Final Video Handin

Here is my final video for DSDN 112 Project 2 part B.
Mission V.I.C
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUxbowZtC5Y&feature=youtu.be

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/52379578

I think the vimeo link is of a higher quality.

featuring "Secret Agent Breakdown" by Toni Aldrich
under the creative commons license

All sound effects from
http://www.freesfx.co.uk/

Finishing touches

I'm putting the finishing touches on my video, like the glass shatter and the checkpoints.
After this all I'll have to do are the credits and a short intro with the name of my app on it. I think that'll be pretty quick to do in flash.

Keying

 When I was filming outside I noticed the glare from the sun was so bad that you couldn't see the checkpoint on the screen. so I filmed my hand inside in front of a green screen and laid it on top.

Another part where I used a green screen is just after the ninja scene.

Input destination

I've added the 'input destination' frames from my flash app over the footage I shot

Finished Scenes

I have finished the introduction and the zombie fight complete with sound and special effects.
For the menu in the intro I exported part of my flash app as a .mov and laid it over the footage I shot.

I don't think the people that own the rights to the  Mission Impossible theme are going to get back to me so after looking through some creative commons sound tracks I found one that I think will do nicely, you can hear it near the end of the intro video.

The blood looks very fake, but I think that makes it funnier.

Zombie Blood Test

  I  need to time the spatter better and I think I'm going to make it bigger.

  I'm working between Premiere Pro and AfterEffects. Premiere is really useful for adding sound effects over top of one another.

That's a Wrap!

Shooting went very well today, I am so grateful to all the people who turned up. They were patient, enthusiastic, brilliant zombies/ ninjas/ evil lecturers/ secret agents.

Here's the rough cut I put together in windows movie maker. There will be more blood, zombies and explosions in the final.

I was quite concerned about getting a lecture theatre to film in, on Saturday I emailed room-bookings for Victoria university and managed to get MacLaurin 103 unlocked for today. I'm so glad we didn't have to drive over to the hospital lecture theatre.

Zombie Death Storyboard

Preparation 03

Today I went to the university and tested the blood on the floor. The inside of the Easterfield has the same tiles as outside, tried a drop and it wiped off really easily. If we end up accidentally spilling blood on the floor I'll be able to clean up afterwards.

I made this baseball bat case out of foamboard and hot glue. I don't think it will hold the weight of the bat so I'll put the bat in in AfterEffects.
I've also got this damage free hanging stuff because I was worried about hurting the wall. It's like stick on Velcro.

Message to Ninjas

Ninjas: Chris, April, Toni

Please turn up at 4:30pm at the Easterfield building of the Kelburn campus, that's the one with the big steps out the front. Wear all black or at least black pants. I have black tops that you can wear if you forget.
Basically you choose your belt and your weapon and think of a ninja pose.
You can see the costume here: Costume
The ninja scene shouldn't take too long and then we can get onto your zombie make up afterwards.
Thanks!

Message to Zombies

Zombies: April, Anna, Chris, Daniel, Emory, Laura, Sam, Toni

Hi zombies, here's what's going down on Tuesday (23rd October).
Turn up 5pm at the Easterfield building of the Kelburn campus.

Makeup-
Here's what the make up looks like: zombie make up it takes me about 5mins to do a person's face, so if you're not getting your make up done you can choose your costume from the range of bloodied up clothes I'll bring, look at the zombie storyboards Link to decide which zombie you want to be (first come, first served) and paint anything that isn't your face.

What to wear-
You are students turned into zombies, so turn up in normal clothes (preferably ones you don't mind getting stained) I'll have a bunch of shirts that are all bloody for you to choose from.
You'll be falling, so it'll be best if you're mobile. Skinny jeans might not be such a good idea. Also if you don't want to do a lot of painting shorts might not be such a good idea either, any exposed skin will be painted zombie-green.

During filming-
There'll be a crash mat (blow up mattress) for you to fall on and blackcurrant cordial to act as blood. It is very sweet.

After-
I'll have make up wipes available as well as goodie bags of yummy things for you. :)

If you have any questions my email is ashleighak@hotmail.com

Preparation 02

I have finished the Zombie and Ninja costumes.
The zombie costumes are basically just normal clothes with more blood.

The ninja costumes consist of the black clothes they will be wearing, a v-neck tunic, a headscarf, a belt and a weapon. There are three belts and a range of weapons to choose from, it's going to be first come first served I'm afraid.

I've put the screens I need onto my phone and they show up pretty well. I've also got some A3-ish sheets of acrylic that I'm going to hold in front of the camera so I can have blood spattering onto it. I think it'll look really cool.

Oh dear.

I have been obsessed about organising absolutely everything for shooting day.
And I forgot something very very important: The lecture theatres will be locked.
Fudge.

I emailed some people about trying to get it unlocked for Tuesday, but I'm not very hopeful. Because of the long weekend I doubt they'll see the email till Tuesday anyway.
Luckily my dad lectures medical students at Wellington hospital so hopefully he'll be able to get us in there,
and we'll just pretend it's MacLaurin 103.
As of today I have all of the props and costumes.

Further Zombie Tests

The make up comes off really easily and takes about a minute to remove.

I also tried out the cordial blood, it works really well

Final Photo(s)

Here is my final photo, I thought about my model being a sort of fungi that grows on other plants.
I chose a strawberry because I think the colours contrast very well with my model.

Final Render(s)

Painting Model

I used black food colouring to dye the main body and I used gesso for the spikes as well as a clear nail polish.

Preparation 01

I've written a checklist of the things I need to have ready for the filming day, it shouldn't take to long.

ZOMBIE SCENE PREP
To ensure the safety of my zombies I'm going to use a blow up mattress as a crash mat and film a few test falls so I know my zombies won't get hurt when falling.
Test that the cordial I'm using for blood can come out of clothes/ doesn't stain the skin.
Time how long it takes me to do the full face make to be sure that zombies won't get bored waiting around.
Bloody up some zombie clothes.
Make the In Case Of Zombies Break Glass case and sign.
Break up some acrylic to be the smashed glass.
Choreograph and storyboard zombie fight.

To make filming easier I'm going to number the zombies in order of death. So if you are zombie #2 for example, you can't be up and walking around when zombie #5's death is being filmed because you would already have been killed. This way I don't have to film the deaths in order because it will be obvious that everyone below the zombie being filmed should be lying on the floor dead and everyone above should still be up.

NINJA SCENE PREP
This is pretty straight forward because all the ninja's have to do is pose and then blow up.
I have a short and a long sword that I'm going to bring on the day.
Since the ninjas are only on for a second I'm not going to make their costumes too intense. Just all black clothes with a black headscarf and tunic that I'm going to cut out of some black fabric.
Right after the ninja scene I'm going to have agent Awesome walking away from the explosion so I'll need to film that against the green fabric I've bought.

PROF. DEATH SCENE PREP
Prof. Death is the evil lecturer at the end, I'm going to film his scene separately because he's never actually in the same shot as everyone else.
I need to get a white cat soft toy.
Test scar face make up.
Print out a fake 'Extreme Calculus Exam'
Borrow a chair that swivels that I can get up to Kelburn.

AGENT AWESOME PREP
I'm going to make an agent Awesome vest that has a clear pocket for the Mission V.I.C phone. Rather than have my precious phone in his pocket while beating up zombies, I'm going to print out the Mission V.I.C screen on paper.
I need to put jpegs of the screens from the app onto my phone.

Final Mouse Toy

Whenever I played with my processing sketch it felt like it was on mute, so I added some forest ambience.

This is my final processing sketch
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/75361

here it is without the sound in case the sound stops working
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/75362

Work In progress 8

 I'm very proud of this mouse toy. You can press the spacebar to alternate colour modes.

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/75354

My sketch is doing this weird thing around the edges, but I refreshed the page and it was fine.

Work In Progress 7

One of the problems I found was that some of the fairies sometimes ended up getting pushed  to the side to get away from the net. So they'd go up and down in a vertical line near the edge (i.e. the xstep was reduced to 0) I've added a check to the outOfBounds method to make sure the xstep/ ystep is never 0.

I made the fairies run to the mouse.
Through this project I've just been thinking about the code and what it does, but just recently I've thought of the fairies as living things. They start glowing faster when your mouse is in one of the four corners because it's as if you've gone away and they can come out of hiding.
I imagined that they would glow brighter when they're happier so if they're running away from the mouse they glow brighter the further away they are because they feel safer further away.

I wanted to add another interaction so I thought about what I would do if there were a bunch of fairies in a forest. I might try to catch them. So when the right mouse button is clicked it's as if you're holding out a treat and the fairies come towards the mouse, they're also brighter the closer they are to the mouse.


http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/75352

Work In Progress 6

The movement in my last test wasn't smooth enough for my liking I think I'm trying to change too many things at once. I went back to the last sketch that I liked and built on that one.

Before I talked about dividing the screen into quarters and having different things happening in each.
I changed this and right now if the mouse is in any of the four corners they 'breathe' faster.
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/75336

Interim Reflection

The lack of sleep kind of made the interim a blur. But I do remember the feedback! This is going to be a massive undertaking, if I recall Craig's advice was to have started shooting yesterday.

Thanks.

I want to have everything sorted so I'm not messing about and wasting everyone's time on filming day. My storyboard is pretty comprehensive but I'm going to expand on it and literally write out every single angle so I know exactly what I'm going to shoot. I've done a blood spatter test, but I want to do another with someone actually being hit with the baseball bat. I also need to do a green screen test for adding explosions. And try out adding moving text elements on top of video.

Get Premier.

Casting was another concern, I was a bit worried about finding people willing to turn up but that's actually turned out fine. I asked a bunch of people today and I already have five confirmed zombies, an Agent Awesome and an evil lecturer ready and willing. I'm waiting for responses from 2 zombies.

 I'll find out sometime which of those zombies would like to be ninjas too.

That isn't a sentence I thought I'd ever say.

Storyboard

First Sketch

Here's the first draft for my storyboard...it'll get better I promise.

Blood Spatter Test 01

AfterEffects is delightful. It helped me murder my sister.

Zombie Make-Up Test

I did some zombie make up tests today,
I like the rotting/ diseased skin look.
I just used facepaint and eyeliner. As well as brushes, cotton balls and polystyrene to apply. The polystyrene worked really well to make a mottled/ bloody skin effect.
And all of it came off really easily afterwards.

AfterEffects Research

I've never used anything like aftereffects before so I decided to do some research into the effects that I hope to use. I think my Flash application showed a lot of how the app would be used, so in the video I'd like to focus on that less and really bring out some cool effects to suit the aesthetic I've set up.

Here's an example of green-screening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYBwflnOtE
I'd like to use this to put an explosion behind my secret agent person.

I'm thinking of throwing in zombies and ninjas so I'd like to have some cool blood effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sGjk5BlhV4

Work In Progress 5

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/74692

Here I tried to get the net to follow the mouse when you click on it.
I also made the fairies more transparent and they become brighter when they are trapped.
The movement in this one isn't very clean.

I think I'm going to try dividing the screen into quarters instead.

Final Render Tests

I'm thinking about how I'll compose my final render with all three models.
I'm going to keep their materials similar and quite monochromatic because I think that will tie the scene together quite nicely.

I no longer think the model in the middle is one of my best, it looks far too angular next to these natural rounded forms. I'm going to try replacing it with a different model.

Background Test

 I made a quick background with silhouettes of trees which I think works really well.

Renders

In tutorial today I tested lighting as well as materials and combinations of the two

Lighting Tests.

This is my favourite lighting test

I like the lighting from below, it makes my model seem much bigger than it is. Almost like a structure rather than an object. The shadows cast on the plane really ground it as well, making it seem more substantial.

Material Tests

This is my favourite material test

I like using a contrasting colour for the spikes. I think a glossy material will suit my form best.

Composition Tests

I like the two bottom tests the most, they are a combination of my favourite lighting technique and my favourite material.