Filming day

Great Job!

Long file is long

There must be something wrong with me, making a decision to work with such a ridiculously large file when I know there are simpler, quicker solutions. But frankly, they can't be as fun and effective as this!

The aim is to represent a film reel coming to an end, as part of some sort of technical malfunction. I was interested in creating that familiar effect where the speed of the film changes and makes the image appear to move up or down. I could have just animated the whole screen to physically move up and down to suggest this, but I think this would have looked too fake.

So, instead, I decided to actually make a digital piece of film reel, consisting of 25 frames. This one image is 25 times the length of 1080p. (Not the one I uploaded here, this is about 10% of the full image!)

Then, I bought this into After Effects and made it moooove real fast, downwards. I perfected the keyframes to make the car move up and down nicely.

A good few hour's work for what will be ONE SECOND of the film.

Isn't it great being an animator.......? :D

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FOUR-AND-FORTY CROOKED TEETH

It has been discovered that the cat-like creature lurking in the shadows of the city has four-and-forty crooked teeth. 

A spokesman from the City Police has made it clear that 'it is unclear’ whether the teeth belonging to the 'Catipoce’ have been used to support the creatures’ terrible habit of engaging in outrageous, fear-inducing acts upon unsuspecting folk in the urban infrastructure of the city.

Since the Catipoce was first reported as a possible threat to the comfort levels of the generic population living in the City’s gritty urban quarter, The Local Council has been critisised for failing to invest in security which could possibly act as a potential barrier to perhaps protect people who feel they may be somewhat vulnerable to an unfamiliar  and possibly-undeniably dangerous unknown force.

" Avoid her face."        
 - The Narrator

At a time which was possibly 10pm last night, a photographer from City News  miraculously captured an incredible image showing what is unquestionably a feline-shaped shadow belonging to The prowing Catipoce as it prepares to presumably pounce and victimise two potentially innocent, compassionate and charitable local  civilian  citizens, maybe.    

Since the cat-related incidents started to appear two weeks ago, public opinion research has shown that concern over continuing  cat-related incidents is continuing at the same levels as before. This undoubtably confirms the universal belief that the continuation of cat-related events is due to a wider network of cat-related events.

'Some people find it hard to believe that this is a form of CAT we are talking about here,’ said Dr. Sam Witches, former Chief Executive of Cat-Incident Partnerships International, 'Most ordinary, law-abiding and unsuspecting citizens of generic, gritty American cities seem to think that all cats are fluffy, cuddly and lovely. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case.’

The news of last night’s show of strength by 'The Catipoce’ by showing her teeth came three days after central government launched an official investigation, quite literally. Linus Squidgeyface, Senior Investigator for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Cat-related Incidents (FBC-RI) departed from Washington D.C. in a one-man rocket in order to reach the epicentre of public outcry as rapidly as possible.

 

Test Visuals 3 & 4

This is a still image from another test, yet a pretty unsuccessful one: The aim of the test was create a visual of the actor behind a chain-link fence. We also used prison-bars, but this test was totally unsuccessful.

If you look at the chain-link the visual effect works out reasonably well, however the whole illusion is ruined by the top bar being distorted. The height of the fence is also a problem. However it is not all wasted effort, we will go back to this at a later date and sort out these problems as we feel this technique has definate potential.

This is a preview of a quick panoramic background drawn up on photoshop, The actual resolution is 5720-1080. (Three widescreen HD pictures side-by-side.) Long background is long. We wanted to create the illusion of a 180 degree camera turn but with a live actor.
The brief given for this background was : A darkish night sky (to play with light source), a point of interest and reference(the barn and trees) and the set dimensions.

This background was then taken into AFX to create the turn and the lighting - The video will be up later!

Test Visuals:2

We have made some changes and also created a new test today. The new test was to create moving headlights against a wall, with a white space for the actor to move within the light spheres. 'Rabbit in the headlights' pretty much sums it up.
We have also filmed the experiments using manual settings on the Canon 7D instead of automatic, as this allows us to control focus and exposure. Here are some images from the tests. These pictures are raw 1080p unedited video frames.

Improvements for next time - Make the white space larger in the headlight test (you can see bricks on my shoulder), and maybe try some lighting and shadows on the extremely vibrant watering can. Other than that, the next tests will be new ones.

Video next...

Test Visuals: 1

For the past couple of days, we have been doing some simple visual tests with the projector, all captured on camera. Here's some frames from the video, soon we'll put a few edited clips on here!

This test was for one actor to lift a watering can and pour water over the other actor. The 'wet' actor would then shake off. Like a dawwg.

The watering can and the pouring water were digitally painted, then given some rough movement in AFX. The head shake water was made with one of the particle systems.

During our testing we have been trying different ways to use colour, brightness and composition. For this test, we created both a black and a white version - there are pros and cons of both, see for yourself. Whilst we both like the white version, we think that being able to create lighting effects and composition with the black background is more ideal. There will be few times in our final project when the lighting is quite as minimal as this, however.

After seeing the results, we have noted the following things to amend for the next test:

Decrease brightness of, enlarge and lower spotlights, also increase blurriness of spotlights, decrease opacity of watering can (it was so bright that the camera received it as orange instead of red when using black background), make watering can animation a bit smoother to help actor move with it.

Next test coming soon...