Synoptic project overview

Synoptic project overview

Once the pitches had been chosen i moved from group 2 to group 3 to join up with

a team who were made up of people all experience with VFX while in my original group

I was the only person in the class going into VFX as my specialism.

First I joined up with my new team and after an introduction,
we started the planning stages of the project first of we spent a few weeks working out
what we wanted to film and what effects we would be doing what for the project.
We started to improve and edit the narrative as we went along.
After some deciding we put together a script and made a recording plan.

For recording, we planned out and recorded by location the shots in college
we got first started with the “lab scene” Which was shot in one of the nextgen
rooms after everyone had left we were using the DSLR from media and our selves
as actors.

We also had to film the Bridges which came with its own challenges
as we had to work around people who were shopping so we had to be unobstructed
as well as trying to get as much footage as we could when no one was in the shot
we had the plan to try and remove people in the background but without a tripod to
steady the camera we found we would require a large amount of work to do so, in the end,
we just cut the footage to use what we could without people in it.

Once we had all of our footage we began planning who to delegate what to
and I ended up mostly doing matt painting for my parts. My one was the lab scene
which my first idea was to make it look like a science lab so I placed charts and graphs
onto the monitors to make it look more science like. I made an animated map to go on
screen to match the meteor strike zones to signal what was going on is worldwide.

Later on, I added microscopes using element 3d to finish off the scene I also added
artificial shadows to all of them this makes them blend into the scene more.

Also, we recorded this scene a second as the original footage was too shaky and some
problems with the light made tracking hard so we just re-recorded it to solve it.

The next parts were matt paint the bridges both the over road tunnel and the
staircase which both had 1 thing in common tracking which caused more problems
than it had any right to if I could go back in time I would tell myself to take a Tripod
and solve most of the issues.

On the stairs, I added an exit sign above a shop sign to remove it and
I added an overturned shopping trolley to signal people left in a hurry both required tracking.
The exit sign wasn’t too bad as I was overlaying it on a square sign I could track a square onto it to overlay it without much problem. The trolley took multiple attempts however I
managed to get a track via mocha working. The briefcase poster was the hardest
as the wall it was on was rigid with no high contrast points or natural markers
I could use as a tracking marker after going through almost every possibility I moved
it to a different wall which was bricks so I had many potential options and settle on that
as it kept it still.

On the Tunnel I originaly just used a keylight to put the dust cloud in however
this looked a bit opaque and didn’t seem as thick as I wanted so I masked it behind
some buildings in the background, this took quite a bit of time to do as I had to track
every mask on the scene before I added the dust I tried adding building in but I didn't
think it looked as good, however as I set the makeup on the main layer it means I can
replace what's behind the buildings quickly and easy.

Another minor scene I worked on was the scene at the bottom of the college
stairs in that I fully removed the radiator from the background to make it plainer to do
this I took the first frame without charlie into photoshop  where I removed the radiator
itself then I took the image back to after effects and used that as the background and
rotoscoped charlie out of the other footage and in front of the
radiator image to composite the scene.

By the time the MVP hit we didn’t have all the effects done but that was expected as
we had to take time to record the footage but everything was on track and ready. Currently,
we are in the final part of the project and improving some scenes based on feedback we
have received I am working on my improvements as are other group members.

The Teamwork Has Been Great overall for the entire project we have been working
together providing feedback when needed and working together on certain scenes.
This gave us a wider range of ideas.