16/09/2020
VFX in Movies and TV shows:
Sometimes it may cost a lot of assets and money or it may be too dangerous to film in certain locations so VFX artists create scenes that fit in with the aesthetic. A scene may even require a certain public place to be filmed because they can’t shut the whole place down at once and then using a green screen, have the actors placed into the shot
- Nightcrawler- The final car chase in the movie demonstrated impressive digital composition skills which were applied to changing the colours of traffic lights to replacing Jake Gyllenhaal’s ponytail. The use of selective color correction to remove shadows and lighten underexposed areas is used without flaw. Rotoscoping is also a tedious process but is used well in the film.
2. The Wolf of Wall Street- The settings used in the movie would have cost the studio quite a lot to move the whole crew out and Martin scorcese wanted to create extravagant settings which would be good to look at. Matte painting is used heavily but is also combined with plenty of other skills to create the scene.
3. Avengers: Infinity War- This film takes place mostly outside of earth so VFX isn’t really something the movie shouldn’t have used. There are scenes of the Sanctum Sanctorum, that is in Manhattan, which require a lot of VFX with the Black Order and the ‘donut’ ship invading. Most notably is the planet Titan which relies on visual effects to create the sense of an alien planet. The battle on Titan and Wakanda have hundreds of shots which are purely VFX. Overall 160 VFX artists worked on the movie while there were 2,900+ shots as a whole. 96% of the movie is CGI/VFX.
Risk Assessment
- A hazard is a danger or a risk posed towards a person or object. Example: electricity, chemicals, working up a ladder, noise, a keyboard, a bully at work, stress
2. A risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Example: damage by fire, flood or other natural disasters.
3. We are protecting ourselves, members of your team, members of the public, any wildlife and public property. We want to make sure that anything we do doesn’t put a persons life in danger.
4. A duty of care is a moral or legal obligation to ensure the safety or well-being of others.
5. The main purpose of risk assessment documents are to identify health and safety hazards and evaluate the risks presented within the workplace. To evaluate the effectiveness and suitability of existing control measures.
6. Below is a Risk Assessment of my own bedroom as an example of what a report would look like:
Game Analysis- Generations
RAYMAN-
Released- 1st September, 1995
Rayman is a side-scrolling platform game. The player character is the titular Rayman, who must travel through six worlds (The Dream Forest, Band Land, Blue Mountains, Picture City, The Caves of Skops and Candy Château) to free all of the caged Electoons, six cages of whom are located somewhere on each level. The game does look like it would have a younger audience but it has brought people from all ages. The game was brought out on the Atari Jaguar, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, MS-DOS, Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance. The one thing which is unique with this game is the worlds you get to explore as Rayman. The only thing I didn’t really enjoy was that it was one of those games that relishes pits and spike traps, which are the bane of every platform game. Overall the game had an 8.3 user score.
GOD OF WAR-
Released- April 20th, 2018
God of War is the eighth installment in the franchise overall. Unlike previous installments, this game focuses on Norse mythology and follows an older and more seasoned Kratos and his new son Atreus in the years since God of War III. The game released on April 20, 2018, and is exclusive to the PlayStation 4. The game was designed for fans of the original 10 games. It is rated 18 so younger fans aren’t really the target audience. I didn’t like the fact that there weren’t any bosses like in the other games but it could be argued that it is more focused towards getting to know the game or that it is more showing off new mechanics. A unique feature that was added was the ability to throw the leviathan axe anywhere and press triangle to bring it back to you. The game had a Metacritic score of 94 and an overall user score of 9.1. The stand out feature is the change in mythology from the other games as it shifted from Greek to Norse.
If game 1 was released today I feel it wouldn’t be as well known since it was one of the major releases back in the day yet now the major releases are something as graphically impressive as God of War. Plus everyone now is sick of the 2d platforming games that copy and past traps into its levels. Currently if you were to load up Rayman on a pc or console it would only take up less than 100mb, however God of War is about 50gb alone without extra patches and updates. Game 1 is already on mobile and much like recent iterations is best suited towards mobile gaming with simple controls such as a joystick, an attack button and a jump button.
“Industrial Light and Magic”– 30/09/2020
George Walton Lucas Jr. is the film director, producer, screenwriter and entrepreneur who founded Industrial light and Magic, LucasArts and Lucasfilm. I.L.M was founded due to Lucas wanting his film “Star Wars” to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. While filming Star Wars, John Dykstra and a few other people on the team had made new computers to help process everything but also developed a new camera which would be the first digital motion control photography camera system.
Critical electronics were created by Alvah J. Miller and Jerry Jeffress. The camera was developed in 1976 specifically for complex special effects shots in Star Wars. Using old VistaVision cameras (since they were high resolution) , created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954, and hand wire wrapped TTL chips, the all-digitally controlled system allowed for 7 axes of motion: roll, pan, tilt, swing, boom, traverse, track, lens focus, motor drive, shutter control, and their duplication in multiple takes. The development of this camera earned Dykstra, Alvah miller and Jeffrey jeffress academy awards in 1987. The various models used on set were all built by hand by the team and involved using obsolete things from a military surplus store across the street from their studio.
What is Pixar?
Pixar began in 1979 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division, known as the Graphics Group, before its spin-off as a corporation on February 3, 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney’s largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar has produced 22 feature films, beginning with the first ever computer-animated feature film (Toy Story)
Industrial Light and Magic have had their part in a few tv series such as Amazing Stories , Star Trek: The Next Generation, Tales from the Crypt (“You, Murderer”), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The Big Bang Theory, Agent Carter, Krypton, The Mandalorian, Brave New World, The Boys and The Stand.
With the exception of The Big Bang Theory (it ran from 2007 – 2019), Agent Carter ran from 2014-15 and Krypton ran from 2018-19 but got cancelled since it averaged 400,000 viewers. A new Star Wars spin-off called The Mandalorian showed up in november of 2019 and has a new season coming up in october along with a new season of The Boys, which is a show based off of the comic book with the same name about superheroes and includes an equivelant to Superman (except he has no morals) called Homelander.
A new VR game is also being developed Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, an action adventure experience coming this holiday season to the Oculus Quest. From the Trailer you get to meet characters from the movies such as C-3PO and R2D2.
ILM carry many awards and as of 2016, they have recieved 16 best visual effects oscars and 40 additional nominations. It has also recieved 24 Scientific and Technical Awards from the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
VFX Green Screen Project- 14/10/2020 – 25/11/2020
(VFXFX 1)- Be able to plan, design and implement a shoot to acquire elements for a visual effect.
Shot planning:
We all agreed that we should just go infront of the camera and either wave the lightsaber about or do something daft. Robin was the only one with a sense of humour in our group so he did some embarrassing stuff to that lightsaber.
Our Team:
William, Robin, Me, Dylan and Harry
Footage Ideas:
Anime fight, lightsaber fight, Mustafar scene, Dynamic scene
Tasks-
Me, Robin and Harry filmed. Everyone edited their own version of the footage. Will did Risk assessment.
Final Idea-
Swing lightsaber around for roughly 10 seconds or pick any pose used by a star wars character and edit us into a different place.
Risk Assessment:
Still Image:
This is a photo of our final filming stage. We decided on just doing a random star wars character pose in front of the camera although I did go overboard and swing the lightsaber like there was no tomorrow.
(VFXFX 2) – Be able to convert acquired elements from camera to computer in preparation for the compositing phase.
Myself, Harry and Robin are the main stars and will be placed into a different environment by each member of the team.
Background Image:
This is the background I went with for my final footage.
(VFXFX 3)– Be able to use compositing tools and techniques to create a sequence that blends live footage with computer generated elements.
To edit our footage we used keylight 1.2 and other colour correction tools. This mainly included me bumping up the blues on Robin while turning down the reds and greens on him. For the keylight tool i mainly used it to key out the green screen behind Robin. A little drop down box allowed me to see the footage in a screen matte which helped me make Robin White and the background black. This was to make sure he fit into the background without the green screen making him blurry or pixelated.
To create the lightsaber effect I had to create a full white solid and make sure it covered the entire picture so the mask wouldn’t mess up later on. Once I made the solid I used the cut tool to cut out a shape and I was to use this as a mask around one of the lightsaber blades. After going through every frame and adding the mask around wherever the blade went I used the glow tool in the effect menu and picked a colour I thought looked nice and applied it to the mask. This was the process for the first blade so I basically just repeated what I did for the second blade.
(VFXFX 4)- Demonstrate an appropriate critical eye for detail and good aesthetic judgement.
(VFXFX 5)-
14/10/2020 – Project Started, Shot planning, risk assessment .
20/10/2020 – Raw footage and production/ team photo.
21/10/2020 – Finding an image for the background.
27/10/2020 – Editing down and putting into after effects for tracking.
28/10/2020 – 04/11/2020 – Lightsaber tracking and colour correction.
10/11/2020 – Uploading to YouTube and blog updates.
Camera Trick- 01/12/2020-
(VFXF 1)- Be able to plan, design and implement a shoot to acquire elements for a visual effect.
Team-
- William Edwards
- Robin Sear
- Harry Marshall
- Dylan Phillips
- Brody Moan (Me)
Ideas:
- Hoodie slam on table
- Endless Staircase
- Lag in Real Life
Risk Assessment:
Photo From Filming:
VFXFX 3:
The main process was overlapping footage and creating a mask to hide Dylan one one side of the stairs when he came down the opposite side. There was a lot of fine tuning
Camera Trick YouTube Upload:
VFXFX 5:
24/12/2020 – VFXF 1 – Planning and preparing for recording with ideas
25/12/2020 – VFXF 1 – Planning and preparing for recording with ideas
1/12/2020 – VFXF 2 – Recording Footage
2/12/2020 – VFXF 2 -Recording Footage
8/12/2020 – VFXF 2 – Recording Footage
9/12/2020 – VFXF 3 – Editing Footage together
15/12/2020 – VFXF 3 – Added Clipping mask to second
16/12/2020 – VFXF 3 – Finish the mask and upload to YouTube
16/12/2020 – VFXF 4 – Finalising the footage making sure it is all correct and listing what was done
Matte Painting Project
What is a matte painting?:
A matte painting is an image, created using digital or traditional painting techniques, to create a representation of a scene that would be impossible for filmmakers to deliver in real life.
Examples of Matte Paintings in Films:
This is a scene from star wars where it would have cost too much for the filmmakers to build a massive set just for a few minutes of footage.
Here is an example of Avatar where something like this world doesn’t exist in real life and would cost too much to reproduce.
This is a scene from Game of Thrones. TV series never really have a massive budget to begin with so matte paintings are used a lot in this series.
Here is the Ivory Tower from The Neverending story. Since this was 1984 we didnt have the best cgi so the matte painting was the best way to portray this scene.
Matte Painting – Portfolio Building: 26/01/2021
Since i dont have access to a laptop where i can edit my own footage, i am editing still images provided by Keith.
Provided Images:
This is the base picture I will use to create either a futuristic or past version of the River Wear area.
Here is the version of the picture with all the key areas erased to allow the illusion of the past.
Here is my version. I liked the idea of having 50/50 past and present and I wanted to try to make the past version look like the older style photos when the camera was still being introduced.
VFXFX 5-
26/01/2021- Introduction to Pixlr and Keith provided pictures/footage.
27/01/2021- Planning out ideas
02/02/2021 – 24/02/2021 – Matte painting
24/02/2021 – Matte painting onto footage and upload
2D Motion Tracking – 03/03/2021Examples of Motion Tracking In Movies –
Doctor Strange –
The example of motion tracking here is the 2 orange shields that Doctor Strange wields throughout the film.
VFXFX 1 –
Team Members –
Brody – Lightning Jazz Hands
Dylan – Fireball (Phoenix from Valorant)
Ideas –
Shield swipe – this is where someone taps the watch on their wrist and a shield will appear, but you don’t like it so you swipe to change what it looks like, so it could be Doctor Strange then Captain America single or dual shields and then Iron man’s shield.
Iron man – This is similar to the Doctor Strange idea but with his repulsors on his wrist and motion tracking the chest due to that being the centre.
Wands and mortal combat – Use wands and have a small battle mortal combat style, always tracking the centre until one person gets the upper hand and wins.
Emperor Palpatine Lightning Hands – Have a couple markers on each hand with random lightning beams emitting from them.
VFXFX 2 –
2D Motion Tracking Raw Footage – 16/03/2021
Risk Assessment –
| Risk | Rating | Prevention |
| Falling Down | 2 | Watching your step |
| Camera getting wet | 10 | Be quick, cover the camera from the rain |
VFXFX 3 –
To do the lightning tracking more smoothly I followed a tutorial which showed me how to track each individual finger tip as if I was Darth Sidious. The video is by a very skilled VFX artist by the name Will Carmack.
The video involved moving to the right side of after effects and choosing the track motion option.
This allowed me to set a tracking point to one of my hands. I had to allow after effects to analyze the footage and fully track my hands throughout the video. Once that was finished I was able to use the in app search engine to find an electrical effect to use. This is also called Advanced Lighting in after effects.
Once I had the lightning effect I created a null object and tied the lightning to it. This would give my lightning a point to move to from my hand. I copied this process once more for my opposite hand. The point in which the lightning touched my hand was too sharp and looked fake so I added an effect called gaussian blur. I feathered this so it would make my hand look like it was glowing and would cover the sharp point of the lightning.
The final part was choosing the colour of my lightning and the blur coming from my hand. After careful consideration I chose a dark blue for my left hand and a light blue for my right hand. These match the scheme of the Emperor Palpatine. They also share the same colour as the Lego lightning pieces and I liked the colour scheme of that.
VFXFX 4 –
VFXFX 5 –
Project Start – 03/03/2021
Raw Footage filming – 10/03/2021
Editing Raw Footage (Premiere) – 17/03/2021
Editing Raw Footage (After Effects) – 24/03/2021
Easter Break – 29/03/2021 – 11/04/2021
Uploading and Blog work – 14/04/2021 – 21/04/2021
NextGen Projects 