Concept Development: The Inbetween

I was getting quite worried during the break as I tried to come up with an idea for my project this semester.  Nothing quite seemed to work- I was getting far to caught up in issues early on.  I had the option of developing my previous script, Kin but I didn't want to touch that concept for a while since I ended up writing the script like a stream of consciousness without having planned it out properly on the morning it was due.  I still like the concept but I need some space from that idea before I look at it again.

Finally, almost at the end of the break, I had an idea for a high concept for my feature film trailer.  It was an idea I had thought about before, then put aside.  More specifically, I thought of a setting.  The world I have created is The Inbetween- a place created from the memories and minds of its inhabitants.   It was too crazy, too hard to design, and what would the story be? What would the characters actually do? 

While I can see an alternative life for this world in web-series or TV drama; for this project I want to take the concept in a different direction.  I want to base this story more around things I can show, more action/adventure, less drama.  It'll also be aimed towards a younger audience- age 15-25 then my original idea. 

Although it probably won't appear in the trailer I don't want to spoil too much about the truth of this world.  My focus here isn't so much the overarching story of the world but how I can focus on a few characters and create character goals.
 

Format Madness! Short film, Feature Film, Webseries, Documentary or Television

During the break I decided I needed to get a concept locked down before we started back for this semester.  I'd had a few vague ideas here and there but nothing that I really felt that keen on.

I decided last term that I would aim to create a feature film trailer.  I would have liked to have something that felt like a finished film at the end of the year but as much as I have enjoyed the film papers I felt I would be doing myself a disservice to focus purely on film.

With the length of a short film as 8-15min I felt like I would need to focus purely on story and film in order to get a film completed.  No extras.

'Sticking' to the basics

Which to me seems like a waste of the last 3 years of study in animation.  Maybe I am just indecisive but I think I'm a generalist.  I haven't discovered a huge passion for any one thing in film or animation.  I like to do a mix of things.  I enjoy variation.  And I know that my picking up a camera and filming something with my current skill level isn't going to land me a job in the future.  If this film is something to kick start a career then it needs to be something that I can show as the result of not only this year but the previous three as well.


Hence the feature film trailer.  The intention being to incorporate VFX and live action.  This is going to be slightly more achievable within a 2 minute piece then in anything else, but because of the nature of trailers will still be really intense.      


I'm not entirely convinced I can pull this off.  It's a huge challenge and a huge workload.

Lying Fox. (TESLA, 2014)

Some things to consider that could help me out is locations and design.  If I can find locations that will work with my concept to film in, rather than needed to resort to Green Screen then the post-production workload will be significantly decreased.  Costume is another consideration.  If I can keep things relatively grounded in at least one area of design then things will be significantly simpler. 

My Time as a Roto Monkey :p

As part of the Group Project I have been helping out with some of the Post-production work.  This is mostly just some WIP screen grabs from of some Rotoscoping I've been doing. 

The Original Shot

In the Original shot there are a number of issues.  One is that we filmed off the greenscreen- that dark green in the bottom there is the carpet on the floor of the greenscreen studio.  This obviously won't be key-able. 

Another issue is the out of focus footage.  This isn't something that can be fixed but will cause issues when keying the right side of the greenscreen.  I think this will need to be fixed up using a feather and edge blur. 

Key and Green Spill Suppression

For my first pass I keyed the Greenscreen and added a Green Spill Suppression to take the spill off our actors.

Finally I moved onto Roto.  Wherever the actors movements crossed over the edge of the greenscreen or the wooden support each frame needed to be carefully rotoscoped.

This shot will still need some tweaking in the compositing stage.



Here's a few of the other shots I worked on:

Shot 12 Original Shot

 In this shot I needed to Roto out the wooden supports and a fabric backdrop.  There is also a c-stand in shot at the top-centre of the frame.  One other issue- the reflection of the wooden support in the glass. 

Roto WIP

To fix this reflection I used a Roto-paint with the clone brush.  Luckily the actor doesn't move behind the reflection at all so this wasn't too complicated. 

Shot 19 Original Shot

This shot was originally keyed and roto'd by someone else but they had done some strange things to the footage and hadn't kept the Nuke file.  So I ended up re-doing this shot from scratch to fix up the problems and make sure we actually had a usable file for compositing later on.

This shot was pretty easy to solve with a Key and Garbage Matte.  Despite there being a lot of rubbish in the shot we were careful when filming to make sure that the actor and set didn't overlap any of it.  Some Roto was needed between the actors arm and the post because of the different shade of green. 

Shot 19: Clean-up

One other task I was asked to help with was to check through all of the files so we knew what had been done and what hadn't and also that we actually had the Nuke files for each shot.  I made the list below to help us out, and made notes of any issues I noticed in the completed shots.  This is how I picked up the issues with shot 19.