Aquascape Update

It's been a very busy couple of weeks, so been remarkably slow on updating the blog.

On the 22nd October, I returned to my location, that had been scouted out the week previously, and took some more photographs. This time I took a tripod to allow myself to take photographs on a much slower shutter speed, thus improving the lighting of the scene. It also allowed me to take multiple exposures for bracketing purposes. I took many pictures, from all angles, I was keen to get into shot the port holes, and the hanging lamps that really sell the place as a boat rather than the inside of a pub.

I've also spent a lot of time researching. I've looked at a lot of general under water images, but for this project to be successful I need references from inside a shipwreck. I found the following image whilst hunting through Google images. I particularly like the colouring of this shot, and the fact that the structure is wooden should significantly help with the final colour grade.


This is the final concept art. I'm intending for the phone to cast light on the foreground elements, and then the light from the window to cast light onto the phone as it passes into the midground.


Once the final backplate was selected, and the concept was complete I could begin work on creating dummy geometry for the scene. This is still a work in progress, though nearing completion, and should hopefully be finished and textured by the end of this week. The dummy geometry creates surfaces for the CG phone to illuminate. These light passes can then be rendered off and composited onto the real scene, creating lighting as the phone passes through the scene. I intend to use area lights to light the scene through the windows, so I can also get a realistic lighting on the phone.


On Saturday 26h October, I spent the day, with a team, in the studio filming practical effects to use in the composition. This largely involved filming bubbles and particles in a water on a black background. The idea is to combine real effects which should add a level of realism and depth, with CG simulation, which will interact with the 3D model.

The 3D model in question is a mobile phone. I have spent much of this week modelling and texturing. This has taken me longer than anticipated because I have never really tried my hand at 3D modelling before, and Houdini is a whole new system for me. However I seem to be learning it quickly and I am quite happy with my efforts so far. The largest issues I've met so far, are; correcting topology issues, which were causing my initial texture attempts to turn out badly; and getting my phone model to realistically emit light. 

Again, this is still a work in progress, but I am hoping that by the end of next week I shall have an iphone that not only emites light, but has an image on the screen. I'd also like to have an some early animation attempts complete as well.

Further Research and Concept Art

Further research has pulled up Green Lake in Styria, which seems almost custom made for this project.

"Green Lake (Grüner See) in Styria, Austria, is an amazing place. For half of the year, it’s an underwater village with fish swimming through the branches of trees, a floor covered in grass, benches and bridges.

For the other half, it is over ground. In the frozen winter months the area is almost completely dry and is a favorite site for hikers. As the temperature begins to rise in spring, the ice and snow on the mountaintops begins to melt and runs down into the basin of land below. The waters are at their highest in June when it becomes a mecca for divers keen to explore the rare phenomenon."

[Source] http://sci-universe.tumblr.com/

I also have taken the opportunity this week to scout out locations. As I had several very loose ideas I've been wandering around Bournemouth and Poole with a camera hunting for inspiration. Mostly I have taken photos of swans. I did however find an underpass, which had interesting lighting, unfortunately it was far too busy for any worth while photographs on that particular day. Another building I found was a nautical themed bar in Poole. The inside of this bar could easily be the inside of a fishing boat, and I am definitely considering sinking the ship.

It was recommended to me that I consider both place and object together. I like the idea of creating a narrative, adding atmosphere to the scene. I'm considering perhaps a mobile phone, ringing giving off a pulsing light. Perhaps, as it gets closer to the camera, you can see the face of someones mother in the Caller ID. This calls in to question, who was on the boat, and is their mother waiting for them unawares that they have met their watery end?

Saturation Test + Lighting Research

Aside from collecting primary (footage from the oceanarium) and secondary (watching copious amounts of sea based movies) references, I have been putting together a saturation test, based on the numbers that I found in my research.

This is obviously very rough, based on a series of photographs taken on my mobile phone. However I feel that the colour saturation, contrast and blur levels are certainly helping to produce a sense of depth. With more work, this will certainly aid me in my task of making a realistic under water scene.

I'm not planning on using a bottle of squash as my digital element however! I have been generating a few ideas. 

Initially I was considering taking a environmental stance, and shooting a rubbish heap as an under water "garbage island." Combined with this I would model a tin can that could drop into shot. However, as a tin can does not emit light, this may not be suitable. Alternatively, I would considering an explosive device being dropped into the scene. These are sometimes used for fishing, emits light and is very destructive to the environment and other species of animals in the area.

Another idea I had, was to shoot inside, and turn a room into an internal shot for a ship wreck. This will be heavily reliant on finding the correct kind of room to shoot in. Some location scouting will certainly be required for this one, but I've had a few suggestions, and I will check them out and take photographs for reference.


Light References

Titanic	Titanic
The Boat That Rocked	The Boat That Rocked

As the project progresses I'll upload more references and images that inspire me. 

Under Water Environment: Research

The problem of the day, is how to create a realistic under water landscape. I have ten weeks to create an environment that is believable and realistic. There are a number of things to consider when approaching this problem, and so my initial task is the same as starting any project: research and idea development.

First of all I turned to Blue Planet, and spent my evening abusing my Netflix account and gathering as much visual information as I could. There are some great shots in this show, and realism, which can often be exaggerated in film and TV. Of course there is nothing wrong with exaggerating a natural effect to give an image more pizazz but I like to understand the science before moving forwards.

This lead me to researching underwater photography, which gave me an idea of how certain effects occur. For example, the god rays, those streaky rays that look really cool, occur when sunlight shines through calm water near the surface. When oceans are rough, the light diffuses creating a glow. Therefore if I would like to use this effect, I need to consider a composition that is set in calm water, such as a lake.

Understanding colour drop off, contrast and light levels will also be important when colour matching, integrating elements and creating my final colour grade.

The following figures are approximate figures for the percentage drop off in colour saturation over 1 meter.

Colour	approx drop off
Red	40%
Orange	30%
Yellow	10%
Green	5%
Blue	0%
Purple	10%

Similarly, light also drops off faster in water than in air. This is because water is denser than air, and so the inverse square law no longer applies. This varies depending on the depth of the water and the clarity of the water.

Because I want this shot to feel dynamic without a camera move, I need to think long and hard about camera angles and composition. I'm currently considering a low camera angled upwards upon my environment. This should allow me to do some interesting things with silhouetting and vignetting. Any object moving in this environment will therefore also be dropping down from the surface to the floor rather than moving forwards, which I think will feel more natural, particularly if I go for a calm water body. However, this raises a number of issues. I will need to generate the surface of the water body, which could be quite problematic, particularly if I want an object to break the surface. I will also need to produce some sort of bubble effect, if an object comes from the surface, it will undoubtedly bring air with it, producing a bubble trail of sorts. I will need some plates of moving debris/particles, as bodies of water, whether they are fresh water or salt water, are teaming with life and are rarely clear. I am uncertain as to whether or not I should attempt to film this plate or create it using particle simulation. Perhaps a combination of the both would create more depth in the scene.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to the Oceanarium to get some first hand experience of the effects of light in water, as well as take reference photographs for the composition stage. I will also need to scout out a location to become the back plate of this dry to wet conversion and start running tests on the various water effects. This looks to be a busy few weeks.

Seal says "Goodbye."

Update and Research

It's been a while and a hectic week with organisation and planning happening for both this project and the Final Major Project next year. I've been looking at camera angles and scenery in both the Assassin Creed games and also in similar hero style films and TV shows. I've broken this project down into two main matte painting, an eagle view from above of the entire city, and a street view. Perhaps a few smaller paintings will be required, but I'm hoping the bulk of the green screen shots can be composited into these scenes. One thing for certain, is that the images will need to be big high resolution paintings, allowing me the scope to zoom in. I am also considering the need for lots of extras, as the town sequences are always busy, and the idea of a crowd parting for this battle to commence is appealing.

The fight sequence should happen in the same sort of environment that is within the games to connect the two concepts together. I have been looking at images from both high level and street level to get an idea of the sort of scenery I will require.

I really like the idea of the sandstone buildings with wooden stalls and hanging flags, though it may be difficult to source some of these images it is the sort of look I am going with. I also plan to play quite a bit with light, the contact lighting in my previous project worked really well, and I am keen to attempt to use it again. Setting this sequence at sunset will allow me to pull in the oranges and yellows which will contract the greens and whites of the salad cream bottle very nicely.

The leap at the beginning of the story board is a major factor, and getting that looking right is very important. I've already carried out tests using the slow motion and I am confident that I can get the effect, but I've been giving it a lot of thought as to how this needs to be framed and edited together. Obviously my actor will not be jumping off anything incredibly high (most likely a table) and so I really need to get a sense of height.

This Batman/OnStar commercial uses a similar idea to what I intend, fast cuts from different angles making it seem that he is falling a great distance. I particularly want a shot from under my actor as he jumps, however, I am not entirely sure how safe this will be in the studio. All I can do is bare all this in mind and get as much footage as I can on the day.

It is safe to say however that one of my matte paintings is well underway and the second in planning stages and looking hopeful. I'll keep you posted.

Interestingly, on my travels through cyber space, I discovered live action filming for Assassin's Creed.

It's definitely interesting to see!

More Slow Motion tests

Today I've been working on my pitch and slow motion tests. After the results of the previous test being too blurry due to the motion blur, I refilmed with a faster shutter speed to lower the motion blur. This proved to be a good idea, and significantly reduced the blurring at the point of the frozen moment.

I have also been researching fight scenes using this sort of editing. As much of my idea revolves around a fight sequence, I think it important to look at how this method fits into such scenes, and also how they are edited together and framed in camera. I have choreographed fight sequences before, but not for camera. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6y2r_uZNXA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmmXO8-P9N0

After some research I put together a quick test to see if I could pull off similar effects. Looking ok for a first fight sequence test.

My next course of action is to storyboard the sequence, particularly the fight sequence, paying attention to composition and editing. I also need to put together a schedule. The green screen studio is so full even after Christmas, so it will be difficult to get the time in. Once the studio is booked everything will have to be organised around it.

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.

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.

Research : Matte Painting

One thing that came up in my meeting today, is that my Castle seems to safe. The comments made were that it needed to seem dangerous and away from the norm. I was looking at ways to make it feel more organic, as if the castle was grown rather than built by a person. Lord of the Rings have several beautiful examples of this, with castles and cities built in the side of rock faces and into tree.

Shots of three very different cities, and yet they all seem to be built out of their surroundings. Of particular interest to me in the tower in Mordor, which is dark and dangerous with something evil lurking within, which is definitely the sort of effect I am trying to simulate. Also, Minas Tirith is also of interest, as it is surrounded by incredibly high walls, a fortress that can never be breached. In my recent tests for my matte painting I have been concentrating on these sorts of high walls, and would like to continue with this sort of effect.

Feedback + Research: Composition

Today I had a one to one with my module tutor to go over my pitch and project tests. The main criticism I took away from is, is that I need to work on my composition. I tend to shoot strait on and central, it was suggested I research into Dutch Tilting and S curves.

Dutch Titling

Dutch tilting is often used to depict  madness, unrest, and disorientation in German Expressionism. It is where the camera is tilted so that the vertical lines come from the center at an angle. 

I particularly like image shot one with the high contrast open doorway really adds to the sense of foreboding.

The second shot of the castle across the water looks amazing, and would work perfectly as an opening shot, rather than the pan up the castle as originally visualised.

The use of light in the final shot is also quite inspiring for the internal shots inside the castle, and the Scream movies (shot 3) are a perfect example of creating intensity and claustrophobia which is exactly the sensation I am trying to create.

Composition
For extra help with composition I have been looking at stock images on shutter stock of corridors and arches. I'd like to bring extra depth and texture to the spell shot below.

I particularly like the depth and the curves drawing the eye into the image. I'll have to take this into considering the final compositions for the story boards. Ideally I'd like these to be nailed down before the end of the week. Every shot is to be a work of art!

Development: New Spell Test and Texture Research

Busy day again today, I have a new test which I have uploaded which you can see below.

The spell part of it is looking quite good now, the lighting in the footage sells it better and with a lens flare and possibly some extra atmospherics this will look good. The key is rough and I am working on a 3D corridor to composite into the shot to give it a bit more texture.

My 3D work is simple, but I am really trying to nail the texturing so have been researching bump maps to give it that extra realism.

I found this on http://www.marcogenovesi.com/gallery/ and I thought the finished result looked great!

Research and Tests: Castles

If I do manage to get the spell effects looking good, then I will obviously need to place the character in some kind of environment and storyline. This will require a certain amount of matte painting and/or 3D structure. I have a few ideas for matte paintings, all requiring a castle and so I have undertaken some research on castle structure, both in real life and tv/film.

The castle closest to my location is obviously Cardiff Castle which would be ideal for base images for the matte painting. There are also a number of churches in Cardiff which are also useful. Particularly one just off the high street which has gorgeous arch windows which could be taken advantage of for looking through onto scenes or creating the sense on a hall way.

I have also been watching Harry Potter and Merlin avidly to get a sense of what a castle in a magical/wizard setting would look like. Camelot in the early series of Merlin for example is all spires and bright white stone surrounded my trees and greenery. Yet in later series, it is much darker, and in a state of disrepair.

Similarly, Hogwarts started out much like Camelot in the series of Merlin, and as the films have gone on this has become darker and moodier. This is emphasised by the dark clouds and stormy weather.  I believe this is to suggest the increased level of danger and also the maturing of the characters within. It certainly creates a higher level of intensity which keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

My own ideas for the Wizard sequence would involve an external shot, perhaps a wizard in flight around the spire of a castle, and also an internal shot perhaps creeping down dark hallways and casting spells that light up the ceilings and cast shadows against the walls. I particularly like the dark and frightening sense of danger that is present in the later episodes of Merlin and Harry Potter and would like to try and recreate this in my own design, perhaps with destruction and disrepair evident on the castle itself.

My VFX shots still require work, however I also need to start developing a few other ideas I have, including an advert for a Student Counselling Service, and one or two other stand alone VFX shots.

Research and Tests: Spell Tests

I've done a number of spell tests, none of which I am entirely happy with, but at this stage I am simply experimenting with particles and fractal noise within Maya and After Effects. Hopefully something will starting looking good. I stress, these are no where near the finished effects!

The last test looks the best by far but still isn't what I am looking for.

Research and Tests: Wizard Sequence

On Monday I filmed in the green screen studio some footage which I am using for a test for my wizard sequence. Currently I am working on using particles in Maya and After Effects to produce a specific spell effect. I'm modelling it on a couple of videos I have seen, but I am not quite there yet in terms of style.

I'm also working on a flying shot. If I can get these to work, they will be great shots which I can produce a matte painting for. 

Week 1 of Minor Project A

As part of my Minor Project A, I have opted to keep my Production Journal on my blog. This site shall now contain my planning, testing and execution of my projects for my final year at university. All these posts will be tagged with "Minor Project A" so there is no confusion as to what goes with what.

I hit the ground running with this first project, having spent much of my summer generating ideas, I managed to book the green screen studio on the first day back to film some footage for a test.

This year it is important for me to showcase my skill set to create a showreel. My aims are to show I am a competent rotoscoper, compositor and matte painter. For this, one of my vehicles is to create a wizard/Harry Potter film sequence. As of yet I have not created a storyboard, but I wanted to collect some footage to test the VFX required if I am to continue with this avenue.