Cities have served as large inspiration to artists and influence the world of art and film. J Donald describes the growth of cinema and it's relationship with these urban environments, claiming that Cinema brought 'the experience of 'going out' to a way of life primarily built around 'staying in'' creating an 'urban experience' (Donald) and that 'Cinema learned to exploit the desire of urban audiences for distraction' (Donald.) This highlights the idea of Cities being quite isolating to an individual, who would therefore need a distraction.
The isolated individual, or in fact any city dweller, 'were the dominant, but not the sole, subject of urban documentary photography' ( Stout) states Stout, who appears to argue in 'Visions of a New Reality: The City and the Emergence of Modern Visual Culture' that despite arts interest in cities as a characteristic entity it is 'the lives of people of the city themselves' that stories and emotions are drawn from. This is a contrast to Donald's view of the city, as in 'Imagining the Modern City: Light in Dark Spaces', it is described to almost become mythological in the context of film noir.
'One of the great figures for this confrontation between the transparent, readable city and the obscure metropolitan labyrinth is the detective' (Donald) Donald states. This illustrates the importance of interpretation in regards to viewing the city. In film noir the 'detective story states the city as enigma: a dangerous but fascinating network of often subterranean relationships in need of decipherment.' (Donald) the Detectives relationship with the city illustrates it as a labyrinth of intrigue, giving it character and depth. It can therefore be stated that film has the ability to give a city personality as well as the city defining the film. Donald even sums this up, stating 'people invest places with meaning, memory and desire.'
An example of a film noir style film that includes a strongly characteristic city is Bladerunner.The city acts as more than just an environment for a narrative to take place, it breathes with life (or in cases, lack of) and illustrates a grimy future. 'The life of the village is narrative,' observed Ezra Pound. 'In the city the visual impressions succeed each other, overlap, over cross, they are cinematographic' (Stout), there is a range of imagery and context created through all aspects of a city, especially in film, that enhance certain narratives, and are especially fitting for the film noir genre. Films such as Bladerunner, that use and design cities to it's narrative advantage, seem to demonstrate the statement that 'out of interconnections of urban narrative and visual representation would come cinema.' (Stout).
Both texts studied argue the importance of people in relation to cities, as without them being populated, or even interpreted they would just be abandoned soulless buildings. Cities are human constructs, As stated by Donald who despite questioning ' 'How can such a bewildering and alien environment - the city as unsolvable enigma- provide a home?' states 'It is concrete, but just as brutally it is fantastic.'
Donald, J. 'Imagining the Modern City: Light in Dark Spaces' in Bridge, G. and Watson, S. (eds.) (2010)The Blackwell City Reader, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, pages 323 - 329 Stout, F. (1999) 'Visions of a New Reality: the City and the Emergence of Modern Visual Culture' in LeGates, R.T. and Stout, F. (eds.) (2003)The City Reader, London, Routledge, pages 147 - 150
Modern Identity 19th and early 20th Century - (Theorists)
-Charles Baudelaire - The Painter of Modern Life (Introduces concept of 'gentleman stroller')
-Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class
Georg Simmel - The Metropolis and Mental Life (the 'Mask of Fashion)
'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or in the traffic of a large city' - Simmel
(This links to the idea of cities swallowing people and creating isolation despite vast amounts of people)
Simmel suggests people withdraw into themselves to find peace. (Due to the noise of the modern world)
Post modern theory - 'Identity is constructed through social experience'
"If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. ('I like Facebook,' said another friend. 'I got a shag out if i')" - Tom Hodgkinson (2008), 'With friends like these...'. Guardian, 14/01/08
Virtual communities and spaces create the illusion of intimacy and a pretence of identity ( as people can choose what is shared etc)
I wasn't too sure how to approach the transportation of Jeff onto the Ship, as I didn't want it to seem too 'Sci-Fi'. After trying out a couple of different effects I found CC Film Burn and immediately knew I'd use that, as it fits so well with my general design work. This effect on it's own however was a little dull, as it didn't seem powerful enough to signify a transportation (this can be seen HERE).
Adding a little reflection to the lens (with the same process I had used when adding reflection to the alien) added a little more detail to Jeff's reaction and by also layering a glowing light ray effect over her I've hopefully given the appearance of 'burning' when coupled with the Film Burn. I sped up the opacity to add a little more energy into the piece and I think this has been succesful. Once sound is added it should give the impression of Jeff being transported away...
My initial plan was to matte paint the background of each shot. I rendered the right perspective in Maya in preparation for this but didn't take into consideration how long it'd take me to create a passable painting in Photoshop. Therefore I used the same layers for the wide shot and adjusted them to fit a mid shot (adjusting scale and position). This meant I had to mask and duplicate the camera-pile layers in order to gain more control and create an element of depth.
Since I had created the environment on a number of layers I wanted to experiment with shifting the position of them and faking a zoom effect of sorts. I thought I'd try a 'Hitchcock' type shot as seen below.
I did this by scaling the foreground environment layers but keeping the background relatively static (along with Jeff). The shift in the movement of these layers is keyed quite slow and seems to lack a fluidity therefore being less effective or believable as a zoom shot. However I still think it adds a sense of unease to the shot and, due to the design of the interior, could also be seen as a 'telescopic' element of the Ship expanding and detracting.
Hopefully with adding sound will add an element of dread. Though I don't think the composition is that effective as a 'Hitchcock' shot it gave me an opportunity to experiment with animating the setting and adds a little bit of diversity to this shot, something which I think I need as I don't have many 'interesting' camera angles or movement in my film.
This is the first shot on the ship. The background was created with a couple of different layers incase I wanted to shift them about. This was useful in another shot (I'll blog about later) but to a lesser extent was useful here when importing the 'wheel' footage into After Effects. The Wheel was a flat 2d image I'd photoshopped, I then turned it into a 3D shape using after effects and was able to angle it on the side wall and then layer some 'lumps' of the ship over it. This is very practical as I am using the same wheel in another shot but at a different angle so it will help a lot with continuity. Using the 3D aspects of After Effects proved incredibly useful when creating the other Close Up shots and POV shots as I could use the same photoshop layers but give the impression they were being seen at another angle.
The glowing of the Warp points was a slight afterthought so I've attempted to add a little bit of glow to Jeffs boots as well as tint her slightly orange. Ideally I would have tried to light her on the day, therefore getting a much more natural and effective glow, however I think this gets the message across. To do this I duplicated the green screen footage but only masked the boots and adjusted the colour, opacity etc. To be honest I don't think this works very well the glowing looks too foggy and I should probably have looked into some better ways and effects to create a nicer more believable look.
The warping in the above video is a little bland and relies too heavily on lens flare (something I'm quite keen not to use too much, if any of, unless it's needed) It doesn't seem powerful enough to justify someone being warped from the ground onto a ship so I have attempted to add a little more drama to it with Light rays. I think this works better and compliments the 'burn' look which I have added (CC film burn) (I'll probably talk more about this effect when blogging about the 'Warping Out/Abduction' scene.)
I've only just noticed the giant white square in the middle of these renders! This is obviously something I'll have to remove and goes to show that constantly working on something without looking with fresh eyes can make you miss even the most obvious of mistakes!
Matt showed me how to merge the green screen footage more smoothly with the environment by 'Trackmatting' which involves duplicating the footage and turning the first into an 'Alpha' and blurring the duplicate. This subtly helps the green screened footage sit better in the composition and is a little extra tweak that I've applied to the above, and will apply to other shots if needed.
There are two shots where the Alien creeps out of the darkness, they are both pretty similar with the only properly noticeable differences being the first is a track and dolly shot which I have scaled and keyed to seem like it is moving from a distance towards the camera and a slight reflection in the lens of the second shot (which is a still shot).
I thought adding a reflection to the lens of this shot would add a little extra detail and depth to the shot as well as highlighting that the thing in the middle of the Alien's face is in fact a lens and meant to be some sort of camera-like eye. To do this was initially a little tricky, as I had assumed by importing the footage of Jeff and then flipping it (by applying the 'flop') and creating a mask that sat on the lens of the Alien layer a reflection would be produced. However masking on a 'flopped' layer didn't work smoothly as the footage shown wasn't the footage selected, or fell in a different area. The problem seemed to be resolved through flipping the footage in it's own composition, then adding that composition to this one and masking it, as it then acted like regular footage. I ended up doing this twice , once with the 'Mid-shot' footage of Jeff, to produce the reflection of her face at the beginning, then with the wide shot of her on the ship to provide the reflection of the glowing 'warp point' that's meant to be suspended in the roof. By adjusting the opacity of each of the 'reflection' footages so only one plays at a time and they don't overlap the reflection in the lens is smooth and is present throughout the clip, even if (after the face reflection) it is quite subtle. For future reference it'll be good for me to keep in mind the possibility of having reflections in shots and therefore gather stock footage on the shoot in preparation.
The Alien footage for this shot was a little bright in contrast to the dark shadowy environment, a slight worry for me was how obvious it was that the body was just a black jumper. To try remedy this I decided to adjust the brightness and contrast levels on an adjustment layer (as I wanted the body to slightly blend with the shadows of the environment). However when doing this it was obvious the face became too dark and saturated when I'd reached a point where I was happy with the body. To fix this I decided to try masking two layer of adjustment levels, one for the body and a separate one for the head, allowing me to have more control over the brightness and contrast of the elements of the Alien. The jerky movement of the Alien meant I had to key the masks to follow it and when previewing the final result this was quite obvious. By adjusting the levels, opacity and feathering the mask I have hopefully made the masking less obvious.
Friday we had to show a rough edit (or however far we were with this project) to the class. Below is my Rough Edit:
There's a lot that obviously needed to be completed, for example the backgrounds 'on the ship' were just bases or not even added yet and the warping from outside to inside the ship is a big problem for me. I like the film burn effect as it coincides with the design and theme of my film, however I've keyed it too slow and there isn't an act of 'burning' to compliment it, I'm going to look into adding some form of light rays too add a bit more drama whilst speeding it up.
To me the edit itself runs quite slowly, it was suggested in the Crit to lose the first shot, which I agree with as it drags on and doesn't add much to the scene. I'd like to make the intro, the viewing of the ship and running away, a little more dynamic and may cut in some other footage (filmed by Tom on the day) of peoples reactions and close ups. I did try this before but movements and continuity seemed to jar quite noticeably (as Jeff is an extra in some of these shots) we'll have to see whether it works now I have actual 'Ship' footage.
I am aware that by adding the sound I will be able to carry the introduction, as I will be able to introduce the idea of the Ship before it's seen (through clanking whirring - unnatural noises). Sound design is incredibly important to a successful video and I hopefully will be able to devote some time to making it work properly.
Hopefully I'll be able to colour grade this and give it a smooth finish once I've finished editing all my footage in After Effects.
I had a rough idea of how I wanted my environment to look, but I'm not very skilled at drawing perspective or lighting, so I thought it would be more advantageous to block out the environment in Maya even though I planned to Matte paint the background for my shots. The rough concept was the inside of the ship was to hint at a camera lens and be quite cylindrical, but have lumps breaking through from the outside of the ship, as if the ship were constantly being built from materials gathered. The Alien has been stealing camera's so there is evidence of this with piles of cameras against the wall. This'll hopefully make it a little clearer what the Alien is after.
By putting transparent images on plates of Jeff and the Alien I could roughly work out shots in the blocked-out Maya file, this allowed me to move the 'important' aspects into shot. I decided to render out different aspects of the structure in different render layers to then edit in Photoshop and add to After Effects, in hindsight I probably shouldn't have rendered out as many, as I only ended up moving a few bits in my comp. For example I rendered close up shots and different angles and perhaps would have coloured them too but due to time ended up manipulating the matte-paintings I'd already created.
I then painted the layers, which, though compliment the 'painted' look of the Alien was quite time consuming and I think look a little flat, despite my overlaying of textures on them.
front
back
side
To add movement and a little detail I wanted some sort of circular wall panel that either had the Aliens 'language' or readings on it or hinted at the inner workings of a ship. I decided on a slightly distorted map of the world, to illustrate co-ordinates or directions that the Alien would be following.
wheel
This video on Matter Painting I've watched illustrates how having a little added movement in a still image can really sell it's believability and add a little more depth to the environment. It's highlighted to me how using a lot of reference, stock images and manipulation can help give a more realistic result. If I were to change my environment design I would have tried to add a lot more detail to give a sense of this realism as to me it looks a little empty, however because I am using quite heavy shadows I can get away with it slightly.
The main highlight for me at BAF (Bradford Animation Festival) was the talk from Double Negative, who have worked on the CG of such films as The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and Inception.
We were mainly shown footage from the remake 'Total Recall', which had an incredible amount of digital work in it, and the processes it took to get to the final result.
This film, we were told, had a lot of CGI in it, which isn't necessarily ideal for the artists visualising and creating environments and sequences. Though it allows them wide range of creative possibilities it also means there is a lack of a base, a source of reference, between the live action footage and green-screened footage which has the potential to make it difficult to realise the directors vision. A lot of concepts had to be drawn up with notes such as 'don't make it look like Bladerunner ' to work from. Something I picked up on from the talk at BAF was a comment regarding working with Christopher Nolan and the cinematographer Wally Pfister. It was implied that the collaboration between them and Double Negative was creatively easier due to the fact that they had a clearer visualisation as to what they were supposed to create as well as being provided with a lot of imagery and details from the real physical sets and locations.
Christopher Nolan is quite well known for being a Director who likes to create as much as possible physically in shot, using VFX to enhance his films rather than fully take over them. This however does not hinder the VFX work as shown when Inception'dominated the 9th annual Visual Effects Society Awards winning the top prize of Outstanding Visual Effcts in a VFX-driven feature. The mind-bending film won all four categories that it was nominated for' (www.imbd.com)
THIS ARTICLEis a detailed description of the work put into Inception by Double Negative and is worth reading. It describes how pre-vis became incredibly important when creating concepts and designing complex camera movements and technical plans which would be later translated to film like, for example, the endless staircase scene. It illustrates a dynamic between the VFX team and Christopher Nolan that is advantageous to the overall production of the film. (The following quotes in italics are from said article)
'As with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, the role of vfx was to support and enhance the narrative. Still, Nolan wanted the film to be extraordinary and to offer startling and arresting visual concepts. "In many respects, the vfx has ended up much more to the fore than in the Batman films, mainly through necessity as the surreal nature of some of the images could only be achieved through a vfx approach," Franklin contends.
As with most successful CGI the less it is noticed for being an effect the better it is and when coupled with a strong narrative that captures the audience's attention it creates a large sense of realism and believability, no matter how bizarre the scene becomes. For example the scene where the city is folded is impressive because the detail and texture of the VFX makes you believe those are real buildings doing that. This was achieved by taking in-depth measurements and scans of the actual buildings in the city then recreating them.
"The visual effects ofInceptionneeded to integrate seamlessly with Wally Pfister's stunning cinematography which -- for the most part -- was hand-held in full daylight, giving it an immediacy that placed extraordinary demands on the vfx pipeline and the team at Double Negative.'
Because of these daylight shots the importance of rendering and lighting became even more important that usual (than say in other films such as Harry Potter). It seems in almost all films and animations I've seen that lighting is a key factor in setting the tone and, in this case, compositing and combining assets to a believable standard.
This article also makes it clear that VFX covers a range of processes from small details, such as deleting wires the actors suspend from, to recreating parts of the settings. As seen in the text below:
"Weightlessness was achieved through a clever combination of actors on wire rigs in a vertical hotel corridor set and a hand-operated seesaw rig on a horizontal version of the same rig," Franklin continues. "Joseph Gordon-Levitt trained intensively with Tom Struthers' stunt team for weeks with the result that he appears as himself in the vast majority of the finished shots. Double Negative 2D lead Astrid Busser-Casas and her team removed all of the wires and rigs, carefully rebuilding the sets where necessary. Costume Designer Jeffrey Kurland came up with fantastically stylish outfits that were also vfx friendly, adding little touches like stiffened shoelaces that didn't flop about giving away the direction of the vertical. One particularly demanding shot, which shows Arthur wrapping the dreamers in cable in preparation for their journey to the elevator, was shot in the hotel room set turned on its side. Numerous wires ran across the stunt actors' faces and CG lead Stuart Farley created digital doubles of Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe to hide the fact that the actors themselves weren't in the rigs.
I think the way they made the above-described scene was fantastically clever and exciting and illustrates how taking a practical approach to some effects can bring massive benefits visually. Combining practical and VFX can create some really interesting outcomes and allows the concept to be clear throughout the process for everyone to see. Inception raises the bar in a number of areas," Franklin concludes, "especially in photorealistic daytime environments and complex dynamics work. For me, it also marked a new level of interaction with the filmmakers where I was able to talk directly with Chris and the other department heads, which made a huge difference to the end result. Maybe I'm a little bias because I enjoy Christopher Nolan's films but I definitely prefer this methodology, attempting to create as much physically in-shot as is plausible, than to spend months with an actor and a green screen 'imagining' what is happening. I personally think it adds a lot more depth to performance and over all detail of the shots and allows the VFX to shine through in more creative, interesting ways rather than just saturating the screen.
I've stumbled upon these VFX breakdowns created by a French studio named Productions Babel for a web series 'Time Out'.
"All visual effects were done in house. We transformed our production company in a VFX studio in order to create the end of the world. Over 500 shots were made and most them barely noticeable thanks to the talent and the passion of our small team! We managed to make the impossible possible."
Watching breakdowns like these illustrates the process a lot clearer than words and screenshots do, and highlights small details, that would have gone unnoticed without being pointed out, that add to the overall effect of the scene.
This particular break down interests me in the same way Gareth Edwards work (when adjusting the environment) has, (which I wrote about here), as it uses and enhances it's surroundings to create a believable and effective environment. By gathering and sometimes even creating extra footage and source images the extra layers composited onto the scene are believable and look solid instead of virtual. I personally think it's more beneficial to have real physical surroundings that actors can interact with, therefore hopefully giving a better performance, when filming. This footage can then be enhanced and used as a base for creative embellishment rather than the VFX artist being given less to work with if everything is shot in green screen (like, for example, in the Star Wars prequels.)
The detail provided in these effects for webisodes shows the quality in which all Visual Effects are now expected to be produced at. This hopefully illustrates the potential to create more and more ambitious projects without having to be an incredibly large team working for blockbusters, meaning more independent, individual and creative content can be made to a high standard whilst still having the freedom to be experimental.
Because I had multiple Render passes, I had quite a bit of control whilst adding the Ship to the scene in After Effects. However I quite quickly realised that despite my best efforts to model the building accurately, (so I'd have reflections that compliment the image sequence of the building), mis-measures or bad angles caused shadows and reflections to noticeably be out of place.
To resolve this I created multiple layers of the same Pass and masked out different sections each time, allowing me to place reflections specifically in the right windows, or alter the sizes of shadows in areas.
The effects on the building in the first 'scene' involving the ship aren't that noticeable as the ship is still a little away from them. I could add a little more shadow or glow perhaps to cement it's presence. I am also considering, time permitting, adding the reflection of the sky a little to the buildings, as they seem a little flat. This scene, unlike the one below, has no yet had and 'Occlusion' render pass added to the ship, which would give it a little bit of self-shadowing and therefore more depth. Hopefully once this is rendered and added the ship should seem a little more solid in the scene.
It's been brought to my attention I need to add more glow on the edges of the building, as though I have a strong reflection the light doesn't effect the top! The reflections themselves seem to work quite well, with this particular scene I ended up creating another individual render pass with just the windows (with a very reflecting Hypershade added) which allowed a noticeable difference between them and the buildings. There are still a few tweaks needed with this scene, for example I think the shadows appear too quickly, however it is dependant on time whether I will be able to alter them.
Though incredibly time consuming to create and render the building, I feel it has helped a lot with the After Effects process and selling the Ship as actually 'being in the scene', as it adds a slight level of detail that I would find hard to recreate manually in After Effects. However I am aware that I could have produced a passable reflection in After Effects in, probably, a lot shorter time. This is something I am taking into account with the 'Wide Crowd Shot' in which the ship appears, as to rebuild and render the building (as at a different angle it doesn't fit the plate) again wouldn't be practical so instead I'll be creating shadows and reflections solely in After Effects. It will be interesting to see the difference.
Our first introduction to incorporating Maya into After Effects involved a trial run of compositing our 'ships' (or in my case a very rough blocking of one) into a scene.
This personally was one of the first After Effects 'tutorial' lesson we'd had where I was actually getting excited at the opportunities in the software and the processes towards creating a 'realistic' incorporation of computer-generated aspects. Adding things, such as the reflection of the clouds, to the buildings to sell the presence of the ship
The above is just a practice, I have since taken into account things such as shadow and light reflection/direction with my real ship, though admittedly I forgot about reflecting any clouds so may incorporate this technique again.
Recently I watched some episodes from the '9th Doctor' series of Doctor Who. Since these were from 2005 the quality of CG is a little shabby compared to what we'd expect now, though in fairness that has always been a trait of Doctor Who. I thought this was a good point of reference though, as I am aware for a first attempt at properly creating a 'ship' and incorporating it into live footage my work will definitely not be cinema standard. The ship in this clip interacts with it's environment and is coloured and lit in a way that compliments it's surroundings, these details allowsthe suspension of disbelief. As long as I keep this in mind and in some way link my ship and the buildings together, be it shadow or reflection, the 'invasion' should translate to the audience.
Over a couple of mornings we were introduced to using After Effects. By being taught the basics of the software I have been able to experiment and manoeuvre better when editing my footage for my film.
As my ship environment is going to be matte painted instead of being fully built in Maya, I am considering incorporating 3D shapes to add a little bit of movement. Below is a 'test' we created when learning how to use this feature, turning a 2D image into a, seemingly, 3D moving animation.
The concept of what images should be posted in the press is always a hot topic. It can be argued that by avoiding gruesome and chilling imagery the media are avoiding the issue, hiding the reality of such things as war and instead giving a more 'glamourous' overview of it. Why shouldn't the public know about these catastrophes? However the issue of censorship is ripe here, as it could be seen as 'unethical' to put such horrific imagery in such a public space, as children could easily be exposed to them.
- What is Culture? - 'General process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time/ particular way of life.
-'Popular culture is seen as inferior to 'real' culture' by critics as it is 'made for the masses'.
Things perhaps are seen to lose there message 'sell out' when they become incredibly popular or imitated. (Used in advertising etc. -Graffiti taken to promote cars etc)
-Banksy - Graffiti becomes culture.
4 Definitions of 'Popular'
- Like by many
- Inferior work (not 'high brow')
- Work deliberately setting out to win favour with people (Made to a format/recipe - such as X Factor - mindless entertainment)
- Culture actually made by people
Culture doesn't have politics, things with agenda isn't culture
High culture/ Low culture
Culture - seen as different/seperate to Popular culture (a minority) (Attack on Popular culture)
Endless Popular culture, passive, exploitation. 'Depoliticises the working class'
Reproductions and copie cheapens and stops the original from being 'unique'
Mass culture is attacked because threatens cultural standard and social authority
Punk movement etc - 'Pop culture' but against society
Analysis of Pop Culture and media is deeply popular (many will be aware of this)
This video was released a while back, but I still really like it. Because it's reversed the story's constantly being re-interpreted and assumptions are questioned with each new piece of information, working as a little drama throughout. It also gives interesting movement to the actors and objects, such as glass reforming or people seemingly floating etc.
The use of close-ups now and then makes me think the piece was edited forwards then reversed once complete, as the video would work played both ways, but this is just speculation.
I've always been a fan of the Lord of the Rings films so was ridiculously excited to see the Hobbit and, once I did, I really enjoyed it.
However I was torn between the use of animation and VFX in the film. On one side I loved Gollum and thought his facial animation was incredibly well done. It is immediately forgotten that he is CGI since his character is so powerful and expressionate, causing the 'Riddles in the Dark' section of the film to feel more like a play between two actors rather than a man and something computer generated. On the other hand though, CG seems to be heavily relied upon on the film for extra characters. This creates a clear difference in tone between The Hobbit film and the Lord of the Rings as the first feels thinner in texture due to it's lack of extras (in which the latter had many).
Peter Jackson has said that the vast amount of extras in the LOTR trilogy was due to lack of technology able to produce the creatures at the time, now that this technology has advanced he is able to have the goblins etc. animated and therefore act less human than before. Though this allows a larger chance to create less humanoid creatures I think it causes a clear gap between the actors playing the dwarves and what they are interacting with causing the picture to look a little cheaper.
