Compositing & Special Effects

Chalani Tharanga Wanigasekara (0329562)
compositing & Special Effects
Exercises and Assignments

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Week 1
Lecture

The lecturer is given a brief introduction of compositing and special effects and explained of the software that we are going to use as well as explained the module outline. 

Tutorial
For the tutorial class, we did group work. Lecturer divided students into 3 groups, and each group got 5 members and told to find key elements that used in the open title sequence. 

Hang Em' High

This is the open title sequence that I chose. And this movie genre is western, released in 1968. I realised that this title sequence is fixed with the story and giving a summary to the audience before they watch the movie. It has a smooth transition as well as the animation won't affect the typography. The font is also making sense, and it is suitable for the story. Simple colours and music are giving realistic to the title sequence.

Week 2

Lecture

We were given a lecture of special effects and showed some movie clips that used green screen. 

Week 3

Lecture

The lecturer gave an exercise (remake of this opening scene) in the class.

Actors: Bop and Brenda

Art Directing: Kamal, Sharon (props, wardrobe, make up)

Directing: Vivien, Hanif, Abi, Aryna
Camera: Zikri, Lily
Lighting: Amirkhan, Regina, Paulina, Poh Yi, Chalani

I looked at the directions of the lighting and how to show the shadows and brightness reflect in actors' faces. We used lighting and additionally, used some reflectors to add more brightness.

Week 4

Lecture

We learnt how to edit green screen videos in after effects, showed some basic editing and taught how to add the background to the green screen. 

Week 5

Lecture

The lecturer gave consultation and taught us how to make some simple text animations.

Week 6

Lecture

The lecturer did consultation relating to our final project ideas. He said to come up with an idea 30 sec trailer.

Week 7

Lecture

The lecturer taught us how to do matte painting. He told us to develop the ideas and to think about spacing and background. Firstly, do some concepts in Photoshop and find some images from Google and Pinterest relating to it. 

A shot will be 20-30 sec. 

A min. and 20-30 sec. for the overall matte painting.

Identify the perspective.

Exercise 1

I used to make this simple animation that Mr Kannan posted on facebook

Exercise 2

Our next exercise was the matte painting.

without details

with details

with even more details

Matte painting in After Effects

universal sky

The lost city

future 

In this matte painting, I arranged the footages and the camera (not perfect). However, I didn't do the colour correction and didn't add a music. 

I chose to make the last video for my Assignment 2.

Assignment 1 progression

Our 1st assignment is to make an open title sequence and I decided to come up with my own story but using some footage.

My story is about robots coming to daily life. The story inspiration is from I, Robot movie.

Thumbnails 

 I used glass effects to show some important parts. used black and white for that significant part.

for the text, used text writing type and used Gill Sans font. so it is easy to read as well as not interrupt the video.  

mood board

animatics

After the feedback, I decided to change effects. however, used the same story. 

mood board

I used holographic and call out to show that it is a story relating to technology. and I changed the footage colour to blue. so it is helping to show the video relating to technology. 

Final submission: open title sequence

Feedback

the glass effects made the video like corporative. and not representing anything under the black and white and glass effects.  the text and the video effects, both are sliding so change the text effect. no technical parts.

Assignment 2

I chose the 'Future' video for assignment 2 and here is the progression of the video.

Here is the final submission of this assignment.

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Cancelled Final Project

For the final project, we should come up with short motion graphic about the technological impact on human nature and how to overcome the crisis.

Progression

I chose to remake the 'Maze Runner: the death cure' movie trailer. However, I'm going to ' Rampage' movies for reference. I decided to add robot animals as enemies and no vehicles.

Maze runner: death cure

Rampage trailer

Final Project

For the final the lecturers decided to change the assignment. We had a chance to express our knowledge, however, should relate to the technology impact on the human nature. The requirement is minimum 30sec video.

To build up the idea, I looked at different styles to express this topic.

such as: 

1. micro video of cigarettes- Make a city using cigarettes and burn it. (Showing the world is dying because of human work) use callout titles to show technical and give information.)

2. micro video of ink- record a video of ink drop and use city or planet or something relating to the technology to represent the technology.

ink in motion video

3. matte painting- shoot a scene in a top of the mountain and make a city scarier ( looks like the earth dying) 

4. Motion graphic- I chose this  

My story is:

people are using technology and addict for social media. But they are not thinking of nature. The mother nature is dying because of people are not caring it.

Style Guide

Moodboard

mood board for background 

Mood board for character

Colour Palette

using the flat vectors to create the animation

Storyboards

Storyboard 1

storyboard 2

Animatics

Final video

For this project I used Adobe Photoshop to make the scenes of the animatics, Adobe Illustrator to draw illustrators, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro to make the video, Adobe Audition to make the music faster.

Feedback 1

The Lecturer said the idea is fine and try to make the storyboard, mood board, style guide.

Feedback 2

The lecturer said the beginning of the animation which is planet space is unnecessary.

Feedback 3

The lecturer said that having an issue with timing and fix it.

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Reflection

Experience (Assignment 1)
at the beginning of the assignment, I was confused about what kind of sci-fi story to make.  And I was confused about what kind of effects should use to make it. 

Experience (Assignment 2)
The matte painting quite fun though than the 1st assignment even if we had a lot stuffs to add and show it real.

Experience (Cancelled final project)
In the beginning, I was blur of this project. It was tough to build a story. I had no idea about this assignment.

Experience (Final Assignment)
From the beginning, I had energy and excited to make this animation. So happy the animation came the way I thought. 

Observation (Assignment 1)

I struggled to manage the time. because I had a lot of failures while I was doing this assignment and a lot of works to do. 

Observation (Assignment 2)
I struggled to find some footages relating to my work. I should figure out what I can do except footages.

Observation (Cancelled final project)
I struggled when the lecturer said that don't use footages. And confused when the lecturer said that can use elements. 
After this, I didn't have any idea of my final project.

Observation (Final Assignment)
I realized that I can make a cool animation with a cool illustration. I thought the animation would be ugly. I had a bad timing at the end of the animation. However, I managed it somehow. Moreover, I felt that I spent so long time to show more details of the illustrator so it took so long time than I thought.

Finding (Assignment 1)

personally, I'm not really interesting to use after effects. However, now I used it and like it. I didn't know that after effects can use to make some interesting works. 

Finding (Assignment 2)
This time I guess I managed the time to do my work even when I had a tough time. I'm happy with that.

Finding (Cancelled final project)
nothing

Finding  (Final Assignment)
This assignment helped me to learn how to use plugin and make a nice animation within few minutes than spending a few hours and days.