VFX

A final film is here! Re-graded about 40 shots in total to make the atmosphere feel warmer although it looks significantly similar to the footage it started out as. The problem being the director of the film toned the colours down a bit in the edit and I think it's taken away any warmth I put in there. I've included some comparison shots of what I sent back to him and what was in the final cut.

 

 

The first image is the final edit, the second my final re-grade. The colours look completely washed out similar to the original footage whereas the second has infinitely more clarity with the natural greens of the background coming through.

Blackmagic camera colouring

In post-production I've gone on to learn more about colour grading and how to re-colour a clip using Davinci Resolve. The play-about shooting we did as a group with the Blackmagic cameras isn't really good enough to get a good colour grade from it but above is a small test/practice using the software. This is in preparation for working on Fashion Photography films after Easter where we'll work with them to add in post production elements like 3D animation or effects like re-colouring and lighting. Each film is different so not everyone wants 3D animation or effects etc added, but I think my focus will be colours because Davinci is a great piece of software to use and being quite colour perceptive, I think I could do a good job at re-touching clips to suit the mood.

VFX Showreel

After almost five months of second year this is some of the work I've done in Post Production. I say some, as I consider these to be the best. The rest of my vfx work is further down but this is the showreel I was tasked to hand in as part of the assessment. It contains both work I had to do as part of the course and some play-around work I did in my free time using After Effects.

 

 

 

 

Advanced Spin and Sky Replacement

Using After Effects to create an interesting spinning light source and replacing a blown out sky.

Footage for the sky replacement from videocopilot.net
Light source created from scratch myself.

Advanced Time Freeze and Day to Night conversion

Learning to composite shattered glass into footage using 3DS Max and After Effects and turning a day scene into a night scene.

The first part of the video is the advanced time freeze where I created all the motion trackers in After effects then transferred the footage into 3DS Max to create the glass. It was then transferred back into After Effects to composite the glass over the top of the footage.

The second half of the video is a day to night conversion where I reduced the saturation slightly and altered the hue before manually animating the headlights and the light on the floor.

Raw footage from videocopilot.net.

Below is the shattered glass I rendered out of 3DS Max before it was added to the live footage.
I created this glass from scratch by creating four individual shapes, duplicating them and randomising their spread and position before adding a multi/sub material which contained a bitmap plus refraction and bump maps to create the transparent illusion. I then parented the glass to the camera so when it was exported back into After Effects it was just a case of dropping the glass into the composite and rendering it straight out.

 

 

 

 

 

Time Freeze

Combining two clips together where one clip freezes in time whilst the other clip plays.
This tutorial was quite easy to understand as all it required was masking out the character that falls and freezes in time and dragging out the key frames for however long I wanted the freeze to last.
Unfortunately the interaction between both clips can be seen as the mask which cuts round the static character clips off the edges of his arm. As this is only a practise, I'm not too worried but if I was to carry out this task properly there would be a green screen involved so masking out the static character would give a sharper, more clear cut look to give the feeling he was in the same time frame as the moving character. Source footage from videocopilot.net

Gunfire on different surfaces and light streaks

After Effects practising using particles as bullets interacting with three different surfaces: ground rubble, the wall and water.
Then again using particles connected to a light source and randomising the motion to create light streaks in 3D space with the camera tracking in and orbiting around it.

Source footage for the gunfire video from videocopilot.net.

Earth Zoom and Quick healing

More After Effects practising creating a zoom out from ground level to the Earth in space and creating a super-human heal on the skin. Source footage courtesy of videocopilot.net.

Set Extension

A bit more complicated than the previous After Effects projects I've done as it involved stabilising the motion of the camera and tracking the motion of static objects as the camera panned around the scene. I had to use two tracking points (one panning, one rotation) for the first half of the shot and use another two tracking points for the second half. This was so I could drop additional objects over the top without them moving with the camera, this included the buildings and replacement sky.

Originally my first render didn't work as the sky was moving slightly with the camera motion. I then learnt I needed to place the tracking points on a distinguishable section of the shot (i.e. a leaf, a dark stone) so the tracker stayed with that object.

Below is the improved render and breakdown of how I got to the finished shot.

Source media from videocopilot.net

VFX Breakdowns

Progressing further with After Effects and now creating various visual additions to a 2D image such as missiles and energy creation using particles to control smoke generation and motion of light/objects on screen.

I've been following tutorials from videocopilot.net. All source files/footage you see in the following video is credited to them. This video is only to show my learning of After Effects so far.

VFX work

Now that I think I'm heading in more of a VFX route I've been learning Nuke and After Effects to get a better idea of how to use the software and create work myself as an added extra for my showreel which I'll have to submit at the beginning of next year.

I started pretty easy in After Effects by stabilising some footage which was originally quite shaky and hard for the eye to focus on. Here is the result.