thirdyearfinalmajor

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Colour Correcting / Grading

So the dreaded time has come...Time to colour match all my shots...

Here are all the shots in my piece. 

Here is the outcome of grading them. I feel like on here it looks alright

However, I am not a fan of how it looks in the video. I feel like the colour is too vibrant int he jumpers compared to the background.

I kinda like this look for this shot

but not this. I feel as if this is well to saturated on the dancer but not enough in the background. 

I showed this to the lecturers and they all really like it...

BUT I can see so many issues with it. Where this look is created with tons of hue corrects it has basically ripped the footage apart. Here are some of them.

In the photo below, his face is extremely pink!! And the background looks dull and sad.

Plus you can see here on the hand, the dancers natural colour next to the sleeve. This is how pink his skin has turned. I could rotoscope round his jumper, but I really don't have time for that.

Here is another example of where it doesn’t look great. The whole background looks well to washed out and grey for my liking. 

I dropped Paul and message and asked if he could see the issues as well

I also messaged Mario for his advice.

I went off from Paul’s advice and cleaned up the shots but with lots of contrast and asked Mario which row he prefered.

I then sent him this:

then I sent over this.

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Deadline Crunch time + Mini Conclusion

It is now Wednesday 15th May and the deadline is on Friday. Even though I am not where near where I wanted to be by now, I am not too stressed.

Here is what I have got so far:

As you may notice, there are a couple different shots from the last work in progress I posted in my last post. 

Before posting the previous WIP I took out my 2nd St Mary’s shot as I knew I had to spread my time across the rest of the project and not on that one shot. 

The biggest difference from this WIP and the previous one would be I took out the long alleyway shot that I gave to Mario to do. Both Mario and I have been in university constantly for the last 2 days trying to track it again. The parts I already painted out stuck okay (with a couple of keyframes) but nothing we did could get anything to stick to where the people were standing at the front. We don’t know why either. It should have been a nice shot to track as it has two walls either side to grab onto and simple movement. 

First, we tried to re-track in Nuke multiple times constantly changing different settings, then we got help from of the lectures but they did not know what is wrong with the shot. Mario then tried to manually corner pin track the door which we had to replace to take out the people - again that didn’t work. I then recommended for Mario to try and track it in PF Track and export the camera into Nuke. It tracked completely fine in PF Track, but when Mario brought the camera into Nuke (with help from Tom with Phyton stuff) it went wrong. The camera came into nuke the wrong way. Mario spent a couple of hours trying to turn it up and align it with the previous camera we created with the Nuke camera tracker. That worked, but the door still would not stick. At this point, it did not seem like we had time to do this shot. It was over 380 frames and it required full body rotoscope, which is all jumping and fast movements. I tried pulling a key on him so that roto would not be as bad but it picked up everything I wanted to clean up in the key.

Mario was getting really stressed about this Shot so I made the decision to take the shot out for his sanity. There is no point stressing him out for the 2 days for a shot that may not get finished in time. He said he may come back to the shot at a later date for a challenge. 

Another shot I have decided to take out is shot 014.

The reason behind is this because of the parallax and the rotoscoping involved in this shot. I have now done 2 shots like this, one which took over a week. I have 2 days to finish my project and make it something which I am proud of so For this shot I would have to replace the entire bottom half of the door as the man behind the dancer walks around all of it. This means rotoscoping the entire top half of the dancer and there is a lot of motion blur around the hands and head.

Mini Conclusion 

Even though I am gutted I have had to change my original video, I am happy that I will be able to hand in a full piece. I guess changing shots is just development sometimes these things happen to meet deadlines. 

This project has taught me so much its crazy. Like I actually know how long shots will take by looking at them now instead of just doing a random guess.

Even though I have had to take out some of my favourite shots, I am so happy with what I have done and that I decided to start with the shots I wanted to use for my showreel. 

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Plan update + Mario Collab

It’s the week of deadline and I still have a lot to do, but I feel pretty confident about what I have got so far.

Here is what I have. It is just a work in progress so some shots are not finished yet.

I have a couple more shots to clean up, but colour grading is pretty important so that is something which I must do beforehand in.

This shot is what I want the whole video to look like.

Once I have completed the cleanup shots, I will make sure to match all of my shots to this one. 

With one of my shots, I have actually decided to pass it along to Mario. I have been trying to complete shot 015 for a while now, but I am really struggling to do so. I have done most of the background clean up, but not the main one. I have the clean plate but I am stuck on getting to track properly and get the correct parallax. 

This is shot 015:

Due to my deadline being on Friday (It is not Sunday) I have to be careful where I spend my time. I know that this shot would take me all week and therefore would not have time to complete the other 2 shots I need to do + the grade, but Mario is completely finished with his FMP and needs a comp shot for his showreel. Also, MPC is big on projection mapping which he has not done a lot of in his showreel so it will be a win-win situation. I have also told Mario that this would be perfect as he could say he did this shot for a client who and only had a couple days to do it.  I can not express how thankful I am that Mario is willing to pick up this shot for me.

Here is what I have already done on this shot:

First thing I did was to tackle all the cars going past at the back. Here is what I am dealing with:

The first thing I did was to select a frame where there wasn't that many cars or people there so that I have something to clone. 

Then it was cloning to take everything away

I have gone over the side a bit to take into account the parallax and the way the camera moves. 

Bringing back the wall (This is rotoscoped at the end)

Next, I wanted to take out the girls sitting on the floor.

Just painted out what I could see and made the rest up

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 008

Here is shot 008, This shot will be used as my inspiration for grading the rest of the project. There is a man’s head which pops up so I will have to paint that out.

Tracking:

I feel like I got a pretty good track with this shot let alone how little points there are.

Undistort the footage

I have used the rotopaint node to paint out the head

Redistort the footage.

Adding grain. This is just the node added on. I need to go through the channels and match it up

Red Channel before

Red Channel afterward

Green Channel Before

Green Channel Afterward

Blue Channel Before

Blue Channel Afterward

Overall RGB

My Script:

Mario working hard on Shot 015

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 006

Here is Shot 006.

First Frame:

Last Frame:

Tracking: 

I am working with 4K footage, so having an Error of 2.19 is pretty good.

The Camera Set up:

I have to paint out the lady here. To do this I am going to mask out the other side of the sign and use it to cover the women.

Like so. I have done this by using a transform node

I then have to bring back the tree. There is no parallax between the tree and the wall as they are so close. Masking out tree

merging ontop of the clean plate

Here is the clean plate. 

I then need to bring back this pole

I only needed to mask out a tiny bit of the pole.

This is the outcome. 

Adding grain back onto the painted plates

This is what it looks like when the grain node is first added

Red Channel Before

Red Channel Afterward

Blue Channel Before

Blue Channel Afterward

Green Channel Before

Green Channel Afterwards

Here the final. I don't have to rotoscope anything of this shot.

My script: 

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 005

Thankfully I seem to moving through the last few shots pretty quickly so there is some hope to get a lot more of this project done then what I thought was possible.

Here is what shot 005 looks like:

I have to take 2 people away from the background however there is motion blur on the hands so that may be tricky to rotoscope out. 

I only really have to worry about one of the men in the background as the other does not go past my dancer at all. Another good thing about this shot is because there is not a lot of camera movement there is hardly any parallax so I can get away with simple cards and not separating the foreground elements such as the railings.

First thing first is to undistort the image and to choose a good frame to begin on. I have chosen this particular frame as it shows most of the pillars on the right-hand side. (Frame 507)

Masked out the section I need

Here is what it looks like on a certain frameHow, looks all clean

However, when you play it through a couple of frames everything is shown.

Next, I am going to select this frame and use the far right of the pillars and the railing to project onto the original footage

Again just masking out the bit I need to use

Here is what it looks like so far

Since there is no frame in this shot where the middle section of the door is clear, I am going to make it myself.

I have masked out the top section of the door and transformed it down to clean the middle section of the door

Here is how it looks. 

I have painted the edges to try and get it to blend it more.

The bottom of the door does not connect well with the floor so I will be using the same process as before to mask out and transform the left-hand side of the door.

Once again I have used the roto paint node to blend it into the door. I used the stretch tools to create the rusty effect going up. 

Masking out the section of the door I need

Here is the outcome

Here is what it looks like on another frame.

now I just need to rotoscope out the dancer to bring him back on top.

I am gonna try and keep out what I can and then roto what is left

Once again I have shuffled the Alpha Channel tog et the crisp RGB channel back.

I have masked out the two men in the parts that they appear.

Here is what it looks like

Then I have just rotoscope the rest on top.

Here is my final script:

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 004

At first, when I looked at this shot, it seems pretty basic, but as I am starting to look at it in further detail I feel it will be more challenging due to the fast circular camera movement. It might be hard for some of the cards to stick 

First thing I am going to tackle is the main section of the floor (This is already after I have tracked the footage)

My paint strokes

For the rest of the shot, I am going back to Shot 003 and using my clean version to use as a plate.

Positioned it to match up with the houses.

Grading it to blend with the floor

Now time to mask the dancer back over. Instead of rotoscoping, I am going to try and key out the jumper as it is pretty bright.

Used a key light to pull a key on his jumper - here is what it looks like in the alpha channel 

However, it looks horrible in the RGB channel so I am going have to fix that.

What I have done here is shuffled the alpha channel from the key light into the alpha channel of the original footage. I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE SHUFFLE NODE. I then premulted the footage.

I think it has done a really good job at masking him back in.

I think it looks pretty good so far. I will update a video in the new few blog posts of how everything is looking so far.

Here is my Nuke Script:

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 003

So know that I have got the St Mary’s Street in my showreel and have applied for the Framestore Internship, It is time to focus on actually making this a full project to hand in, not just a couple shots that are finished.

Here is what Shot 003 is:

For this shot, I am going to be using the clean plate from Shot 2 to paint out the one guy.

I am using the pillars from this.

The plates go over the dancer so I will need to mask him out

Using a keylight to pull a quick key on the jumper.

Not great in the RGB channel so will have to shuffle the alpha 

What I have done here is used a shuffle copy and replaced the alpha channel from the original footage with the alpha channel from the keylight. I have then premulted the footage. 

Then i masked out the part I needed to use. I did this because the key gave me too much of a harsh outline on the hood.

Rotoscoped out the rest that i needed

the outcome.

Here is my script:

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

General Update

So I have been lacking alot with my blog in this project. I have been far too stressed with the actual final product that I have no sat down and updated my blog for a while. So here is just an over view of how the project has gone so far. (1 month till deadline)

Overall, I have such mixed feelings about this project. I love the outcomes i am getting from the shots - but they are taking me forever to do. In the entire project I have 12 / 15 shots which need VFX - I am still working on my 3rd. As much as this dissapoints me - it is what i pitched to the tutors in the first week. I did not know how many shots I would have - so I though 3 would be a good number.

With this said, at this stage of university and the year, the project it’s self is kind of second hand. As long as i hand in a finished project, thats all that matters - whats important is getting the shots for my showreel done and getting a job! This is why i spoke to the tutors and agreed that if i am able to hand in around 30 seconds from my FMP then that is completly fine! It shows my skills and it could be an advert for instagram instead of a long one. 

Problems occured:

Thoughout the project so far, the only issue I have really had to deal with is time...I did not take into consideration how long rotoscoping motion blur would take and completly repainting the entire background. There is alot more work involved then anticipated. But thats okay, im pretty good at jumping back onto my feet and just keep going. There is no time to be worried about it!!!

What’s gone well so far?

I think the actual outcome of the shots i have done have come out pretty well. Like the tutors have told me that things get aired all the time with little mistakes - but unless you’re going frame by frame nobody can notice them, then its okay. 

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Going back to Shot 007

Starting to create my clean plate.

Looking through all my clean shots which I shoot, none of them works....In them, the camera was standing too far back on st mary’s street so the plotted tree’s are covering the information that I needed from the shops on the edges. 

I can’t do much for now as its chucking it down with rain, but I have made plans with Paul to get some new clean plates tomorrow.

In the meantime, I want to see what I can create with paint out.

From this shot, I think the left-hand side would be the easiest to paint out.

Tried to paint it out the best I could. It hard with not much information to work with! I had to make sure to paint out anything that moves at a different speed within the parallax in this shot - like the tree and the lamp post

Rotoscope out the part i wantted to use

Projecting it back on

I had to go online and find a photo of the logo of the fantasy bar and projected 

Colour Graded the sign

Started Rotoscoping the lamp post, the bench and the tree back in

What I have so far. Still got a lot of the tree to rotoscope out - but it's getting there. Once the tree is rotoscoped back in, the plain wall behind it, won't look so plain.

Bringing the table back. On my other paint out for this shot, the actually painted out the table, so I need to bring it back in. So I painted the top of the table out so I could blend it back into the clean plate.

Putting it on top of the wall clean plate

Adding the rotoscope on top.

One part is done! Next is the bit next door. This bit will hard because of the reflections.

Original

Paint Strokes

Clean 

Roto

What it looks like through the scanline render

Roto on top

The backwall here is somewhere which i think i am going to struggle with so i am going to tackle this next.

I can see a bit of the floor here so I will use this to create the rest of the floor.

Pretty happy with that outcome. The reason why i have not continued to paint out the side is because the selected frame was not the best for the side window - only the window which i am focusing on. I will repaint that on a frame where i can see the bottom of the window.

The paint out process:

I haven’t really demonstrated how I painted the other one out so I am gonna show you on the other side of the plate (Tesco side) how I managed to clean it without having a good clean plate to put on top.

Original:

Here are all the paint strokes that I used to clean the plate. You can see that I completely covered the people. I started to paint out the tree and lampost. But then I released that I am not gonna replace the top of Tesco, I am gonna fade into that. (Means I don't have to roto out the tree!)

The first thing is first, I want to create that connection between the wall I am gonna paint out and the floor. There was a tiny bit that I could see so I just blended it over.

Blended it more up to create that bottom half of the wall.

Continued with the bottom wall.

I then went to paint out the first window. To be honest, I don’t know why, my eye was just attached to it, so I just started with that. Once again just cloning the rgb values down. 

I have left the bottom out, as I need to look at how I am going to connect the window to the wall without looking too fake.

Painted out the door side, I tried to do the bottom of the window, but like i said it looks a bit fake.

Continued this process and cleaned up the bottom of the windows. 

Here is the outcome of my clean plate for this bit.

Bringing back the plant pot - still, need to roto out the tree. the reason why I have not cleaned up the post is that I am going to put another plate on top of that.

I am going to come back to rotoscoping the tree out. I want to try and clean up the rest of this side first. 

Next target: This will be hard because I don't have any floor details, I will have to make most of it up...

Using a tiny bit of floor I saw to spread it out

Bringing the floor up to cover the people’s legs

What I have done here is dragged the bottom of the floor from further back to create the floor for these buildings

Rotoscoping the A out from the sign

transforming it and merging it on top of the other sign

I have no idea what the test is meant to say so I am just painting it out.

Here is the outcome so far

Rotoscoping the bottom of the A to create the other side of it.

Rotoscoping this sign to replace on the other side

What I have done here is used my other clean plate from Tesco to duplicate one of the panels. I don’t have any reference for the cash point behind the lamp post so I am just replacing that.

Using roto paint to make it look more put together. + Painting out anything that has a different parallax.

Paint stokes

This section on my script.

The outcome. A very messy clean plate.

Rotoscoping the foreground elements back on top.

Looking at the rotoscope a hand goes past this part for like 4 frames

Using paint to frame by frame paint it out.

Done

Here is the result so far:

Overall, I am pretty happy with how it looks so far. I still need to rotoscope back the tree, but it is getting there! I also need to fix the shadow for that plant pot - but I will do that once all the people are out. 

I think the next thing which I am going to tackle is the people right at the back in the middle.

For this back wall, I am going to break it up once. The dancer pretty much stayed in the middle of the road, so there is no need to make up the wall what is never seen. 

Due to this, I have to choose a frame where the dancer is the furest to one side then the other. For the right, frame 1 would be the best choice to start on. Below is frame 1 and you can see how more windows are revealed and more pillars.

Also on this frame, I can see some details from the bottom of the windows. This is gonna help me cover the people and make it actually look like a window.

My paint lines

The outcome so far. 

I stopped here because I don’t really have any more information to make the rest of the window. So I am just going to use what I have already created to make the rest of the window. 

Masking out the side of the window which I think looks pretty good

Transforming it to the bottom. 

I have done this to get that nice blend of colour between the frame and the wall.

of course, I cannot leave it like it is. So I used the roto paint to create that nice sharp corner.

Here are paint strokes.

Once again I am going to use this side to recreate the other side.

Transformed it over and rotated to create the slant

Think it is coming along nicely.

Fixing shadow

Now that window is done, i am going to mask it out and use it to create the other windows.

Of course, I don't want the windows to look the exact same so I am going to paint some of the shadows out to make it look different but still as if the sun is coming from the same angle. I have painted out some of the surrounding to make it blend better

Doing the same as before and using this window to make the next one.

I will be repeating the same process for this window.

Here is the result so far. Of course, I need to fix the edges which the sign was.

Masking out some of the walls from a different area to put over the mess.

Widen it to fix as well

Final paint to make everything blended together 

Final result. I have left the signs in at some parts as I know I will not need them when the signs are back in, they will cover them. Also, they help me as a reference.

Coming together nicely - of course when the signs and pillars are back in, it will look more realistic.

Here is my first render:

From this render, I have found quite a few issues - but thankful they are all in the same area.

Looking at the right-hand side at Kaspers, the whole card slides, along with the middle pillar.

I can also see people move behind the tree as well as some of the tree moving and some staying still - I will need to rotoscope the whole tree out to move all of it.

Overcoming the issues:

Painting more of the tree out on the clean up of the back window.

Doing the same to this side aswell

Here is what i am left with. The reason why i have done this is so I can not see the people walking behind the tree / i can get the parralx movement better when the tree is rotscoped.

Render no 2

Again lots of issues. Mainly with the tree pot and the the bin at the back again

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 002

So, I have need another shot for my showreel, and I am not confident enough to do a St Mary Street one yet as I don’t think I have the time for that before hand in. 

So I am going to tackle shot 002:

This shot is gonna show different skills from shot 010 because i will need to body rotoscope for it.

Tracking:

Undistorting the frame:

Starting to clean up with the man walking at the back

RotoPaint

Roto

Card in 3D

Scanline Render:

Contining to paint the fence out.

Roto

With the last bit, i did not need to paint anything out, so i just frame held a frame and masked it.

The 3 cards in 3D space.

The output of the scanline render:

Gonna mask out the floor space inbetween the man and the women walking. Inbetween my cards, his feet shown so i need to get rid of it.

Painting the surrounding out. 

Here is the overall “clean plate”. I have put it in speach marks because technically, it’s not completly clean, but theres no need for me to paint out the parts that I do not need to (such as the feet and head). 

Rotoscoping:

Whilst watching the rotoscope play through - i found an issue with the clean plate. Here is the clean plate video:

The issues here are one of the plates are really slipping. I think the issue is with the paralax. Right now, It is all just flat plates. There is not much stacking of different layers. I thought i could get away it, but this shows that i can not with this part.

Time to rotoscope the fence out and then create a clean plate for the houses behind to place on their own card.

HANDS! This is the part which i’ve been worried about the most.... The motion blur is crazy on this shot.

I have no idea how to tackle this so I asked some of the graduates for some advice

Here is the process I did to complete this:

Orginal Plate

Rotoscope

I then created a constant, picking the colour from the hands themself.

I duplicated the mask with the rotoscope on to mask out the constant. This creates like the background of the hands

Blur the hell out of it.

Then this is the result.

Okay so i’ve been super stressed recently and been abit behind on this project, but here is this shot so far. Only a short clip for my showreel so far

Asking Mario how it looks so far. The reason why i ask Mario is because we both want to get onto the DNEG grad scheme, so he knows that level of work I am aiming for. 

I worked on what Mario said needed fixing and sent him videos from my phone to see what else needed work. When it comes to getting help from friends who reply super fast, I am not gonna waste time rendering out when i can just take a video.

This is the first video i sent to him. He said that the wall in the middle of the B and K pillars was sliding. I found that I had a card for that, but when i turned it off, hardly ntohing changed, so I just left it turnt off. The only difference was there was atiny bit of rubbish on the bottom of the wall which is hardly noticable anyway.

Second Video

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Shot 010

Here is shot 010:

This one is pretty simple, just paint out the two men on the side and there is another man who walks across the screen aswell.

Here is my tasks:

1: Paint out the man on the stairs - this should be easy as I can just clone the stairs towards the side of him.

2: Remove the both men walking behind the pillars. This will be a bit more challenging as I will need a card for the back wall and then a seperate one for the pillars.

3: Remove the plastic cup in the middle of the top left pillars. This was not noticed on the shoot. 

4: Paint out a mould part of the stairs. This could be mistaked as a bad clean up job. Best to just take it out.

5: Roto out the dancer for showreel.

Tracking:

NOW, I had a nightmare tracking this scene. I am working in 4K and trying to get the Nuke camera tracker solve error below 1 was a challenge. After hours of trying to figure this out and worrying, I asked Tom the next day for help and he told me that with 4K, a solve error or 3 is acceptable.... 1 is just for HD....

Tom then helped me get the best track i could. We got it to 1.1

The clean up... I tried model builder, but i just can not get my head around it with the stairs. The lectuers have been really busy with 2nd Years FMP pitches, so I think for now, i am just going to do it the way I am confident in, 3D cards.

I know that i still need paralax so i will do each step at a time. Logically, gonna start at the bottom and work my way up.

Orginal:

RotoPaint

Roto - As you can see above, I painted out more then i was targetting. This is because i wantted to feather my masks out to blend in more. If i didnt paint out the show in the above stair, then the foot may have appeared in the feather.

Clean Up

I then repeated this for each stair:

TRICKS I USED: In order to make sure each step was tracking correctly, I did ended my Roto shapes on the natural lines in the stairs. This meant i could line up my clean up correctly and easily tell when it slips.

Clean up the rest of the man:

Then i went to the floor correction:

Here is the bit of mould. Up close you can tell what it is, but from afar, you can’t. It looks like i have messed up.

Painted it out and masked it off. Again i did the whole step just so i could make sure it was the right place and not slipping

Then i tackled the man in the corner: On the frame I was painting on, there is a bit of the man in the corner so i am going to paint him out:

Orginal:

Clean:

I was worried that this line looked dodgy so i checked before i put ths clean card on.

It is still there, so i wanna check the orginal footage

Stil there, thats good, means that i didn’t mess it up

Here is what I ’ve got so far. This is on the last frame it looks kinda clean (apart form that cup.

But when you go forward in the clip it reveals this:

Man running behind pillars on right hand side removal:

Orginal:

Top half gone: (Used 2 roto shapes) For this bit, I’ve made sure to line it up with the lines on the wall and the pillar. I also selected a point from the point cloud which is quite far back to make sure i was tracking the wall.

In order to paint the rest of this man out, I need to make a clean plate for the back wall. The reason for this is due to the parlax between the wall and the railings. 

Painted out the railing:

Masked off the section i needed. I included some of the pillar just to use as a reference to make sure it is sitting correctly.

The outcome from the scanline render:

Rotoscoping the railings and part of the pillar.

Merging it over the footage. Still need to add the little details back in.

But here is what i’ve got so far. Just need to add more details onto the railing and paint out the feet.

First Clean Up Test. Looks fine to me right now, but i will reevaulate after looking at different shots and having a break at staring at the same things. I will also get a sign off from the lectuers on this shot.

Overall I’m happy though.

So i have actually already spotted something wrong with this render:

Below is what the render showed, There is no detail on the bottom of the pilar.

I have just rotoscoped it back in.

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Starting Shot 007

06/03/19

I have decided to start with Shot 007 because I feel like it will have the greatest impact on my showreel. My showreel is due in 2 weeks so I would like to have this shot on it by then. 

The reason why I am doing shots for showreel first is because Internships are due before the hand in - not much before, but i want to perfect the most effective shots for my showreel first.

Here is a screenshot of shot 007:

I am just rendering out the little clips i have put into my edit. There is not point wasting time cleaning the entire video when I have like 20 shots to do. This shot is only 71 frames long, however, it can be good for my showreel as it will make it more snappy.

First thing first is to analyse what needs painting out in this shot.

These are the most important aspects which I need to clean up; All the people, a homeless man’s tent, and there are white lines on the floor. The reason why i am painting out the white lines on the floor is because it looks like I put them there as refercnes points, when I did not, we just wanted the dancer to be centered in between the plants. 

After all my shots are painted out i may consider painting out some of the signs aswell - nobody wants to give out free advertisting. 

Now i think rotoscoping the dancer out is the next important thing to do. I need to make sure i get a really good roto on him. 

First part i decided to rotoscope out was his trouser pocket. In the dance, his pocket sticks out and then goes back in, so i think that is important to focus on. 

No pocket showing

Pocket sticking out

Then i am moving down the leg on the same side:

This section seemed fine at first, but when i started to analyse it, there was a lot of motion blur in some parts. To combat this, i am just going to mask out the parts of the legs which the pixels are completly opaque to the background.

Here is the two masks I’ve made so far. I think it’s going pretty well so far. Next i will do the knee, then the shin. After that i will go back and do the inside of the leg. I am going into this much detail is because where is is fabric i want to be able to get it perfect. There is no time to have to go back and fix my rotos so I have to get them spot on straight away.

Even though, i meant to be focusing on the knee, I want to extend so that I know everything is covered.

So far:

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

First Edit

03/03/19

According to my schedule, I am meant to be doing my showreel work, however, my mind is set on my final major at the momemt. I want to get rough edit done to show the lectuers on Monday. Even though I am always showing my teachers my work, its important that i am more consistently having dailies with the lectuers, not just when im in trouble a couple weeks before deadline.

Here is a first edit:

Theres a few bits misisng, but I think its getting there!

I showed this to the lectuers and they loved it! They recommeded that I tried a different aspect ratio though. 

3840 x 1634 Version:

Just showed this to Geraint and he says it looks so much better !!!

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Film Day!!!

01/03/19

Today I filmed my project and it was mosly successful! I decided it was important to film as early as i possibly could so that I could have more time to do the VFX and reshoot if need be. However i wantted to make sure i was prepared to film with everything planned before i went out.

Here is a photo of the equitment we used:

This includes the Movi, Canon C300 and Prime Lens 

Since i wantted to begin filming at 7am today, we set the movi up last night. Nobody is motivated to set that up in the morning - espeically since i wantted to start filming so early. Looking back, starting at this time was such a good idea. The sun just came up and we were filming untill about 4.30pm any way and the sun was meant to be go down around 5. If we started later, then would of lost daylight.

FIRST LOCATION:

The first filming location was on the museum staircase. The reason this was our first location is because we had to film and be gone before the museum opened. It doesn’t open till 10 normally, but since it was St David’s day today, i thought there would be events going on.

There are many reasons why I choose ths location. The main on being that the dancer will really stand out. I wantted locations will boring colours so that all the attension will be on him.

Here are some screenshots from the footage we got:

In this location, there is not much to clean up since nobdoy was around, so i got my runners to just be crowd. There is also little bits of rubbish which need to be cleaned up.

SECOND LOCATION: Well, it was meant to be St Mary’s street next, however i was not aware that delievers had to be done before 10AM, so the street was full of delievery vans. I didn’t have time to stand around and wait so we swapped locations and came back.

Instead we went to the side of the stadium. 

Here are so screenshots.

Agin lots of rubbish which needs to be painted out.

In some shots are people to paint out so thats good!!

THIRD LOCATION: back to st marys street

This will be the challening one. If i can get this clean i will be so happy. I also want to paint out some signs aswell. 

This is the street that i want to end it in since it is the busiest. I wantted to end it smoothly so we came up with this idea. Close up shot of the dancer taking the headphones off, looking around and laughing at himself.

Then cuts to a long shot of everybody around him.

He then walks off in the distence will people covering him.

FOURTH LOCATION: Some side street outside a wetherspoons near the castle.

Lots of people on this street so we have lots of people to paint out again.

FIFTH LOCATION: Bute park. We only actually got 1 shot here since all the batteries died. Throughout the whole day we went through every Movi battery the uni had! We sent a runner back 4 times to keep swapping them. 

By this time it was like 4.30pm, the dancer was shattered! The amount of times he had to redo the dance was unbelievable. (Didn’t help that he didn’t go to sleep the night before!)

Overall, successful day - but its time to put this project on the side and focus on creating my showreel, not only for the deadline, but also for prepartion to the mock interviews.

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Clean Up Testing

16th Feburary 

I feel like it is important to get as much practise in before i film as i can. Since we have a showreel deadline soon, I feel like its a good opportunity to go back and practise on my old work.

The first piece of work that i really need to fix is my Final Major from 2nd Year. I forgot to clean up hand trackers and the clean up of rubbish needs to be better.

It is starting to get hard to go into detail about what I did on these blog posts now due to the fact that i have learned so much and it has just became second nature.

Here is before:

After:

3D Projection:

Due to the camera movement, the rubbish in the background had to be put onto cards so that it rotates and changes in size as the camera moves. Here is what the cards look like:

 The script:

Hand Trackers:

With the hand trackers, it has to be 2D tracking. Here is the script. Broken down alot. 

Bedore: 

After:

[thirdyearfinalmajor]

Pitch Day!!!

14th Feburary 

So today I Pitched my idea to Geraint, Tom and the class. Overall, I think it went okay, however they don’t give much away!!! I was worried about this Pitch because of what happened on the final minor project pitches where Jason made all us resubmtt. Then getting the pitch marks back from Tom, even though getting 11/ 15% is still really good, i feel like i could do better.

I have been speaking to Tom alot about the Pitches and he really wants up to lay it out as if we are selling it to a company, not just doing a powerpoint in front of the class. In order to make it seem as if i work for the brand, i need to look at what the website looks like and the branding. 

The first thing that stood out for me in the black banner at the top with beats logo in the left hand corner. This is something which i feel is important for my pitch, 

Something else which is going to be important is the full screen picture display. 

Here is a breakdown of my Pitch:

Very simple cover page, but effective. It shows instantly what i am trying to sell, the overal colour scheme and introduces the black bar at the top theme.

I felt like it was important to explain that i am not just making this to pass the course. I decided on this idea because it is what i am lacking in my showreel. Of course the slide would be too dull and boring if i just had text on the scene with lots of empty space, so i found a nice collection of images from the same advert to put in.

I believe in pitches, i should have as little words as possible. Therefore i have very briefly stated what my idea is so that when i presented i could elabrate on it. This also gives me an idea who is actaully listening to me at the end of the pitch and who is just reading the scene. Of course is sometihng is just reading the pitch and not listening to me, they will ask questions which i have already covered. Thankful, nobody did this in my pitch. 

Again just going over the clean up reasons of the project.

Showing my inspration. This whole project is based around this video, so of coruse it is important to show it. Looking back at the Beats website, i wantted to make it full screen to match the theme.