Captured

Short Film Blog Post 

             


Our short film was tilted Captured, it was written by Thomas Rex and directed by Cade Walkins Captured is a about two boys, one of them being a jock and the other is a normal middle schooler. The synopsis is that the normal middle schooler saves the jock even thought the jock is mean to him on a daily basis. The boys are captured by a recently released prisoner. The everyday middle schooler has one of two options, save the person that is mean to him or let him be killed.

we included key elements of filming with the locations, shots, and actors because our group chose all of these locations and actors very well and the entire project came together perfectly. During pre production the group decided to go with Thomases story because it was the best one that was not easy but gave us a challenge. My job was to draw the story boards according to the directors visions. our production schedule was during the weekend and film from 7 in the morning to 2 in the after noon starting at Cades house ending at mine. I learned along this project by watching Thomas and Cade because I think that both of them are really good at filming and so I watched them while we where setting up the cameras. During this project my group used the 5 guarantees perfectly because everyone communicated and everyone participated unlike some of the projects I've been in. something that I would do differently is reshoot some of the shots when the actors would over exaggerate things. If I could I would do everything the same because I think this was the best project all year.

bouncing balls

Bouncing Balls Animation 

This animation was different from all of the other animations because we had to first record the real world ball falling and bouncing back up, this was important because after we have the actual balls recorded we marked the keyframes and height of the balls in a google docs sheet. Then we went onto Maya and replicated the spread sheet so the animated balls are exactly the same as the recorded ones, this was really interesting to me because it was combining the real world with a animation, if that makes sense. We had to make the balls relatively the same size as the recording bot to make the balls we used a image from the internet and turned that into a bump map. This animation was also one of my worst because I missed allot of days this project and set me behind a long time, the other problem that I had was restarting the entire project three times because Maya would crash and not save. Then on the day I would render Maya would not render correctly so I spent a total of two day rendering this animation 6 times before it would save correctly. but I still liked how it turned out even with me rushing the entire project. 

High School Trailer Blog Post

High School Trailer Blog Post 

The trailer that my Group and I chose to replicate was Say Anything. Out of all the options on the list to replicate my group was a unanimous decision that Say Anything was a trailer that could be replicated without a budget. We incorporated the key elements of filmaking into this video by getting all the necessary shots, by that I mean whenever their was a wide, close up, extreme wide, and body shot in the actual trailer we made sure to get the clip as close as possible to the real thing. The processes I contributed to in pre-production was storyboards, production schedule, and editing. These where the main things that I would do, but whenever someone needed me I would help them. 

My main role in the processes was director of photography, however if we where on site and someone  with a different role the rest of us would take over the needed parts and spread roles. Technically I was behind camera a good amount of the time and we all edited our on trailers so editing was the other thing that I did technically. I think that everyone in this group used the five guarantees, unlike some of my other projects, the five guarantees I worked on the most is communication, collaboration, and project management. I say this because I, collaborated with the entire team to get the best product possible and project management I used to get the props, like the car and some locations. 

Something that I would do differently is filming in better locations instead of inside of the e-comm pod, because we filmed in the e-comm pod some of the shots jumped form past to 2018 witch did not make the video smooth and not as good as it could've been. If I had the choice I would try to get into a group with Thomas again, because Thomas was a really good director and leader. Experiences that I will use in the next projects is to film in the same time period throughout the video and to get better audio than what was used. My general thoughts about this video is that the high school trailer project went very well and well made. 

Container animation

     

Container Animation 

things that I learned durning this animation are how to use the revolve tool, shape, and add a label to the container. what we had to do durning this animation was create a label in adobe photoshop then put this label onto the container and make a product. This animation did not go as smooth for me compared to the others because I had to restart the entire project three times witch was very tedious and a wast of time. so I guess I learned that I should look at the directions a little closer that was I don't ae to redo the entire project and just do it right the first time. The actual animation part of this project was really easy, it was just rotating the object so that wasn't anything really new. The other thing that was not that new bit we haven't done in a while was sketching because we had to sketch the container before turning it into a polygon in a real thing. 

Snow Flake Animation

Snowflake Animation Blog 

           

This is a animation of snowflakes falling, outside the window. During this animation we learned allot of new things that we haven't done before, like making the snow flake you have make a polygon on the x-axis line then mirror the flake, then special duplicate the two, that way it ends up being a six sided snow flake. This was something that was new to us and was very different then the other methods. Once we got the one dimensional flake we extruded and rounded the flake to make it three dimensional. Making the window seal was really easy and was like the other projects we made, but this time we put the inside window into a one dimensional polygon and made it transparent to look like a window. After we did all this random stuff, we went back to the normal three point lighting and batch rendering.

salt shaker and cup

Cup & Shaker 

modeling 

Modeling these two things was very different than the other things that we have learned to use for example we had to draw the design of the cup in a 2d plane then use a tool that makes the 2d image into a 3d object, its kinda like when potters use the rotating table and shape their clay into something just this was using maya. The salt shaker designed a different way, basically we had to create a 3d skeleton of the salt shaker and use a took that would automatically make the skeleton into a actual body of the salt shaker. then the final part of the modeling process was using the vertex points to touchup the designs. 

shading 

we then used shading to give the 3d designs a realistic aspect for example I made the cup silver because I was reminded of a silver challis and on top of the salt shaker I made it look like metal and the body a bliyn shade so that it would not reflect as much light. I think that the shading was a lot better on this project than the last one because I had a better understanding on how the shading worked in Maya. 

3-pt lighting 

3-pt lighting is the most important park of making a 3d object look realistic because the three lights all work together to make it look like it is a real object. the three lights are the spotlight, fill light, and backlight. spotlight make the majority of the object visible and the fill light fills in parts that otherwise would not bee seen and the back light is used to give some color to parts of the object that would not be seen at all and lights up small but important details. 

Hammer

Hammer 

Modeling 

Modeling the hammer took almost two days because it was really complicated and most people did not know how to make the hooks on the backs. but other than that to model the hammer you have too make a square and then extrude the front and beck of the hammer, then go into vertex mode instead of face then slowly shape it until it looks like a hammer witch took some time but was really easy once you got the hang of it. The front of the hammer was really easy because it was just extruding and scaling. 

Shading 

We are supposed to add shading to the hammer so that is looks more like a 3D figure and helps add dimensions into the hammer and makes the final product look really good and well made. and plus the shading adds shadows to the hammer and on the ground so it can make it look like the hammer is resting on the ground instead of floating in the air. 

3-pt lighting 

Three point lighting is also used to make the hammer or the object look more 3 dimensional, in three point lighting you have to have the key-light, back light, and the fill light. The key light lights up the entire project, but that does not make the object look that good so you off the backlight to light upon things that are not seen on its own. so the final light is the fill light witch fills up some of the darkness in the animation.