Visual Effects Compositing - Week 11

26/09/2019

More tracking on After Effects
Weirdly enough, the tracking effects on After Effects is now working and can render tracking points unlike last week.

The result for the green alien was amazing and cute. It seemed so believable!
I missed some steps when doing it, but I managed to get the purple alien included. 

Afterwards, I added an adjustment layer and applied a embossed multiple exposure animation preset, and with that it looked like a cool, trippy, stoned perspective of the sequence. I feel proud about for some reason.

The class was tracking the face of the subject we were doing last week but I went on a toilet break and missed out on some crucial steps, so I was completely lost with it.

We got a point where we as class started from scratch, which was good for me. i did, but then we had same problem as last week with the warp stabiliser and so I couldn't continue on. It 's strange that camera tracking shows its tracking points, but not warp stabiliser.



Preparations for the VFX shoot
Last night, I was exhausted by all the stressful organising with VFX shoot and the idea of doing traffic management plans for every single shot for my VFX shoot.

I talked with Ash this morning about the traffic management plan and he assured that I shouldn't have to worry about it in my case since I won't be filming in the car park part of the basement. We had a chat with Chris to for me to get access to the basement over the weekend for the VFX shoot.

It had to spend a while with Chris this morning because I cannot have both cameras and Ash justified it by saying this wouldn't be feasible in the real world to rent out for a low budget production. You really should only have multiple cameras when you shooting interviews.

Then Chris had reserve my stuff again that I was going to pick up today because he accidentally cancelled it. Bo and Kiarne will help me pick up all the equipment and stored it all in the editing suite that I still have booked.

I had to make another booking on CHEQROOM because the Lowel lighting kit wasn't in the new reservation. I also noticed the same for the Panasonic monitor, but it wasn't available to book and there was only the Shogun monitor that's for the F3 camera. I'm not completely certain that this particular monitor is compatible with either the Blackmagic or Urusa.



Getting the equipment
I managed to get to the equipment room ahead of others. The waiting line today for equipment was long and I reckon nearly every film student in the building was waiting to get equipment for their shoots this weekend. Kiarne was kind enough to help me carry the equipment over to my booked editing suite. There was much more equipment needed for this shoot than what I had for my screen arts shoot, plus the equipment filled up the editing suite.


A few more things...
I forgot about the slate again, as well as a monitor for the filming. I was able to get a slate from Chris, but not a monitor since my booking for that was lost this morning and there weren't any good monitor left. Chris gave me a faulty monitor with bad colouring and put together an old tripod to use as a stand for the monitor. It may not be great, but it's good enough as a point of reference.


Getting an actor
Ruby approached me a while later and suggested contacting Royce to be my actor for my VFX shoot since he would likely be keen because of the subject matter. I contact him, but he is unavailable for this weekend. Ruby then suggested asking Royce if he knew anyone who would be keen to be my actor, but I was exhausted by then and so I didn't bother.



Shooting schedule for the VFX shoot
I spent the afternoon finialising the shooting schedules

27/09/2019

Audio production student
I heard back from an audio production student called Jean Yu last night (thanks to James) who is keen to be involved as a sound person for my VFX shoot. I sent him a shooting schedule with all the details. I had to modify it beforehand to include him.

Jean replied back asking for a copy of the script, so that he has an idea what sound equipment he will need to bring along for the VFX shoot.
With this mind, I will not end up using the Zoom H6 or any of the sound gear that I booked out from Chris.

Modified shooting schedule

I also sent the shooting schedule to Bo and Kiarne this morning. I received a call from Kres (a first year film student, whom is keen to help out on my VFX shoot tomorrow afternoon. He cannot help on Sunday because he will be helping on Oisin's VFX shoot. I will have Kres be a boom operator on-set. I told him to meet me at the RAW Gallery, at 1pm tomorrow.



I manage to finalise the storyboard and wasn't as bad as I suspected. All I had to do was remove shots that I no longer wanted or were in the script anymore and add three more shots to complete the ending since I ran out of time to finish the ending when it came to collating my proposal. With the VFX storyboards sorted for the weekend shoot, I also added the changes to my shot list.

28/09/2019

I spent the morning refilling catering for the shoot from my screen arts shoot last weekend, as well as including the leftovers from the catering for that shoot.

I wasn't certain what role Kres would do on on-set since I was uncertain whether he would be needed to hold the boompole. But in the end, we got him to be AC.

We didn't use all the lighting we at your disposable, but we did make use of the Aladdin. 
The filming went well like last weekend. It was an interesting experience directing and acting at the same time. Kiarne told me he had a good time today shooting a scene for my VFX shoot. Shooting the scene took 2 hours and 14 minutes (1.40pm to 3.54pm).


I couldn't do this shot because the angle would reveal the Aladdin


I was going to actually shoot this shot behind the cell door, but I couldn't open it and Kiarne and Bo had an idea how to fake it; have blanks placed in front of lens. You can tell it is wooden planks for a second, but otherwise we manged to pull it off, especially with he light making the planks look just as pink as the actual bars on the cell door.

I'm not wearing glasses for this short film because of the glare and reflection my glasses would get from the lighting.

The loud venting noise in the main part of the basement wasn't something I expected. Jean (my sound person for this shoot) reckoned it was too loud and may cause me to do ADR if I proceed with having dialogue in this scene, and so I limited the dialogue for this scene.

The other part of the basement (where I will be shooting tomorrow) has a watery sound coming from the pipes, but it's not as much as of an inconvenience to sound recording like the venting noise.

I did explain to Kiarne and Bo where the portal (the blue light) would be situated in the other part of the basement, so that they know because we were going to have that blue light beaming into the basement scene we were filming today.

I had to swap Kiarne with Matthew Butler as my DOP because Marcus needed Kiarne for his shoot tonight. Matthew had to be both DOP and gaffer for filming tonight since Kiarne, Bo, and Kres would be absent for the night shoot today.

With the filming for the scene completed early, I ingested the footage off from the Blackmagic.



The winds were too strong for us to film out in the alleyway outside Centrestage, and so we had to compromise by filming in the hallway oncampus. We filmed at the fashion design end of the hallway. I didn't film in the middle of the hallway because there was aloud venting noise like in the basement.

Matthew turned up. We were thinking about whether to use the Blackmagic or the Osmo since there was a lot of handheld shots needed for the opening scene. The downside to the Blackmagic was that we didn't have a shoulder mount because another film shoot had that booked before me, and the downside to the Osmo was that Matthew was unfamiliar with operating the Osmo and I was concerned the venting sound coming from the Osmo would be caught in the sound recording. 

We didn't want to take any chances and so we just decided on the Blackmagic


It turns out we would had needed Kres tonight helping out as best boy since we couldn't have the light consistent because none of us could hold the Aladdin around while shooting. We had our hands full. I was acting, Matthew was DOPing, and Jean was sound recording, and so there was no way around and we had to make do. However, the lighting may come out as inconsistent for the opening scene.

We were going to have a red gel over the Aladdin to give the feel of an abandoned building and it would also work creatively since it could potentially work as foreshadowing the character's demise at the end, as a result of the entering this building. It turns out we didn't have any red gels and red wasn't colour that was available on the Aladdin, and so the idea was scrapped.

However, I could do something about when colour grading the final film.

It wasn't easy getting particular shots done, especially the medium close up following shot since Matthew had a hard time keeping up at my pace.

As the character, I did some quirky moves while walking down the hallway for the opening scene to give personality to my character. I did say some of the lines that are in the script, but with it all edited together, it shouldn't matter and I could always ADR it.

Matthew lit the wall he was panning from to seeing me walking down the stair, so that you could potentially see the texture on the wall.

Filming the opening scene tonight took as long as I expected, which was about an hour.

Once we packed all the gear up and into storage tonight, me and Jean ingested all the sound files from today's shoot.

29/09/2019

Oisin was doing his shoot in the green screen today and Kres was helping him up until my shoot. We spoke briefly and he told me he would only be available to help for my VFX shoot today up until 7pm. I will need someone else to help onset for the night shoot, if last night's shoot has taught me anything.

The filing went along well today in the basement and it went along much faster than I expected and took as long as yesterday's shoot in the basement (2 hours). I got Kiarne to capture as many angles as possible to make use of the time.

We used a light with blue diff for the portal. The question will be whether I will successfully able to produce garbage masks on After Effects, in order to get rid of the light and its stands and replace them with the portal. 

I started syncing up all the sound for a scene from my VFX shoot between the end of the day shoot and the start of the night shoot today. Because many shots weren't storyboarded and were conceived on the spot, I aimed to sync up all the full duration of the best takes before editing them into a scene.


For the night shoot, we had to cover up the window at the stairs to block out the daylight since it wouldn't be dark enough until 9pm. I wasn't aware that daylight savings was happening this weekend. Kres ended up coming along to help on the night shoot after all.

We were able to come up different angles on the spot that weren't storyboarded and because of this, I had to have Kres made the shots beyond 2C to be 2.2D and so on after that because I had planned to do only three angles for the start of this scene and had already shot the rest of the scene yesterday. Making them go 1.1D and so on after was so it wasn't confused with the shots that I had shot yesterday that were same name. Looking back, I accidentally had at 1.1D and so on after.

30/09/2019

I continued to sync up all the sound for one of the scenes in between having my BSSA231 Digital Filmmaking class and manged to complete it. I will need to edit them down now. There were some shots I had to definitely have at full duration when syncing up because the monitors in The Clinic weren't bright enough to view the dark shots, even with the brightness up to 50 or 100.

I returned all my filming gear today to Chris.