Idea 3 - Visual Effects

Idea 3: Visual Effects

Initial ideas of progression routes for this project:

Idea 3: Visual and Special Effects

Proposal for this idea:

History of Visual Effects:

Visual Effects Inspiration:

To start of my secondary research for my FMP, I started looking into the Visual Effects Industry. I started it off by looking more in depth into what the visual effects industry is and how it is done.

This video shown below taught me exactly what visual effects is and how to not get confused with motion graphics. I now know that motion graphics is things that are not real. Visual effects is adding scenery and effects to the scene to make it realistic looking even though it may be for a film or fantasy.

One question I did come across when looking at this video was about special effects. Now I know that motion graphics are things in the scene that is supposed to look fake, what is the difference between special effects and visual effects?

I watched this video by Film Riot, it taught me how both special effects and visual effects come about. So, from my understanding, special effects are the things you put in place for the scene before and during filming. So the special effects for this project would be the air compressor and the making of the tube and box where he made the dirt fly in the air. This is the special effects because this is what he has done to create the effects of the gun without using effects and editing afterwards.

The visual effects of this project would be when he duplicated and re-placed the bullet shot to create multiple shots. He also colour graded this and added sound effects. This is the visual effects as it is what has been done for the scene but when editing after it has already filmed.

After watching these two videos, I now have a greater understanding of what I want to do without being confused by special effects, visual effects and motion graphics. What I am looking at doing is a element of special effects but mainly visual effects in the editing stage as this is what I am passionate about.

This video is also another look into what VFX can be. My visual effects project wont be as big and detailed as this as there was obviously a big team working on the film. They probably used a graphics tablet to draw and design the effects which is then tracked to the temporary object so the scene looks real. This is what I love to watch and see even though it is a little out of my wave length.

For the very first part of this video, he sums up the difference between special effects and visual effects once again. So, I now definitely know that special effects is what is done and created on set which is real whereas visual effects is all fake. Its all computer generated imagery when edited. It is made to look realistic for example, the lady with the dragons in the video above the VFX core concepts.

So, what is compositing?

Compositing is when you have all the visual effects layers you are going to use and you stack them all on top of each other. For example, the smock layer, the fire layer, the animation, everything you have created and want to use in one scene.

Tracking is when you chose a part of the scene or shot and you can add things to it. For example, when you are editing, you can motion track a point of the image or point and either change it, focus on it or add things to it to blend in with the background. As seen in the video shown above, he adds a tiger to the background on the boat. He has obviously shot that clip and masked it or animated that image and tracked it to fit and move with the scene so it looks realistic. 2D tracking is when you have a image and it is fixed on one axis and one point in the scene. It does not have any other dimensions to it, it is just one image fixed on one spot. 3D tracking is when you can see multiple dimensions of the image. The camera is moving through a 3D space where you can go past the image, through it or over and under it. It is more than a flat image. It is not stuck to the footage. If it is tracked very well then you shouldn't be able to notice what is real in the scene and what is not.

Rotoscoping is when you have your shot and you have your footage but you want to add more layers to it. You would need to manually cut objects out of the footage to add multiple things to it. For example, cutting a person or living thing out manually to add a explosion or something behind them. If done well, it will be very time consuming. It should be extremely detailed and clean so you should not realise the footage has been cut and things are added behind it. Filming on one layer and making it multiple layers.

Keying is using either a green or blue screen and changing it to be something else when editing. You are editing that colour out and making it to be whatever you want e.g. the background and scenery. You can keep everything but that one colour. If you do not like it then you can select the colour and get rid of it.

Matte Painting is when you paint everything over with a brush. This used to be done on glass so you can see it but now it is all done on the computer. It makes the contrast darker, colours brighter and scene look better. You save out the image file you want, give it to the compositor and usually motion track it into the shot if the shot is moving.

3D stuff. The 3D stuff in visual effects is when you model and design items to go into your scene or shot. For example, tanks, machines, vehicles, lamps e.t.c Whatever item you want, you can model for it to look realistic.

Texturing is simulating the model. For example, you texture the way the object looks. So you can see how it would feel. Either rough, sharp or edgy, you texture it to add colour, 3D look and a more real look to it. Texturing can also be particle effects. How the item falls apart and gets back together. It may explode or run like liquid. The 1000 little particles added up to make water, fire or smoke.

Lighting is important in the scene as it also plays a part into making the item or scene looking realistic. For example, the lighting may shadow the face of a character or set the scene as daylight, sunlight, night.

Rigging is when you set up the character to move. For example, allow your character or person to have joints to move on. So the arms and legs will move separately but in sync also. Making the character look natural. It allows for it to look natural even when walking, running and doing other things. It is making the bones and the joints of the skeleton so it moves naturally.

So, as of yet I am unsure on what I want to do for my FMP. I have really taken an interest in the visual effects industry so this is what I will be looking into further.. This is what I am starting to do my specialist study on as it is what interests me the most but I will need to go in depth on the pros and cons to whether I will be able to do it for my final FMP.

My initial pros and cons of doing visual effects for my Specialist Study:

Pros to visual effects as my Specialist Study:

It is interesting, fun and different
Original
Better for me as it is what I am passionate about and want to do in the future
Allows me to look more in depth into it and practice it
I could use it as my university portfolio

Cons to visual effects as my Specialist Study:

College may not have the software and neither do I
I don't want to buy the software when I do not know how to use it
I may not be able to do it at college due to rendering e.t.c macs may not be powerful enough
May take too long and I might not be able to complete by the deadline
I may struggle to much and not know what I am doing
My FMP might turn out really rubbish as I have never done it before and I want my FMP to be really good to get my A levels.
May need a big team to work on it and others will be doing their own projects
May not have the equipment to do special effects. May not work and I wont know how to do special effects on set as have not been taught

These are my initials ideas of me debating whether to do visual effects. It is what I want to do with my specialist study however, it may not work out as my FMP. I may need to wait until university to start learning it.

More possible ideas for my FMP if visual effects do not work out:

Visual Effects
Video (relying on more cinematography and transitions rather than video editing and effects)
Photography (album covers, art work)
gaming? I have a gaming design software at home and I could create art work or a video through it?
Music video
Album art covers
Logo designs

Main ideas is video and editing/effects as this is what I am passionate about. Below is a music video I recently found by Taylor Swift. The after effects to it is really interesting. It looks very complicated but this may be something I could look into on YouTube.

Shown below are a few screenshots I have taken during this video to break down some of the scenes that use CGI and VFX.

The images shown above is using the motion tracing method in visual effects. The editor has created the animation of the blue technology in her eye and has used motion tracking to track the animation to her eye so it looks almost like she is a robot with high technology skills. Like she is some super human.

For my specialist research, I wanted to re-create the visual effects in the eyes just like this music video. To do this, I used my Nikon DSLR camera to shoot my footage. I filmed in handheld to give that unsteady look to the film and I used a DSLR so that I could un-focus and focus on the main character. By focussing and un-focussing on the main character at the start, it gives the footage that unsteady feel to it. As though the character is dangerous. Once I had my footage, the first thing I did was put it into Premiere Pro to colour correct it. I find Premiere Pro much easier to colour grade with rather than after effects. The raw footage is shown on the left and the colour corrected version is shown on the right.

The colour grading gives a real evil feel to the video. It gives a sense of tension and unsteadiness which is what I was going for. Next, I put the video file into After Effects and I added stabilisation to it to smooth it out. I didn't add too much stabilisation to it as I wanted a sense of unsteadiness to be in the video.

The product shown above is a screen recording that I have made for proof of editing. I filmed a short clip of my nan's eyes, put it into Premiere Pro to colour grade so that the clip has more of a thriller, scary theme to it before using the software Adobe After Effects. In After Effects, I followed a YouTube tutorial to 3D motion track the eyes where I wanted to transition and change the colour of the eyes to make it look like the person has supernatural abilities. This was a practice edit because I was not sure how it was going to turn out. Once I 3D motion tracked the eyes, I created masks and animated them frame by frame with the motion tracking so that I could make an adjustment layer, add it to the animated masks so that the transition and colour grading would look natural and be aligned to both of the eyes. There is no narrative to this project, it was just a trial run to see if it would work or whether it was too complicated for me as I have not done it before.

After finishing the screen recording of this video, I realised that I had accidentally deleted the video clip inside the After Effects project. This means that I could not open the project file as the main clip was missing. I could not recover this file therefore the side project to practice my edit was gone. I have definitely learnt from this for next time as I will in future make a separate folder on my desktop with the video clips and project file in so that it does not get lost within everything else on my desktop.

Primary Research Survey

This question allowed me to know the age range of people whom answered my survey. It allowed me to put an age to a product which indicates the requirements that this target audience would have.

This question allowed me to gain a rough estimate of how popular CGI really is. Whether the people notice it or not, they know of it. Every person answering my question apart from one had said that they have heard of CGI before so they have a rough understanding of the concept of visual effects and what it is. When I had looked in depth at the people who had completed my survey, I discovered that the reason they had heard of visual effects is from movies.

Visual effects is most well known for being in movies rather than advertisements or music videos so this is how most people know what it is. This has helped with my primary research by allowing me to say who visual effects has affected and as it seems, it is a large majority of people meaning my product would be successful by potentially a large population.

Every one of the respondents had all seen CGI and most of them had seen CGI from movies. Others had seen CGI on tv but the majority of the young population, had seen CGI in action movies. This shows that the most successful CGI products were action films due to the young population loving the fake/ real looking thrills of the impossible. All of them that had seen CGI also said that they love it proving my theory of the young population loving the impossible made to look possible in these types of movies.

The answers to this question has proved my theory in the past question wrong. The answers here suggest that sci-fi genre films with CGI I in, are the most popular whereas previously, I suggested that action genre movies were the most popular with CGI due to the audience saying they had heard of CGI with the action movies that they suggested. These answers show that although CGI might be most obvious from those action movies, the young population actually prefer the thrills from sci-fi movies based in the future. Meaning if I was to make a product to do with visual effects, I would have to base it in the future for it to be most successful.

The responses to the last question made me very pleased. I was thinking of creating a short film instead of a music video before this questionnaire because it would allow me to create the best results on a low budget. I have lots of ideas that I could potentially merge together for the short film and I believe it would be a much better outcome than doing visual effects in already made music video. I am glad that the public also think that a short film would have the best outcomes as it would make my product successful.

Instead of a friendly message alongside a link printed off for everyone to type into google, I decided to be a little more creative as I know nearly all of the class has made surveys and people are going to get bored of typing the link into google.

Instead, I went onto a free online QR code generator. This allows people to just open their camera on their phone, scan the QR code and tap on the link that it gives them. This makes it more fun and interesting and will appeal to my audience as they have already filled out plenty of links to surveys. I created this on Word.

Older projects that are relevant to this idea:

The mini projects that I have created a while ago, are beneficial to me now as it shows the level of skill that I am capable of. It also allows me to re-cap on how I do particular thing like colour grading in Premiere Pro with two screens so you can always compare your edit to the original image and to always make the colours neutral and white with the eye dropper tool before making drastic changes. You can also add in glitches with plug-ins and add-ons to the softwares Premiere Pro and After Effects. I then added in glitching noises that I downloaded for free on YouTube or free audio sites.

For this edit, I learnt how to 3D motion track to a contrasted part of my hand. I masked a part of my hand I wanted to motion track, played through the track and slightly adjusted some points to make sure the tracking points did not get lost, and then I added the video to the track. I made sure the video was a PNG and I added it directly above my hand. I then motion tracked some red light onto my face as if it was coming from the flame. Making the video look more natural.

For this simple edit, I again just 3D motion tracked a contrasted part of my head and added an image to it. I 3D motion tracked my head so that when I turn my head, the image will turn to and look a lot more realistic.

In conclusion, these little experimentations I have made previously, help me with my current project by allowing me to recap what I have done and what I am capable of for this project. Meaning I can evidently push myself further on this project if I chose to do visual effects as I have proven my ability to motion track.

The Matrix: Visual Effects

The film, The Matrix is one of my biggest inspirations for visual effects not only because of the amount of awards it has won like the Grammy for best visual effects, but, I like how real looking and creative the effects are. For example, when the main character dodges a bullet in the image shown below, it looks realistic with the visual effects but of course we know it is not real. Another example is of the motion stopped balls flying in the air with the main character in the background. It makes it look like the character has special powers and are making time stop.

The film 'The Matrix' inspires me greatly to do this idea as the outcomes in products like The Matrix looks amazing. It makes the audience think twice about whether the visual effects are real or not because of how realistic looking it is on screen. Visual effects is a massive area to explore and when mastered, there is no limit to your creativity. There is a lot of softwares out there that creative visual effects such as Adobe After Effects, Cry Engine, Autodesk Maya, HitFilm 3 Pro, Blender, S.C.A.D, Unreal Engine, Unity, Frostbite and many many more. Some movies or games even make their own softwares that allows them to edit and create certain things for their product. Plugins such as Element 3D for After effects, also allows the user to create different things and effects on their product as it is an extra built into the software. Many companies make these plugins such as Video Copilot for many different softwares for you to be able to do certain type of things for the product you are creating. 3rd party plugins are where you hack these plugins using illegal websites that allow you to get the plugins for free.