Slow Motion Fight Scenes

I've been browsing Vimeo, looking for some nice methods of doing slow motion fight scenes. It seems there are three different methods.

1. Film at a frame rate and then do magic on Twixor. Having looked at some of the speeds out there is seems I would need to film at about 2000fps to achieve the look I want. My camera shoots at 50fps. This does allow to slow the speed by half, and maybe with the use of Final Cut Pro, half it again without it looking to jittery but I will have to experiment with this.

2. Take photos to hold for several frames. Really not sure if this is the look I am aiming for, but again experimentation is key.

3. Take still images and map it to a 3D and add a digital camera move.  Almost certainly not.

Tests will ideally follow, to experiment with the first two methods. Though having read about the method for the third film, which was really clever, but over complicated for the look I want to achieve. I'd like to be able to get into the green screen studio before the pitch date to see how some of this will work. Unfortunately, it seems it is pretty much fully booked for the next two weeks, so that may be optimistic. 

Another Day Another Project

This week we received a new assignment brief. Effectively it boils down to us producing a competition entry for one of the design awards on D&AD or YCN. Most of these are motion graphic/advertising briefs which isn't really the direction I wanted to go towards as my showreel needs to be catered for the VFX industry. Because of this I decided I needed a cool way to get VFX into an advertisement. The first example of this that springs to mind, is the Star Wars/Currys adverts.

I love these adverts, and using blockbuster film style VFX, combined with humour to make a brand seem cool really appealed to me. The brief that would allow me to produce something like this was the one for Heinz Salad Cream. This requires a quirky advertisement to make Heinz Salad Cream appeal to the 18-29 year olds. What I wanted out of this brief, was to be able to produce something with a fight sequence, green screen/compositing and matte painting.

When considering the things that appealed to 18-29 year olds, my mind instantly went to computer games, night clubs and fashion. The latter two seemed to lack the possibility for VFX so computer games became the obvious choice.

After looking at some trailers for popular computer games, I decided I really like the slow motion fight scenes in the Assassins Creed trailers.

This gave me the idea of an Assassins Creed style advertisement, starting with a lone hooded figure standing atop of a tall build looking over the city (matte painting). It's a typical Assassin Creed style landscape, hot and exotic city surrounded by mountains. He hears a scream and leaps down to the streets below to find a woman being mugged by several men. A close up fight sequence ensues combining slow motion and bursts of speed. Instead of a knife, he's using a squirty bottle of salad cream to take out the attackers.There's no blood, only salad cream across faces and on the screen. When the attackers are all flat out on the ground he turns to the woman holding her sandwich protectively to her. He offers her the salad cream and she smiles.

Heinz Salad Cream - Your Secret Weapon.

And At Last...

I have finally finished my list of adjustments, and completed my final edit. My project is now complete! I have also put together some shot breakdowns, unfortunately I have run out of space on vimeo and will not be able to upload them until next week (I will hand them in with my project however so no worries there). There is however space for one very low resolution copy of my final edit. Enjoy!

This project is by far the best piece of work I have ever produced, and allowed me to push my skill set to the maximum. Shots have been put together in Photoshop, After Effects and Maya, allowing me to work in both 2D and 3D. 

I'd like to thank everyone who helped out in this project. Particularly Christopher Hansford, my actor, and  Finlay Duncan who was very helpful in the green screen studio and has a great critical eye. The tutors at my university and the guys on CG Coach provided excellent feedback which helped me take my work to a new level.

I'm very pleased that I managed to complete everything on my list a day ahead of schedule, even if I did venture away from initial work schedule due to reshoots, and the detailed feedback from CG Coach. The only two shots which I wish I could work on more are the close up of the face and the magic blast shots. I'm happy with the VFX work, I just wish I would have been able to get a reshoot as the footage was not quite as I wanted it. The expression on the face of my actor in the flying shot is too relaxed, and in the magic blast shot there are a few issues with blurring and grain. Also I felt that because all the other shots around it are moving, a static shot was a jolt to the flow. A reshoot would allow me to perhaps frame it closer and add a camera move. However, this is most likely the best work I have produced to date and so I am very happy with what I have managed to do. Fingers crossed for a good grade. Bring on the next project! :) 

Development: Before and After

With one day left to go, and only a few finishing touches let to make, I thought it would be interesting to look back over my project and really see how far it has come. This is the most elaborate piece of work I have ever attempted and I am really pleased with my development on a technical and artistic level.

A Homage To Harry Potter

As the film is a major inspiration and influence to my project, my text choice is a homage to the movies.

Flying Shot Breakdown

This is how the magic is performed!

Feedback + Updates

So it's the final week and I have a list as long as your arm of alterations I want to make before the hand in date. It may be a little optimistic but I hope to get them all done.

Shot 1, 2+3 - Colour grade match: the skies are different colours they all need to match up.
Shot 01 - Fix ripple sizes: too large,
            - castle perspective and sharpness stands out.
Shot 02 - Sharpen facial feature, add lightning, soften rain on lens.
            - Reshoots not possible due to the busy schedule of the green screen studio.
Shot 03 - Direct rain more towards the lens, add flapping noise, animate character more/more movement.
Shot 04 - Matte painting lacks focus and needs refining.
Shot 05 - Not finished.
Shot 06 - Possible lighting issues.
Shot 07 - Add shadow behind the door, something is alive back there.
             - Darken corridor add wand contact light on wall.
Shot 10 - Not finished.

I'm going to have to prioritise and focus my time on the hero shots, and work through the list.

Rough Edit v01

This is a rough edit of my project as the shots stand at this moment. I have a list of tweaks and changes to make for each shot, some longer than others. I am still looking for feedback so I can perfect each shot as well as the editing. My style of editing has been inspired by the teaser trailer style of editing seen at the end of TV shows such as Doctor Who, Merlin and Misfits. Hopefully this will have an impact as well as portraying the creepy intensity that I am trying to get across.

The feet shot, is being of particularly difficulty to me due to the shadows and grain, and requires rotoscoping. This is quite consuming and as this is not one of the hero shots of the piece may well be dropped if time constraints make it difficult for me to complete on time. My main focus needs to be on the magic blast shot, which at this point stands out amongst the other shots. Though I am quite happy with the VFX, the colour grade, brightness and sharpness are significantly different from the rest of the shoot.

Big Video Update

After a week without any Vimeo space I am finally back and uploading my work. I apologise for the resolution of some of the videos, I am trying to save as much space as possible so I can post tweaks and updates throughout the rest of the week.

This week has been very busy. I have been doing a Final Cut Pro intensive course to get my Apple Accreditation whilst juggling my project with a deadline next week. I've managed to put together a castle matte painting and a 3D corridor in Maya.

This shot is an updated version of the flying shot, with colour grading fixed and a few other minor issues. It is looking much better now.

This shot is to be cut into the wizard creeping down the corridor scene. This is what he is creeping towards, a big ominous door with some sort of beastie behind it. The door was made in Maya and integrated into the corridor matte painting using After Effects. The lighting and colour grade in this needs  some work but this is not bad for an early run through.

The final project a supposed to be a promo, which is why I have added some text to the end of this shot. The font in this is NOT the font I will use in the final project, but I am looking for something a little distorted which I can texture.

This shot is a castle matte painting to go with my establishing shot matte painting. This is the destination of the hero character whilst flying on his broom. This is a first run through for this matte painting so there is still work to be done, but this is the overall look I am going for. Comments and feedback is much appreciated.

Next week will be dedicated to tweaking my existing shots to make them look the best they can, and editing them into a promo trailer and adding music and sound effects. Fingers crossed this turns out awesome!

Second Corridor Sequence

As part of my storyboard, I had my hero character creeping down a dark corridor toward an ominous door. The door bursts open revealing whatever that is behind this door, and the character falls back and the sequence ends. This posed a bit of a problem, as obviously I can great still shots of castle doors, and did in fact when I went on my trip to Caerphilly, but footage of one bursting forward is more difficult to get hold of. Because of this (and the reasons I described yesterday) I turned to 3D. At the moment I can not upload any videos to Vimeo, but I thought I'd share some still images from my sequence to show you what I have managed to do.

Obviously this is not the finished article, I am hoping to insert some atmospherics and smoke, possibly some flickering and a light halo from the heroes wand in the foreground. I'm also considering altering the door animation, so that one door flies off, as if something huge and scary has attacked it from behind. This however will be very reliant on time, as rendering this shot was lengthy and there is only one week to go. Panic stations!

3D Elements

I'm hard at work at the moment, wrestling with footage that is far too grainy, working on a matte painting which my muse just won't let me finish and waiting patiently for Maya to finish rendering. Personally I prefer working in 2D, I feel much more in control with Photoshop and After Effects, so much so that thinking about Maya makes me break out in cold sweats. In my mind however, to call myself a visual effects artist, I feel I should at least be able to jump into Maya and know my way around and produce something that is at least semi decent. Because of the overwhelming need to prove to myself that I can do this, I have opted to do one of the elements of my project in Maya. So far i have produced an ocean (one which I am rather happy with) and this week, I have modelled, textured, bump mapped and rendered an animated swinging door. To someone who works in 3D, this may not sound massively impressive, but for me this is quite an achievement. More so when I incorporate this into my corridor matte painting and thus finishing my project!

Texturing in Maya has always kind of stumped me, I love the idea of producing cool and elaborate textures in Photoshop, but the getting them into Maya and onto the 3D shape is somewhat difficult, files always seem to be too small, or warp when wrapped and generally look rubbish. This week however I have been looking into UV mapping, which works brilliantly. This involves exporting the net of the 3D shape into Photoshop (weeee! :) ), putting the texture straight onto the net and putting it back in Maya. Somehow Maya knows exactly what it is, and wraps it perfectly. It worked really well, though still looked suspiciously like a 3D rectangle with an image on it. To give it that realistic look one has to use a bump map, which adds the sensation of a groove into dark areas and bumps into lighter areas, making an object, such as my door, seem weathered and real.

Watch this space for the final rendered image!

Flying Shot v03 and Spell Test 06

Currently I am having issues with Vimeo, it won't let me upload any more videos, it seems I have reached my upload limit! However, this doesn't mean I am taking the day off. I have received some feedback on my flying shot, the main issues seem to regard colour grading and warping the shadows. I have been working on this shot this evening, focusing on these issues.

Though I haven't got a video to show you, this still gives you an idea of the alterations to the colour grading. I have also added a slight motion blur to the water near to the camera, made the rain more three dimensional and matched the movement of the clouds to the movement of the water. Hopefully I can upload a video soon!

I have also been working on magic test. This is something I have been working on from the very beginning, (Previous Tests) I have gone through various methods from particles in Maya to fractal noise in After Effects. I am now experimenting with particles and fire footage in After Effects. The overall result it much improved but not there yet.

Just to point out this is still a test and the colour grading and keying on this is still very rough. I added the wall texture to see how all the aspects worked together as a composition. 

Trailer Editing Research

I started out with a rough idea of how I wanted the narrative for the trailer to go, but I thought it was important to research trailer editing to make sure I get the most of my shots.

I started in the obvious place, the Harry Potter trailers.

I particularly like the pace to this trailer, with slow ambient establishing shots, and then into action. Similarly, the Merlin trailer follows the same sort of formula, and despite being a commercial for a TV show, it has the same sort of epic feel to it.

It seems that trailers need to give an idea of the story, without giving the story away, showcase great shots and promise the viewer more. Definitely an editing challenge with the fantasy genre.

Flying Shot

This was perhaps the most difficult shot to pull off. It is very different from my original plan for this sequence, however I think it came out looking ok considering. It still needs a bit of work, perhaps some motion blur on the water and more keying on the brush, but certainly a good start for this scene.

Matte Painting V01

For the establishing shot I need a matte painting introducing the location of the castle where the beastie is lurking. Now originally, I was going to do this in one long sweeping shot, following the wizard on his broom stick as he flies toward his destination. However, I have opted to split this up in shorter shots. The first off being a wide shot of the location, next introducing the characters and then a shot flying towards the castle.

This is my first attempt at the matte painting for the establishing wide shot. Vimeo have compressed the blacks a little too much losing detail in the water. There are still some teething issues with this matte painting, feedback would be incredible.

Wizard Light Spell Shot

I've been working hard on the light spell shot, and managed to get two versions out in 24 hours.

Both have extra atmospherics, lens flares and altered colour grades, though I feel version 4 is the best out of the lot and probably how I will leave this shot for my project. 

For a quick look at how this shot has changed I have screen grabbed the final frame of each version and put them together for easy contrast. It is easy to see without looking at all the videos how this shot has changed over the last week.

Wizard Flight Shot Closeup

I have been lucky enough to get feedback on this so quickly that I have two versions to upload at once! A big thank you to everyone involved in that.

I can't help but think that if the character was flying into a storm he might be squinting against the weather more, and so I plan to reshoot towards the end of this project if there is time and other reshoots required.