My group- group 7, consisting of Amy Chen, Ray Hegarty, Erin Reid and I- was tasked to create a presentation on the animated short film “Flyworm,” made by 3D artist and animator Nui Naruphon.
We divided up our roles by the different suggested categories and each took one or two that we wanted to do. I chose to do sound, and as I wanted to do more than one category but all the others had been taken, I thought I could give some information on the modeling process as well.
Music theory is not something I am new to, having studied music and playing several instruments myself, I find it easy to talk a lot about it, which is why I chose to do this category. However, the 10 minute time limit meant I had to stick to the most important parts and leave out a lot of what I felt I could talk about.
Initially we as a group watched the short film together and discussed our observations on each of our parts to help come up with ideas, and Amy created a powerpoint that we could all access to create our presentation.
What I wrote about was mostly based on what we had learned in class. I read over the “Sound and Editing” slides a few times while watching the short film, taking notes on anything I thought might be relevant. After this, I tried to find more information on the creation of Flyworm, which led me to the creator’s YouTube channel. Nui Naruphon had posted 2 videos of him talking about the project, one which gave some background on the music for the short film and the modeling process. I decided to talk about both of these things as I wanted to have more than just one thing to cover, but in hindsight with the ten minute limit for the presentation I think I wasn’t left with enough time to expand upon the modelling side enough to make it worth it.
Outside of this, I searched for more information on the use of sound, but a lot of what I found only covered a lot of the same information as were in the class slides. An article that I found interesting will be linked and referenced below, but the final topics I chose to discuss were those I had learned about in the class on sound. Had it not been for the time limit, I would have included more.
We all put together our slides, I chose to have mine be mainly images as I wanted to talk about the important information. I took all of the images from the short film, screenshotting relevant frames to what I intended to talk about. I also put in an audio clip of the wind chimes from the transformation scene, which took some figuring out to get the file format to be compatible with PowerPoint, but the sound wasn’t on on the computer we were using to present so that ended up not working. After putting my slides together, I took all of the notes I had written and developed them from bullet points to a more fleshed out and linear passage for the first draft of my full script.
In hindsight, I feel like I should have added more information to my slides. I thought keeping it to my script would be more professional, but now that I have seen other groups’ presentations, I could have used more text to make my slides feel more full. On the other hand, if there was more on screen to read, with how brief I had to be to stay under 10 minutes, I feel like there wasn’t a lot of time to read through a lot of information on screen. I and a few others took notice of how long each group took and we were one of the only few that stayed under 10 minutes, although we were very close to the 10 minute mark. I’m worried that, by us sacrificing some information to stay within the limit, that we will end up being marked down for being less fleshed out as the other groups that were over the set time.
I thought it would be good to run through the presentation with my group before the day, so I organised for us to meet and rehearse on the Monday before the class, as this was the only time everyone was free. We all went through our sections and we gave notes on things that we thought could be beneficial to add, and we decided to remove some images so that the slides were overall more professional. When we were all happy with our own sections, I went home to edit down my script and finalise it.
I presented my section to my roommates at home and got them to time me as I wanted to keep my part to under two minutes in order to stay within the ten minute limit, and ended up cutting it down a lot, just keeping the key points. After finalising the script, I practiced some more, until I knew my points thoroughly.
As for the actual presentation, I think my anxiety got in the way, as despite the fact that I had managed to give my speech without the need for my script several times in practice, my nerves got to me and I brought prompt notes up with me in case I forgot my points. I think I projected my voice and spoke well, and I know I stayed within my 2 minute time limit for my section, which I’m pleased about. Admittedly, this assignment wasn’t my favourite, as I dislike public speaking and wasn’t overly invested in the short film assigned to us, but I understand the importance of learning from other people’s work, and being able to analyse media is a very important skill to develop.
I have included my original script below.
References:
Marques, R. (2022) The importance of sound design in animation and Motion Graphics Projects: Mowe Studio, mowe. Available at: https://mowe.studio/animation-sound-design-effects-music-motion-graphics/ (Accessed: 15 February 2024).
NARUPHON, NUI. “Fact about Fly Worm / เรื่องจริงของ Flyworm.” Www.youtube.com, 15 July 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7z8ZgRpoU. Accessed 4 Mar. 2024.
NARUPHON, NUI. “Fact about Fly Worm / เรื่องจริงของ Flyworm.” Www.youtube.com, 15 July 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7z8ZgRpoU. Accessed 4 Mar. 2024.