the coexistence of architecture and nature in Hong Kong. The film tells the story of a ghost who visits Earth for a day and travels through the city and ecology of Hong Kong. It passes through the forest symbolized by the University of Hong Kong and the coastline symbolized by Tai Long Wan, finally arriving at the intersection of forest, sea, and city, Victoria Peak. It realizes on the mountain that urban ecology is the intersection of human society and nature, and then departs at dawn. This story-driven film aims to lead the audience’s perspective from a traveler’s perspective and appreciate the respect that Hong Kong’s architecture has for nature. It also implies the concept of Hong Kong’s urban planning, which is to accept and coexist with the world beyond human civilization.
Method and Reflection
For filming, a mobile phone was used as the tool. The iPhone has high portability but produces footage with high grayscale and low contrast, which requires post-processing to create an atmospheric feeling. Most of the ghost’s shots in the film use mid-range and mid-far lenses to capture the character’s entire body. In the first half of the film, most shots are low-angle shots, such as birds on pillars, fountains, and grass, creating a sense of curiosity about the new environment. At the same time, low-angle shots also imply the ghost’s perspective as a child facing the unknown world, bringing a sense of mystery to the natural world in the city. From the coastline, aerial shots gradually appear, mainly bird’s-eye views of the beach and city night scenes. This type of shot presents the panoramic view of the city and nature to the audience with a wide perspective, expressing the protagonist ghost’s observation and thinking as a traveler from the environment. This thinking, combined with the film’s subtitle’s consideration of what an ecological city is, forms an inherent unity of beauty.
Although these shots integrate well with the film’s theme, the type of shots is relatively single in this film. If making a similar film in the future, more types of lenses should be attempted, such as oblique and perspective lenses. At the same time, in the editing process, due to the shortage of good shots, some unreasonable scenes had to be filled in the middle, bringing a sense of disharmony to the film. For example, the film sets that the ghost finally reaches Victoria Peak, but there is a segment of city night scenes filmed in Tsim Sha Tsui. This may cause the audience to feel a sense of space-time confusion, so it should be avoided in future filming.
Regarding the animation aspect, Procreate was used for simple animation drawing. The frame-by-frame animation was made with a rhythm of six frames per second, which is suitable for animation beginners and falls between being jerky and smooth. This approach does not bring a heavy burden of drawing nor does it make the picture appear disjointed. By drawing the two nodes at the beginning and end of the animation first, and then filling in the middle transitions, some animations with clear actions can be created. However, due to using different editing software for combining film and animation, it was not possible to import the film into Procreate to match the animation and camera movements. This occasionally resulted in a lack of a sense of perspective in the animation due to mismatched camera angles. Therefore, if it is necessary to draw animation in a photographic scene, it is best to import each frame of the video clip one by one, or use computer animation software such as Clip Studio Paint, which can synchronize video and animation playback.
As for the music aspect, Garage Band was used for arrangement. The key of F major was used as the basis for a peaceful and lively main melody, and some Eastern-style arpeggios were attempted to express the mystery, uniqueness, and grandeur of Hong Kong as an Asian city. The melody and tone of the piece were partly inspired by the composer Joe Hisaishi’s pure music piece, The Rain, such as the violin’s staccato and legato and the piano’s arpeggio direction. The quality of instrument tone and sound is largely determined by the arrangement software. As a mobile arrangement software, Garage Band’s sound quality cannot match that of computer software like FL Studio. Therefore, if pursuing higher quality, it is necessary to learn new software and techniques.
Completing photography, animation, composition, and editing alone is certainly a challenge, and in the practical process, many small photography details need to be practiced and improved through experience. Perhaps the desire for better results is the reason why photographers continue to create new works and explore new themes.
Full Name: Liu Xinyun
UID: 3035983665
Bibliography
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I appreciate your exploration of animation in creating your video. However, your video lacks a position on the urban ecology, and the point of the mountain being the intersection of urban ecology needs more elaboration. What do you mean by urban ecology is innocence and freedom and how is that reflected in Hong Kong’s urbanism? Since the objective of this assignment is to explore a certain aspect of the city rather than experimenting with different animation or filming technique, you should have a more focused topic and clearer hypothesis instead of just showing these different sites without further explanation.