Graduation Film Self-Assessment.

Graduation Film Self-Assessment.

 

I feel that I have been overall successful in my role as VFX artist. There have been a few moments through out the year which have wavered my patience but I feel that despite all the hiccups and the lack of communication on both parties I have presented a solid product that I feel proud off (apart from the apocalyptic shot at the end of the film but I shall go into more detail about that later). I have only been teaching myself after effects and all the sundry programs associated with it for a year and a half now and I feel that, although the work presented is not of expert quality, it is certainly good for someone of my skill level.

 

To start of chronologically with pre production, my input, although lacking on edmodo, has been in my opinion satisfactory, comparative to my role. I feel that everyone was always informed of what I could realistically achieve with my skills and every time something came up in a discussion I would always be able to answer the question in an effort to pull back to earth the expectations of the team.  I do However admit that I was never really opinionated or vocal enough on my thoughts on the story, design or management of the film when it came to things that did not directly effect my role as I felt that in a professional environment it would not have been my place to question any of these things but I now realise that I probably should have had more of a presence on the production.

 

Despite this though I did take it upon myself to quickly mock up a design of a Grey Man from the production design drawings as I felt that they did not convey clearly enough the design of the film. It was originally intended to be a quick illustration of how I interpreted the designs and was initially only intended to be sent to Chris so he could check to see if that was along the right lines however, the photo became the main design of the zombies and ended up being what they showed to the makeup design as a reference (a fact that only became clear on set and if had been made clearer before hand would have been redone a lot more professionally). Another part of my input to the production design was that I remember early on I mentioned we should get contact lenses for the Grey Men so that it would be easier in post to change the eyes as they would be easier to track. But it transpired that to use contact lenses you have to have someone that is professionally trained to use them on set.

 

I also did two Visual Effects tests, the first was to see if I could change the skin texture of the faces while they were moving. Although I feel that this was mostly successful, it was never introduced into the film as I decided that it would be far to time consuming to rotoscope the mask of every Gray Man in the film and change the skin texture so it was dropped but the technique of tracking the face carried through to the next test.

 

The Next test was the first to be based of off my design of the zombie and featured both the veins running up the side of the face and the change of the eyes. I used black gaffer tape as tracking points so I could see the absolute minimum definition I would need for them and I then used these to track the veins onto the face. I feel this did not look right as the veins moved as if they were stuck to one point and not as if they were under the skin so I went back to the drawing board and invented a new way on mapping compositions to a face so individual points moved and stretched with different parts of the skull.

 

When it came to the actual production I feel that this was my downfall. Although it was only necessary for me to be there for two shots, the green screen and the veins, and I attended both of the days that those shots were meant to be shot on, because of difficulties on shoot I was not present for either of those shots although I did make sure I taught the make up artist how to make the tracking points and there would have been nothing much more I could have done for the green screen other than got rid of the wrinkles and have made sure that it was evenly lit (which would have been impossible as they had to shoot it outside). For most of my time on set I tried to be as useful as I could but there was little more to do than that of a runner so I decided that it was a waste of money for me to be there.

 

When it came to post however it was a different story. I had requested a paper edit in both pre and production meetings but after that was never put together I had to wait until the first rough cut had been assembled (which took a lot longer than it should have) before I knew which shots they were using.  After the rough edit had been assembled I went in to get the shots that I was going to edit and then asked Dinesh to export them from avid. I then spent the next week editing them only to realise that they were compressed versions of the files when I blew them up onto the big screen and thus useless so with 5 days left to the deadline I had to start again and asked Dinesh to re-export them as uncompressed files.

 

I managed to complete the effects I was asked to do but the cost of the lost week had been the quality of the visuals in my opinion, In all honesty I feel that I could have created, with a bit more time, something that looked far superior to the end product. For example I do not like the final shot of the green screen for many reasons such as the fact that is was done in one day and that, even though I followed the direction from Chris after trying to convince him otherwise, I feel that it does not suit the story. I feel that the film should have ended with a fade to white as she opens the tunnel door as this is a logical end but after I mentioned this to Chris and the entire crew (admitting that I don’t like the shot myself) he still decided that he wanted it in.

 

All in all I feel that I could have done more towards this project other than my allotted role. I could have been more vocal on my opinions of the story such as I always thought, and only mentioned once, that making the mother the bitten party and the father the one that has to look after the baby would have added both more character development on his part and more jeopardy to the story. I could have also been more involved in the production side and offered to do more in terms of general contacts and such. Despite this though I do think that if I had been professionally involved on the project in the capacity that I was graded for, it certainly wouldn’t have been my place to comment on such things. I feel that I fulfilled my role to a high quality degree considered the setbacks and obstacles endured and although I wasn’t as involved as I could have been I do believe I went beyond the call of duty when it came to my role.