VFX Evaluation.

In preparation for making this VFX film, I looked at a lot of VFX companies such as Double Negative so when it came to making a story board/idea of a film I wanted to make it became very hard because I kept on thinking way to big, and couldn't narrow my ideas down. Later on we did tutorials on making VFX within After Effects and Maya, from this it began to put limits on my ideas of what i could do, however I couldn't put a final idea down, therefore i looked at students/peoples VFX films on Youtube and this was very useful because I was trying to make something original however a lot of the videos used the same assets but manipulated them to look different and awesome.

After this I came up the idea of making a origins type story for a super hero, but what power would he have? I lucky had been playing a few games with super powers so I looked at all on them and the looked on Youtube for tutorials on many of them. Lighting was the main choice with it being common in most games and VFX films so from there I started to practice the lighting tutorials.

The next thing was who was going to be in it?  I thought that one main actor was needed for this as I was focusing on a origin story so anyone else would have been a extra. 

Costume for him was basically what he would wear naturally in this modern age so that wasn't too hard.

Location for the Film was going to be tricky because there are many people who could damage equipment and mess up the production of the film, and I have to think about time of day? In the end I used the small car park just outside my flat where it is spacious and not too busy, accept from lorries delivering to the shop, therefore I knew from living here that the lorries would be in the mooring and so we could film in the afternoon without much interruption.  I think I should have done a lot more testing then looking at tutorials on how to get the best effects, because I was only looking at the lighting and nothing else really and how people did this, therefore next time I’ll be looking at more effects and not finding one amazing one.

The day of the filming went very smoothly, there were hardly any cars for the look out to call out and since it was in the afternoon the sun lit the area naturally and the car park wasn't dark. The only problem was a little contingency from one car leaving which was in the background so we shoot that scene again just to keep the background the same.

Sadly after filming there was one scene, which I forgot to turn on the microphone we, I have lost a little bit of audio, which wasn't a major loss. For next time if filming I hope for it to go as smoothly as this one because we had no problems, however I think the people knew we needed to get this done so that they would be needed to the next day if there wasn’t enough footage.

I started my Post straight away colour correcting the footage I wish to use due to the fact of it begin a lovely shade of blue which the only cause it the white balance so that heavily annoying because it cut into the post schedule, after this was complete placing the lighting effects was fairly quick with tracking on the Actor and the stone. However my Tutor asked if that was all I'm going to use, sadly this was true and that it doesn't show any real use of VFX from what we learnt. Therefore back to the tutorials on Youtube to find different methods, which don't use After Effects. Maya came up and that was very useful on how to do it. I thought from this it would put me back in my schedule however it only put me back a day, which i would have to recover. 

When the lighting was complete and film put together it only came to 47 seconds so I had to fill in the extra 13 seconds. 

Reviewing the footage I thought i could add in a thunder cloud roll in to emphasize the lightning powers activating in the film and creating a different mode compared to the start, this lead me back to Maya and the particle effects. It stared off well however the clouds didn't look effective compared to the lightning effects. So i researched into making clouds to my surprise I found some really good looking ones with a tut, however mine came out really, badly this is put my effects schedule really behind a bit before the upcoming Critical Analysis, I panicked, for a while and trying to find out way it didn't work but after a day it came up as it did in Mental Ray within Maya I decided to save this and render it out on the better computers compared to my laptop. I did this fitted it the film and I still had 7 seconds to fill so looking at the film again I noticed the actor lifting his arms to shoot lighting and thought to put a skyline shot with the lighting in Maya to show the lightning being released into the sky. I did this and I thought it was complete, sadly I was wrong because when my flat mate looked over it he asked "where is the rain?" It felt like I had been hit with a idiot sign, so with the Critical Analysis pretty much round the corner I went into Maya created a plane for the rain particles to hit and bounce to add to the scenes in the film, in certain places which I managed to do somehow?

Here I wished I spent more time looking into different effects and not focusing on the lightning however it was the main element in the VFX film and looks good. The clouds in Maya gave me hell beyond imaginable, so next time look at every option available and talk about what I’m doing so people can give feedback therefore adding to the project

Sound was Interesting for me because trying to find the right sound that I had hoped for didn't quite work out.  I used clips of thunder going off and rain effects mainly which worked well as build up and lightning scenes as effects layer one, this could have been very bad due to the mixed up of sounds not working together and having a major issues with the pitch. Then recording sounds in Leeds to get the feel of a city at the start and continuing though out as background noise, this was difficult to find the right area for the noises which I wanted therefore next time if I wish to do this I will need more time so that I can use all the sounds together into one single clip. For the actual lighting I paid for some Star Wars effects which I then manipulated in Audacity to have a more screeching effect, so that it was a shock to the audience that something major is happening, I think this was a good move due to the time issue and all the effects on the track was very useful; however putting it into the sequence, I need to seriously change the pitch of the noise and get every thing on the right levels so it would have the impact I was looking for without destroy the speakers, or hurting ears.  One problem here was finding the sound but it was fine because I knew it would take some time, however I believe for next time in the module to pre plan what sounds I will be using and get them early on.

The Critical Analysis. I was really hoping here that the film was pretty much done and needed little to no tweaking at all. This was correct and the only feedback was it was awesome and there were no contingency problems, the only thing was the rolling clouds didn't quite fit t in the scene, but that cloud be easily fixed.  So after tweaking that little bit and adding a credit scene the film was done.

Overall I have really enjoyed this module, I have found doing this module, using a schedule is very IPORTANT for project organization, however since I planned everything quite late in due to not coming up with an idea which I could stick to there wasn’t enough time to add much extra or to do testing before putting it into the film therefore this leads to very late nights and early morning which isn’t good for productivity. Next time get a idea and stick to it as best as possible to give enough time for any problems.