Forum Archive Home -> Short Film Competition 2005 -> Entry: Wasp
Entry: Wasp | ||||||
| vitualis posted 2006 Jan 13 19:20 | ||||||
Download here: http://shortfilm.videohelp.com/video/Wasp_(small).avi Author: Bo Johansen Name of short film: Wasp Short blurb about the film After being attacked by a wasp-colored space ship an alien is forced to land on earth... Behind the scenes: I bought a camera this summer with the intent to make some short-films. When I saw this competition was announced it was a great excuse to actually do something about it. I had recently started to use the free 3D animation software Blender and was intrigued by the possibillities of mixing DV footage with 3D animation. That's why I decided to make a sci-fi short-film. Since I've never made a film before, it's been a great learning experience. How this was done My camera is a Panasonic GS35. 3D animation was done in the open source software Blender. Video and 5.1-sound editing was done in Sony's Vegas. I composed the music using Sony's Acid Music Studio. Everything in the short-film was made from scratch except a single sound effect(explosion) and some earth/moon textures. Sponsors None | ||||||
| MeDiCo_BrUjO posted 2006 Jan 14 09:38 | ||||||
| Very nice!, I liked the shadows during the chase.
I also liked the way the alien walked. Funny! :D | ||||||
| CapeKO posted 2006 Jan 14 11:00 | ||||||
| My favorite
Best imagination of any, very well done | ||||||
| mats.hogberg posted 2006 Jan 14 11:20 | ||||||
| Second that!
/Mats | ||||||
| fritzi93 posted 2006 Jan 14 17:12 | ||||||
| My favorite also. :P | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Jan 17 03:12 | ||||||
Oh, I'm glad someone noticed since it was very timeconsuming to get the shadows right. I had to build the ground and surrounding objects in 3D to be able to make the shadows appear in the right place and f.inst. to make one spaceship fly in front of an object and the other behind it. Furthermore it took tons of adjustments to get the perspective and focal length in the 3D animation to match the live video footage. One of the scenes had camera movement, and therefore needed to be motion tracked to make the 3D objects stay in the right place. I know it must sound crazy, but I used about a month to make that 30 sec. chase sequence. :shock: I wish you could see it in DVD quality, since a lot of details is lost in the low-resolution version available. In the near future I'll try to make a few tutorials on how I made some of the effects. Maybe someone could find it useful. I'll post them on my web-site when ready.
Thanks. :D Bo | ||||||
| waheed posted 2006 Jan 17 03:50 | ||||||
| I liked this one. Good effort. | ||||||
| mattso posted 2006 Jan 17 04:31 | ||||||
Please do! Blender looks quite an excellent piece of software - as your clip proves well! | ||||||
| DeadLamb posted 2006 Jan 17 05:38 | ||||||
| ok that was just neat...
Cool smoke effects and so on. nice job.. | ||||||
| mats.hogberg posted 2006 Jan 17 05:43 | ||||||
/Mats | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Jan 17 12:56 | ||||||
I agree completely. I think Blender has one of the steepest learning curves. First time I tried it I couldn't make it do anything, so I uninstalled it. A few days later I tried again. This time following a beginners tutorial and bit by bit it actually started to make sense. :) Bo | ||||||
| mats.hogberg posted 2006 Jan 17 15:00 | ||||||
| :-) Had the same reflex - "Uninstall!" - But I think I'll give it another chance. Looks like there are some good tutorials at the home site.
/Mats | ||||||
| mattso posted 2006 Jan 17 15:34 | ||||||
The 686-page manual was a bit intimidating, but wow I like what you've done with those spaceships.
That's not crazy, it's what art is all about. | ||||||
| TaoTeWingChun posted 2006 Jan 23 00:15 | ||||||
| Gobs (Bo) -
my hats off to you completely, my friend! That was an amazing piece, even the low-res version completely blew me away! I swear, if you find time to post the DVD quality version of it I'd definitely want a copy!!! I know I'm light-years away from any such movie competition, but you've clearly drawn the line in the sand here! Great job! TTWC | ||||||
| ozymango posted 2006 Jan 23 18:08 | ||||||
| As I mentioned in my "review" of a different submission, I was gonna do a "Reporting From The Front report" on this little gem but I've been having some serious back pain issues that have me feeling a bit non-creative at the moment. So I'll give you an actual, serious response.
Bo, I loved your movie, absolutely loved it. :) I think all the movies here deserve notice in many ways, and several deserve a rating of "5", but this one is the one I reacted to the most strongly on a "personal enjoyment" level. In terms of camera work and effects and music and sound and all-around creative use of three minutes and fifty-two seconds of video -- WOW!!! :shock: Just an absolute hoot. Brilliant. And this your first movie! Watch out, ILM!!! :D | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Jan 24 08:57 | ||||||
Sorry to hear about your back pain. :( I know all too well how pain can drain your energy and creativity.
Thanks for your kind words. :oops: Bo | ||||||
| dphirschler posted 2006 Jan 24 09:25 | ||||||
| Wow. Very nice. I liked the music too, especially during the credits. Just outstanding.
Darryl | ||||||
| MrMoody posted 2006 Jan 24 18:26 | ||||||
| A very impressive masterpiece; a technical tour-de-force of visual & sound effects. If it had just had some sex and butt-kissing it could have won. | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Jan 24 19:30 | ||||||
Thanks, :) I posted the music as mp3's (192 kb/s) on my homepage: http://cinegobs.com/?Resources:Media Bo | ||||||
| ozymango posted 2006 Jan 26 11:57 | ||||||
Very nice! And I'm looking forward to whatever tutorials you come up with, you've inspired me with your excellent work! :) | ||||||
| dipstick posted 2006 Jan 26 18:39 | ||||||
| Very nice. Great special effects. Loved the ending. This film makes me want to learn Blender. Five stars. | ||||||
| offline posted 2006 Jan 27 07:00 | ||||||
| You should experience the higher quality version. I had it on the home theater and the combined effects with the full surround sound just blew my socks off. | ||||||
| MOVIEGEEK posted 2006 Jan 28 22:17 | ||||||
| I really enjoyed this film,nice work on the special effects.
:thumbs_up: :thumbs_up: | ||||||
| iLuvLandingStrips posted 2006 Jan 28 22:49 | ||||||
| This was the best, IMO | ||||||
| Noahtuck posted 2006 Jan 29 00:49 | ||||||
:evil: Well ?!?!? Someone hook us up!!!!!!!!! Because this was my fav also and it looked pretty damn good and sounded pretty damn good on my PC with 5.1!!! I would love to have the full version to burn to dvd and watch it on the 54" with full blazing power in the living room 8) I remember watching it the first time thinking... WTF does this have to do with the theme, even tough i like it, and at the end was like :lol: :lol: But i did get a strong sense of deja vu watching it... so i don't know if i saw something similar to this before or if it was just a flashback from the 70's 8) It's so hard to tell nowadays!! :lol: offline you are SUUUUUUCH a tease!!!!!!!!!! :evil: :P :lol: :lol: | ||||||
| offline posted 2006 Jan 29 01:02 | ||||||
| :lol: Unfortunately I don't have a full version either, but a higher bitrate copy that when upscaled on my mp4 player, still looks gorgeous. | ||||||
| Wile_E posted 2006 Jan 29 01:05 | ||||||
How do we get higher quality versions of these films? | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Jan 29 14:39 | ||||||
I've just uploaded a high quality version of my shortfilm to my web-site. It's full resolution and compressed with newest XVid at 2000 kb/s. Sound is AC3 5.1 Size is around 60 MB. Get it here. http://www.cinegobs.com/?Video Cheers Bo | ||||||
| CapeKO posted 2006 Jan 29 18:39 | ||||||
| Fantastic
By far the best entry | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Feb 01 21:11 | ||||||
| If anyone's interested I've made my first tutorial on my web-site. It's about the chroma-keying(green-screen) scenes I made in the shortfilm.
http://www.cinegobs.com/?Tutorials I'll also make an article/turorial about the scenes with 3D animation later. Bo | ||||||
| gadgetguy posted 2006 Feb 01 21:32 | ||||||
| I read through your guide and it's pretty good, but I'm confused about how you placed your lights and reflectors. Could you add a diagram of where they were placed, the direction the lights were aimed and what angle the reflectors were at? I tried something similar, but could never eliminate the hotspots.
(Ultimately, it didn't matter because my camera can't record a solid color. :bigcry: I focused in on a well lit paint chip and a frame analysis showed over 1600 different colors. :o But I would still like to know in case I ever can afford to get a better camera.) :) Edit: Oh, and thanks for the guide. I'm looking forward to any you create in the future. | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 Feb 02 07:38 | ||||||
I've added an illustration and some additional information to my guide. Let me know what you think.
My camera is one of the cheapest panasonic's (gs35) and the green-screen recorded is nowhere near a solid color, but In the chroma key filter I use I can set a tolerance value for the color to key on. This enables me to mask the different shades of green anyway. You have to avoid any hotspotting though.
Thanks. :) | ||||||
| ozymango posted 2006 Feb 02 11:18 | ||||||
| Gobs (Bo), thanks for the guide! I'm looking forward to more! :)
Gadgetguy, I had the same problem at first with chromakey (getting like six billion different colors when I went to the key feature), and as Bo mentioned, there should be a "slider" somewhere that'll let you adjust the tolerance of the key color. This can work miracles -- I stumbled upon this by accident at about 2am, using Adobe Premiere, and thought I was done for but it's there. Somewhere! :) I hadn't really planned on using the chroma key, I just got lucky -- at the last minute I realized I might be able to do the effect of myself with the volcano footage (I was just planning on cutting back and forth) if I could figure out the @#$#@ chroma key. As luck would have it, my step-daughter painted her room walls (before she moved out and the room reverted to my "computer" room, lucky me) this weird aqua color. And it just happened to be a good color to key off of! :D In my case, I lit it with two desk lights (like those little $10 halogen lights), again this is at 1am and I'm making this all up as I go, stuck the camera on a tripod, shot some footage of myself, popped it into premiere, turned on the "key," and spent about half an hour (don't remember any steps, really) figuring out if I could make it work or not. At first it didn't work at all, then I did something and found that "tolerance" slider and bang zoom, IT WORKED!!! There's more than a bit of bleedthrough around the edges but it was certainly tolerable. So with Gobs instructions, I think we can work miracles! :) As for light, one thing I did that helped is something I picked up from my old darkroom days -- I had a white ceiling in the room, so I just bounced most of the light off the ceiling to reflect on the walls, I didn't aim the lights directly at the walls themselves. A lot of this depends on the intensity of the floods, the distance to the screen, all that stuff, but in a pinch you can make "diffusers" out of an old sheet -- don't put the cloth too close to the lights! -- or even big sheets of white cardboard (lke poster board, even thin stuff works, clip those to the lights and bounce the light off that onto the walls. This diffuses things a lot, and because modern video cameras are sensitive enough to light, you can still get very good results. Hope that helps! :) Hey, that makes me think of a possible forum for this board -- movie making tips and tricks for amateur film makers! :) | ||||||
| gadgetguy posted 2006 Feb 02 11:43 | ||||||
| No offense Onnie, but the chroma-key work in City of Tomorrow wasn't to the standard I needed for what I had in mind originally (although it worked well for COT, it wouldn't have worked for Wasp, if you see what I mean.) I adjusted the tolerance as much as I could and there were still too many jaggies and "leftovers" to make it workable for my original project. :(
I will try again using the lighting techniques from Gobs and maybe something workable will result, but I really don't have very high expectations. Gobs, I think the diagram helps make it very clear now. Thanks. | ||||||
| ozymango posted 2006 Feb 02 12:57 | ||||||
Oh, no offense taken, I just meant that if I could make a semi-tolerable chroma-key with a painted wall at 2am, there's gotta be a way to make an actually decent one with just a bit of tweaking! :D Were jaggies your biggest problem, or was it hot spots, or anything particular? Or more just a general "this #$@# thing doesn't work!" situation? :P As far a lighting "tips" goes, I'll second what Gobs wrote about how it may be easier if you light the background not so much -- the more light I had on the wall, even though I managed to get it pretty even, still made for a lot of weird "jaggies" and that. So, going on the theory that, photographically, if you want to "separate" an image from its background, you put as much light as you can on the object (me) and much less on the background (the wall), I was able to get a much clearer chroma-key. Also I "side-lighted" myself so that there was no shadow (or minimal shadow) on the wall, that helped. Again, my chroma-key work was on a level of "3" on the 1-10 scale, 10 being best, but before, when I tried more light on the background, it was about a level "1." :P Also, for better or worse, even a very slight change in camera angle or lighting angle can make a huge difference, so it can take a lot of experimentation. And clothing choice can be critical -- the red suit of the "alien" in "Wasp" was a great choice, both artistically and technically, because it just snaps out of the background in a chroma-key shot, if you have more subtle color blends, that makes things tougher. Guides!!! We need to work up some good guides on this!!! :) EDIT: Damn, Bo, you really earned your prize money with the work you did behind the scenes on your movie!!! :) | ||||||
| gadgetguy posted 2006 Feb 02 15:47 | ||||||
| It was just bad. If I adjusted far enough to remove the "halo" around the subject, it would lose big chunks of the subject as well, and in all cases there were leftover artifacts all over the screen of varying size and densities. After several attempts across several days I just felt I had to abandon the project and try something else. But I will try again and let you know how it goes (although it will be awhile until I can aquire the materials needed to make an attempt). | ||||||
| Gobs posted 2006 May 07 03:48 | ||||||
I've finally finished my article/guide about the CG scenes in the shortfilm. Sorry it took so long. :oops: http://www.cinegobs.com/?Tutorials Hope someone finds it useful. Bo |
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