Infinite Zoom - DMD

Digital Media Development OUD301

Synthesis – Infinite Zoom

This piece of work proposed for Digital Media Development is designed to develop and expand on skills learned in the foundation years of this course. The method for producing this work primarily focuses on digital animation and visual effects, created using After Effects with a small amount of digital film production involved.

Although the idea itself is not entirely unique, the method and narrative sets this piece aside from other pieces of moving image, which seek to visually represent the idea of enhanced zoom. Inspiration to embark on the production of this idea have been developed from viewing:

“Men in Black”
“Contact… intro”
“The Powers of 10”
“The Simpsons (Universe on Homers head)”
“Macintosh post-installation sequence”

This digital animation will include sound effects and a backing track designed to contribute to help make the piece a fully entertaining audio/visual experience.

Narrative

A writer is struggling to find inspiration, starring at a blank document; looking both tired and delirious. The writer selects a song to try help him stay awake, as the track begins to play a visualization appears on the screen, within a short amount of time the writer begins to hallucinate, the visuals leek out of the computer screen and into the room, surrounding the writer.

The writer bewildered by what he is seeing has wide eyes and dilated pupils (in contrast to the beginning.) At this point the camera zooms down the pupil of the writers left eye. The camera then begins a journey of infinite zoom, first travelling down the optic nerve into the brain, into a brain cell, then the DNA, inside a molecule, then an atom, finally going to a string.

At this point the camera zooms into the string and the viewer will soon notice what appears to be galaxies coming into view then hurtling passed the edges of the screen. After a few seconds of this motion the camera focuses on one galaxy in particular, increasing in size the galaxy is entered about a fifth of the way in, after travelling through masses of stars one appears, at first in the distance then gradually getting closer and brighter, several seconds after passing the rest of the stars, some planets begin to emerge. After a few close encounters with various asteroids and planets, the viewer soon becomes aware that it’s our solar system in which they are travelling through.

A small bluish dot appears in the distance slowly approaching it becomes clear that it is Earth. A gradual descent to Earth is made, after passing through a cloud layer the view, is of a city from above, zooming on top of a building before ending up with a birds-eye view; back in the writers room. The camera pans down to the side of the writer who has fallen asleep in front of the computer, as the camera settles the writer jumps as though he has just been forcibly ejected from his slumber… He begins typing.