Thomas Doukinitsas's DFSA Research Blog

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Shot List & Storyboards

After getting our script ready, i broke it down in to a shot list

This shot list is to assist us throughout the production, such as planning shot times and production duration.

One of the main things this shot list was made for was to get storyboards created, these will later help us with animatics and art direction.

This shot list was handed out to Katherine and Mollie to storyboard. Katherine did the line drawings and mollie is currently doing the final coloured versions.

For Mollie's version of the final storyboards i scanned in the line drawings and scaled them up slightly and reprinted them on thick paper. Mollie then will draw over these:

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Booking Sound Room & Equipement

As we had already figured out most of our schedule, i booked the following rooms and dates for our production:

Date	Start Time	End Time	Room	Description
18/11/2015	10:00	17:00	G23 Sound Recording Studio	Pro Tools Rehearsal for Sound Recordist
19/11/2015	10:00	17:00	G23 Sound Recording Studio	Rehearsals with Lawrence
26/11/2015	10:00	17:00	G23 Sound Recording Studio	Voice Recording with Lawrence
27/11/2015	10:00	17:00	G23 Sound Recording Studio	Voice Recording with Lawrence
26/01/2016	10:00	20:00	G27 Journalism Greenscreen Studio	Live Action Shoot of Stop Motion Animators
27/01/2016	10:00	20:00	G27 Journalism Greenscreen Studio	Live Action Shoot of Stop Motion Animators
17/02/2016	10:00	17:00	G23 Sound Recording Studio	Foley Sound Recording

we have also booked the following equipement for our live action shoot in g27:

Start Date	End Date	ID	Equipement
25/01/2016 AM	28/01/2016 AM		Blackmagic URSA + Matte box + Lenses
25/01/2016 AM	28/01/2016 AM		3 Fresnels
25/01/2016 AM	28/01/2016 AM		Ronford Heavy Duty Tripod
25/01/2016 AM	28/01/2016 AM		Gels and Diffusion Set

These bookings were confirmed by Rosie Gunn via email.

Lastly we will also be booking lights for the stop motion shoot days.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: 1st Tutorial with Kathleen

During our first tutorial with Kathleen we discussed several elements about our projects.

D-Eb31E

These suggestions were discussed:

Emphasize the fact that it’s a one set piece
Names may date it / add elements (maybe unwanted)
The character’s accent / place of origin will be important, since it is one of the first shots
There should be a coherence to the piece (like Twin Peaks’s Razorhead)
It should have a strong emotional core
The quality of Debbie’s seductive voice is very important
Look at Euripedes “Bakas” and the routes of tragic writing
Be aware that pills take time to become active
An interesting thing to do is instead of opening with the magazine, show it after we’ve met Debbie to surprise the audience
Get equipement out and test most of the effects

Through the Medium

For our animation project our main focus was coming up with a short, snappy and interesting synopsis that describes all of the elements of our project

"Experimental Animation, applying 3D and Stop Motion, using two Characters, to juxtapose, engaged in whitty banter about the condition of their material and immaterial existence and the physical interface. This will allow us to explore the existential angst of the CGI character living in a mercyless void dominated by a cursor in contrast to the warmth and congeniality of the stop motion character who conveys a special bond with the human counterpart hands on animator. "

Taking the above into consideration, we decided to shorten in for synopsis purposes:

"Experimental Animation, applying 3D and Stop Motion, using two characters to juxtapose the condition of their material and immaterial existence, through witty comedy and banter."

Our other concerns were with the character designs, and how we should re think some of the design elements

Lastly we talked about expanding the script, and coming up with improvisation quese for Lawrence to try out on the recording days.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Maya VS Cinema4D

One of the more technical questions i had from the beginning was "Maya or Cinema4D".
Maya is an industry standard supported by the university, but i feel uncomfortable in it, and also

After speaking and discussing with John Hunn, an an animation tutor technician at uca, the benefits of both were outlined:

Maya is an industry standard and the main reason it is supported at universities is because it is free for educational use. However Cinema 4D is also supported by the industry, not as much as Maya.

I was advised that if i feel comfortable with Cinema 4D and can work with it then there is no problem with using it. However we need to keep in contact to see if things work.

Uni also has a dedicated render farm running "Arnold", an industry standard renderer. Arnold is supported by both Maya and Cinema4D, and i've downloaded a personal learning version to test it out. The only limitation is that my renders will have a watermark, therefore i need to see if the project files that i create at home can be rendered at uni.

Also as a backup, if uni can't render our project, i'm thinking of setting up a render farm at home using regular computers.

The only problem i've had with Arnold so far is that it only works with it's own materials and lights, therefore there is a bit of a learning curve since they are different from the standard materials and lights. Also they look different, so that is another thing to consider.

Left: Cinema4D's Standard Renderer - Right: Arnold Renderer

The skin material works well, although i still need to figure out how to overlay a texture onto it. Also the hair needs more research and shadows need to be figured out. I feel as if with the arnold renderer the skin is too shiny, however that might be due to the settings.

Lastly i will try sometime soon to send a test scene to the uni machines so see if any problems pop up.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Camera Shootout

During our first camera workshop i got the chance to compare both the C300 and the URSA, two high end cameras that we might use for both "Through the Medium" and "D-eb31e". Therefore i shot a few test shots with different settings to see how both cameras look.

Comparing size and form, the C300 has a nice form factor, and can be mounted on various acessories such as the Glidecam or the Motion Control Slider. It has a familiar menu, same as the XF305 and can handle high ISO's. It's also connected to the Samurai Blade, therefore can do 10bit in Avid's DNxHD.

However this also means that a cable needs to be connected to the blade, and the blade needs to be mounted on to the camera. The plus side though is that if we want we could create two sets of files, one internally for backup, and one using the blade as our main source.

Looking at the image, it's a pretty clean image, however there is a bit of artificial sharpening. This can probably be fixed by changing the settings on the camera.

Also using the provided LUT to convert it back to Rec.709 gives a pleasing image, but loses information through the black areas. This can be fixed by color grading before applying the LUT, however the color representation seems a bit too "videoish". (Note: This is just my personal opinion)

The Blackmagic URSA is big and bulky, so it would possibly only work on heavy duty tripods, handheld for short amounts of time or on a heavy duty rig.

However the image quality (when appropriately lit) is phenomenal in my opinion. It has good natural looking sharpness even in ProRez, and using the DaVinci Resolve (free software) it can be outputed to a very pleasing version of Rec.709 with great colors, or also converted to linear light for Visual Effects use, or other film stocks such as Kodak and Fujifilm.

RAW recording, as i discovered whilst trying to get a beautiful shot of Shahid shaking a fanta bottle in slow motion, needs two CFast cards simultaneously, as odd frames are put on one card and even frames on the other. Because we only had one card, and were also trying to do 80 frames per second in raw, only half of the frames were captured, and after one point the camera started dropping frames due to the write speed needed. Also processing times in Davinci for raw are MASSIVE, whereas ProRez on a high end computer or even a Macbook Pro work at realtime.

I'm leaning towards the Blackmagic URSA as the main camera i want to use, however if we need to do specialist shots (Glidecam, Slider, Low Light) we might use the C300, depending on availability.

Here is a compilation of the test shots with and without LUTS:

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Finding our Voice Actor

When looking for voice actors that could help us, Lauren immediately thought of Lawrence Simpson, a DFSA graduate that now works as a voice actor and that we have met during the alumni days.

Therefore we sent him a synopsis and some character descriptions, and he agreed to help us:

We are thinking of using him for all of the characters as he has allot of experience with cartoon voices.

Also he might be more flexible as he might be able to record himself in his own personal studio, freeing time spent on transportation and booking rooms.

We've already sent him the script, and we are just waiting to finish pre-production so that we can get started on recording throughout November.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Finishing Version 2 of the Script... in Starbucks?

Even though we had started working on the script after all of the restructuring, it was going slow... very very slow... therefore me and Lauren thought that to write the script we possibly needed a change of environment... and lots of coffee.

Using the breakdown as reference, we examined each section and tried to make the dialogue seem more natural, but we also focused allot on character development, as from our research this was a really important part of our story.

To establish both characters in the first section we shuffled the dialogue around. We also tried to add some of their personality traits within the interviews (eg. CGI Guy checks his hair in a mirror during the interview).

A scene that originally involved a gag with sandwiches and the cursor has now been re-written with a funnier coffee scene, that happens during the interview, and also contains the "triple mocha frappa lacka macha chino latte" reference from one of our first year films.

A conclusion has also been written in, and the script in general has improved pacing.

During writing the script i noticed that when you are in a calm and more social environment, like a cafe, it seems to be allot easier to write and come up with ideas, and i will definitely keep that in mind when i need to write a script.

Also, when picking a cafe to write a script it has to be open till late... we were in there for 4 hours...

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Re-assembling the script and further research

So far even though we had an early script, it was not complete.

To continue on writing the script, but also to make sure it was flowing well and make it easy to shuffle in new ideas, i broke the script down in to post it notes, creating segments with individual post it notes, and using colors to represent sections. After brainstorming with Lauren we concluded to this:

And for better reference all the notes were transferred to our google doc:

The main points added were a dialogue sequence about the character's physicalities, and also shuffling the order of shots to create a better flow. We also came up with a possible conclusion, as Lauren pointed out we could have them talk about their similarities and possibly ending up saying the same things.

Therefore in the next few days we will take this structure and turn it in to a script.

Lastly today we both watched a very interesting google talk that Lauren suggested, from Leica and the makers of the Boxtrolls:

as we watched this we also discussed some of the practicalities of the stop motion shoot, such as using CGI to create guides for the movement, using rough models.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Researching in to Comedy

From early on one of our main points of research was this short documentary on the visual comedy of Chuck Jones:
This documentary amongst other points stresses out the attention needed for character development in animated movies, as there is no physical actor to bring over pre-existing character traits.

An interesting point is giving the characters a goal or a desire to create a more vivid personality, however, it has to be simple to be effective.

Another thing to consider is making the movements tell the story, as the goals and desires that come with the character's personality dictate the movement.

An interesting thing i liked is holding poses to tell a joke, rather than exaggerating movements as the lack of a reaction may be funnier.

Lastly Chuck Jones mentions to broaden your source of inspiration and not just limit it to movies, but also study the real world and other sources.

Another short documentary from the same source talks about visual comedy:

One very important technique shown in this is the power of staging to get a joke. Using objects, the way they move in and out of the scene, using camera pans to reveal a joke, etc.

These ones are more of a study of comedy acting, but also some good points about camera movements and blocking are mentioned:

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Initial Project Presentation

Download Link | Fullscreen Link

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Initial Ideas and Summer Developement

Even before the end of Year 2, some initial ideas were floating around as a result of all of us talking to each other, and essentially doing mini-pitches during lunchtimes and gatherings. The ideas that came out of this were the following:

A big group production about a date gone wrong through taking drugs, with a twist at the end
A short film interviewing a Stop Motion and Computer Animated character, comparing each art form through a humorous tone.

In the group production, my role would be that of Visual Effects Supervisor/Artist. This role involves looking at the script, breaking down the visual effects and making sure they get delivered on time, working closely with the rest of the team. I also may be assisting with organizing Post Production. I'll talk more about this in a latter post.

My role in the second project will be to produce it, do the Computer Animation and writing the script.

To organise the production, i'm using Google Docs, and have created a common spreadsheet that everyone has access to, and there we have notepads, a budget sheet, character descriptions and we can add accordingly. Also the script is on a Google Doc. Lastly we're using facebook as a means to update everyone about important information, and also share ideas.

Some of our ideas on the google doc

I also helped create some concept art of the two characters to get a conversation going and to help with the design:

Concept Sketch for Stop Motion Character along with some examples of the rig.

First concept sketch of the CGI character.

Second concept sketch with larger eyes, plus some facial expressions and rigging notes.

As a team, to exaggerate the differentiations between the two mediums, we decided to have both characters have the same gender, age and ethnicity. However the appearance of each character would reflect some of the key features of each animation type. For example the stop motion character would be cute, with lots of organic curves as part of the tradition of stop motion, with a big round jaw inspired from Aardman, and the CGI guy would have smooth, polished features, almost perfect to show the perceived perfection of the medium.

Lastly i've spent allot of time testing and learning modeling, texturing, hair simulation, and doing research and development on the technology side of things to get a pipeline ready for us to use.

The modeling technique i chose to use was "box modeling", a technique we learned in Year 2's professional toolkit, and it involves starting of with a box, and shaping it and extruding it to form a base model. I was guided by a rough sketch i did of the front and side of the head.

After the base model was in place, i used a technique called Hypernurbs, which subdivides the mesh and smooths it out, to give the model that "disney/pixar" feel

Another thing that i used was a technique called "Subsurface Scattering", which tries to mimic the material properties of skin. At this stage the character started to look more like the disney feel that we wanted.

I then added textures, and spent a long (loooooooooong...) time on figuring out how to properly simulate the hair. This is where i'm at currently, and am still testing things out...

DANCE VIDEO: Working on the set of "Elysian"

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...:

DANCE VIDEO: Evaluation and Reflections

During this project i had to learn some things the hard way, especially during the post-production process.

The first thing i learned was that the "We'll fix it in post" attitude is bad practice and SHOULD BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. During the shoot as a visual effects supervisor if i had just asked around for a black cloth to put on the floor we could have avoided so many of the masking shots, freeing up time for the more important sequences such as Amelia passing through the mirror. Therefore next time if i ever am a visual effects supervisor instead of thinking how things could be fixed in post production i will try and think of ways of avoiding visual effects for silly things.

The second thing that i could have done better was enforce a final cut from the beginning before we started the visual effects. Even though i know this would be hard since we got our feedback in the middle of the edit, and we had such a tight shedule, it would have saved allot of time and avoided allot of stress during the last few days of post production.

Lastly i would like to apologise to the entire team for being late on multiple occasions during post production (coming in at 12pm instead of 10am), and although thankfully it didn't affect the work it was extremely unprofessional of me and in the industry such behavior could have been extremely damaging. Amazingly after realizing this, i managed to come in 9:50am sharp for all of the other days!

Overall though i am extremely happy with how this project developed from a quick idea that came up during a dance workshop. As a team we have managed to bond very well and figure out how to work together, and i really enjoyed the concept of experimentation throughout the entire process. This experimentation leads to ideas being generated quickly and most of all... allot of fun!

Our dancer was an absolute pleasure to work with, and i hope that in the future we work with talent that are proactive and are willing to contribute their own ideas to the project.

As a camera operator i got to work on two shoots including ours, with some great gear and learn from first hand how rigorous and hard a shoot can be, and how to react quickly to situations.

Post-Production was an amazing experience, and despite the problems and long hours, i felt comfortable in such an environment and believe that i would be happy in a post-production career.

So... after all of that i am proud to present the product of our hard work:

DANCE VIDEO: Post Production

ROUGH EDIT:
After finishing the shoot and all the footage was backed up Lucy started the rough edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, as she felt she would be more comfortable with it. After a bit of initial research i reassured her that it would be possible to convert the project file to Avid Media Composer, our software of choice for Color Grading and Finishing since we had booked the Avid Suite.

CONFORMING TO AVID:

Lucy's Premiere Pro Timeline

Since the rough edit was done by Lucy in Premiere Pro, and the final color grade would be done in Avid Media Composer, we needed a way to get the timeline transferred from one application to the other.

Since Premiere and Avid aren't very compatible when sharing EDL files, we came up with a way to make the premiere pro export as generic as possible, stripping it from custom master clip names that confused Avid.

We did this by exporing an XML file from premiere pro containing all the cuts. We imported that in to DaVinci Resolve, a software package used traditionally for color correction, and is compatible with both Premiere and Avid. We then exported an AAF file from DaVinci, that could be imported smoothly in to Avid.

The Premiere Pro timeline conformed to DaVinci Resolve

The resulting Avid Timeline retained all of the basic cuts and fades. We also exported a video render of the premiere project to verify and fix any errors that occured with the transfer.

VISUAL EFFECTS:
The film required a number of simple and complicated effects. Some of the most complicated shots were the glidecam shots as they involved tracking the movement of both shots, stabilizing them in 3d space and then re-applying one of the camera moves to both shots in order to get a shots with both Amelias and a moving camera.

Also allot of the greenscreen shots required extra hand drawn mattes as due to our quick shoot we didn't have time to cover the floor in a greenscreen.

The way i went about garbage matting the shots was instead of adding the masks after keying the footage, i precomposed the footage and then added green solids to cover up the floor and the light stands. This meant that the keyer would be able to pull a more natural key from the image and other effects such as light wrap would work properly. My keyer of choice was a combination of Keylight and Primatte. Keylight works well with chroma differences, where Primatte can be extremely selective as it also considers the foreground object's colors.

For some of the shots i also tried quite a different way of masking, as allot of shots needed to be done extremely fast. Instead of drawing masks and keyframing them by hand, i used the "Roto Brush" tool that was introduced in the recent versions of After Effects. This allowed a semi automatic masking process that only required some of my intervention to fix errors. I also added some adjustments to the edges of the matte such as softening and light wrapping to hide some of the imperfections of the matte.

Also, towards the last few days a new edit was cut, therefore more shots had to be added. These shots were being created at the same time as the edit, so as a shot would be completed i would hand it straight to shahid to replace in to the timeline.

Here are some shot breakdowns to further show my contribution to the project as an effects artist:

COLOR GRADING / ASSISTING THE EDIT:
To assist shahid in the complicated color grade for allot of the complex visual effects shots, since i was already creating keys and mattes to seperate both sides i created grayscale mattes as separate exports. (You can see these in the breakdown video above)

These mattes were then used in Avid as a Matte Key to isolate specific areas of the image in order to color grade them seperately.

Seperating the two colors in Avid

I also assisted shahid in the tricky job of transferring shots back and forth between the edit, visual effects and the final conformed timeline. Both me and Shahid tried our best to mach lucy's edit, keep everything organised in bins and fix any problems that occurred during the transfer of projects.

With the colors both me and shahid were trying to keep everything consistent, therefore we saved both colors as presets to re-apply on to footage. We also added a filler on top of the main timeline to adjust the contrast globally, and to add a color safe limiter. Lastly we also played around with some external controllers for avid's color correction tools.

Color Correcting in Avid

SOUND MIX / FINAL TOUCHES:
To finish the project as soon as lucy had the sound edit ready she exported each track individualy and gave them to me to do the final mix and mastering.

The tracks were mastered in Logic Pro X, and the adjustments made were equalizing all the tracks to avoid frequency clashes, but to also bring out the best of each sound (for example, lift the "kick" of the heartbeat, give some high end dynamics to the clicks), compress some sounds that were not balancing correctly, adjust the levels using professional monitor speakers and add some further effects such as a slight reverb on the breathing.

The final mix was balanced to -10db peak and -14db average with a -18db test tone, as highlighted by Simon Allmark.

The final sound mixing desk

I also designed a simplistic end titles sequence that literally "reflect" the mirror in the piece.

DANCE VIDEO: The Shoot

Shoot day, finally here!

SETTING UP:

Our day started with getting all of the equipment in to the room and setting up the space. As me and shahid were setting up the camera, blade and glidecam Lucy went to greet Amelia and bring her in to the room.

We also had Laura, Lauren and Katherine helping us out with things like makeup, timing and lighting.

Setting up the camera was pretty straightforward since it was all ready and prepared from the previous day, when we all picked up the equipment and formatted the cards.

The glidecam however was allot trickier. Balancing the weights and the camera is extremely tricky and requires allot of time, therefore we couldn't fully set it up at the start. Thankfully we had planned for the glidecam shots to be filmed after the lunch break, so we could continue setting it up then.

The lighting was a pretty simple set up, but we had to make sure that we recorded the lighting change for each shot change to maintain continuity.

THE SHOOT:

Once everything was set up we started with master and mid shots of the entire dance from both the manipulator's and manipulated's performance.

The camera was locked off for these shots as they are intended for a split screen composite of the two elements.

To maintain the spirit of improvisation the dancer was given a song and some keywords (body parts, bones/muscles, sections), and they improvised movements based on those combinations.

To time and synchronise the dancer we noted down the time that each keyword was said. Then for the next take they were repeated in the same order

We then did some frontal shots and closeups with a combination of handheld and locked off shots.

Our philosophy was that the dancer was confined to the frame, therefore the camera would not move and trap their performance.
When the dancer was more fluid and could break out of the restrictions of the frame, the camera would now follow the movements.

To assist the dancer in knowing where the frame was we used an extra monitor pointed to them. This gave them a good reference point and allowed them to experiment more. Personally i liked moments where the dancer was aware of the edges as a physical frame and tried to touch the borders.

We also did a few shots on the greenscreen for some of the more complicated composite shots.

Tracking markers were added to assist in matchmoving both takes, due to the fact that we didn't have a complicated rig that could perform the same movement twice.

Even though on some of the takes background objects are visible due to the limited setup time we had, i am confident that since these shots will only appear for a short amount of time, they can be digitally erased, and the dancer can be isolated.

I also placed a line between the two halves in order to have a reference point for the mirror.

Lastly, after we had shot everything on our shot list, we decided to use our remaining time to experiment with different lenses, camera angles and slow motion.

We ended up shooting almost two hours of footage, and i believe that that's more then enough material to use.

REFLECTIONS:

Overall i was really happy with our shoot, and although i would have wanted an extra shoot day, i believe that we can work with everything that we've got, and i have allot of confidence with my team.
I was also happy that we managed to get extra help, because without it our shoot would have been much more tedious and difficult.

Amelia was an amazing find by Lucy, and i'm extremely grateful that i managed to work with someone so keen to collaborate and share their ideas, i believe all projects should have this collaborative nature, as they are executed allot smoother and have a fun shoot.

I would have maybe liked to get more of the greenscreen set up, but unfortunately every production has to work to a limited schedule, and every production that we've made further shows this to me.

Conclusion: would shoot a piece like this again any day :)

INTERACTIVITY: Further Developing the Game

The first thing i decided to implement was a 360 degree sky, this would allow me to use a perspective camera, and implement a few cinematics. The first thing i did was make a texture matte painting in photoshop.

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.

DANCE VIDEO: After Approval and Before the Shoot

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:

DANCE VIDEO: Project Proposal

PRESENTATION:

PROJECT PROPOSAL SHEET:

DANCE VIDEO: Getting Pre-Production Done

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

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

Synopsis

This collaboration between contemporary dance and film will attempt to convey the emotions associated with oppression through the combination of repetitive sequences and improvised movement as well as an exploration of the reflection on the self through the use of mirrored images, colour, and lighting to create a loosely narrative based piece which will see our dancer travel from a point of complete submission to one of emotional and physical freedom.

Treatment

This film follows the basic idea of attempting to convey oppression through movement. The dance will begin from a state of submission to the ‘norm’ with repetitive actions, and evolving throughout the film to a state of full creative expression. The idea stems from the desire to play with the evolution of dance from one state to another, and to play with mirroring and time. The idea of oppression comes from the ever present negative feelings in society towards creative degrees and career choices that both ourselves as film-makers and dancers may experience alike.

The film will begin with a continuous repetitive sequence of a few actions which are rigid and expressionless. The dancer will be repeating these mindlessly in front of a mirror. The mirror image will eventually become wise to these motions and act as a catalyst for change in the dance. The mirror will begin to affect the real life image by adding movements into the sequence and attempting to get the attention of the real person. The real person will eventually become fully aware of this ‘other person’ and then become aware of their own situation. This will allow the real person to break free from these repetitive actions into completely fluid motion.

Our production design is taking a minimalistic approach, as we do not want to be too literal in our relation to real life. Therefore we are designing our set around opposition of colour, attempting to represent either side of the mirror using different colours or tints to distinguish between the two. Our lighting aims to be a mixture of light and shadow using only one or two lights on our subject to create a moody atmosphere, yet lighting our subject softly to enhance the shapes and movements made through the dance.

Our soundtrack aims to focus on the movements in the dance. We have decided to mostly use the movements of the dancer to create the soundtrack, using the repetitive actions to create rhythm and using also the breathing and sounds coming from clothing etc. This type of sound design draws focus to the subtle movements of the dancer and gives the film a personal edge, and draws attention to the evolution of repetitive motion we are trying to create.

TUTORIAL WITH VICKY:

Also during our tutorial with Vicky after she had given us some very useful visual refrences, such as "Dancer In The Dark" by Lars Von Trier, or even "Modern Times" for it's mentality, she pointed out a few things that i found very important as the camera operator:

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

RISK ASSESSMENT:

As a co-producer, i agreed on filling out the risk assessment, and examining the possible hazards of the project. What i found possibly dangerous was:

The lights and any other electrical equipment
Cables and a messy workspace
Physical Strain on the dancer
possibly a mirror, if it gets used (probably won't, but i put it in just in case)

After listing all of the measures used to protect the cast and crew, the risks seemed relatively low thankfully.

Also during this process i gathered the crew's contact details. The dancer hasn't been added yet as she hasn't been cast, but i'll fill that in before production starts.

ROOM BOOKING, EQUIPEMENT AND PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT:

Very early on as i knew rooms would be booked relatively quickly due to high demand, i went on and booked a suitable studio space with green/black screens on the 25th of March for the entire day.

I also put together a list of equipment after meeting up with the group for a discussion of our requirements.

We opted for the Sony EX-3 as we have previously used this camera, and because it has a clean, uncompressed signal using the Samurai Blade, which is a very important thing for green screen compositing

We also got a rode ntg microphone as we are heavily basing our soundtrack off of natural sounds.

Lastly we booked lights, stands and tripods as per usual.

Today i also booked classrooms for rehearsals for two days, to give practice time for us without wasting studio space.

At the moment we are considering using the glidecam for a few shots, but we are going to wait until our induction until we book it.

We also thought ahead and have booked three weeks of post-production using the Avid facilities on campus.

PROJECT PROPOSAL:

To present our project i've decided to compile a project proposal using inDesign, bringing together the following:

Synopsis
Treatment
Production Management
Equipement List
Mood Boards
Storyboards
Shot List
Risk Assessment
Individual Learning Agreements

3D MODELING: Ufo and Animation

To start off our last session we created a spaceship out of a cylinder using the extrude tool and the insert edge loop tool. I also used the soften edge tool to smooth the more spherical surfaces.