The first Production Log for 2016! As we usher in the month of February, I want to give you an update on how the film’s progress is coming along. Since there isn’t a huge reveal like I’ve had in the past like the movie poster or the preview trailer, I thought it be cool to do snippets of the many facets that are still in production. Whenever I had the chance to work on the film, these are the four things that I’ve been plugging away at and have achieved great results.
Color Correcting
Since I began splicing my shots together, I’ve always thought about how the film should “look”. I’ve tested this multiple times throughout the years but one thing that I needed to complete was basic color correcting. I’ve always color corrected my work in the past, but I wanted to take it to the next level by focusing on vector scopes to get the balance that I wanted. Once that was completed, I went into Magic Bullet Looks to play around with some finishing touches. I’ve successfully done this to all of our scenes that have been completed!
1st CC Pass – Original Shot – Final CC Pass = Gauntlet
Pixel Art Game Creation
In my script, I have a battle that takes place between one of our hero characters in a “game of purpose”. The original idea was to have the two characters duke it out in a complex CGI fight sequence that showcased fighting on top of a rooftop with a massive thunderstorm also taking place. Even though this would have been amazingly cool to see, I thought this sequence could be a tremendous opportunity to reiterate the time frame of when our story takes place (’87-’95). To achieve that was to create the fight sequence as an 8-bit arcade game.
I immediately began studying on how to do pixel art successfully. I’ve found some amazing techniques online and jumped into Photoshop to begin drawing. I just finished the designing phase which took over a span of four months. It’s incredibly time consuming to do pixel art correctly and the time invested is worth it. Now I’ll be able to animate the entire fight sequence in After Effects which will be very reminiscent to classic arcade games I grew up playing like Final Fight and Street Fighter. Stay tuned on this one for I’ll definitely feature this on my site when I have more to show.
8-bit Video Game Scene – Gauntlet
VFX Revisiting
I told myself not to do this when I began this project for I knew that the more I learned VFX techniques going forward, that I would feel inclined to go back and redo some of our previous shots. Yes you learn by doing and I’m cool with that, but I can’t and shouldn’t do it EVERY time or else the film will never get finished.
Alas I couldn’t help myself so I decided to take a look at some of my early passes of doing VFX work and chose a few to “update”. The one I have displayed is ironically my first VFX session I did for the film; a villain teleporting into the scene. You can see in the example that at first, I attempted in created a TV distortion and glitching effect to signify that something was coming. I felt that I could have done a better job in creating what would eventually be the portal starting to form. That’s what you see in the second still frame, which is a much improved shot to convey what I wanted in the first place.
Another perk in taking my time in creating this film is that more software becomes available that helps me to not only achieve my vision, but also become more tangible for me to complete that said vision. When I began back in 2012, I didn’t have the tools or the know-how to complete some of the VFX shots. Now thanks to the progressing of technology, I’m becoming more successful in achieving my vision with the use of VFX.
Before/After VFX work on the same shot – Gauntlet
3D Modeling and Compositing
As you’ve seen in my recent blogs, I’ve been going strong at 3D modeling in Maya. I’m still learning the best practices in creating these assets and by learning, I mean doing. I’ve embarked on two out of the five 3D sets back in 2015 and I’ve begun to composite shot footage with my 3D sets! I am by no means close to completing this task because I want it to be believable and great to the best of my ability. The hurdles that I’m currently facing are the best practices of creating 3D environments, linear workflow which deals with color management and finally delivering my work to compositing software programs like Photoshop and After Effects. It’s always healthy to get your feet wet to see what you have to work on to improve and that’s just what I’ve been doing these past nine months. I’m hoping by summer to complete my deep studying phase and move forward to just creating and compositing our shots.
In closing, you can see I’ve been diligently working away since my last Production Log post. On top of all the things I mentioned above, you can see that in my featured and background picture that I’ve been also doing some new VFX shots to our scenes. I’m hoping that I can continue to do more VFX shots before summer so that I can get most of the scenes mixed with audio. As we usher into yet another year of working on my film, I’m really excited to see what I can accomplish in these next twelve months. As always, stay tuned!
“I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today’s movies. They believe everything and they’re hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.”
– Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Momento, Inception)
