EE 1262 Making a short video Part 1: Preproduction Studen ID: 1112146

Student ID: 1112146

Page | 1 The Idea: The idea of my project is to combine an interesting story with a lot of visual effects in order to grab the viewers attention and interest. The story is about a guy, who is sightseeing in the park with his handy cam and taking shots of the nature as every other ordinary day. However, what is about to happen is far from ordinary. Suddenly, the character notice a fireball, falling from the sky and crashing nearby. When he runs to the crash side, he finds a small crystal orb. When he picks it up, he gains a number of supernatural abilities such as telekinesis, time reverse and super strength. This is great news, because a portal in the sky opens and strange red glowing dots fly out of it. Those energy balls get into the humans around the character and obsess them, turning them into zombies. The zombies try to kill the character and get the crystal orb. Thanks to his special abilities, he succeeds to deal with them. The portal in the sky closes and another one opens just next to the character. The voice, coming from it tells him to drop the orb into the portal, so that the world is not in danger anymore and the orb is in safe place. After doing that the character is disturbed by the loud sound of his alarm clock, he tries his special powers on a bottle of water and realises that the whole story was only a dream. However, at the end, while the character is leaving the room, there is a close shot of the bottle which starts to shake. Was it only a dream? The viewer has to decide. The Script: 1. Shot from the characters handy cam, filming his face, while he is cleaning the lens with a tissue. 2. Long shot of the nature in the park, camera panning from left to right. (Slight handshake, because this is a shot from his handy cam) Character replicas: Aaand another beautiful day in Huntsmoor Park. Actually, I think this is one of the most beautiful parks I have ever visited. Hmm maybe next week, I will call Jim and his friends to come here and play some football. 3. With surprise, the character turns his camera to the sky and notice a falling fireball. Long shot. (shaky footage) Character replicas: (surprise and fear) Oh my God What the hell is that thing. I think there is a lot of time since 21st of December 2012. 4. Another medium shot of the character, but this time from another camera, shooting behind his back, but the falling fireball is also in the frame. 5. The fireball crashes in the ground nearby. 6. The character is running towards the crash side. 7. The character finds the crystal orb and picks it up. We can see an image of the galaxy inside it. 8. Suddenly a portal in the sky is opened and red glowing balls of energy get out of it and start to fly to the ground 9. At the same moment the ball starts to glow, and an image of the galaxy appear all over the character. He feels the supernatural powers rushing into his body. 10. The balls of energy from the portal get into the peoples bodies and turn them into obsessed zombies. There is a close shot of the face of one of the zombies. We can see how his eyes turn from normal into black.

Student ID: 1112146 11. The zombies start to run towards the character. Their aim is to kill him and to take the crystal orb. 12. The camera rotates 360o around the characters face and stop behind his back. (Medium shot). He pushes the air with his hand and unleashes an invisible force, which push back the closing zombies. 13. The character is happy about his abilities and feels confident. Character replicas: Hell yea just like a jedi in Star Wars 14. The character points with his fingers to one of the zombies and from distance lift it in the air. 15. When the character closes his fist the zombie evaporates in the air. 16. The character starts to run towards the other zombie, jumps in the air and prepares to punch (slow motion), an energy appears around his fist and just before the hit, the slow motion stops. 17. The character notices that there are zombies with guns advancing. He is surprised and scared and before taking any actions he gets shot in the chest three times. 18. While lying on the ground, the character tries to reach with hand the crystal orb, which is nearby on the ground. 19. When he manages to reach it, suddenly he finds himself standing next to his body and holding the crystal orb. From that point of view, he observes how the time is reversing and watching in reverse how he is getting shot. 20. Just before the moment in which the zombies have fired, suddenly, the character finds himself at his body again at the very same place, when he got shot earlier. 21. While trying to figure out what is happening, the zombies fire again, but this time, just before the bullets hit him, the character make an invisible shield in front of him and stops the bullets, which are floating in front of him (The Matrix effect). 22. The character twists the bullets and with a push of his hand he sends them back to the zombies and kills them. 23. Suddenly, another portal opens next to the character. The character hears voice, coming from it. Portals voice replicas: (Mystical voice, whisper) you have done well. You managed to defend the crystal orb of the gods from the dark forces and saved not only your world, but the balance in the whole galaxy. Now return it where it belongs, on a safe place, far from the reach of the darkness. 24. The character throws the ball into the portal and suddenly a loud noise appears. 25. The character opens his eyes and finds himself in his bed. The noise is from the alarm clock, so he, sleepy, turns it off. 26. The character remembers of his dream and tries to push a bottle with water on his desk from distance, but nothing happens. 27. While he is leaving the room, there is a close shot of the bottle of water. We can still see the blurry character figure that is leaving the room, behind the bottle. 28. Suddenly, the bottle starts to shake. 29. Black screen 30. Credits

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Student ID: 1112146 Story board: Can be found at the end of the document. Required equipment: Hardware: HD Camcorder Personal Computer Camera Tripod Green screen

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Software: Adobe After Effects CS 5 ( Creating the visual effects) Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5 ( Editing and final export of the video) Adobe Photoshop CS5 (Designing the poster) Particle Illusion ( Improving the portal) Cinema 4D or 3D Studio Max ( Bullets modelling and animation) 3D Studio Max ( Simulation and render of a realistic explosion when the fireball hits the ground) Example

Key shots analysis (look at the script): Note: While working on the effects on the different shots, I will use uncompressed versions of the videos in order not to lose quality. Thats why I will have about 200 GB free. The final and edited version will be exported to MPEG 4 format/ H.264 Codec, because of its good quality and compression ratio. #3: The falling fireball.

In order to create the falling fireball from the sky, I will use Adobe After Effects CS 5 and more specifically the plug in Particular. First, the shot has to be motion tracked, so that the fireball will follows the movements of the camera in order to get as much realism as possible. Secondly I have to animate the path of the particle emitter across the sky and play with the various options in order to make it look as better as possible. The explosion will be simulated and rendered using the 3DsMax plug-in Fume Fx. #7: The crystal orb shot. The character will hold a green ball with 4 tracker markers on it in order to track its motion easier and to put the crystal orb on its place later. The first step is to create the crystal orb with Adobe After Effects. After that I will track the movement of the green ball in the characters hands and replace it with the crystal orb. I will animate the light from the orb in order to integrate it better with the shot. (Example on next page)

CG Crystal Orb, created in After Effects

Student ID: 1112146 Removed and motion tracked green ball from the shot.

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Final result:

#8: The portal in the sky.

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Again the first step is to track the motion of the shot, using the integrated in After Effects Motion Tracker. To create the portal to looks as good as possible, I will create a new elliptical shape and feather the edges. I will import a smoky loop video (Fig. 1.2) and set expression wiggle (0,360) for the rotation so that every single of them rotates randomly, while looping. The colour can be changed as desired using the Tint effect. After that I will export a suitable emitter from the software Particle Illusion in order to make the portal looks even better. I will export the Particle Illusion animated emitter in .PNG sequence, interlaced, in order to preserve the alpha channel. The result will be something like this (Fig. 1.1) After that I will import the ready portal into the shot. The glowing energy balls, falling from the portal will be created again using Adobe After Effects and the plugin Optical Flares. In addition I will apply sky replacement.

Before

After

Student ID: 1112146

Page | 5 #10: The dark eyes: For this shot, I will use already created and freely distributed CG eyeball. I will make it black and after tracking the motion of the zombies face I will mask his eyes and put the CG eyeballs in. The result will be something like this, with the difference that the eyes in the shot will be entirely black.

#14, 15: The flying zombie and the evaporation. In order to make the zombie flying, I will combine two shots. The first will be actually a still image of the park without the zombie and the second will be a video of the zombie, in front of the green screen, moving his hands as he is flying in the air. After that I will remove the green background and put the zombie in the shot. To make the zombie evaporate I will use displacement, turbulence and particle world plugin again in After Effects. #17: Bullet stop To achieve this effect it is needed to create a 3d bullet, apply textures and animate its motion. I will use the software Cinema 4D for this task. I will create the bullet by using reference photo of a real one. The next step is to duplicate it and integrate the bullets with the scene. For this task I will create a new plain in Cinema 4D and apply a still frame from the scene where I want to put the bullets. After that I will create a new camera in front of the plain, align the bullets as desired and animate their motion: start point, end point and their rotation in the air to make it look more realistic. In order to avoid motion tracking I will install the camera, steady on the tripod.

Student ID: 1112146 #19: Getting out of the body and time reversal: Definitely in this shot I will have to use the green screen again and again I will combine two videos. The first video will be how the character gets shot and falls to the ground, filmed from the side. The second video will be in front of the green screen of the character, standing and pretending to observe his body from the side. After that I will combine those shots together and will make the first video darker and smoky, so that it looks as the character is in spiritual dimension while observing the action. For the time revers effect, I will simply reverse the time of the first video, so I will achieve the effect that the character is watching how is getting hit from distance, but in reverse. #28: The shaking bottle: This effect will be actually the simplest one. While the cameraman is filming it, another person will start to move the bottle with plastic cord for fishermen. Eventually, I will remove it if it is still visible in the video, thanks to the wires removal plugin in After Effects. Locations: The bigger part of the video will be filmed in Huntsmoor Park, near Brunel University. The park security and police will be notified about the event few days before the filming take place. Only the end of the video will be filmed in my room in the university campus. Production Team: Cameraman: Vassil Vassilev Sound: Vassil Vassilev CG effects designer: Vassil Vassilev Lighting: I will use available light

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Casting: I will search in the university drama society about volunteers for my production. I will need 4 different people for the zombie role and 1 more to play the main character. Scheduling: First I will speak to the actors when they have the opportunity to spend about 3 days. Maybe the best option is to choose a weekend. Because I will use only available light, the best time to film is from about 10:00 a.m. to about 3:00 a.m. I will book the HD camera and the green screen studio according to their timetables. I dont need to hire costumes, because the zombies and the main character will be dressed with regular everyday clothes.

Student ID: 1112146 Poster: Page | 7