September 19th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I managed to insert a car in the opening shot as well as tweak Shot 21 and got them all rendered and composited during that last week before hand-in. On 11th September 2006 around 11am I submitted my short film for assessment. It’s been a pretty long journey - ultimately satisfying but not without pitfalls. Towards the end it got harder to remain motivated and excited since I’ve sat and watched and analysed the shots over and over so many times the impact of the story and animation has dulled on me. At times I was picking on the smallest things and missing the forest from the trees so to speak. All in all I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished given the timeframe and capabilities. Anyway, with the submission done, this marks the end of my project - but not necessarily my production log. I’m hoping to sporadically update with any news concerning festivals I entered (or hope to enter) and how it performs in them. I’ll keep you posted.
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August 31st, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
As I mentioned before these past couple of weeks have been devoted to compositing my shots and editing them together with the audio track into a final film. I’ve intentionally been rushing to finish it by the start of the week (the actual deadline is 11th September 2006) due to reasons I’m not at liberty to explain for the moment but what it means is that I’m now at a point where I’ve to decide if I want to continue tweaking and possibly incur a large amount of extra work or just leave it as it is, kick back and enjoy the rest of my time here in Bournemouth. The perfectionist part of me prefers the former. I do have a bit of time to mess about with it so I’ll probably do it. Worse case scenario my adjustments don’t get incorporated in time (or ends up damaging the film) and I just hand in what I already have. Anyways here’s the situation so far:
I found a more interesting and appropriate font for the title and credits.
Just for the sake of it, I’ll go into a bit more detail about how I composite the various passes in Shake. A typical shot requires that I render out 1 pass of the sky, another pass with just the background elements and another with the foreground elements (Mr. Knox, Kid and the bench usually) then finally an ambient occlusion pass (sometimes I render the ambient occlusion pass separately for background and foreground). When the bus is in the shot it might require an additional pass specifically for the bus. I usually only utilise the Blur (or Defocus), ContrastLum and iMult nodes to end up with the final look. I only had to render out Depth passes for the first and last shots mainly because I had camera moves in them. I also had to tone down the ambient occlusion effect (20% mult) otherwise the darkened areas just make the shot look like it’s indoors. I didn’t eliminate it entirely because it does give the shot more depth even though it’s very subtle. Here’s a sample breakdown for Shot06:
Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting news concerning the project next week. See you then!
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August 15th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I managed to get the first-pass animation integrated with the sound and music (both first drafts as well) in time for the crit of Thursday. I received some productive feedback from my tutors and coursemates of both the animation and audio aspects. The rest of the week was then devoted to tweaking the animation and rendering a couple of shots. Unfortunately there wasn’t much else to it. I’m just glad I haven’t lost my momentum and experiencesd any symptoms of burnout yet.
This week starts off with more rendering of shots. My plan is to render out all the shots in the appropriate layers (background and foreground mostly), composite and edit them all into the full film then review at what needs to be tweaked in terms of timing, animation and rendering. That way I can make the necessary adjustments if time permits and only re-render the affected layers/shots. FYI, I’m using Shake and Premiere Pro for my post-production needs. Here’s a screenshot showing how I assembled one of the shots in Shake:
That’s about as complicated as it gets - so far. Here are some familiar examples with the newly-created compositing effects:
On the one hand I feel the backgrounds could use more blur/DOF in some of the shots. Otherwise the whole shot might look quite flat and bland. On the other hand I don’t want to patronize the audience by telling them what to look at with blatant areas in and out of focus in every shot. Also, I still need to decide if I want to experiment with Ambient Occlusion as a way of enhancing the look further. Decisions, decisions!
Anyways. See ya soon!
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August 5th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
We did the sound recording at the university grounds and in the studio on Wednesday. As I suspected, getting my kids to perform on cue was an impossible task (the old adage about working with kids and animals rings true). We did manage to capture the runs, bench-climbing, jumps and snatches of dialogue needed for Kid after some repeated coaxing. In comparison, Mr. Knox’s vocal recording went so much smoother, with my sound designer’s roommate tackling the role with gusto.
I also managed to complete the first pass of all the shots in my film. Already looking at the edited playblasts I can pinpoint some timing issues and numerous tweaks to be made in the animation. There’s also the task of refining all the facial, hand and cloth animation. Add to that the texturing, rendering and compositing tasks still to be done and I’m wondering if the remaining 4 weeks is going to be enough.
I am so looking forward to hearing the animation with the first draft of sound effects added in!
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July 31st, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I changed the number and sequence of shots recently - after adjusting Shot08, Shot10 had to be removed, shots 09 and 11 were merged, and a new shot was introduced after shot 12. Presently my numbering system is a little skewed because of it. The edited playblast I uploaded in my last post has incorporated the new changes but it’s caused a propagation down the rest of the line and now I have to decide if I should continue with my original numbering or rename all my scene files and playblasts/renders. For the sake of organization the answer is clear it’s just such a hassle renaming files. Another major change to the short film is going from PAL 4:3 to 16:9 letterbox format. I’ve been toying with the idea since the beginning, but I wasn’t too concerned about it since I had much more pressing tasks to settle then. Now that I’ve gotten the set and characters sorted and in the midst of animating, I’ve decided that - given the way the shots are designed and the mostly-straight-lines look - the story would look better in a wider, more film-like format. Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:
In most cases its an improvement over the original 4:3 format but at times it’s not so ideal because of the challenge of directing the audience’s eyes to the intended focus point within the wider but ’shorter’ shot. The pros outweigh the cons though so I’m sticking with the new format:
On a more positive note, I’m quite pleased to report that my animation momentum is still going strong. I’ve managed to complete shots 11 - 18 this week (1st pass only of course). At this rate I should be able to finish up the full set of shots by the end of next week and thereafter focus my attention on refining and implementing the more important changes/improvements. I should have something decent to show at the next mid-term critique session scheduled on 10/08/06.
I’ve also handed the improved block test to my sound designer on Thursday for him to draft out some basic sound effects. We’ll be doing some recording of Kid and Mr. Knox at the studio hopefully this Wednesday if all goes as planned. Another recent development concerns the music for my film. I received an e-mail a couple of weeks back from a composer who has worked on (and is working on) a couple of impressive animated short films expressing an interest in creating music for “Wait, Mister!”. I must admit it does feel like such an honour to have my humble WIP attract such interest! After discussing with my sound designer and ironing out a few concerns, I’m officially going to get the composer on board. It looks like all my audio needs are now set!
I’m still wrestling with the idea of showing you all my playblasts (which means you’ll then know what the full story is and ruin what little surprise it contains) or keeping a portion of it under wraps until the film is fully completed. Until I make up my mind I’ll hold off from uploading the last few shots. I’ll still be working on improving the first half of the film and working on the renders so I hope you still give me feedback on them (or start giving feedback!). Sorry about the secrecy. I hope you understand my reservations. In the meanwhile here are a couple more basic render tests:
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