Visual Effects Compositing - Week 5



08/08/2019


 I had tried to complete the screenplay over the weekend, but I continued to have a weekend of mental blocks. When it comes to professional document, I at least have managed to get it roughly a couple weeks ago. I just need to put it in the format and structure required.

 I did manage to make some progress with my proposal, especially when putting together a mood board.

 I have talked with Oisin about standing in for the protagonist of my VFX short film and he agreed. We will be do a photo shoot on Monday afternoon. I would also be taking photos of the locations I had in mind for filming. In this case, it would be an alleyway close to campus and the basement on campus.
Parenting
We went through a parenting tutorial on After Effects, but I couldn't manage to do the coding shortcut, so I just compromised to how I would usually do it without.


Turnaround FX
We also went through a tutorial on after effect where we have 2D character turning around like a 3D character and basically adding effects to that, inverting stuff on the character and background graphics. There were probably a couple steps that I had missed, but it didn't affect much of my final outcome.


Returning to Track Matte
I returned to the track matting from last week because I now understand how to use it properly and so I track matted some old cinematography footage onto the text and apply curves to brighten by the footage track matted, so the font is more readable.



09/08/2019


I worked a lot on the proposal and booked an Nikon DSLR camera kit to use for taking photos on Monday afternoon.  

12/08/2019

I forgot to pick up my camera from Chris at the right time, but I managed to get to him. 
I wasn't permitted to use the particular Nikon camera kit that I had booked because I'm a student. Chris did allow me to use a Canon DSLR instead (Canon 7D Mark II).
It was more professional model of Canon DSLR than I have used before. The most professional model I had used before was Canon 70D, back when I was doing a photography elective paper in Christchurch.

 Oisin was available to do some poses for my proposal as the protagonist of my short film. It took a while to prepare for it because there were troubleshooting issues with the 7D. On the manual mode, I couldn't for the life of me understand why the image was completely black and the lens cap was definitely off. I had to compromise to using the auto mode, which is something you avoid to use as a professional photographer. But I had to make do, despite the high level of ISO exposure, which generates noise on the image.
















After the photo shoot with Oisin, I went down to the basement to take photos for some of the setting that will be included in my proposal. As for the alleyway, I initially was going with the driveway right next to the campus, but I had health and safety concerns even if the filming there would be done at night. Not willing to take any chances, I took a photo of the alleyway next to the CentreStage building to take part of one of the settings for my short film / proposal.



















14/08/2019


I searched for any other tutorials on YouTube of creating a portal on After Effects. It took some time, but I managed to find one that looks and works better than the original portal that I chose for this project, and doesn't need any downloaded assets or plug-ins. 
I used raw footage from my cinematography showreel as a plate. 
I followed the tutorial and managed to get through most steps, but I put it on hold to finalise the script.

 BNA STUDIOS. (2014, July 27). How To Make a Portal in After Affects (0 Plugins Needed) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOR3u1YFaM



I did manage to get the script finalised and it's three pages long. It is much more simplified than the beat story in order to tell a short story. Now I just need to proof read my script.




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