Digital Film and Visual Effects

DMD – Infinite Zoom – Evaluation

It seems as though it is no more than five minutes ago since I was writing the Rationale for this module. This is partly due to the fact that I have been working practically non-stop since the beginning of October; the other reason that the past 10 weeks has flown by is because I have thoroughly enjoyed the work I have been doing for this brief. This is most probably because of the nature of the project; I find that self-directed briefs make me more interested and enthusiastic in my approach to the project. The main worry for this project was one that has existed from day one, knowing that the brief I had set myself was a little over-ambitious, like much of the work I attempted in the foundation years of the course.

The best way of evaluating the outcome of this brief I have figured to be comparing the finished product to the original suggested idea, looking at how much they differ from each other and whether the outcomes have been met as suggested. However this is only a small part of the module, the other side draws upon a well documented body of work, which shows further development of skills learned in the previous two years of the course. I am fairly confident this project has been well researched and each stage of the development has been documented correctly. Personally I believe the finished piece could not have been finished to higher standard within the time constraints of this project. As for the research and development side of things, I feel a vast improvement has been made on previous years. This is an area of work that I have struggled with from the beginning of this course.

I was reminded the other day that this is a thirty credit module therefore around sixty hours of work should be put into it, this made me laugh as I can honestly say I have put at least double that amount of time in. I'm not sure whether I’ve been extremely dedicated to this project or a fool for putting too much effort in. I suppose we'll see when I get my grade for this.

I've chosen to specialize within visual effects for film, however this is still far too broad for industry. I need to decide whether I am looking at going into editing, compositing, modelling, texturing, lighting or render. Although I enjoyed playing all these roles as it gave me ultimate control of the content produced, on the other hand this limits the amount of work I am able to produce and to what level of quality is achievable.

Although I am fairly satisfied with the result of this project, the initial photo-realistic style I was originally aiming for was unachievable working as a one-man band. As Annabeth suggested in a recent Crit, this is a hundred and fifty-man job, or a two-year project working alone.
I think it goes without saying that in this area of work, a specialism is much needed.

The specialism’s in which I worked on this Infinite Zoom production are as follows;

Writer

Director

Producer

Director of Visual Effects

Producer of Visual Effects

Lighting Technician

Modeller

Story boarder

Animator

Render

Researcher

Editor

Track operator

Compositor

I think it's impossible to have a professional understanding of each of these individual areas as they are so vastly different but yet depend on each other so critically that if one of the jobs isn't done to perfection then the whole thing begins to fall apart and look shoddy.

I've decided from this project that I will never take on this many roles in a project again, it is far to stressful and tiresome and after all it much better to get someone who's exactly what they're to do it than trying to do everything at once and doing a crappy job of it just to get your name on the credits a few more times than anyone else.

Apart from struggling with the amount of roles I have taken on in this project, it has helped me gain a better understanding of how a film crew works, everyone does there own little bit to get the best results. It has also given me one last chance to explore some possible future career paths, so in that sense this project has been a vital step in me reaching a set career path.

During this project there are a few areas of which stuck out to me the most in terms of being a possible future career path. I enjoyed writing this possibly the most as I had a vision in my minds eye of how I wanted this to look and I felt that getting the idea down on paper was the biggest step in the whole project, from visualizing to realizing is the most satisfying thing.

From here I would prefer to work with a storyboard artist, it takes me a lifetime to draw anything at all and even when I do manage something my drawings are very stiff and rigid.

Converting the storyboard into an animatic, well that's easy enough however I would soon get board of doing that all the time.

Director or Producer; to be honest I can't organize myself nevermind others to which everyone relies on, not for me.

I decided last year that I am not cameraman, track operator or lighting technician.

I'm not much of a modeller, although I made some basic models for this project, I couldn't see myself getting into modelling.

I struggled with animating even simple camera paths for this project; this is not an area I would like to be in full-time employment.

I enjoyed producing visual effects both in Maya and After Effects, I guess it's a kind problem-solving thing combined with seeing the ideas materialize, which I like about this.

Director of visual effects, I enjoyed this quite a lot, having a shot or two which I didn't have time to produce, explaining it someone else who is more specialist in that particular area rather than struggling on with it myself. Ok so this is a senior position, I have decided to set it as my 10-year goal, after all what's the point in aiming if you don't aim high?

Finally, editing and compositing, these are two areas I got my kicks out of in the second year, editing is not particularly my cup of tea plus there is probably a million people out there who could do it better than me. As for compositing, well I can quite happily sit at computer for hours on end, editing frame until it's right. I really enjoy seeing the bits of a puzzle coming together especially when I'm doing it.

So from this project I learnt the importance of specialism, plus I have managed to narrow my possible career paths down to just a few;

Writing

Compositing

Visual Effects Production/Direction

By the end of the final major project I aim to choose one of the above as my career path, I have plans to write a short/feature length film in which I aim to involve much of the 3rd years, assigning them places according to there chosen specialist paths. I'm sick of being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

This short visual effects clip shows the retina, optic nerve, synapses, DNA and atom all edit together. All five scene have been created in Maya and composited in After Effects. This took around 20 hours to create a 20 second long clip, it looks pretty nifty but it's not exactly a James Cameron masterpiece.

I knew this project was a bit over ambitious from the start, as my tutor Annabeth said; this would be two year project to complete as I originally had in mind or I would require a crew of 150 people to achieve a photo-realistic look throughout.

I heard recently that it took 2000 man hours to produce a 1 sec clip for James Cameron's recent blockbuster 'Avatar.'