Outside the show.
Inside the show
At the private show.
Archive for the 'Portfolio' Category
The final year 3d project was something I had been looking forward to for the previous three years of my university course. It was the project which generated the movies which were shown to promote the course to all newcomers and I remember being pretty impressed with the ones I saw when I was just starting.
Using 3d Studio Max as the primary creation tool, the expresso short uses a composite of two different rendering techniques to achieve the cartoony feel of the character, yet still based in the (relatively) realistic setting of a coffee shop. The background scene contained over 1,000,000 polygons in over 5,000 objects, and was a true test of my computer…which wasn’t really powerful enough, it ended up being a true test of only working on one or two objects at a time.
The character took heavy inspiration from Blur’s Coffee & TV video, looking back, perhaps too much. The character animation was done using original motion capture data from the talent of Fiona Cosgrove and is certainly one of the crucial factors for determining the feel of the movie. The process of adding the motion capture data to the biped bone structure for the cup was long and time-consuming, as typically about half of the movements needed to be manually corrected to avoid problems with the skin clipping itself (usually the arms going inside of the body), this had to be fixed very carefully so as not to make the movement look unrealistic.
The project took 5 weeks from conception to hand-in, two weeks of that time was taken up by rendering the video. At the time I was very un-sure as to whether it was going to be ready in time. I setup a small render-farm in my flat utilising the other three computers owned by my house mates, the combined power was about 6GHz and 4Gb RAM. First the background scenes had to be rendered to a set of tiffs (for improved quality) using the default 3dsmax renderer, then the animation renderer was used to create another set showing only the character(s). The shots in which the character interacts with the cocktail umbrella were probably the most challenging, as they required three layers for the composite and a keen eye to make sure there were no arrangement errors (ie. The umbrella appearing to be above the character when it should be behind).
Finally the scenes were composited and the video sequenced to music…enjoy!
This was the first of the three week movies given to us in the second year of my degree. Why is it called a three week movie? because we only had three weeks to plan, shoot and edit them. If memory serves, the brief was completely open…just create a 5 minute movie about anything. We spent AGES (at least a third of the overall time) in a little room on the top floor of one of the technology towers (less impressive than they sound) thrashing out what the movie would be about, what would theme it and what kind of music should accompany it.
I cant actually remember how, most likely it was the least hated theme in the group. But we settled on using a £10 note as the theme…as we could really make a movie about anything then, since all it had to do was contain a tenner. The plot then thickened into a day-in-the-life of a tenner, and finally about how it could be used for good or evil and the meaning behind money being reflective of the intent of the carrier.
After brainstorming, story-boarding and (on my part) being in various locations taking pictures of £10 notes in odd locations, I still cant remember why. We decided that we really wanted to take video of harmon house (pictured), a great mirrored building in central uxbridge. And it would be a good excuse to get up really early and take some dawn-video of the sun rising in the reflections of the mirrored glass. Loosely tied to the prefix of the beginning the day of the subject of the video. As you may be starting to guess (if you haven’t already seen the video) this was created in a shot-centric manner (we made the movie fit around the shots we wanted to take, rather than any storyline). But hey! It was the first time we were let loose with a whole load of really expensive cameras and equipment..of course we will go a little wild…
One of the background stories during the filming of the video, was that the preliminary shots of Harmon House were taken on the day that the US invaded iraq. So me turning up, in a battered, old volvo, at 4am taking photos of the building, wearing sunglasses and leather gloves, then driving away at speed as I had forgotten to bring the tape to film on, kinda spooked the security guards. When we returned to film a few hours later and setup two large cameras with tripods (on public property). The security came out and told us we couldn’t film here, once they were certain we weren’t going to combust anything, pah! As always the reason of ’security’ was actually a veil for the owners not wanting video of their building to be used for commercial purposes…fair enough, we just had to get a note telling them this. I seem to remember this wasn’t that hard, and that they didn’t even look at the note we produced…
The next in the list of shots we wanted to get was a bunch of trickshots in a bar…this was pretty good fun, the smoke was generated with many uninhaled cigerrettes which almost killed the star of the show as the trick shots didn’t always work, and each shot needed a fresh blast of smoke to make it look authentic. The most impressive shot was the full table pot, bouncing off the cushion…this probably took about 30 mins to get, probably upwards of 40 takes…I lost count after a while and just left the camera recording…It was only after we got the shot that we realised it made no sense, as the ball he was avoiding was the same colour as the one being potted…ah well!
Then to finish, the classic poker, liqueur and drugs shot. Where the star of the show sucks sherbert in through a rolled up £10. (bought from me in a mens room at uni, needless to say some of the other patrons were a little surprised to see two girls filming two guys passing small bags of white powder around in a toilet stall).
This project was a lot of fun, the result is somewhat humorous. The post production stage was the first time I had ever done any video editing, as well as the first time I had ever used premiere, I still think it didn’t come out badly, since we just had a bunch of random shots to glue together with video of shoes walking.
In final days before the project was due to be handed in we came up with the title, every student needs to make a crazy movie with a latin title we thought…we chose In Metum Argentum (what we thought meant ‘the love of money’, I never bothered checking at the time but a quick glance at an online latin dictionary suggests it actually means, ‘the fear of money’…not all that dissimilar, really).