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.