Reflection Post: Light Effect

Light Effect

I needed to create a light effect for my teleportation, but I was not sure how to do this in After Effects. Instead of attempting something difficult, I drew from my experience with Adobe Animate, and used a simple shape layer to create the bubble, lowered the opacity until it was semi-transparent, and then applied a similar fractal effect to the one applied to my actor. Then I used a glow effect that, when combined with the fractal noise effect, made the bubble look less plain and more like it belonged in the scene.

bubble without effects applied

bubble with fractal noise and vector blur applied

bubble with glow applied

Reflection Post: Fade Effect

Fade Effect

Another problem was getting my actor to fade in and out of the scene. I did not want her to sudden appear and disappear, so I needed some way to get the footage to fade. This was where my researched tutorials became useful. Following a tutorial on simple teleportation effects, I applied a fractal noise effect with a vector blur to a black solid layer, which I used to make my actor fade in and out of the scene using a luma matt and keyframes.

fractal noise with vector blur applied

fade effect applied using luma matt

Reflection Post: Removing Backgrounds

Removing Background

The biggest challenge that I faced was effectively removing the background from my actor footage. Initially I planned to do this using the rotoscope brush, however I made some mistakes when I filmed the footage. Firstly I filmed it on quite a busy background. This meant that the rotoscope brush kept including pieces of my background, and the edges were very blurry. Secondly I filmed it inside, which gave me inconsistencies in the lighting between my background and footage. To fix these issues, I refilmed those clips using a rudimentary blue-screen, in an outdoor setting. This meant that I could use chroma-keying to remove the background, instead of rotoscoping.

However I still had some problems in making sure that my chroma-key removed the background cleanly. I found that some parts of the footage would be clean, while others would flicker, such as the hat. To solve this problem I layered duplicates of the same footage over each other and masked sections to have different settings applied. This allowed me to cleanly remove the background from the entire clip without some parts being lost or flickering around the edges.

Reflection Post: Assignment 3

I am, for the most part, happy with the end result of my project. There are some things that I could have done better, such as the shadow beneath my actor's feet. I almost forgot to add it and I am not entirely sure whether it is the right kind of shadow for the light in the scene. I would have liked to spend more time getting that detail right. I would have liked to try something slightly more visually interesting than a simple teleport across the screen, however I am happier with this version than the my original ideas set out in the animatic and storyboard.

I am particularly happy with the blue bubble that appears around the actor. I think that it enhances the science fiction feel of the scene and does not end up looking too amateur. I am also fairly pleased with the colour-grading. I was aiming to make the scene look gritty and serious, almost like a post-apocalyptic world.

Another element I would have like to do better was my actor. For lack of other people, I had to use myself, which made filming quite difficult. The footage that I ended up using was my second attempt, where I used a rudimentary blue-screen to remove the background. This was easier than my original plan of rotoscoping the footage, however it needed quite a lot of fiddling to make it smooth. I would have like to have spent more time on producing higher quality footage and less time on trying to cleanly remove the background.

At the beginning of this project I was unsure of what I would be expected to do and my ability to produce a decent video. I did find parts of the past three assignments rather difficult, especially the planning stages when I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to produce. However, I feel as though I have learnt a lot during this unit and have adequately put that knowledge into practice in this video.

A3 - VFX Breakdown

Here is the breakdown of the visual effects used in my final video. I hope that I have effectively shown what effects and techniques were used. I have broken down my video in the different stages of production, from the raw footage before I removed the background, to the final additions of the fade and light effects. 

A3 - Final Video

Here is my final video, all rendered and uploaded. Since my last draft, I have completely re-filmed the clips of my actor and used chroma-keying to remove the background instead of rotoscoping as I used previously. This solved the issues that I was experiencing with flickering edges. I have also tweaked the audio to remove a slight glitch and made sure that my actor is properly colour-matched to the background.

Overall I am very pleased with the result. Since I reworked the action in my video, it has become more visually interesting than my animatic indicated, and I think that the timing works fairly well. While most elements fit together rather well, I am not entirely happy with the shadow I added. I would have liked to spend more time figuring out exactly how that shadow should have fallen, as I am not entirely convinced that it is accurate or believable. However, that is a small detail and I am really quite pleased with my video.

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.