Sunday, November 11, 2012
Marc Baird comes to Fredonia
Before his visit to Fredonia, I had never heard of Marc Baird. The first thing that grabbed my attention during his speech was his passion for his job. He must have said 10 times how much he enjoys his job and doesn't even consider it to be "work". Not many people can say that with such honestly as he did! He is so passionate about his work and it definitely shines through. I was impressed with how much goes into making movies. I honestly did not even know that this job existed. Now I see why it is so important in the formation of movies and videos. I found it interesting that story boarders do not use actual pen and paper, like I first imagined. Instead, they use a tablet with 16 million colors! I found it funny that he says he has all these colors to use but only uses black and white, with an occasional splash of red. He also stressed the importance of using arrows when making story boards, which I would have never thought of. I also found the connection between comic books and story boarding interesting, since you can pretty much read a story board like a comic book. Going back to using a tablet instead of pen and paper, I found it interesting that this allows the artist to "copy and paste" old images into the new drawing. For example, he said he has drawn so many pictures of a foot on a gas pedal, so now all he needs to do is just copy and paste that image when he needs it for a new movie. Also, he mentioned how in earlier movies, they had to redraw the background image with every story board picture. Now, they can just copy and paste in the entire set that is used in the movie! Talk about a time saver. I think the thing that intrigued me the most about this entire job, is that I never realized how important it is. I thought that a director just simply had an idea of what they wanted the scene to look like, then just filmed it. It is amazing to me to see all of the behind the scenes processes that occur. Also, during his speech, I saw a student drawing. I thought this was funny and cool that Marc's speech inspired that student to draw. Even though they weren't the best artist, it was nice to see that they were encouraged by Marc to draw. Overall I really enjoyed Marc's visit to Fredonia, and I am glad I got the chance to hear him talk and share his experiences with all of us.
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Yeah the technology with the tablet and everything really blew me away. I knew that technically was constantly changing and improving the way we live in every aspect BUT to see how much it has helped and enhanced the programming and story board world was amazing! To know that he can take a picture and put it on his tablet and then start drawing over the background was incredible. Also the fact the it allows Marc to have other windows saved so that when he needs a shot of a foot hitting the brakes, he can just bring up the image so that he doesn't have to draw it hundreds of time.
ReplyDeleteyes Marc baird clearly loves his job! I hope that after i graduate i can find a job that I can love just as much as he loves story boarding. I was interested in the tablet and other technologies as well. i thought they were really interesting and make the sstoryboarding job much easier and more efficient. Especially with the foot on the gas pedal that he has drawn so many times now that he has an entire library of images that he can copy and paste. But I feel like it takes away from the art form of pen and paper. Marc has been story boarding long enough to have experience with both pen and paper and the technologies of today such as the tablet. During his talk friday he made it apparent that both techniques have their advantages and disadvantages showing indifference on the matter. I thought this was a classy act because he didn't just discredit the value of the old way of using pen and paper, and he didn't give too much credit to the tablet and make it seem superior. Also I feel like the fact that Marc uses mostly black ink when he has sixteen million colors available to him to be a part of an old habit with pen and paper. even though he has the technology he still keeps a part of the old style in his work. I also saw someone drawing as well, he was a young kid and he drew what Marc drew on his tablet. His turned out pretty good and i was glad to see someone so young being inspired and doing something that he loves.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you mentioned something other than his story boarding. He did bring up a lot about the process that went into movies and not just his part in it. I found it interesting when he talked about how producers and set directors dealt with directors who were kind of "spacey." I wonder why he doesn't use more color in his drawing though? Is it because it would take too much time or because it's simply not necessary? I also did not know his job was that important to a films production I always thought of it as a simple guideline. However, after seeing the animated 21 Jump Street compared to the actual scene and Marc telling us how the small changes made saved so much money it made sense as to why story boarders are needed.
ReplyDeleteThis is thoughtful, and I like the connections you made to comic art and technology too. I'd have liked to seen more explicit discussion of the differences between his talk to the class and the Friday evening talk, and maybe some more in-depth comparison to comic art, since we touched on it in class.
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