A3: Refinement Critique

Over the past couple of days I have had to make some intensive changes to some elements of my project, including some of the source film. Originally I filmed and rotoscoped a section of film, then laid it over a static backplate. However I encountered some problems with producing a smooth rotoscope on the film I had, because it was filmed on a busy background and there was insufficient contrast between my actor and objects behind her. This result in flickering edges and parts of my actor randomly changing shape. To fix this problem, I re-filmed the entire clip using a rudimentary blue screen and clothing that contrasted better with the background. Instead of rotoscoping this section, I used chroma-keying to remove the blue, which has for the most part fixed the flickering edges. Unfortunately the hat that my actor is wearing does flicker a little bit, but I may be able to fix this with a little fiddling. Other than that, I am fairly happy with the result of my actor clip.

My original narrative was, as my tutor pointed out, rather boring, so I have made a change to the action that happens. Originally I was just going to have my actor slowly fade into the scene. Someone, probably my tutor, suggested having my actor disappear from one part of the scene and reappear in another, so that is what I have done. The action is rather more interesting, although the 15 second time limit constrains what I can do. I would have like to make it more obvious that my actor has teleported somewhere other than this scene, but I really did not have the time to re-film parts of the video again to explore that aspect.

Those are the main things that I have changed from my original plan. However there are a few things that need tweaking in the video before it will be ready to submit. I want to adjust the colour of my actor clips to make them better match the background. They are not too dissimilar, but with a little work they can match better. 

I also need to work on the audio. There is currently a quite obvious glitch in the audio that I have imported, and I am not sure that it matches up to the action as well as it could. So I will have to take another look at the audio track and fix the glitch and I may also work on the balance between the wind sound effect and the teleport sound effect.

Other than that, I just want to check the timing of the action to make sure that it works properly and that the teleportation does not take too long or have too short a break in between the actor disappearing and reappearing. 

Overall, I am happy with how this project is shaping up. I did get rather behind on it, and was further delayed by the need to re-film some parts. However, these issues are behind me and I feel as though I have reached the stage at which I can focus on polishing my project.