RESEARCH

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For this project I did my research on how technology effects and has effect the world around us. I looked at the effect on the past, present and future. One of the things I looked into that I was particularly interested in was the idea that technology will rise up and take over man because we will allow it to. This piece of research was very useful to me as it gave me a different outlook on how technology can take over not just by itself but if we enable it. This gave me a much different idea to approach my film with. Next time I would take whatever point from my research has inspired me the most and research it further as I could have found another idea that gave me more inspiration from looking at what other people think could happen for technology to rise.

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IDEAS DEVELOPMENT and PLANNING

 

To plan this project thoroughly I first had to start with a general idea for my project. I liked the idea of mankind being the reason that technology takes over, so I created a storyline where man is the reason the tech gets annoyed and therefore fights back. When we were in college I was planning to have it set there so I could use the building to have a different environment. I created this general idea on a mind-map and then wanted to vison my ideas better so created mood boards for parts of my project I felt I didn't know well enough. I have a general mood board of everything that made me think of the kind of film I wanted. I created a mood board on the kind of over-grown environment I wanted. I then needed to think more about my alien tech in which I got inspiration from my first mood board. I created a few rough sketches then after getting inspiration from things around my home such as my PS5 camera I solidified my design and created a couple of image planes to use within Maya. After editing my story for the location I still decided I liked and was going to use the same design so before jumping into Maya, I looked into what textures I would want on my robot. I created a mood board as there were a lot of different options for types of metal. I also went on a walk to get some further inspiration as I didn't like what I found around my house. I decided I liked the more worn out textures, the metals with scratches and marks etc. I also took photos of my camera that inspired the futuristic design of my model. I then created a storyboard to make filming easier and to see what my film could look like.

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I think I could have improved the application of contextual research in a few ways. I feel I just scratched the surfaces in the topic at hand. To help with my project I could have actually researched in what ways technology is becoming smarter, I know of stories where humans have not been able to understand technology's way of speaking and therefore had to kill the connection from them to prevent anything further happening. If I had explored exactly what robots were able to do more then I could have incorporated this in my final film, getting the robots to speak in this language that we cannot figure out. This would have been a much better comment on how  technology could take over as it is harder to understand to someone who hasn't heard these stories before. Furthermore, if I could research into the true risk this has on us I could have portrayed that risk actually happening in my film and therefore the message of preventing it before it happens would be stronger. Overall, better application of my contextual research would have made my film more realistic to current world risks and concerns.

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WORKING IN MAYA

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Overall my process in Maya came with a lot of trial and error as it is a software that I haven't used much of before, as I have never created a fully fleshed out model before. My workflow consisted of getting my main framework my model done, then adding in details. I then had edited my model slightly part way through texturing it. I then lit and rigged my model ready for animation. Although I did have a lot of problems, I am quite happy with a lot of what I was able to produce. 

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I found a fair amount quite difficult when working in Maya. I had a little trouble when modelling how to do the head as I knew I wanted to apply a bevel effect but had trouble doing so, after watching a tutorial I was able to do this. I had the most rouble in the next stages however. After choosing my textures, I felt it would be a simple process of wrapping my image textures however they proved to be too small ad ended up stretching across parts of my model. After trying to find ones that would fit better I realised I'd need to take a different approach, I first tried using shaders to create a texture in Maya but I was happy with the texture I had already chosen so I learnt how to UV wrap an asset in Maya. This took a long time to figure out but in the end became quite easy to execute. Despite my small other struggle with rigging my model, which I managed to find a tutorial telling me how to adjust and connect joints in my model, there were parts of my model I was quite satisfied with.

When looking at my work in Maya, I was quite happy with the design and original model that I had created. It had the big, overwhelming look I wanted without being too much. I am happy with the detailing on the legs and the head of my model, I feel it creates the futuristic look I was going for when thinking about the tech's impact on society in the future. To have that appear from a phone shows the massive development technology can have in a short amount of time, which is the effect I wanted to go for. I was also quite happy with the end result in texturing my model. I felt the lens of the camera was good as I was worried I would struggle to get detail such as the writing around the lens eye, however with UV wrapping I was able to do so. More specifically I am happy with the metal texture I was able to get on the leg of my robot. When first putting on the metal I was worried I wouldn't be able to get the scratchy effect I had hoped for however I think it fits well with the head of the model, although the ribbed part where the legs connect is somewhat off, I am happy with the overall metallic feel of my model.

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I have not only learnt a lot about more tools in the Maya software, but I have learnt more about how to aesthetically plan and create a good looking character and what makes them fit a setting well. When texturing my model, adding the white felt off but instead of counting it out, I experimented to see how it could become more pleasing to the eye and managed to do what I feel was a good job and believe my model wouldn't have looked as good without the white there. It took me a while to figure this out which taught me a lot about making a model aesthetically appealing. IN regards to what I learnt within Maya, I learnt quite a few new tools, the main ones I used for this model were the bevel tool, UV wrapping and the quick rig tool. I am happy I took the time to figure each of these out as they are useful tools to know for any new work I will be doing in Maya in future projects. Not only this but spending a lot of time in Maya has made me much more comfortable with the interface, especially with certain settings such as those within the lighting preferences.

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Next, I would like to learn how to create environments in Maya. I feel confident in creating a 3D model and with more practice will be able to perfect this, however I feel creating an environment in the 3D modelling space is a much different process as you will have to account for every space in the 3D world. In doing this I feel I would be able to create a lot more environments for my films and try using my own environments. I could also create worlds that perfectly match the aesthetic of my model I create. Being able to do this confidently would open up a lot of new possibilities for settings and illusions.

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FILMING

 

Filming for my live action part of my film was a fun but lengthy process. I had printed off my shot list and made notes on small things I wanted to remember or ideas before going out to film so I knew exactly what I needed to get. It took a few attempts as weather was a problem, but once I found a nice day I went out to record. I decided to film my shots in chronological order so I could adjust any shots if the shot before didn't come out the way I planned on it doing so or I wanted to adjust it. There was a lot of running backwards and forwards from my camera which is why it must have taken quite a while, as I was being the actor in my film as well as doing the camera work. After getting the shots I needed, I did go around and take a few more shots of the environment in general as I felt they could come in useful if I had a shortage of footage, which they did.

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The most challenging part of the filming process for me had to be working with the settings and general settings of the camera. Not did the very cold weather make it a lot more difficult to operate and move things around, but I also hadn't properly thought about learning the settings on my particular camera. One of the things I haven't done a lot of is filming professional, so I wanted to get more experience with the camera, I had messed around with it a little the night before but didn't massively know how to get the best shots. Being unable to do certain shots or getting the correct focus, I did have to edit quite a few of my shots so the quality wasn't effected too much. I did record the shots where you can see the phone screen on my iPhone as that was apart of the story I needed to include. However this struggle inspired me to do some camera work, shown on Task 6.

However I am quite satisfied with a few parts of my filming process. For me, the different shots I was able to get was the most successful part of the filming process. I had a wide range of close-ups and wide shots and together they make for a very smooth video. I was also happy with the amount of shots I was able to get, this way I was confident that I could make smooth shots and link up my footage so it appears as a quick sequence. I do enjoy recording and being a director so I was quite happy with the shots I had produced as I didn't know where I was recording off by heart, so I was happy with how I was able to adjust.

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The biggest thing I learnt about this process was what it is like being completely in charge of the filming process. Having help before with recording my scenes and having an actor makes it a lot easier to manage, however this time being the director and acting leads me to think filming chronologically may have not been the best idea as there was a lot of running around which took a very long time. Although this meant I could adjust easier I have learnt that next time having a thorough plan and recording shots that are in the same spot may give me more time to focus on better settings. I have learnt here that the settings and focus of the camera are extremely important.

Next, I would like to learn about the settings on my camera. The biggest things this has taught me is that knowing about the camera settings and focus on the camera can create a whole different illusion and better my film. Not being able to properly focus not only takes away from the live action effect but also made some of my visuals less effective, the biggest effected being the phone screen being out of focus, so the portal looked odd out of focus whilst being on an in focus phone screen. If I am able to better adjust and understand camera settings my time would be better spent and I wouldn't have funny filters over my film and have to use other shots after realising like I did in this film.

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ANIMATION

 

I found the animation process quite difficult to get to grips with. It felt quite intricate and hard to control when not being used to animating in the 3D space as you really have to pay attention to every perspective of the model. My general workflow was to go through each animation and make them in order, however this was interrupted by issues that were not necessarily to do with the animation process. I had random occurrences where the textures on my model would become blurry and fuzzed and where my model would randomly become squashed and the legs twisted. This took a lot of time up and pushed me back very far in the animating process. Because of this it was a time consuming process. 

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The hardest thing about animating for me was getting the right stylized movements from my model. Being a robot I want jagged, mechanical movements however I found this quite difficult as the keyframes were blended into one another , therefore I struggled to get the right timings to make the walk even or have the right movements. The other major problem I had was with the rig. The first animations I messed around with and made came out well so I started rendering what I was making, however when starting to use the back leg there was an unusual bend unlike robotics. This is when I realised the rig would act more human like as that's it's baseline when quick rigging. This may have explained the unusual occurrences. Because of this I didn't get to mess around with what the back leg does which does really hinder the overall effect.

 

Despite the negatives I am somewhat happy with how I managed to operate the front legs. Despite the smooth bend in the centre of the legs, I managed to make a smooth step with the legs in front, I am happy with how they mechanically operate and look when still in each position, this is hindered with the smooth movements however. On the other hand I am happy with the way my tech aims when first coming out of the portal, I like the way the legs hit the ground to stabilise before going to fire, this created a realistic effect for the robot. 

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In doing this animation I learnt a lot about the importance of having a specific rig to the model you are animating. Actually having to move and operate my rig made me realise that dimensions of my models should be considered more also. For example I couldn't have the legs moving up too high like I wanted because the head was modelled just a little too big. I have also learnt that there is more to the rigging process than just the joints. There were other elements such as the centre of gravity and the balance points on my model. This means there is a lot to focus on when animating and taught me about the many different elements of one still position.

Next, I would like to learn more about actually determining how to figure out how a model would walk. I think one of the reasons this was quite fiddly was because I was playing around with the positioning a lot before and couldn't find a style of walking I was happy with. The movement of the robot is very, I would like to learn more about the actual positioning and timing and how to give my Maya models and better and more accurate personality, as I was unhappy with how this had turned out.

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EDITING / COMPOSITING

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The compositing and editing process was quite lengthy due to me wanting to do a few different visual effects. To begin with I gathered all my footage in Premiere and started editing together my footage. This took a while as a lot of this shots had odd filters and therefore I needed to work with other shots to complete my film edit. After this I worked on visuals, using many tutorials to create a portal in each shots, looking into environmental lighting, and then creating an explosion from footage found on green screen on VFX stock footage websites. After these were done and I was happy with these visuals, I took the renders from my Maya animations, created the image sequences in Premiere, slowing them down if necessary and then compositing them into my film, each time having to look at different elements of my scene.

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There were a few challenges for me when editing. The first problem I faced was to do with having to work with the bad footage from not knowing my camera settings properly. I spent a while compiling footage from the other shots to create the same storyline. This also meant taking parts of shots I hadn't yet come into shot to create the establishing shots. With regards to the VFX portals it just took a while to understand how to create them in a realistic light, after this it was easy to execute. The biggest problem I had was taking my Maya renders and making them feel believable within the scene. This because I wasn't happy with the animations I had created so tried out many things to try and improve these. I ended up creating scales to create a better illusion and masks to make the feet appear behind the grass. 

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I was most happy with my VFX in this shot. My proudest achievement was the portal I was able to make. I felt this had the exact fantasy yet powerful aesthetic I wanted to it. I was able to create realistic environmental effects. This sold my portal effect a lot better. The explosion I am somewhat happy with. I was able to create the environmental effect again which looked good flashing as the explosion did. I was happy with my ability to layer the explosion with the fire, smoke, debris and the hole in the ground, which I felt was quite believable. The layer ended up creating a good effect however I do think I could improve this. The smoke I created in the scene after this I was also happy with as I was able to get a good movement from it. As well as this I was happy with the phone throw as I hadn't tried something like that before and felt it looked very realistic. IN regards to the actual shots, I was proud of how smooth my film ran, there was a smooth movement through different shots which helped to make my film feel like one complete timeline with no cuts.

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I learnt a lot in this process. Not only did I learn many different effects in after effects for how to use motion blur correctly, how to key out green in green screen assets etc, but I also learnt a lot about what really looks good in a film. I feel a lot more comfortable with many effects in after effects that I am excited to explore, however in doing this I made many adjustments to my effects to create what looked best for my own film. I feel through spending this much time in after effects I was able to learn how to adapt the effects I was learning into these tutorials so they look best for what is happening in my scene. I have also learnt a lot here about how important environmental impact is from what is going on in the scene, if I had not had the portal lighting or the flash from the explosion, my scene would have been negatively impacted and not have looked half as realistic. 

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Next, I wanted to learn more about masking within after effects. Although I am quite confident with the basic masking in after effects, I feel there is a lot for me to expand on that could've helped my film. For example I struggled to make the robots leg appear from the portal in a realistic way as I struggled with having too many points on my mask, and how to smoothly keyframe my mask points. If I were to do this, I could also have masked out the branches on my scene in front of the robot instead of having to use green screen branches.

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AUDIO

 

To create my audio for this project I first created an audio plan, this helped me so that when I was collecting my audio, I could make sure I didn't forget any of the ideas of audio I felt was missing when first watching my film, as I feel like when doing audio you can get lost in the process. I then collected my main sounds, and in the process recorded some sounds through Foley that I either couldn't find or wanted a certain pace for (eg the sound of my character texting) I then put the audio I had into Premiere and put in the main audio sounds, going backwards and forwards through my audio plan. I didn't have a set way to do my audio except go through chronologically and keep watching and editing sounds where necessary.

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The hardest thing about creating my soundtrack was collecting together the sounds for my robot. I knew what kind of effects I wanted to make my tech sound powerful however couldn't find these and was unable to create these from home with what I had. I had to figure out a way to make this part where the robot was in the scene more powerful which when done I was happy with, but it was difficult coming to this conclusion. Something else I found difficult was matching the footsteps to the visuals as I found the kind I liked for this effect however they weren't in time with what happened on camera so there was a lot of cutting and editing and I even used the audio from the recording on one footstep part which caused for a fuzz I couldn't cancel out.

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The thing I am most satisfied with is how I was able to use volume in this project to create the effect I wanted. Due to not having the sound effects I thought I would have for my robot I thought the next best powerful thing was the volume of the scene. I decided to use and effect I have seen before, where minimal sound makes every sound that happens more powerful. I had first planned to have people chattering but decided just to have the birds tweeting and the ambience of the woods, this way the sound of the pone dropping and the sound of the phone typing become important as they are louder than what is going on. This also means that when we get to the portal and robot appearing, the overwhelming fuzz and crash of the portal and the robots mechanics suggest a power bigger than the environment around it. I was very happy with how this worked out.

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During this process I learnt a lot about volume of a scene, as seen before this did become my main focus for this film as I wanted to show power. However I did have to become careful with this as creating sounds too loud could take away from the other important thing, in this case the portal. One thing I did find impactful was gradually building the sound. In this case, this reflected on on the impact each action had on mankind. The louder the noise, the bigger risk it was to humans. In this case it went from the phone drop, the portal, the robot and then the thing that could actually kill mankind and the biggest noise, the explosion. This is a useful piece of practical work I could use in the future.

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Next I would like to learn more about how to create impactful Foley. Due to having a clear vision of what I wanted my robot to sound like, I did have a think about how to create these sounds from home however I had no idea where to start. When looking at sounds for my robot, I was looking at descriptions and saw some of the effects I used were created by things such as balloons. This makes me want to learn more about the objects I have around my home which could create good effects.

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GROUP FEEDBACK

 

When showing people my film the main things that came back positively we're my shot choices. I was told that they believed the range of different angles and choices of shots kept them intrigued and interested, always seeing a new part of the story and therefore environment. I was also complimented on the look my portal, looking as though it did belong in the environment I put it in.

 

The main criticism I got was of the robot tech. I need to work on the animations of the robot as they look very unrealistic when walking and in one scene the textures are fuzzy which I had realised when doing audio. I agree with these points, I was told the only thing not creating realism was the robot, particularly the robot in the last two shots of my film when it is walking away from the camera. 

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OVERALL

 

Looking back on this project I am most proud of my visuals. I most enjoy working in after effects to create visuals like the portal so was very excited to get into this. One of the feedback points I have had before is on the environment where my effects are taking place, therefore I was excited to experiment with this this time round, and I was extremely happy with the progress from some of my past visuals I have done. This time I feel as though my effects belong in my scene. I was also quite happy with the wide range of shot choices and smoothness of my film.

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I do wish however I had more time to explore Maya. I feel my biggest point of improvement here is my animations in Maya. They feel very choppy and at points too smooth. I feel if I could have spent more time learning how to rig my model this would have been the biggest help as the rig was too human-like and didn't bend properly at the knees on the leg. I feel this would have given a better aesthetic and feel to my robot. I also would have liked more time to work on my explosion as I think I could have blended in the fire better, therefore making the environment more friendly. 

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The main areas I want to develop and focus on for my FMP is the visual effects in After effects and also my camera work and shot choices when filming. The biggest area I want to learn further is the VFX side, as this is the part I am most excited about. I plan to create a lot of visuals in my FMP as I want to create a battle, superhero power full FMP. I want to work on camera skills also as this would improve the quality of my film, and give me higher skilled camera shots and therefore improve and make my film more impressive.

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