Monday 31 January 2011

Research

As the idea of the story is a man using his Parkour skills to get away from a monster I thought it would be a good idea to do some research into Parkour. Especially as I have personally had no experience with Parkour. I've seen some people doing it before and watched a documentary on it several years ago but still don't know too much about it. I thought that some research would broaden my Parkour knowledge and would help with finding a location. The research will help me to find a sufficient location because it will give me an idea of the sort of obstacles that can be used to showcase some Parkour skills.

So firstly what is Parkour?

I went to my faithful friend Wikipedia to find out exactly what Parkour is and it states that 'Parkour is a non-competitive, physical discipline of French origin in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the moss efficient way possible, using only their bodies. Skills such as jumping, climbing, vaulting, rolling, swinging and wall scaling are employed.'

Parkour can be practiced anywhere, however it is most commonly practiced in urban areas as these areas are more preferable as they provide lots of obstacles. This piece of research is extremeley useful as it tells me exactly what type of location we should use for our project.

However Parkour does bring some confusion as it is commonly confused with the art of Free Running. Parkour does not employ the use of flips which Free Running does. My take on it is that Parkour is more of a natural sport or hobby and free running is something which requires stylish tricks and flips, therefore making it more showboaty than Parkour.

Parkour and Free Running

The link above is a video clip that shows both Parkour and Free Running but it helps you to understand what the difference between the two is and also shows you the skills of Parkour. Which is very beneficial as it gives me a clear view of the sorts of skills that Parkour uses.

Through my own research and a heads up from fellow team member Will I discovered that a man called David Belle is credited as the founder of Parkour. He has a very interesting background and seems to have lead the way of Parkour. Below is a link which is a video that shows the best clips of this extremely skilled frenchman.

The Best Of David Belle

I then started to wonder if there were any films or commercials that had employed the use of Parkour. So i started to look for some clips. As I started to rack my brains i remembered there being a chase scene that adopts the skills of Parkour in the 2006 film Casino Royale. The link below shows the whole chase scene.

Casino Royale Parkour Chase Scene 

I also remembered seeing a trailer in the cinema not that long ago which was a sports commercial. Its a 2D animation of a character running and over coming obstacles as the environment around him is being destroyed. Unfortunately I have searched everywhere for a video clip of this trailer but I can not seem to find one anywhere. I searched Parkour chase scene's in films in youtube and came across some very interesting scenes. One than stood out was a Parkour chase scene from the film District 13. Below is a link to the clip.

District 13 Parkour Chase Scene 

That same youtube search lead me to a short film which is basically just a Parkour chase scene. Below is a link to the video.

Under Penalty Parkour Short Film

I then tried to find some commercials which use Parkour. I found a commercial for an energy drink called Cheetah Powersurge. Below is a link to a video of the commercial.

Parkour Cheetah Powersurge Commercial 

I found these video's very beneficial as they influence and inspire thoughts as to what type's of camera angles/ shots we should include and the sort of locations and obstacles that should be included in our piece. I now feel a lot more prepared for the next stage of searching for an ideal location.

The Idea

We put our heads together to come up with an amazing story, Will got the ball rolling by suggesting the idea of a Parkour chase scene. Myself and the group liked this idea and we all pitched in to perfect a structured story that will work. The basic idea is a man using his Parkour skills to get away from someone who is chasing him. The idea then progressed and it was decided that it would be a monster chasing the man. Lots of different ideas were now floating around about the possibility of the monster destroying the environment as he chases after his prey. But we decided to tone it down a key and not be too prestigious. We had bigger problems to worry about anyway, we needed an ending to our story. We had a group meeting and all started pitching in some ideas about how to end the scene. I put out the idea of the scene turning out to all be in the imagination of someone playing with their toys. I use the word someone as we have not specified who the character is going to be yet. I had the idea that if we used a grown man instead of a child it would hopefully add abit of comic effect. This idea was subconsciously inspired by Toy Story 3 but any how most of the group liked it and thought that it was an adequate ending. Nat had wrote out the first draft of the story and posted it on our group blog. However we then decided upon a final ending so she wrote up the final story concept and posted it on the group blog as well. After several discussions and assessing our options we decided that we would model and animate the monster, we thought we would model some other objects to put into the scene too. It was also decided that we would use real footage of the Parkour man. Now we have our story set, the next step is to find a location that we can use.      

Introduction

Back again and eager to get working! Most of team W.A.A.R.T have teamed up again, however we now have some new additions therefore deciding upon a new team name. We are now called the Kash Kong Monkey's! Which makes us sound pretty awesome. We learnt from our last project that its best to get started as early as possible, as last time we found ourselves running out of time towards the end. So for this project we've got started early, we have been contacting each other via a message on Facebook and discussing ideas. This is proving to be very helpful and has given us an extremely beneficial head start as it allows more time to create a good quality project.

The title of this unit is ANI204 Post Production and Visual Effects. This unit requires us to assemble some short live action footage that is designed to be integrated with 3D elements. There's the learning part right there, we will be learning how to composite! Which basically means adding 3D elements to live footage. I'm very excited about this unit as I find special effects very intriguing and am generally extremely interested in how the process works and how they are created. Therefore this is going to be something that i am going to thoroughly enjoy learning about. The final piece must have a clear narrative so now all we have to do is come up with an amazing idea and make sure it works as a story.