This week there was not a lot of progress since our team didn't meet until later in the week, however, in that time I spent watching films and gathering reference. This may seem weird to say but I actually hat watching movies. I fall asleep withing the first 10 minutes and the pacing just always felt way too fast. But, if you give me 10 seasons with each episode being 45 minutes to and hour long and I will know ever detail there is to know about that show. I have watched the Pahntom of the Opera probably over 20 times and I seriously could not tell you the plot of that film. I know there a phantom whose like, ugly and a girl. That's all the information I could provide.
In other words, I had to remind myself what a film was. That informs everything else. Maybe not directly, but for example, I am well aware of the "3D graphics" style camera. Grab a camera, and attach it to a curve. Sometimes I wish we were taught how to do that because non-cinematographic people will abuse that. It looks terrible. We need to steal. Camera shots are made to be copied. Every shot has been done, but why don't you notice it other than a few stand-outs? Because they are well made.
I spent a lot of time over the break just trying to inform my eye to what a camera should look like. I also watched a vast variety of films. Seriously, I watched the Hannah Montanna movie (best movie of all time I dom't care if I am biased) but I also watched stuff like Across the Universe, and Talk to Me. Wildly different films, but I tried to take notes on what was similar. Let me tell you, that was difficult. My conclusions were hopefully will guide me to creating better cameras for our film.
On a different note, as a team we talked and figured out what our schedule is going to be like for the next two weeks. We have a standard set for the film and we are trying to make it as base level as possible without it looking like no effort was done. We have decided to only work on pumping out a cohesive film made with playblasts and using the same textures throughout. One thing that we realized needed to be consistant is lighting. Yes, I said we are doing playblasts, however we need indicators for time of day because that is significant to our film.
So here I have Aelma's HDRI she created and I have turned them into nore cohesive skys. I am still working on the night sky to match the others more. With these, It helped with my initial issue. I was originally just changing the sky domes actual lighting and then I realized that this sky is not very reminiscent of the time of day. I was trying to light the night scenes with what was the original file and wow that so obviously did not work.
These are not up to standard however they are quality enough to get through the screening so over break I could potentially work on getting them perfected. In action it works and that's all that matter right now.
Not GREAT but visually understandable.
Like I said earlier as a group we figured out our schedule and we have a deadline for December 10th for all the playblasted shots to be done. The lighting will be complete on this upcoming Monday so we can throw all of that in each scene and get those shots "rendered!" We are going to be moving fast but it'll be the same thing for a while. Next blog will probably be a lot of the same.
That's all!
JR
