Major Project 8 - Refining the Edit

In an attempt to cut the film down to a more concise running time, I went on a trimming spree. I watched through the edit multiple times, taking frames away from the beginning and ends of shots. 

I remember hearing about this technique in an interview with the directors of Avengers: Infinity War. They learned when they worked in TV that once they were happy with the structure of the film, they would go through and literally just pull out frames to bring down the total run time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFuM1j1t7k0 36 minutes in.

Doing this in my edit, was successful in trimming the film down by around 20 seconds, however I still wanted to trim it further. So I went back through again and was much more aggressive with what I was cutting out. I cut shots that lingered for a bit too long, or just could be shorter and still serve the same purpose. I then found myself cutting a couple of lines which I realised did nothing for the story. I could have not had them in the script in the first place because they weren't really necessary if I had have combed through the script more thoroughly. This helped save me a lot more time, and bring the film to just under 10 minutes.

I am now going to go through and rough out any shot which has effects which might dictate the length of a shot, for example when there are time ramps and laser blast where the speed would change how much the shot needs.

Major Project 7 - Editing

The editing process was a fun challenge. This is the biggest project I have ever undertaken, with over 200gb of footage to sort through and pick out the best shots.

Dialogue was something that I was excited about trying out, part of the reason I added so much of it to the script. I think that this was definitely the greatest challenge about the edit. Choosing the best takes that fit with each other took a long time because there were so many takes. I knew when filming that I should take a lot of takes because the opening dialogue scene is very important for setting up the whole film. I could have probably worked a bit quicker on deciding takes as I spent so much time just watching over and over for the tiniest of differences that really didn't make much of a difference. 

There was an interview with the lead editor of Amazon Prime's Counterpart where he would just do his first edit using the last (or second to last) take, then if something isn't working, he runs back down the line of takes until something works. This lets him move a lot quicker and get a first edit quicker because the later takes are usually the best and most refined, it then becomes much easier to tweak from there once there is a rough version to watch. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ojMQlP1cR8

This would have been a good way for me to work quicker to get my first rough cut. Instead it took a bit longer than I expected however I am still on schedule. The first rough cut is longer than the animatic was, coming in at around 11 minutes verses the animatic's 7 minute run. This is due to more pauses and ebbs and flows that make everything feel more natural, I didn't account for this in the animatic. I will trim this a little more to make everything a little more concise. 

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.

VR Dreamscape - Finishing up

I've nearly finished all three scenes now. I managed to fix the star seams issue rather easily. It turns out there was just a simple checkbox when converting the 3D scene to a 2D output in which you can state if you are using any 3D assets or elements so that the output can account for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob9lgyeMjas

Making the scenes transition into each other has been interesting. I have tried to make this very gradual and slow as to keep with the mood of dreams and calming visuals. I rendered a low res version to show Grace and she really likes it. I was concerned about the simplicity of the visuals but when I asked her she said it worked better simple. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsC0yYUgRgI

Rendering has been a long process with many errors. The composition is nearly a 6k file with many 3D layers, which has been causing many crashes and slow performance.




Now I'm just doing final checks and fixes, and maybe some changes when I send a final render to Grace. The installation itself will be on the 16th of February in Hartlepool. I will be looking over the VR part, making sure it keeps working as well as taking photo and video of the event for Grace and myself to evidence.