The Red or Dead project is now over and I'm rather behind on all the updates. It's gone through MANY stages and the story has somewhat changed.
The filming aspect has now been completed. However it took 3 shoots to arrive at our final footage.
We had planned to film the entire story on greenscreen and then later composited our animations designed by the lovely Sophie, Alice, Luke and Lee ontop of it. However as soon as the 1st shoot was completed, we realised we had a problem.
SHOOT 1:
For the first shoot we used a pre-viz of the shots to be taken that was inspired by our original storyboard designed by Luke and myself. It was made in Maya and I definatly reccommend its use when planning a live shoot. When directing the actors/ camera I found having a visual reference of the exact shot and movement I wanted extremely helpful. (Below are a few rough stills).
However when filming, we struggled with lighting the greenscreen enough to get a good key and when the footage was eventually edited together, although it looked good in a storyboard, it didn't flow right in terms of the style we wanted within the time allowed (1 minute). Plus...I think...as a Director...I underestimated the amount of roto/ keying and work that we would have to do to enable the animation patterns to be incorporated. So simply. The idea had to be completly reworked.
To explain what I mean...here's our terrible shoot which includes some pre-viz shots that weren't taken at the time. Some of the shots won't make sense as a room is needed to establish angles and perspective. It's not a great edit as it was obvious from the go that the concept wouldn't work.
I would like to thank Alice, Sophie, Brian and Luke who were helping shoot and light on the day for all their patience. It was a rather stressful day. But things got better.
So, overnight as to not waste time or worry the group (as we had little time left to film and animate) I reworked the idea.
It begins with the girl (Princess) trapped in a room where we, as an audience, would not know why. She would see a door close and try to escape...but to no avail. As she bangs on the door, the patterns would emerge and it would be in these patterns that the Persian imagery and bike would appear. The girl would then walk into the patterns where we would she her riding the bike and become the final ‘wow’ image for Red or Dead like initially planned.
Because of the problems regarding the first shoot, I decided to change the location of from a studio (white sanatorium), to a real life warehouse building at an abandoned boat workshop. The building and room itself was so cold and dreary, that it was perfect for the new concept and would help the actors ‘get into character’. With Brian's technical advice, we also limited the amount of greenscreen that would be used and instead decided to track the animated footage onto the walls.
SHOOT 2
Thankfully the group were really supportive of the new idea and the shoot went amazingly well. All the footage was correctly lit and shot to how the storyboard went and no extra shots were added or needed. I assisted Brian (who was lead Camera Man) with shooting as well as lighting and green screening.
Luke was a real trooper and helped on all the aspects of the filming process and recorded the continuity of the shoot.
I cut the footage the same night and the following day, Insa Burch helped me re-edit to make the footage more snappy. Thanks for that Ins.
Here's the new edit. Minus of course any form of colour correction/ VFX/ Sound. It's a rough template for the composited patterns from the Pre-Prod guys.
SHOOT 3
We decided to change the scene where Kate (our model) actually pulls the bike from the wall as it didn't flow right. So we instead shot her already riding the bike infront of greenscreen. Luckily she was nice enough to come into the studio so that we could get a good enough key with all the lighting equipment available.We then planned to comp the footage (minus the green) onto the wall for the final shot. So when the camera pans out she'll be seen riding the bike with all the patterns surrounding her.
Below is the last shot which was given to Christian Smith (a late comer to the group) to key out all the greenscreen. A link is attached to his name if you wish to see his work.
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