Week 10 - Strategizing

Having a long break due to the UAE National Day celebrations was very helpful in providing some safe space to get work done! Yes, I was able to use this time very well to get things done according to my workflow schedules. The week had been productive with major ups and downs, but still progressive.

In this journal, I will be discussing quite a few things! I will discuss the importance of camera work in my shots, my various strategy plans, project progress and the collaborators I had to deal with. I will try to keep this as concise as possible since a lot has happened and it all needs to be documented here.

Camera

Camera angles are very important in every animation shot because not only does it frame the elements into a composition but also tells a story through its unique camera movements. In the case of Paradise, the camera work is even more important because the characters don’t communicate through dialogue but through gestures and expressions. Each shot should convey the desired effect. Moreover, due to this being a narrative music video, the impact of each shot holds more significance.

I have added this as a pointer to the Quality Assurance Checklist because I found it to be an important aspect in adding value to the MV. Below are the methodology and execution.

Methodology:

Low Angle Shots: Low angle shots are mainly used to convey power by making the subject look strong and tall. But depending on the subject, that power can be a good or a bad thing (Studiobinder, 2020).

Shot 8 - Officer offering handshake

As seen in this shot above, the police officer looks powerful due to the use of low angle. However, his gesture is gentle. The reason for this angle is to demonstrate how much power an officer holds and how that power has been misused in society. Since Paradise is a fake version of reality, his gentle gesture is something that cause conflict in the viewer's mind.

Over the shoulder Shots: These shots provide perspective and dynamism to the shot in relation to the characters in the scene (NFI, n.d.). Despite not having any “clear” rules, it is essential that the camera is positioned to the eyeline of the character in focus. Raising it to a higher angle for intimidating purposes makes the shot more compelling or using low angle to show power can also be achieved (Hellerman, 2019).

Shot 9 - Miles Hesitant

We see an OTS shot of Miles from the perspective of the officer. Looking down on him is synonymous to the high angle camera shot. This makes Miles look small and vulnerable to the officer's power.

Execution:

In the first act we see a lot of low angle shots on the police officer to exude an image of power, contrasted with high angle shots on Miles to make him feel “small”. After the handshake, they are on the same page with things which is when the angles become more linear.

Shot 10 - Handshake!

The shot above is one of my favorites from the first ACT. The camera motion makes the storytelling aspect quite compelling because it orbits slightly as it settles down into a low angle shot where we see Miles smiling quite comfortably. This is the part in the story where they form an alliance together, hence is the end to ACT 1.

With that, I am done with ACT 1. Woohoo!!!

Strategy Plans!!!

Planning after planning after planning, there has been non-stop planning in my head and on paper this week! Why? Read below.

A lot of aspects were quite challenging this week and lead me to overthinking about the worst case scenarios. However, since I have the habit of constantly preparing for these "worst case scenarios", I tend to come up with back up plans for backup plans. As mentioned in my previous journal, I prepared for a couple of plans to somewhat ease my mind into working. I tend to procrastinate when theres too much clutter in my head and I can't seem to find a way to work things out. So below are a few of these strategy plans that I wrote down in my notebook.

To sum it up, there are:

Render schedules
Workflow plans for Week 10, 11 and 12 (planning ahead, that probably won't work - see on the right)
Daily schedules based on the current status in the morning and from the previous night
Things to keep ready for an upcoming meeting with Bing (that didn't happen because of the holiday)
Rough estimate with calculations on how long each shot would take to render

Yeah, my brain thinks a lot! This is only 10 percent of the stuff that goes on in there!

Project Progress

Shot 23 - TVs

Here are some rendered tests of the shot 23 from ACT 3. I jumped straight into ACT 3 because some of the shots seemed to be easily doable. I wanted to strategize an approach wherein I can finish all the easy shots first and then worry about the difficult ones. I can't work the other way round because it leads me to procrastinating A LOT!

I quickly got the approvals for these as Bing really liked it. The animation on this shot just involves a slight pan up from Mile's perspective. An important pointer I needed to note down about the progression of the TV shots was how the build-up can have a stylistic impact as well as improve the technicalities of my workflow. To explain further, below are some points I took note of.

Stylistically, I think having the first shot (shot 23) with Blue screens followed by some glitchy effects on Shot 24, creates a sort of mystery and suspense as to what's happening in the story. Then, when we see Miles "boxed in" a room full of TVs. Having the TV's with various types of media such as Calibration glitch bars, blue and green screens, news footage, black lives matter footage would really help to tell the story further.

OMELAS Shot

These are some rendered test shots of the OMELAS scene. I implemented the feedback from some weeks ago on this which Dalia wasn't able to do. To see the feedback in relation to this shot, you can refer to the first image under Strategy Plans or head to this link from my previous journal.

Personally, I really enjoyed working on this shot. It was the most fun in terms of aestheticism in modeling and texturing. I am also pretty happy with how this looks. Bing also agrees.

As I was working on the file, I came across a lot of issues by Dalia. The light intensity was over 500, which isn't good. The multiplier was really high on the other lights too and most of the objects were floating. I had to clean up the file to ensure the scene is optimized. I even did a light flicker on the PARADISE sign and added Object ID to all the elements for better control in Post.

I will also be using a snow and galaxy star twinkling overlay in After Effects later in Post. Here are the videos I will be using (just saving it here for future).

(GR media, 2019)

(Jurassic Films, 2019)

(AllDesignCreative, 2017)

Finally, here are the comparisons and changes evident from last time.

Shots 11 and 12 from ACT 2

Below are two renders from Shot 11 and 12 respectively. I really like how the sky and lighting look in these. I put a lot of effort into the aesthetic of these shots because the second ACT should visually look powerful and beautiful.

The act of the officer covering the "LOUDER" logo on the jacket can also symbolize how the need for rioting is not needed anymore because of this "perfect Paradise".

Shot 11 preview

I'm still working on Shot 12 because I need to fix up the collaborators' work in another file before importing into the main scene file. Some of the characters weren't textured so i had to do that as well. I even posed them in the other file and will export them as an FBX into the main file so as to avoid any complications. Below is a render of the textures i did for two characters and their poses.

COLLABORATORS!!!

Honestly, the collaborators didn't help as much as I expected from them. In fact, they made things a lot more difficult for me. I understand the reason for their delays due to their studio workload but this "understanding" nature of mine lead to my own downfall. Also, since they didn't have much at stake due to this just being a collaboration, it was evident that effort wasn't put into this. That's just sad!

I requested them to send the files over to me even if the feedback I sent to them wasn't properly implemented. I developed a mindset wherein I'll do all the changes myself. So, I factored that into my schedule.

The animations sent to me by Shibani wasn't upto the mark as well and it disappointed me, although I told her that they were good. The car model done by Douglas was good and I was able to use it in my scene. The scene set up by Zachary wasn't in line with my vision but I requested the file to be sent over so that I can continue working on it. The lighting and texturing on the Room design done by Salma was pretty good though, but I'd probably change up a couple of textures according to my liking later.

Below are my evidences of communication with them, once again acting the role of a Production coordinator and Producer.

Lastly, the collaborator who raised my hopes last week about helping me the the TY flow simulation also backed out. That got me overwhelmed. But I was dealing with too much at the time so I decided to keep that pending till after the trimester, in hopes that my application for extension is approved.

Project Management

The gantt chart as of date.

Hence, this is pretty much how my week went. I'm starting to see myself getting lot more progressive with my work and that's a great thing. I'm hoping to continue this for the upcoming weeks and get things done as well as I can. Until next week...

References:

AllDesignCreative (2017, Nov 18). Night Sky Stars Falling Animated Video Background [stock footage]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg_zhVD1f_k

GR Media. (2019, Mar 15). Free Snow Overlay 4K 60FPS Stock Footage - Download In Description [stock footage]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO0l8FkMpSQ

Jurassic Films (2019, Dec 23). Snow overlay free footage [stock footage}. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggXBtl8Tj58

Hellerman, J. (2019, Jun 26). What Is An Over the Shoulder Shot (OTS) & How Do You Use It? Retrieved from https://nofilmschool.com/over-the-shoulder-shot-examples-definition

NFI (n.d.) OVER THE SHOULDER SHOT. Retrieved from https://www.nfi.edu/over-the-shoulder-shot/

Studiobinder (2020, Jan 16). Low Angle Shot: Creative Examples of Camera Movements &

Angles. Retrieved from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/low-angle-shot-camera-movement-angle/#low-angle-shot-effect

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