BSA227 W2 : Photoshop, Proposal and VFX History

July 17, 2019

BSA227 W2 : Photoshop, Proposal and VFX History

We have to prepare a proposal for our project, this is worth 10% of the overall paper.

This is going to be a professionally presented document themed around the project idea, it must include:

- Title Page: Something that also advertises the idea, with the usual name and title accompaniment.

- Contents Page

- Written Analysis: Outline of the project (succinct).

- Story, genre, target audience, treatment and logline.

The story is a parody of fantasy role-play in the modern day, where character have magic abilities and the world is populated by wizards and magical charms - the subversion: in my story those things have real consequences in the world, fire balls burn your hands and magical charms are more likely to eliminate social anxiety than grant you any higher status in the world.

The genre is comedy.

My target audience is that ungrateful young generation to which I belong.

Logline: A man's brother dies in a house fire, he becomes an advocate for fire safety but everything changes when he finds out his brother's death might not have been an accident.

- Provide production pipeline/workflow and plan of the project. List
techniques, materials and software needed to achieve this content.

I will come up with a schedule that I wish to follow, if I am working with Craig or someone else I will divvy up the responsibilities.

The materials, software and techniques will be covered in the character layouts or the specific VFX shot breakdowns I think - maybe, I have to look at Ruby's exemplar proposal.

- Identify relevant existing contemporary works which have influenced you and why. What techniques, materials, software did they use to achieve their content and how?

So far the only one is really Luke and Rory's from a couple of years ago for this same paper, so I need to find some other ones to use as inspiration. Essentially I am making a parody of one very specific thing I saw one time, but that can't be all there is - I am sure it's just the cap of a very large ice berg. Has to be.

Of course they used the same materials and software I have access to, hence how I know this'll work, would be nice to do a better job than them but not too fussed on that side of things to be perfectly honest. A lot of the visual effects things present in my script come from the different techniques that we learned in class last year - like the building being destroyed or the magic power stuff on their hands.

Guess I could just include examples of what I mean depending on each visual effect I cover, like how the twins have been done a lot in movies like Adaptation (2002) or the clones in Moon (2009).

I have seen a lot of ghost things on Youtube and think about finding a good one I like and using that as a contemporary example.

- Visual Development: To back up the written content you must provide visuals which show the desired look and feel of the project.

▪ Provide a mood board to reflect the desired genre, style, and colour scheme. This can be made up from existing material and own images.

I like mood boards, but weird thing is that I haven't actually thought much about style or tone, the project is quite visually flat in my mind. This would be cool to decide on, I think I've avoided it because I don't want to make more trouble for myself when it comes to the VFX compositing.

▪ Character pages with their final looks and brief, relevant bios. Can be drawings or photos depending on your project.

Would be good to have photos of cast with costumes, forces me to get that stuff sorted before Week 6 and before the week of shooting.

▪ Settings page with images of what the world looks like and where the story is set. Can be drawings or photos depending on your project.

Probably just location photos for me, I can even decide on the set design I want.

▪ One piece of final concept art in the desired finished look of the story in HDTV format.

So like a test fire hand or something I guess.

VFX Storyboards: Your story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. All storyboards must be properly annotated with each element in the shot broken down and organised. Be considering the best composition, camera work, and shot grammar for the story. Drawings must be legible and make sense.

I have done some simple storyboards, I would prefer to do them more refined and interpret what is in my head a bit more clearly, at the same time I am now working on an animatic so slowly getting there.
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Ruby read my script and gave me some feedback:

- Find cast: this would be very helpful going forward for the person I'm pitching to to be able to visualize and better connect to the characters, having actors will also help me a lot in taking another weight of my shoulders. Ruby did get a bit confused with the twin brothers in the script, which is fair enough, and I will just have to ensure that they are in some way distinct in the final product.

- Think about locations (not too much SIT): People outside SIT wouldn't necessarily know that the film was filmed here, but all of us would and that takes away from it a bit. I have already decided on most locations, only really lacking like the coroner's office, in my mind I blocked out in those locations so I am pretty sure I'll use them. One of them was in the fishbowl and hallway next to it though, so maybe I should start looking for a different location.

- Costuming and props is important: Because there is quite a lot of it in the script, need to get that shit sorted.

- Careful with VFX shots: We tend to improv a bit on set, just be careful when it comes to VFX shots. These need to be handled with care! Otherwise it'll be a nightmare.

- Animatic plz: She would love to see an animatic, it's quite long of a script and it would be nice to see how it works in real time. I am busy with that and showed her a bit of what I did, but its not much. My goal for next week is to get this animatic done already, I wanted to do much more by now but I've been busy and am really bad at animatics. I hope if this animatic works that I can start doing it for all future projects, in my mind it seems like it will be a very useful tool.
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We played around with photoshop:

I created this masterpiece, most editing was in adding sixth finger and making the hand the same skin colour as the auteur over here. The face tattoo was very easy, just warped the text a bit and changed opacity, the fire is a PNG so really just needed adding - most manipulation here was making it fit between the fingers (behind one, in front of the other).

I think this was just to learn layers and naming and stuff, a lot of this is the same in after effects.

Ruby also recommended this site for tutorials and stuff:

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/

How to blend photos like a movie poster in Photoshop

How to blend photos like a movie poster in Photoshop

I copied the tutorial they provided for this, which seemed very straight forward, I decided to leave out the old timey colour scheme.

IMO this should be the cover for the cheap pirated version of Devil that people sell on the street corner.

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Intro to Motion Graphics and Compositing (The History):

We went through a powerpoint from 1998 of this in class.

Glossary:

žMotion Graphics

•Any graphic which has been animation in any way

žSpecial Effects

•Usually used to refer to effects done during filming such as pyrotechnics/ rain/ wind/ flying rigs etc etc etc

žVisual Effects

•Usually used to refer to Computer enhanced imagery which is added in post production

žCompositing

•The digital manipulated combination of at least two source images to produce an integrated result

Early Examples:

žThe Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots

•1895