Showreel

As I have created a range of work over the years, and want to illustrate this. I made a 'generic' showreel that depicts the main pieces of work I'm proud of.

SHOWREEL 2014 from Lija J on Vimeo.

Hopefully it shows a range of skills, a willingness to work with others, and interest in film and art design.

Wear Sunscreen

I have been thinking about the nature of planning when writing my essay and a friend recommended this video. It's a nice positive outlook on life and worrying about the future. It's a comforting thing to hear when we're about to finish and everything's uncertain. 'Choices are half chance'. 

Ruddigore Trailer

This is the trailer I made for OperaSoc's 'Ruddigore'.

A bit of extra comping

In order to reach the deadline, I've helped out Luca a little with the VFX he was working on and masked the eyes of U-1 in two shots. 

This involved creating a solid shape, feathering it, then animating it to follow U-1s head, covering the gaps or eye that you could see in the original shot. Other than adding gauze to the box in production (which wouldn't have helped the already compromised vision wearing it entails), I don't think seeing through the eye holes could've been avoided. When others viewed our draft of the film, a relatively large amount of feedback centred around being able to sometimes see this, and confusion as to whether this was intentional. If it is distracting to the audience, then it seemed right to mask them out and draw their focus back into the story. The process itself is a little tedious but seems to cover what we want without being obviously CG. 

Cereal Box Final Shots

 Following the tests and developments for the hologram, I added Ryan's performance to the cereal box shots. This included having to mask out elements of the shot, such as the boot smashing down, and any rocks and plants in the foreground.

In each shot the cereal box is crushed underfoot, so I had to animated the hologram composition to shrink and move as it the box distorted. This was helped through adding more static and glitches in the composition, to give the appearance of the hologram breaking and avoiding having to 'fold it'.

Overall I think they work well, not seeming too over the top (which is something I worry about with VFX). I think, due to the colours, the blue version works better. This is not only because blue is a little more futuristic, but in the box design, I'd lightened the center, which gives the implication of light. I attempted to mimic this in the red cereal footage in After Effects, but it didn't appear natural.

Title text and possible poster designs/promo stuff

We've been considering the 'promotion' side of our short film, mainly how we would present and advertise it during End-of-Year show, and possibly during film festivals etc. Tom took a range of landscape and portrait stills from our location shoot that we could use. Looking at both horizontal and portrait, there was a trend in certain poses/layouts and what we liked. Mainly, the silhouetted character with their back turned in portrait.

Feedback during our last crit highlighted the difference between our 'title/logo' design, and the content of the film. Accordingly I started to try something simpler that would work both for the film, and any promotional material. The content of the film is quite minimal, and 'empty', so a simple text seemed fitting. I messed with case and overlay/textures to try and find something that worked.

In the end we decided the overall poster should be relatively minimal too, as we hadn't much to write on it (yet). We ended up with this poster design (showed bottom left), which isn't too telling of the plot (or even shows U1's face), but does show the character and the overall 'tone'. At the moment I've just left placeholder text, which would be replaced with things such as showing times and a brief blurb for the film.

When looking at film posters, there was a trend for quite illustrative designs too. I decided to experiment with this idea, using the box head as it's quite a simple yet obvious design. We could possibly use this design as teaser cards, or cards with information on the team and each of our roles, to be left out during end of year show. It could also be an alternate poster or flyer, to drum up some interest for our film. Again, once we have details, we would fill it in accordingly. 

Mask in film

Something that's appeared in film recently that is relevant to our project is the film 'Frank'. It looks really good and I'm interested to see it. I'm very interested in how it was to work with the head piece, as with our production, the box head became a little uncomfortable for Ryan to wear over the course of three days. By the looks of the trailer, the head creates an endearing character, even if slightly creepy sometimes. It's interesting to see a film that covers the face of it's star, and how that can still be successful and work well, illustrating that performance and story are key to selling something.

"It's pretty comfortable now. I'm used to it," explains Fassbender during a break. He has taken the head off and it really is him beneath it. "It was kind of weird in the beginning, the way it sits on your head. You feel a little bit vulnerable because you've not much peripheral vision. You can only see straight in front of you. You can't hear that well either. But it's quite liberating as well, in the way that masks are. It's amazing how many emotions that face manages to convey. It can look vulnerable, it can look sinister, at times it looks confused."

(Above taken from this source) http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/24/michael-fassbender-frank-sidebottom

Hologram Cont... (Colours and cropping)

Continuing the hologram tests in After Effects and how they look on the cereal boxes. Whilst blue is a common 'futuristic' colour, the redder version on the left still seems to work ok. I think this is due to the vibrance/ colour dodge nature of the edited footage. However, there should probably be a little more light source, or some sort of glow, emitting from this first box (the second shown in the film).

Initially, the holograms were to sit on top of the box (as shown in the blue right hand side box), whilst this works, it creates a little separation between it and the box. By masking the box and putting the hologram between the adverts (seen left), there seems to be a little more depth added. This is probably how the hologram will be added in the real footage. 

Helping out a friend

Since I gained a lot of practice drawing background hills for our extended project, I was happy to help Siobhan with a quick background for her animation project. 

Whilst I've been more focused on film/production based things this year, I still really enjoy more 'traditional' art things, such as painting etc. Therefore it's nice to practice and a bonus to support a friend's project.

 

Hologram test

Using the green screen footage I'd taken Monday, I have begun testing out ways to create a hologram effect, which can be used once I have the main footage to comp onto.

For this test I have been following this tutorial:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/digital-video/creative-cow-after-effects-tutorials-hologram-effect/

This tutorial reminded me of little things such as typing in expressions to repeat actions e.g, loopOut("cycle") , that have proven very useful.

I'm aiming for a traditional 'hologram' style, that of lines and slight static, as seen in the vid below.

Whether or not we have light coming from the box illustrating where the hologram is coming (as seen above) will be decided once I've view the main footage the hologram will be comped on.

The fluctuating lines and slight flash give this sense of hologram. I will refine it, and key the timings slightly better in the overall shot. I feel the timings will depend on the main footage, therefore I may also have to incorporate jump cuts into the hologram in order to 'make it fit'. Obviously in this there is still elements of grid line, which I would avoid having in the final thing. It's possible that the form of this hologram is too solid, and I may have to look into distorting it, especially when the box is crushed in the shot.

The above is a quick illustration of where the hologram would be on the box. At the end Ryan goes out  of the lines of the box, however this is when it will be crushed so the hologram itself will probably be more distorted too. If this box is being found in a scrap heap, it seems like it should already be glitching, this is something I will try and further investigate.

I need to consider the light source, or a slight glow in the hologram. As well as make it a little fuzzier and 'impure'. For example the hologram's in Muse's Knights of Cydonia music video sometimes come from a source, and I should consider how the box is effected by the hologram in our film.