“HOPSCA” by Xinyan Wang — Stop Motion Animation

Hopsca is a community which joins different kinds of functions in the building and integrates many advanced technologies. People have access to various kinds of resources in this smart building. The film unfolds the life of the protagonist who lives in Hopsca from Monday to Friday. Showcasing technologies including high-rise farm, delivery system, robots, 3D food printer and hybrid vehicles in Hopsca.

So, what is the life like living in it? 

 

Studio Reflection 

Our studio name is called Future Machina which immediately attracted me when I was selecting the course. The course combines both study of technologies and media which we discussed a lot of innovative technologies with Cat in this semester, some have been widely used in our daily life already, some are still in the stage of developing and some seem to be unrealizable. I get to know more about contemporary technologies such as virtual influencer “Miquela”, mind reading technology, Lo-fi, AR and so forth. Several assignments in this semester allow me to add my own imagination to the projects based on the real technologies and researches. Through this course, I learned more about AI technology and its applications. Now I am not only conscious about their conveniences, but also more aware of some shortcomings and possible dangers. Besides, the technologies we are looking at are not only interesting and worth exploring but also can be applied to solve problems. It is a very creative course which I get great opportunities to practice my skills (pre-production, filming, editing etc.) Although it is a special semester which we communicated almost fully online and we were not able to go out to shoot, everyone in this class is active and positive.  

 

Pre-production

The issue that I explore in assignment 4 is ‘Equal access to resources’. I named the project ‘Hopsca’ which this resources shared community is able to solve the issues that I addressed. ‘Hopsca’ involves varieties of advanced technologies in it to make the best use of all kinds of resources and enables people who are living in it to minimise the damage to our environment.

Initial ideas

Above is link to the slides that I presented in week 9. It includes my initial thoughts about this project. It was a very unusual semester for all of us however I did not want my filming to be limited into a small apartment. So I tried to search for more creative ways of filming on the Internet. When I found some stop motion animation videos on Youtube which were quite interesting, I stared to feel that I can also do something similar.

Sketch draft (click to open)

This project requires very detailed pre-production preparations. I wrote all my ideas down on a paper and initially I was planning to do ‘a week living in Hopsca’ using seven technologies I researched and showed in week 9’s presentation. Considering the workload of doing a stop motion animation, I decided to cut it down into five days and I sketched the story on the papers I designed for this project.

I bought some craft papers and a craft knife and started to figure out how to make the crafts. I had some tutorials which shows how to make stuff and how to produce stop animation videos. Even though I am not good at drawing, I only need to put geometric figures together and that did not require me to be good at sketching. It was easy to do but only time consuming. When I was in the process of making the crafts, I got some new ideas and made some changes to the initial script.

 

(This photo was the taken after I finished the crafting. My table was such as mess.)

Pre-production video (click to open)

 

Filming & Editing 

Filming was the most difficult part for me. I did not have any equipment for doing stop motion animation and I did not even have a camera. So I stuck  my iPad onto a storage box. It was not a good idea because the camera needed to be moved closer to the items sometimes but that was the only way I could do it. In this case,  I chose to move the ‘table’ instead to get closer shots. I used another storage box to be the ‘table’ for some closer scenes.

Besides, and the lighting condition was out of my control. I closed the curtains and other lights in my room to make sure the lighting condition to be the same during the process of filming which lasted for six days. I only used the light in my room but it was very unstable and kept changing. It was very obvious in the camera and it caused some problems for my shooting. Once the lighting changed, I had to decide whether to change the scene into different backgrounds or just re-shoot the whole scene again. 

Another essential consideration in the filming was the ‘shadow’. I need to make sure the scene was clear in every shot. However, I took approximate 800 images and I still found a few with shadows in the corner.

In the editing process, I put more focus on the sound editing. I made a soundscape to simulate some sounds in the video, such as the sound of chewing cookies, placing items, opening and closing doors, etc.

Vey unfortunately, during the sound editing, my audition was shut down twice with no reason which I redo the whole editing twice. The version you hear now is the third one that I did. I saved the project every time I made any changes. I had no idea why there was nothing left in the computer including in my back up when I opened it after Audition was shut down. I was upset and asked for the help of my friend who studies Information Technology. The result was I lost the files and I had to redo it again. After the crash, I stayed up all night to do the third version of my sound editing. I was unwell the day before which I asked for a one-day extension. I did not want to apply another extension. The story tells one thing: always leave more time than expected. Complete task in advance is better than being desperate.

 

Collaboration 

This semester we communicated online most of the time, so we mainly rely on the online tutorials twice a week to keep in touch. The face to face classes were only for the first two weeks. However, I missed three of them, so I did not have the opportunity to communicate with everyone in this class. We set up a discussion group on Facebook to keep everyone in touch after class. In the tutorials, we were divided into groups of four to communicate and exchanged ideas about the assignments. I got great feedbacks from people which helped me to improve my projects. In addition, I am lucky to have two friends, Crystal and Leslie, in this class with me. We had our own online meetings almost every week after the classes to talk about our progress of the assignments and share some ideas with each other. In this case, I could get suggestion all the time and understand how everyone was going even though we were not able to meet each other.

 

Week 9 Presentation Reflection  

We had our presentation on Tuesday, everyone is very creative and passionate about what they are doing. People’s ideas are diverse which everyone shares different plans to achieve the project. I heard about some amazing topics and strategies. I was so impressed by how people connect varieties of technologies to their solving issues and their arrangements to shoot the videos. I talked to Neville about his project and I think his topic is interesting. He is planning to connect AI technology to mental health. The narrative way of telling the story about a person talking to an AI robot can be a clever choice of combing the researched theories and story. I have not thought about AI technology can become one of the treatments to mental issues. I feel that Neville’s idea of an artificial companion is very suitable for those who feel lonely and desperate. According to what I knew from the psychology course before I came to university, lots of people did call for help before they committed suicide.  Family members or friends may not be able to discover the seriousness of the problem in time, or in the case that some people live alone. An artificial companion may be able to help during despair situation or at least issue an alarm before things are getting dangerous. I think Neville is on the right track in order to achieve the goal of combing the academic theories to the story. He is still in the stage of constructing the story and he only has very basic ideas in the current stage. I am really curious about his story and how he is going to script the relationship between AI robot and the person in the video. Are there any possibilities that it becomes to a love story like what is shown in ‘Blade Runner’? I am looking forward to seeing how Neville is going to portray the interactions between AI robots and human and how that helpful to the treatment of mental issues. 

 

Screenshots