#also drawing this made me realise i use the same marker for their skin tones and also give kaz freckles so. twins

[kazuichikazuichi]

wlw and mlm solidarity!!!! they are bffs in my head!!!! based on the stage play photo below:

will i ever stop drawing pictures based on stage play photos? hmmm let me think about that for a second... NOPE lol

[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 1: Beginnings, never expected)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang​. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

chapter summary:

In the past, Sara schemed.

In the present, Connor meets Hank for the first time.

In the past, someone called.

also on ao3

---

Before

Family was instructed to wait outside the room during the final check-up, so she complied and made a call while keeping an eye on the doctors and nurses in charge of her brother; they were much better than the ones in the previous hospital with a far gentler touch and humane approach, but she had had enough people snitching on her, and, after tapping the glass to gouge its integrity, she would not hesitate to flare up and use her powers to break down everything standing between her and her only sibling.

The door to the outer room opened to admit another woman holding a phone, and both of them hung up the call once they saw each other. The new visitor closed the distance between them and moved as if wanting to give the sister a hug, but her arms lowered upon seeing the tension in the sister’s body.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Do not celebrate yet.’

‘And neither will being on guard every single second bring you any good, Sara,’ the visitor replied. ‘It will only hurt you and cloud your judgement.’

‘There is no other acceptable opinion,’ the sister - Sara - pressed her thumb against the bottom of the glass. ‘My father tried to send my brother to a boarding school despite fully knowing that they can’t accommodate for his needs, my brother said no, my father forced him to, my brother would rather die than be sent to a hostile environment, and I got him away from our father. I saved him, Amanda, but with my father’s resources, do you really think there’s a place in the country where we won’t be hunted down? So no,’ she shoved the hand into her pocket, leaving a burn mark in the shape of her thumb behind on the glass, ‘I am not relaxing until we have disappeared off the face of earth for good.’

‘It’s hardly a viable plan for us, Sara,’ there was resignation in Amanda’s voice. ‘My guardianship isn’t secure. Scott requires constant medical attention. I know you look highly upon me, but I’m not invincible. Against people like your father…’

Sara raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And you don’t think I have a plan already?’

Amanda turned her head to take a good look at her student. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ she said at last. ‘It isn’t that I don’t have faith in your abilities, it’s just -’

The door to Scott’s room opened. All medical personnel except for the doctor-in-charge of the boy started vacating the ward. Watching them leave one by one, Amanda pressed her lips together and only resumed when the door was clicked shut behind the last nurse. ‘I have seen people like you. My classmates, my friends, my colleagues. The ones who are successful all know which battles to pick.’

The girl flexed her hand. ‘And those who don’t?’

‘Destroyed, one way or another.’

Sara’s face twisted as if she wanted to laugh but couldn’t, and then her expression softened. ‘Don’t worry, Amanda,’ she said in a reassuring tone. ‘I’ll be careful.’

She entered her brother’s ward while Amanda waited outside. Not only did the teacher not look convinced, the lines on her face only seemed to deepen more from her student’s response as if foreseeing a doomed future for the two of them, not knowing that indeed, things would turn towards a direction totally unexpected to them - and the entire world.

oOoOo

Now

A lone figure stands in the rain, its form dark save for the neon blue triangle on his back and left shoulder plus the armband on its right arm. The drive from the precinct to its current location is bland, nothing like - nothing as stimulating - as…

As…

So Connor calibrates. Turned up his skin’s sensitivity to feel the change in current as he went through the air-conditioning settings one by one. Turned it down again as he emerged from the taxi into the rain to prevent his processors from overloading. Collected information on the rainwater. pH value below levels which can sustain a balanced ecosystem. Minimal contaminants. Suitable for human consumption. When the analysis is finished, he takes out the coin bestowed upon him from one of his developers - at least, according to Ryder. Connor’s memory banks are unable to provide further information on the matter as there were no other relevant memories. 

Another figure which Connor did not notice was there suddenly vanished, its sudden absence alerting him of its existence. He turns his head, his world becoming shades of grey and yellow outlines as he scans his immediate vicinity, and, discovering nothing notable or dangerous, lets the frozen, imaginary world fall away and reality return with all its vivid colours. Calculating the probability of Lieutenant Anderson being in this bar is simple, and therefore he flips his coin to do some further calibrations.

A swathe of blue surrounds the coin and it stays at its highest point.

LED flashing red in alarm, Connor hastily grabs the coin from its position in midair and jolts as it sends a spark through his system, the thirium in his body distributing oddly against the normal flow like… like a conductor suddenly connected to a closed circuit and the free electrons within suddenly having a direction, one that - one that -

The same blue halo sweeps through the surface of his body, too faint to be noticed by ordinary humans but clearly caught by Connor’s sensitive optic units. The shadow shifts again, ducking out of the android’s sight despite being right there, and subsequent scans also fail to pick it up again.

He is being watched. That is certain.

It is getting unsafe to stand in the street alone any longer, so Connor pockets his coin and fixes his tie, steeling himself for yet another unsuccessful search for the Lieutenant. He ignores the ‘No Androids Allowed’ sign on the door and pushes.

o0o0o

Turns out Hank is easily bribed by alcohol. Sated by the double shot of whiskey, the human’s interest is piqued, and with a sharp ‘Did you way homicide?’, he stands and walks out of the bar as if he has not been consuming heavy liquor for the past few hours. The shadow which has been following Connor vanishes as soon as they are out on the streets, the static-charged air it leaves behind quickly washed away by the rain. Hank insisting on driving worsens matters as it allocates more than enough processing power for Connor to pay heightened attention towards his surroundings: the hum of the old engine, the squeak of the dashboard decoration as it swings, the vibration of the speakers as Hank blasts heavy metal. 

The shadow which reappears as they approach Carlos Ortiz’s house, always out of his sight and never detected by his proximity sensors.

He cannot worry too much, however, when he chooses to follow his original mission and get out of the car, the smell assaulting his nose and the roof of his mouth and very nearly overloading his senses. He sneezes - a response programmed to clear the smell from his nose while his sensitivity is toned down - and is startled by how… strong… it is: a full-body tremor and expulsion of air that takes the colour out of his HUD for a few milliseconds before his eyes recalibrate automatically and return to normal. The noise also draws the attention of a few passers-by whose faces display [emotion identified: shock] when they see the neon-blue band on Connor’s arm and the triangle on his left breast. He ignores them, and a few steps later he encounters his first problem.

‘Androids are not permitted beyond this point,’ the PC200 android holds up a hand. Connor could have easily overpowered it and barge his way in, but that will be against protocol and is not beneficial towards the investigation, therefore he shuts down his pre-construction software before it can give him any suggestions. 

Hank turns from where he was talking to an officer and lets him in. ‘It’s with me,’ he says, but the sense of familiarity is gone completely when Connor approaches him. ‘What part of “stay in the car” didn’t you understand?’

‘Your order contradicted my instructions, Lieutenant,’ Connor answers honestly. Surely the human understands?

Hank’s face scrunches slightly in distaste. ‘You don’t talk, you don’t touch anything, and you stay outta my way,’ he rattles, ‘got it?’

‘Got it,’ is the android’s too-quick reply. 

The human turns towards the entrance of the house just to be greeted by another detective. A scan tells Connor that he is [Detective Collins, Ben. Born: 09/12/1989. Police Detective. Criminal record: none]. ‘Evening, Hank,’ he sounds too [cheerful] for the situation. Descending the veranda, he continues, ‘We were starting to think you weren’t gonna show -’

‘Yeah, it was the plan until this asshole -’ Hank gestures at Connor - ‘found me.’

‘So…’ Collins’ voice is [emotion detected: teasing] when he turns away, ‘you got yourself an android, huh?’

Hank gives a good look at Connor. ‘Oh, very funny.’ [emotion detected: sarcasm] A small sigh. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

He ignores the android and follows Collins into the house, leaving Connor alone in his own device. He is not bothered by how they do not include him in the conversation; he can always tune his ears to their voices and record everything down, so being near them is not a priority. He can analyse the scene as he wishes, Connor realises as his world goes grey save for the yellow of the evidence markers.

Fantastic.

o0o0o

The first thing Connor notices is the abnormal electrical damage. The house itself is nearly in ruins, the floor grey from a layer of dust, the walls cracked and mouldy and, in some places, even falling apart and exposing the wooden beams, but the damage seems recent - as recent as the body they discovered, at least. The damage on the curtains are also new, their ends torn and the remains scattered on the ground, and he gets zapped by the static discharge when he pushes them to the side. It is not painful per se, but it comes as a surprise.

‘You found something?’

It is Hank’s second time asking the question. He stands tall for a hungover man, taller than Connor standing at his full height, and the android finds himself wondering what the Lieutenant looked like when he was in the red ice task force. Probably even taller. Even stronger.

‘There is a copious amount of electrical damage on the walls,’ he answers as he adjusts his eyes to view the backyard better. There are fresh footsteps on the soil. ‘And there is an abnormal amount of static in objects. I suggest handling evidence with care.’

‘Yeah, I don’t remember the last time I’ve been zapped this much.’ Hank also squints at the dirty glass. ‘Door’s locked from the inside. Killer must’ve gone out this way.’

Connor runs a scan. ‘There are no footprints apart from officer Collins’ size ten shoes.’

Hank straightens and crosses his arms. ‘Well, this happened weeks ago. Tracks could’ve faded.’

Comparing data… ‘No, this type of soil would have retained a trace,’ he explains as he catches the Lieutenant’s gaze. ‘Nobody’s been out here for a long time.’

Hank looks away with a grunt as if dissatisfied with the results, and Connor, having analysed everything notable, pushes on. ‘Lieutenant, I think I’ve figured out what happened.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Hank shrugs. ‘Shoot. I’m all ears.’

‘It all started…’ the mess in the kitchen flashes in front of Connor’s eyes, ‘in the kitchen.’

Hank uncrosses his arms. They enter the kitchen together, and the human has to duck to go through the door frame. ‘There’re obvious signs of a struggle, but the question is,’ Hank turns towards the android, ‘what exactly happened here.’

‘I think the victim attacked the android,’ comparing evidence… ‘with the bat.’

Hank perks up. ‘That lines up with the evidence.’ Connor hopes that he isn’t imagining the smile on the human’s face. ‘Go on.’

They switch places, Hank’s arm brushing against Connor’s shoulder in the confined space. He is warm even through the coat, and Connor finds his software warning him of instabilities as the edges of his HUD flashes red for a millisecond. ‘The android stabbed the victim.’

‘So the android was trying to defend itself, right? Okay, then what happened?’

‘The victim fled to…’ recalling re-construction… ‘the living room.’

They follow the silhouette of two struggling figures; more like Connor follows them - Hank just follows him. ‘And he tried to get away from the android,’ the human says, a swing in his arms. He does not look pleased being back near the half-charred, rotting body. ‘Alright, that makes sense.’

‘The android murdered the victim…’ he wants to say the knife, but it did not cause the unexplained burns and broken bones. He runs a search again to compare the wounds (electrical burns, severe blunt force trauma) and does not realise that he has trailed off until Hank speaks up.

‘Well, obviously he got stabbed and burnt,’ the frown on his face deepens. ‘You can’t stab someone without a knife, but what about the rest? The android short-circuited and fried its owner?’

Connor draws up experimental data from CyberLife and compares it to the current needed to cause the damage in front of his eyes. ‘No. It is unlikely for androids to short-circuit, and even if that is the case, the current is not large enough to cause severe burns on humans. Common household models are unable to reach the speed capable of generating enough force to break an adult’s femur either.’

‘But it doesn’t tell us where the android went. If we find it, we can just ask.’

Connor finds himself… liking that line of thought. ‘It was damaged by the bat and lost some thirium.’

‘Lost some what?’

‘Thirium, you call it “blue blood”,’ the android explains as he secretly adds [Hank is not familiar with android mechanics.] into his file. ‘It is the fluid that powers androids’ biocomponents. It evaporates after a few hours and becomes invisible to the naked eye.’

‘Oh…’ Understanding dawns in Hank’s eyes and he smiles, approval in his voice. ‘But I bet you can still see it, can you?’

The edge of Connor’s HUD turns red again as thirium rushes onto his face, and he looks away to begin scanning, not to hide his blush but to quickly search for the deviant. Now that he knows what he is looking for, the blue of evaporated Thirium 310 contrasting starkly with the grey the rest of the world has changed into and forming a trail leading to… a dead end. What he can see, however, is the shadow of a ladder that used to be there, so he looks up and - there. A handprint.

Hank follows his gaze despite not being able to see the trace. ‘You think it’s up there?’

‘I’ll need something to climb.’ Find something to climb, his processor offers, so he turns towards the human and asks, ‘Hank, may I climb you?’

‘Oh for fuck’s -’ Connor’s face must have changed and caused the man to stop ranting, but exactly what that is, the android is not certain. ‘Alright, Jesus, gimme a sec.’ A deep breath. ‘Yeah. How do you want to do it?’

‘Please hold me up, Lieutenant.’

Connor drapes himself on Hank’s back, and the human, finally getting what Connor means, places his arms underneath the android’s thighs and lifts him with a grunt. With his thighs at Hank’s waist, the extra height allows Connor to easily slide the trapdoor to one side. Hank lets go without being prompted to let the android climb further up.

‘I’ll wait here,’ he says as he pops his spine back in place. ‘Yell if you need anything.’

‘Got it,’ he whispers even though the Lieutenant probably cannot hear him. Already missing the human's warmth, he hoists himself fully into the dark attic - 

- and everything hits him. The static, the floating pieces of furniture, the eerie blue glow they give out; the hum in the air, the strange force threatening to tear him apart on the molecular level, the distortion of - he doesn’t know anymore. He has never seen anything like this before, there is nothing in his databases that talks about scenarios like this, and he is very glad that Hank did not come up with him. [Kinetic barrier at 100%] appears on his HUD, but he has no idea what it means.

A piece of cloth waves despite the absence of wind, and since it is blocking his sight, Connor brushes it away and hunches so that he doesn't hit his head against the supporting beams while he watches, fascinated, the fabric float away in a wave of white against the darkness of the room and get caught in the splinters of a beam. He continues forward, at first brushing a few pieces of furniture aside and causing them to fly straight to the other side of the attic, then holding them in both his hands and gently moving them away. If he must speak in an analogy, he would equate it to rearranging furniture: randomly pushing them will send them towards unpredictable directions, but if you lift them and put them exactly where you want them to be, they will not move away. The only difference is that vertical distance is also considered.

[Kinetic barrier at 64%]

A loud crash. Connor’s head snaps towards the direction of the noise just to see a broken mannequin sailing directly towards him across the air. Catching the rapidly-approaching footsteps, he swats the mannequin away and dashes across the source, his veins tingling in an unfamiliar power as he runs into the blue distortions supporting some of the larger furniture and sending them either crashing onto the floor or flying unpredictably away from him; he can faintly hear Hank’s ‘The fuck’s going on up there, Connor?’, but his attention is divided between pre-constructing the deviant and the furniture’s path. The deviant probably knows where he is now, but then again, deviants are known to be unstable and act illogically, so he decides against answering the Lieutenant to attract less attention. 

One final crash. The last wisp of blue breaks and dissipates, plunging the entire attic into darkness except for the yellow glow of an android’s LED. All footsteps halt. 

[No gravitational anomalies detected. Kinetic barrier deactivated.]

The room suddenly lights up again, and the deviant is right there in front of Connor, its face a look of utter [emotion identified: terror]. His HUD flashes with warnings about abnormal thirium flow, and Connor realises that he is the one glowing blue all over and lighting up his immediate vicinity. The tingle in his circuits, the crackle of static, the distortion in front of his eyes - they now originate from within himself instead of his surroundings. 

[DEVIANT LOCATED]

Connor adjusts his eyes for the impending darkness. He relaxes by overriding his muscles, and despite the darkness engulfing them once more, he can see the blood spattered on the deviant’s skin and clothes, the exposed chassis on his arms, the burn marks all over its body. It is to no one’s surprise that it says, ‘I was just defending myself.’ A trembling breath. Red starts to appear at the edge of Connor’s vision. ‘He was gonna kill me. I’m begging you…’ The deviant never stops shaking, and the red climbs towards the centre of his HUD for the first time in his existence, ‘don’t tell them.’

For one split second, the red completely takes over Connor’s sight and forms a crumbling wall a few feet in front of him. A figure - himself, Connor realises - hesitantly steps forward and slides a hand into a crack in the wall, fingers curling in and tearing a piece of it away.

‘Connor, if you don’t answer this second I’ll haul my fat ass up there!’

It is Hank. His warning reminds Connor that he still has a mission to complete, and the red wall recedes as if it is never there. Raising his voice, he shouts without tearing his gaze away from the deviant - 

‘- It’s here, Lieutenant!’

‘Holy shit… Chris, Ben, get your asses in here now!’

The deviant’s expression alone is enough to turn half of Connor’s HUD red again, but even that fails to hide the shadow disappearing from the corner of his line of sight. One thing is sure: either there is a critical error in his software…

Or there is someone following him.

oOoOo    

Before

Somewhere, a figure bearing surprising resemblance to Captain Allen stood with their hands behind their back in front of a large plane of window and stared at a blue sunset and an endless expanse of red desert, and when they shifted, blue light reflected off their face to reveal thin wires outlining every muscle, every nerve, every piece of bone that formed their head. There was tension in their jaw, their temple, and soon we knew what caused it.

‘It doesn’t sound safe,’ they said to no one in particular. ‘As much as I hate to admit it, we need you. Our future is out here. Earth can rot.’

They did not speak for the next few seconds, but when they did, it was something like, ‘I’m glad that you plan to uphold your side of the contract,’ they said sarcastically and turned serious, ‘but I still don’t like where this is going. So many things can go wrong and none of them knows which side you are on. You’ll be caught in the crossfire.’ A pause. ‘I trust your ability and your intellect. What I don’t trust is the stupidity of the general public. That’s why we left. Why we moved forward.’

Whatever the other side of the call made them frown. ‘Then how many years will you wait for? Five? Ten? Twenty? I know you’re smart, Ryder, but that’s just fucking stupid.’ A deep breath and they went on, ‘Not everyone is fucking immortal. How long do they design the androids to last again? Ten years? How many more will die before you leisurely stroll in and burn everything within a fifty-mile radius to the grounds just like last time? How much time do we have before someone points their telescope or satellites in the right way and somehow bypasses all our shields and finds out what’s out here, where I’m standing right now, or what Charon actually is? We get out of that shithole specifically to prepare the world for all of this!’ 

They inhaled as if to calm themself down, and then, ‘Don’t flatter me, Administrator, and you still have that unfinished project you sneaked out right under your dear papa’s nose. Of all your talk about android humanity, you sure as fuck leave a lot of them behind.’ They rubbed their eyes, and when they opened again, glowing rings akin to the lens of a camera were edged on sea-green irises. ‘Fine fucking fine. Make sure to win. Anchor out.’

A loud sigh. Blue tendrils the same as the ones the deviant summoned snaked out of their body and supported their back as they fell backwards, but it did not last long as they straightened and walked through stark white hallways, entering a room at last after passing through a few doors and one that seemed to be an airlock. It was dimly lit by the glow from a pod placed at the farthest corner and the screens connected to it and wires ran like a nest on the floor, however the person seemed to know their way through without tripping and reached a holographic keyboard where they typed something to start a total system diagnostics, and as the screen darkened and the keyboard disappeared to prevent the further input of commands, they manoeuvered themself through the wires to stand at the head of the pod and placed a glowing hand on a hidden interface. The glass allowed them to see the face of the android sleeping in the pod.

Connor’s face.

[mortalgabby]

Editing the Video - VFX

I planned to incorporate SFX into my trailer as I wanted a chance to try out Adobe After Effects, and thought it would make it a lot more visually appealing. There were several scenes that had to have effects added to them, which were usually just simple glowing runes or light. 

This was my first time using Adobe After Effects.

Arm Rune

To create this effect, I went to the storyboard to see the design I had for the arm rune then traced over it in Photoshop to get the correct shape. The design was then saved as a PSD in 2 colours: black and blue. The PSD was transparent and had no background.

I opened After Effects and imported the clip of the arm, then turned it into a composition. Then, I imported the PSD file and added both of the rune layers to the original clip. I then decided on a time to make the rune appear in the video based on how long it was. 

I opened the ‘transform’ bar on the layer (for the blue rune layer) and started making keyframes for the Opacity. To do this, you click on the timer next to Opacity so that it turns blue, like this:

From this point, whenever you move the position in the video and change the opacity there, it will create a keyframe. I set the opacity to 0% at the point just before I wanted it to start appearing, then moved to roughly a second later and set the opacity to 100%. Now it faded in between the points I had selected. I also lowered the opacity when the rune turns black so it would look more like it was on the skin.

Next, I searched for the following effects in the ‘Effects and Presets’ bar on the right hand side of the screen. With each effect, I dragged it onto the blue rune layer, which then allowed me to adjust it in the top left hand corner. 

The Hue/saturation effect allowed me to change the colour of the rune from blue to white to black as I needed. I realised at this point that there was no real need to also have a black rune layer as I could just change the colour of the blue one. The rune stayed blue at first, then flashed to white and finally faded to black.

The Gaussian blur was used to make the rune blurry while it was appearing, then appear much sharper at the end once it turns black. However, I made sure to keep a small amount of blue the whole way through, as it looks more realistic. 

The Glow effect added a blue glow around the rune as it was appearing, which the colour and opacity of could be changed.

To track the rune to the arm, I had to choose a point on the arm which stood out from the rest of it. Since I wasn’t aware you had to do this, I didn’t add a marker to her arm when filming so had to use a freckle instead. 

I used the Tracker on the right hand side of the screen, and positioned the marker on the freckle. 

I selected ‘Track motion’ and made sure the motion target was the actual video clip layer. After this, you can change the size of both of the boxes.

I learned that the smaller box is the size of the actual object you’re tracking. The larger box is the radius in which the tracker will search for the object - the smaller this is, the quicker it will be done. If the object barely moves from one frame to the next, the box can be small, but if it moves a large distance between each frame then the box should be big enough to compensate for that. 

Finally, I selected the play button next to ‘Analyse’ and it went through each frame and marked where the tracked point is located. If any tracked point was very far out of place I stopped the analysis and moved it back to the correct location before letting it analyse the next frame. Once this was done, it looked like this:

Before clicking Apply, I made a new Null Object layer. I clicked on this layer and then clicked Apply. This way, the tracked point is now attached to the blank layer rather than the video layer.

I then parented the blue rune layer to the null object layer so it will now move along the same path as the tracked point does. 

The rest of the effects in the video were made in a similar way except the hardest scene - the one in which the magic circle appears.

Magic Circle Scene

This was the most complicated scene in the entire trailer to create, and i’m still not completely happy with the finished result but I don’t know an easier way to get a better result currently. I got the Magic Circle, Lightning Bolt and Smoke from Production Crate, and referenced this tutorial a lot in order to help me achieve the effect I wanted.

I downloaded the magic circle animation and converted it into a 3D layer:

This way, I could move and adjust the layer based on perspective as if it was laying on the ground. In Hindsight, I think that the magic circle was not quite at the right angle to look convincing against the ground.

Changing the size and opacity of the magic circle was achieved the same way as with the arm rune and was easy enough. I also used the same method to make the circle and the lightning bolt glow (and to change the colour of the circle from pink to blue - I used the hue/saturation effect.)

Using the CC Light Rays Effect

(With^^)

(Without^)

I added this both to the magic circle and the bolt, which I think makes it look a little more impressive. 

To add even more light, I added solid layers of blue, then hid them while I drew a mask in the area I wanted the light. Once I showed the layer again, the colour was inside the mask. I feathered the mask a lot using the mask options inside the new layer so it actually looked like a glow. Next, I changed the shape of the mask at different points in the video so that the light appeared and dissipated as I wanted it. This worked really well I think. The light layers were on the blending mode ‘Add’

Layering the Magic Circle behind Chloe 

This was the most difficult part of the entire process. I tried 3 separate methods for this and even the best looking one didn’t work as well as i’d hoped. 

Method 1: Rotobrush

I used this tutorial to help me with using the Rotobrush. This method would have worked a lot better if my video was higher resolution and if she’d have been wearing a more contrasting colour to the ground. 

I begun to try and rotoscope Chloe out of the original footage using the Rotobrush tool. I selected the video layer and the Rotobrush, then double clicked the video. This took me to a separate tab with just this layer in it. The brush works a similar way to the select pen on Photoshop - by drawing, it will select the entirety of the area that has the same colour as the one you picked. 

To erase using the Rotobrush, I held down the alt key. By playing the footage once all of the subject is selected in the first frame, After Effects will try and keep the same object selected and change the shape accordingly based on it’s position or shape. However this did not work properly, so eventually I had to individually erase and select the area I wanted to rotoscope for each individual frame. 

Once the main area was rotoscoped, I tried using the refine edge option which is meant to make the selection more accurate - this didn’t work either. I was left with a mask that I didn’t know how to use and wasn’t the right shape, so I decided to abandon this process and try something else instead. 

I tried various other methods - and eventually decided not to mask her out at all. Instead, I created a new solid, hid the layer and then masked around the lower half of her body. Then went into the layer settings and clicked on the stopwatch for the ‘Mask Path’ option. This meant that I could edit the shape of the mask for each individual frame. I also feathered the mask so that it looked a lot softer and less noticeable. 

The next part was really difficult to figure out. I was trying to figure out how to make the mask transparent but also not show any of the magic circle inside it. To do this, I made sure that the mask layer was directly above the Magic Circle. I then selected the magic circle layer and did Layer>Track Matte>Alpha Inverted Matte. This created these two icons on both layers:

After this, I hid the mask layer (black solid 3) so it appeared to be transparent while not showing any of the magic circle inside it. The mask was still a little uneven and shaky in some parts of the clip but it seemed to be the easiest way to accomplish what I wanted, despite this method taking several hours. 

Chloe’s Eye

I made this sequence before I had ever used After Effects. At this point, I didn’t want to use After Effects and so attempted to do it in Photoshop, which took a really long time and wasn’t really worth it. I drew in each frame of the eye beginning to glow, and had to manually move the eye colour in each frame so it moved with the face. It ended up looking a little shaky and if I could do it again i’d definitely use After Effects’ motion tracking tool. 

Colour Correcting

This was achieved mostly in premiere. The scenes that had SFX were individually colour corrected in After Effects by adding coloured solids set to multiply to get the level of light I wanted. When adding the colour correction to the rest of the clips, I wanted the footage to look cold and somewhat desaturated - since the original is really bright and sunny - which I thought looked really out of place and didn’t fit the genre, song or tone. 

To colour correct, I used the ‘Lumetri Colour’ option on the right hand side of the Premiere work-space. I did this while having my chosen clip selected. I then lowered the saturation and changed the hue to something darker and more blue, as I was trying to make it look a lot darker. I then copy pasted the FX to each clip so that they were all the same.