Other than our dance video, i had the fantastic opportunity to work on the set of Laura, Lauren, Katherine and Mollies group film "Elysian" as a Camera Operator.

I was called in as most of the group already had roles (Laura and Mollie co-directing, Lauren producing and making sure everything goes to schedule, and Katherine filming behind the scenes) and big rig such as the EX-3 combined with a glidecam needed it's own crew to handle it.

Setting up the camera was easier this time as we had already done the same rig for our own shoot.

Both me and shahid worked under the strict direction of Laura in order to get the shots that she and mollie imagined. Something that i learned on this shoot was to carefully listen to directions, but also suggest ideas that may fix problems on set.

One of these problems was the lighting. Since the group had originally imagined the lighting as backlit, they tried it out but the light was clearly visible. It was my suggestion then to add two blue lights behind the actors, one off camera at the left and one off camera at the right. This quickly solved the backlighting problem and allowed the group to carry on with the shoot.

Overall it was a very fun experience, and it was nice to work on such a different shoot then ours. Definitely worth it even just for this photo...:

Shoot day, finally here!

Because i wanted to have a 3D scene with a free moving camera, i had to create a skydome.
However, since all surfaces are one sided in unity, i had to invert the normals. Then i just exported the model as an FBX.


The mesh was then imported and a unlit textured material was added
Also, the lights were changed to reflect the new background:




Animations were added to the camera, and animation changes were called through the script using the CrossFade function (found through the Unity API website)




After this i decided to create an introductory cinematic. I created a new scene, added my objects and then added individual animations to each object. I also created a "Start Game" 3d object in Cinema4D, and baked the textures on to it to make it easier to import.


When i imported it i attached a script to it so that when it was clicked on or touched it triggered the animations.

Also, to load the main level i created a script that used two gameobjects and their colliders, so that when they hit eachother, the level stored in the script's variable would be loaded. These two objects would collide at the right time using an animation.

I further went on to add some image effects imported from Unity's built in libraries. The main ones i used was Depth of Field, Chromatic Abheration, Vigniette and Lens Flares

In the main level i also added a highscore script. This was done by comparing the Score to a HighScore variable, and then if the score was bigger, it would be assigned to the highscore. The key to making this work properly was to make the HighScore variable a static variable, so that it wouldn't reset when the game restarted.

After testing out the early versions of the game, i found it quite abrupt when a cinematic would finish and the game would start. Therefore i decided to add a screen that would state some controls, objectives and a rough storyline. This was done using a simple quad in a new scene. A script was added to this quad to load the correct level when the mouse was clicked


Another cinematic was created to introduce the boss fight, and it was made in a similar way to the previous one. I changed the sky to a darker red color to indicate a scene/difficulty change. Also during the cinematic a transition texture is used to help transition between levels.

The boss fight level uses a MathF.MoveTowards function so that the enemy follows the player on the x axis, but with a delay.

Further modificatons were made to a copy of the GameController scripts, and some other custom scripts to make the enemy bolts kill the player, make them shoot in intervals, make the player bolts cause damage to the enemy ship, a health variable for the enemy and another text object to display the enemy ship.

Lastly an Ending level was added with an explosion to indicate that the enemy ship had been destroyed. However the builds may have a bug that causes that level not to load (whilst in the editor it works fine)

I also added some basic touch controls for the Android build, however they are sill buggy and need improvement.

This is what the final game looks like:


And this is what the mobile version for Android looks like:

SELF-EVALUATION
Overall it was an interesting experience and extremely valuable learning how to script in C# as i previously felt uncomfortable with it, and it has put me off using game engines such as Unity or UDK. Now i feel a bit more confident with this area and feel like i will be experimenting with game engines allot more in my spare time. The shooter game i created still has a few bugs that need to be worked out, but for the amount of time we had considering we have other projects running in parallel i'm happy with the result.

ROOM SCHEDULING:
Booking out rooms has been the definition of a logistical nightmare...

Originally we had booked the 25th of may for g27 with a full equipment list, and two extra days for an audition and a rehearsal in classrooms.

However, despite our early panning we had to work in conjunction with Laura, Lauren, Katherine and Molly's group who desperately needed a studio, to completely rearrange all of our bookings due to all the studios being fully booked.

As a space appeared on the 20th, the underwater dance group couldn't take that space due to their dancer. However, as we could we decided to swap our slot with theirs.

This posed another step of confusion as our equipment bookings had to be swapped over. Luckily we booked roughly the same equipment. However during the process we did lose a couple of sandbags and a c stand.

Also, since Dowan needs a camera for Friday morning, i've offered to swap the EX-3 that we need in exchange with my personal 600D. I'll be giving him a few tips and tricks on Thurdsay for how to use extra software that i've installed on it.

CASTING AND AUDITIONS:
After receiving replies for our film we did two skype auditions and one physical audition. During the auditions we asked the dancers what they would like to input to the project, and also some of the more practical things such as availability.

This is some of the footage we shot during our physical auditions:


We decided to cast Amelia Emma Forest for her contemporary dance skills and enthusiasm for the project.

During our Skype conversation we talked allot about collaboration, and how each art form could feed in to each other.

We also went through allot of the ideas of the film, and how we'd like to structure it.

Overall, as a group we are extremely happy with Amelia, and believe she is a strong motivated individual fit for the part.

REHEARSAL AND MOVEMENT TESTS:
On Monday we booked a room to meet and greet our newly cast dancer, and to try out a few things such as movement, visual effects and costume. This is the result of that day:


VFX TESTS:
To test out some of the more complicated shots we decided to shoot visual effects tests for the pass through mirror shot, but also for the duplication shot.

The way i'm going about creating the mirror shot is using a bunch of adjustment layers in combination with the displacement map effect to create a mirror/glass look. Then the elements that are passing through the mirror are rotoscoped and put above the adjustment layers. The edge of the matte is used to further distort the areas where Amelia is passing through the mirror, as if she is bending reality. My conclusion to avoid needless extra roto work is to shoot it in front of a greenscreen


For the duplication shot, it's just a case of matchmoving both shots and creating a split screen mask.


CALL SHEET:

I also created a simplified call sheet to schedule our shoot, and gather our equipment list and contact details in one place:

Well... this has been a busy month...

To start off, as a group we have a synopsis and a treatment, written by Lucy:

• Try using the framing to internalise his restrictive movements
• a thought may be for the first half to let the camera dictate the movements

Starting off this workshop, we created a new script to destroy an object upon contact.

The script at the beginning looked like this:

However, since the OnTriggerEnter is checking for all collisions, the asteroid dissapears instantly. To fix this the script was modified as so:

also for this script to work we added a tag to the asteroid object

to create an explosion we further modified the script using the Instantiate function, and added an if to check weather the player is colliding with the asteroid or not:

Ship goes boom :P

now to make the asteroids spawn multiple times we added to the script

also to loop the waves the script was further modified

To start this session we wrote the script to move the bullet

after a changing the value in the inspector, the bullet moves across the screen

after getting the bullet ready we created a PreFab and moved our bolt in to that.

Now to get the bolt to spawn we created a point for the script to reference

We then opened up the PlayerController script and added the following:


After adding some more code modifications, especially trying to get both guns to shoot this is what i ended up with


Now, in order to destroy the bullets when they exit the screen, we created a boundary
This is the script that was written:

This added a random rotation to each instance of the asteroid.

Dat Tho...