Major Project 6 - Filming Week

The week of filming was an incredibly fun and stressful week. Thankfully everything went smoother than I could have hoped, but I was still very nervous about it beforehand anyway. I am proud of all the planning work I had done in the weeks leading up to filming and I think this really helped the shoot run very well. 

It was a great experience having a bit of a crew for this production as it let me delegate tasks to others allowing the whole process to move faster. Directing actors was a very fun experience, making sure they were all comfortable with everything they were doing and understood everything about the characters at that time. 

I think sometimes I struggled to put what I was thinking into words to give them the prompts they needed to give me the performance I wanted. I feel happy with all the footage I got, though I'll have to look through it all next week as I'm editing it together to see for sure.

After each day of filming, I reviewed everything from that day to see if there was anything needing reshooting on the next day. This was only necessary a couple of times, mainly due to the sunlight being too strong when all the rest of the shots were overcast.

Using the gimbal was a new and fun experience. I was really satisfied with the results I got using it for the action shots. The rest of the time I filmed with the camera on my tripod just to add a little bit of stability. 

Overall I'm really happy with the shoot. It went much smoother than I could have hoped. I did a lot of planning and organisation which I think really paid off and let us move really quickly. As well as having the people around me helping me out with other things so I could focus on filming and working with the actors. 

Major Project 5 - Matte Painting Moodboard

Here is a moodboard I have made for Bach for him to start coming up with ideas for the city of Utopia in my film. The idea I have is for the same low poly and angular feel of the drones to be translated into the city. The frame will be in that design of shapes around a city. In between that frame will be energy shields to complete the dome. 

Major Project 4- Finding Actors

To find actors for my film, I put up a listing on Mandy.com. I am paying for their travel and food but I did state people should be Yorkshire based. 

I found an actress for the Stranger quite quickly. I liked her showreel and felt that she had the right demeanour for the character. So I emailed asking her for an audition clip and she sent it back. She was then confirmed quite quickly, and costume details were given to start work on that.

The Wanderer was much harder to find. Most people who applied were from London which is just unrealistic for what I can afford. I emailed a few people who I thought looked the part however they either didn't respond, weren't willing to take time off work for a student project or were just slow to respond. 

In the end, I asked Liam Shevill if he would be willing to be my actor again. He played the character in my COP film and did a very good job and he does look the part for the role. This was a massive relief and weight off my mind. Though I originally wanted a more professional actor in the role since it would be their specialty, I am confident Liam will do a great job. 

LoopDeLoop Piggy 1 - Ideas and Starting Model

I decided to do the 'pig' prompt for this months LoopDeLoop. I am going to make a balloon style pig head in Maya and composite it into real life footage. I haven't decided what exactly this scene will be yet but some ideas I have so far are;

• someone bouncing the balloon, keeping it off the floor
• balloons bouncing/circling around a room.
• a bouquet of balloons bouncing around each other.

I will decide on this by the time I have finished the maya model. For the model itself, I am not worrying about it looking like a realistic balloon shape, I more want it to be cartoony and exaggerated. Here is what I have so far.