Version the third.

In this version, I've added shadows and lighting to the scenes which needed it, so now the entire thing is lit. I've taken my first stab at adding music to this version, by using some music from Deckman Coss, an artist on my former label. It's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 license (more information here).

In short this means that I am allowed to use the music, but I have to credit him, and I can't make use it commercially. I've credited him at the end of the film and this is for educational purposes, which are okay.

I'm not entirely happy with using the same song twice at the beginning and end. The bit where the second stops in the middle is supposed to be funny but I think it falls flat. I'm going to take another look at the music really soon, but this evening I'm going to be focusing on accompanying written work for the blog.D 3.0

In progress version 2.

Here's the second in progress version of the film. I exported and uploaded this before I went to bed last night, some shots are still a bit broken but most of them now have lighting and shadows. I added extra shots to the end to give it a stronger conclusion. I think this conclusion will be made even stronger with sound.

The last shot also has a spot of rotoscoping applied, and an effect to make him stand out less in the brightness.

I put a bit more thought into the sound this time, the background noise from Dom's game is continued between the last few shots, this ties them together much more nicely than before. Apart from that, the sound has yet to have any significant work put into it, but it's on the list!

Exactly 1 week to go.

I've been hard at work on the film, and i've made pretty good progress.

Firstly, here's a picture of my three characters, each a different kind of plant pot.

Higher res version here.

As you can see their personality from left to right is Angry, Stupid and Excited. Deep characters in this piece. I used the pictures of plant pots that I took to model them, then I used those same photos to make the textures. The arms, legs, eyes and eyebrows are re-used between all of the models, and the noise and mouth is added into the pot's mesh. The pupils are kept separate from the rest of the eye so that they can look around, which they do at various points in the film.

Here's the latest export of the film. It ends before the actual end (the noise might make you jump!) because I've not finished those shots yet. In fact most of the shots are incomplete, this was mainly for receiving feedback from friends.

I'm going to remove the last split second of the first matchmoved shot. I'm going to add shadows, increase the speed of the leg movement and make the pots bob up and down as they run. The second running shot needs a complete overhaul because they constantly change sizes and the rotation is completely wrong. Oh, also i've got to think about what I'm gonna do about sound and music. I'm not sure if I can create anything that would match this piece but I'll try. If not, I'll use royalty free material.

I'll probably upload another test version tomorrow.

The Season3 Studios slide appears on screen. You hear a smash, and the first shot is of Dom sitting on a sofa, he looks out the window for a second and then returns to his game.

The "Alex Noble Film" slide appears on screen. You see a row of plant pots, moving from right to left along the row until we get to a CGI plant pot with arms, legs, and a face. Then be blinks and looks at the camera, and the screen goes blank. The title appears.

http://cyberalyman.deviantart.com/art/Titles-for-my-upcoming-film-207279689

Photo refrence material

I borrowed a camera and took photos of all of the plant pots out the front of my house. This is going to be used as reference material to model realistic looking plant pots. They are a very simple shape so it won't be hard to get that right, but I'm also looking at colour and texture here, and how the lighting affects them, which is why I took pictures from 3 angles for each plant pot.

The camera's battery ran out before I could completely finish, so there may be more photos to come, but while it's charging I'll get to work making plant pots.

I'll also need to look into how to make a cool looking transformation from plant pot to self aware plant pot.

The photos are visible here.

Final week plan.

Okay, last week, I'm putting this plan in writing to make sure I stick to it.

Saturday, monday - Get all of the models and animation finished so they're ready to just drop into the scene. Also get some titles and credits set up for the film so I don't have to do them later. A plan for filming would also be crazy useful.

Tuesday to Friday - I'll have the camera, so it'll be a case of filming by day and matchmoving by night. The animations should be easy enough to just drop into the scene so hopefully I shouldn't have too many issues, it's just about making sure I've got enough matchmoved shots to prove I know the ropes as far as that's concerned. Also I'll need some shots of Dom acting, to get it all tied together.

The plan for that is that he'll hear noises outside and to to the window and see them running up the drive. Then we'll cut to lots of shots of the plant pots waking up and running towards the house. As for a conclusion... Just tension build up and then the title I guess. A bit lame, not much payoff, but at this point what can I do.

Over the weekend it's gonna be piecing it all together and adding some effects glossyness in After Effects if needed. Then I'll need to look at reformatting my blog content into a good readable format. Also I'll link to the blog. I might also look at getting parts of the process online so that you can see the steps I took.

I'll need to get Red Bull, I'll need to get burnable DVDs, I'll need to make sure the printer's got ink, and I'll need an external hard drive for all those image sequences. The end (for this project, at least) is in sight, so FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE, IT'S WORK TIME.

Now is the time to really get going.

Hello again.

A week ago I went out and recorded some nice footage outside my house. The focus of the project has shifted from indoor shots with people to outdoor shots of the plant pots coming to life and running towards my house. Here's two example shots to show how well they matchmove. The first shot has a prototype plant pot character in it, the second shot just uses cubes. The second shot matchmoves slightly less well but I'll get that buffed up real soon, and also there seems to be some missing frames, no idea how that happened.

I'm currently doing the animation on my plant pot characters, and then I'll start dropping them into matchmoved shots, and this should all start coming together. Next week I might take the camera out again and get some more shots, I just need enough shots to make a coherent piece. At this point I've had to scale down the project considerably, but when it's up to scratch I'll consider adding more ideas. Right now it's really about getting something ready to submit which shows I can matchmove.

I'm going to go back to my previous post and add the early test footage which I never uploaded.

April 1st

So i'm quickly realising that the footage i've captured already isn't good enough, and here's why:

It's overexposed: everything is much too bright and a lot of data was lost. I blame this on the inaccurate screen of the camera, but in fairness I should have used the zebra lines display function. The next time I film, i'll put more effort into proper setup.

I didn't think: Turns out that most of my shots are just nodal pans, I need to factor in LOADS more parallax to get more 3D matchmoves. When I next rent a camera, I won't be taking out a tripod at the same time, the tripod is mostly useless for creating parallax. I managed one shot which I should really upload. I'll do that when I get home. I did that by putting the tripod on a tray and getting somebody to drag that along the floor while I held the camera steady. That makeshift solution wasn't very practical at all but it did work. There might be some more clever ways I could use to get the shots really smooth, so maybe I should consider that while planning shots, and take the tripod out if needs be... Then again, it's nice without a tripod because it makes it much easier to transport the equipment, which is a plus for motivation. Still, the quality of the final film should be a bigger focus than whether I can be bothered to carry equipment.

They look really cheap: I think I've aimed my film too high as far as production values are concerned. I don't think I can emulate the kind of thing i'm thinking of in my head. The problem is, I was thinking "epic" for the film, but in order to achieve that i'll need permission to film in university at night, i'll need actors. Combine that with the possible need for multiple shoots and I think we've got a problem...

It might be possible to go to the university when it gets dark and film somebody walking up to the door, to set the scene. They might need to run towards the door so maybe security would be suspicious of that, but the worst that would happen is that we'd be asked to leave, so potentially no biggy.

I was thinking I might change the direction of the project to look more "amateur"... So instead of changing the setting and actors, i'll just put them in a situation with amateur looking footage and ad-libbed reactions. That way it would look like a home movie, kinda like Cloverfield I guess. I'm as tired of Cloverfield clones as everybody else is, but I've gotta get a project together right?

That's the lazy option, but with a bit of clever planning I might be able to pull together something a bit more pro looking. I'll definitely try that.

Also I REALLY need a much more solid idea of exactly what shots will go where in the film. For this, i'll need a proper storyboard, shot list, which shots will use VFX, how long that will take, see if any adjustments need to be made. I should have done that from the beginning I guess, but I didn't, so I've got to do it now.

I've also got the option of maybe taking some Steadycam shots next week... With the possible new direction of the film, that wouldn't work very well at all, but this could factor in very nicely if I wanted to make it look more professional. The outside shots would need to be at night BUT I could film some inside shots with artificial light while using the steadycam. Perhaps I could look into a day to night shot? These are all things i'll be considering over the weekend and updating the blog with my thoughts.

But I've got to go now because the room is being occupied by animation students.

Update 24th march

So I did some filming a while back. I got a test shot which turned out quite well but I didn't have much in the way of USABLE MATERIAL or anything related.

So I filmed some more test footage following the storyline better, but now I think the end project is going to look awful.

But i'll do some stuff with this footage and see if it ends up okay. I might have to change the scope of the project so that it'll look good within my capabilities.

FOR EXAMPLE, changing to to a Cloverfield handheld cam type of thing might be cool, and it would mask the terrible "set" I'd have to use, making it look like more of a decision.

Concerns and solutions.

The viewer may be dissapointed - If the viewer is expecting giant robots, how can I avoid dissapointing them? With the fact that it's a comedy piece, and one of the main ideas of the piece is to deceive, it may be fine, BUT just in case, here's my Solution: Have a final shot of the robot's shadow approaching the characters, and have the main character say "aww no, I forgot about them!".


The entire point will be missed - Solution: I'll just have to make it entertaining enough even to people who don't know the point of the piece.


The fake objects will look fake - Obviously i'm trying fool the viewer into thinking that the real objects are 3D, and that the 3D objects are real, so Solution: I'll need to make smart choices about what would be easy to model realistically. For example, a plant would be a bad choice because it would be hard to make the leaves move realistically when thrown.

My idea: Red Herring

So it's fair to say that i've not had good luck with ideas these past few weeks, instead doing vague tests which i'm not sure will apply to the final project. However, this weekend I came up with an idea that i'm very happy with. I'm currently writing it out in full and doing a storyboard and a small script, but i'll outline it here.

It's called Red Herring. It will be about tricking the viewer into thinking something is going to happen, and then something else happens. It's about taking the mickey out of film conventions and throwing the viewer off the scent.

The original idea was "Attack of the inanimate objects!", and that idea is being incorporated into my new idea. I originally imagined a line of objects, some real, some CGI. The viewer could try to guess which objects would move by which ones they thought were CGI, or which ones looked the most threatening.

The main threat in my film will be self-aware plant pots throwing themselves at people's heads, but the viewer will THINK that it's going to be giant robots.

When the film starts, there'll be two people walking down a street, they'll walk past a car with the radio on, and you'll overhear a news report saying "scientists warn about the imminent danger of giant robot attacks". You'll walk past a kid playing on a portable games console, and it'll show for a split second some footage of a robot destroying a city, and his mother might make a comment about these games being too violent, and then the kid might say "but it's not realistic at all!".

Then, the ground will start shaking, and people will look to the parting in the building's expectingly. THEN, a pot hits one of the guys in the head and the shaking stops, and you realise you've been tricked into the fake robot attack story.

I'll write the rest of this later.

Second update.

So I rented a camera on tuesday and i've been doing a bit of filming around the house mainly. I'm going to try and get some characters to walk around on the floor, i'm going to try and replace my desk with my virtual desk.

Of all of the ideas i've had, my best one so far is to have inanimate objects flying and hitting people in the face. How would this take any skill at all? Well it's all about getting the real object up on screen and then making people guess which object it is which will fly at the person's face.

I could actually replace multiple objects with 3D versions just to make people really confused as to which objects will begin flying. I was thinking "attack of the potted plants" but plants might be quite hard to model... So maybe just ATTACK OF THE INANIMATE OBJECTS would be good, saves me having to make a choice about what catagory of objects I want to throw at people... Except that they have to be inanimate...

BUT WHAT IF I WANT THEM TO ANIMATE?!? Tough decisions! Anyway, for now it's test shot time and as for my idea... I guess I ought to start writing a solid plan right about now.

Matchmoving is hard with SD footage.

After learning how to use the software with tutorial footage, I've gone right ahead and recorded some footage of my own. The problem is, my camera isn't HD and I was too lazy to borrow one from the uni.

I have modelled a desk for my previous project, so I decided to record some footage of my actual desk and put the 3D desk on top of it. This is however proving difficult as the points which were automatically selected on the footage are non reliable (grey).

I'm going through and making all of the good ones hard, I am also adjusting and extending a lot of them manually, in an attempt to get the matchmove gradually more accurate. It's been several hours now so I'm starting to think I should just give up, but if I manage to do this it will be a wonderful day in the world of Alex.

Now back to matchmoving I guess.