Practical

Testing Visual Effects

Before recording the footage for the short film and editing it with the visual effects, I decided to test the other visual effects I had planned for the original footage before applying them to the actual footage.

Green Screen Effect 

For the green screen effect, I looked up a simple tutorial on YouTube just to know how to use the Chromo key and for any other tips or tricks which would make effect quality better. YouTube Tutorial.

For the test, I used a previously recorded footage.

So I implemented the footage into After Effects and then proceeded to follow the procedure on the tutorial which led me to adding and activating the Chromo key which took away the majority of the screen behind the subject, which wasn't that ideal for replacing with a background, as displayed below.

So I continued to follow the tutorial which led to enhancing the blacks and whites in the whole footage, which, when the footage turned back to normal, made the quality of the green screen effect a lot better, but could still be more separate from the subject, as displayed below.

I looked up a simple background on the internet and implemented it into the background on the footage.

Final product

As said above, the final product could have been a bit better, in that the separation between the subject and the green screen in the footage could have been more crisp. So during the recording of the footage for the final film, I make the green screen scene better by stretching the actual green screen itself across the canvas more so there are no creases, also adding better lighting on the screen to make it stand out more, and also having the subject stand further away from the screen when recording to better separate the colours from the subject and the screen.

Text Bubbles 

For the text bubble effect, I also looked up a tutorial on YouTube to follow the whole procedure of how to make the text bubbles on After Effects and to see how another editor adds it to their footage. YouTube Tutorial.

I also used some test footage I shot a while back.

I found the tutorial itself quite difficult to understand sometimes and to follow, so I had to follow each detail in the tutorial more intricately and closely to get the effect complete. So I started by implementing the footage into After Effects, and then made a new composition on the program and then took the pen tool and shape tool to start making a simple text bubble icon that I took reference from the tutorial and on my phone. I then added text to it and positioned it on the screen correctly.

I then duplicated that composition and altered it by switching the little arrow in the corner to the other side and changed the text on that new bubble, and then I adding an effect to the other original text bubble to change its colour to my choosing (grey). I now have two text bubbles for the footage, as shown below.

After that, I implemented the two bubbles to the footage, from here I worked on my own accord and played around with the position of the bubbles in the footage, placing them in the at the right time and animating them like how I imagine a text to act on my iPhone, as shown in the final product below.

 

Final product

I quite liked how this visual effect turned out, the animation I found especially was pretty cool. The text bubbles took a while to make from the tutorial and I feel like they could look a bit better, I found the style was a bit off, something I'll consider when making the effects for the final film.

Also, I planned to add another feature to the bubbles in the final film scene, like the feature in the tutorial, how he had the bubbles to move in 3D in the footage, but instead I'll just have the whole effect move with the subjects iPhone as it moves. 

Recording Footage 

After all my research was collected and completed, I began working on the production side of this project, recording footage for the final film scene and editing it with visual effects. 

I first started by taking my recording equipment, my tripod and the green screen, and then shot the scenes of the film that I had planned in my research. 

I decided to change my original plan for the green screen scene in my recordings, as there was cloudy weather on the day of recording so the light quality on the green screen itself would have been low and not that practical when editing it in the program. So instead, I decided to film both the scenes after the subject teleports in my house hold, this time with the first scene also having the green screen behind it so I can replace the scene behind that subject to still make it seem like he teleported to a different location, but with it having a less interesting scene than the one in the last scene, as shown below.

I found recording the footage for this project to be quite simple and easy in my opinion, I didn't have many problems during the process, except for the green screen scene but that was cleared just as easily. Looking back now, I noticed some small problems with the quality in some of the recordings, like the lighting on the subject in some scenes. 

Film Scene Development

After I tested with all the other effects and recorded all the footage for the scene, I went to making the short film scene.

I started off with the usual, opening the After Effects program and importing all my footage on it. I then placed all the footage on the time line in order and added the cut parts in the footage to it where the subject teleports and reappears, like it did for my previous project where I tested the teleportation effect in my Research blog page.  

I then began work on the text bubbles for the text effect in the film scene, like I did for my previous test effect above. I referred back to the YouTube tutorial I used to make the effect for anything I forgot, YouTube Tutorial. I made the text bubbles using the shape tool and the pen tool, added the text to it and more text above it for increased quality on the text bubbles. I then copied and pasted the text and edited its shape, colour and text to make the next text bubble in the sequence, I repeated this until I had all the text bubbles for the entire conversation that will happen in the film.

I then implanted all the bubbles into the original film footage, and then positioned them in the fashion of a text conversation that would happen on an iPhone. 

Then I went through a meticulous process of animating the text bubbles, using its Position and Opacity options, so that when it plays out in the sequence, the text bubbles appear and move like they would on the iPhone. 

Then, bu following another tutorial on YouTube, YouTube Tutorial, to help me remember how to make this effect I used for a previous project, I created a new Null object in my timeline, and then opened up the motion tracker effect to make tracking box appear on the screen which I then used to track the movement of my hand in the first frames of the footage on my film. I then linked the Null object to the new tracking line.

I then synced the text bubble animation to the Null object and then repositioned the whole text animation so now that when the scene plays out, the whole text animation follows my hand movement, to increase the feel that the text messages are coming from the subjects iPhone which I quite liked the look of.

I then continued to repeat this effect for the rest of the footage in the film. For the rest of the parts in the sequence, I used the Position option in the layer to carry out the animation if the tracker couldn't go any further.

After the text effect sequence in the film was completed, I went on to making the teleportation effects for the whole film. For this sequence, I referred back to multiple YouTube tutorials I used to make the test effect I also made in my Research blog page to help me in this project, YouTube Tutorial 1, YouTube Tutorial 2, YouTube Tutorial 3, I found some the tutorials less useful than the others. From my last teleportation test effect, I had trouble with physically making the effect and so had to find a solution for this one, as it turned out, I managed to find another YouTube tutorial which gave a link to a special effect which was a kind of puff of smoke, which is what I was looking for, YouTube Tutorial. I then implemented this effect into the film and positioned it in the film where the teleportation effects would take place. 

After that, I implemented glow effect to the special effect and an effect to change its colour to give the teleportation effect a cooler and more appeasing look to it when played out in the sequence.

After that, I implemented a Bulge effect to the footage like I did for my previous teleportation test during the teleportation part in the sequence to greater increase the feel of the teleportation as it plays out in the sequence. 

After I completed that, I decided that I wanted to add more to the effect, so, again in my previous test, I duplicated the specific scene and then took the pen tool and made a mask layer around the subject and kept animating it in just before he got teleported, this time I was more rough with the drawing as to save time unlike my previous test, this was ok because this time I had the appearance of the new teleportation effect to draw the viewers attention. 

I then added the same glow effect as I did before to the mask layer to add an aura around the subject like I did for my previous test. I added key frames to the effect to make an animation of the glow increase over time before the subject teleports.

I did the same thing for the other footage in the sequence when the subject comes out from the teleportation.

After the teleportation effect was completed, I went on to making the green screen effect like I did in the test effect above. I selected the green screen footage and implemented the same Key effect, I then went through the complicated process of selecting the green colour of the screen in the effect and separating the black colours in the scene from the white to increase the separation between the subject and the background. I then also too the pen tool again and drew around the edges of the footage to get rid of the last sections of the background so it can be replaced with the new background that will be implemented.

After that was competed, I went onto the internet to search for possible backgrounds for the background in the film. As said in the planning in my Research blog page, I was looking for an unrealistic looking environment, like something out of a fantasy work, to give the viewers the feel that the subject has really teleported to some unknown location that would not be found on earth. I selected these few choices because the style of their landscape was flat too and extent, and would match the sort of land that the subject would seem to be walking on in the scene, and also because of the specific lighting gradient in the images were the closest matching to the subjects. 

I decided to choose this one out of the others because mainly, it looked exactly how I had imagined the background for this scene to look like, plus the land seemed flat enough and the lighting wasn't far off either. 

The initial plan I had had for this next stage in the film, as there are two scenes in the last part of the film with two different perspectives, was to take a section of the background I chose and alter it in a way so that it doesn't look like the original one, with the surprising detail that will interest the viewer, but still has the same features and tropes as it so I can use it as the background for the first scene in the film with the subject facing the camera, and then the second scene with the camera facing behind the subject and have the full scale original of it in the background, all to avoid the hassle of looking for a similar background on the internet but with different features this part of making the film was the most difficult. 

I first tried to take a section of the background and enlarge it to fill the scene, but it looked too pixilated and low quality, so I tried to look up a solution on the internet and found this short tutorial to try and alter the image on Photoshop. So I implemented the image onto the Photoshop program and tried to sharpen the image, but it didn't work. 

So as a solution, I instead made a copy of the entire background, then took the stamp tool and began to completely paint over the image, replacing the castle and the river to make it look like and entirely different location. This took a while and quite honestly, it doesn't look that good of quality, but it was the only solution I could find.

Satisfied with the result, I exported the image and implemented both the images into the film sequence and placed them in the ground of the in the sequence. 

After that was final finished, I decided I wanted to add one more thing to the sequence and that was too make the lighting in the one scene a bit brighter so it was appeasing for the viewer. For, I looked at a quick tutorial on YouTube, YouTube Tutorial, and then went to implementing it into the sequence, which was done by creating a new layer which allowed you to change the certain features in the footage to make it brighter. I admit, there wasn't much of a difference with the applied effect, it only made it slightly more bright, but I still decided to keep it in. 

After that was complete, the last thing that needed to be completed was some sound effects in the film, for this, I collected multiple sounds from the internet, I tried looking up a basic teleportation sound effect and an electric sound effect which I imagined would add more to the teleportation effect. 

I also looked up the basic sound effects that an iPhone would normally make when texting someone and when someone texts you back.

I quite liked these sound effects and was pleased with the outcome of it.

After the sound was finally all implemented, the last thing to do was export the film itself from After Effects, this was the tedious and difficult part of the whole procedure. I've always had trouble exporting films from After Effects, when I tried to export this project, the film turned out without footage, only audio. 

The only other thing I could think of doing was taking a screen recording of the footage on the program and then recording the sound from the program separately with my iPhone, and then implemented the footage and audio into a separate I use fro making films, Hitfilm Express, and then export that film in a compatible file which I can see and hear. I then uploaded the film onto my YouTube channel. 

As said above, this was the most difficult part in the whole process, trying to record the audio in a quiet environment, and there was even problems with the program as I was trying to record the audio. I wasn't quite happy with the outcome either, by recording the audio separately, it made the audio in the final outcome sound weirder than normal, but I really struggled to find any other way to get this film together.

Final Product

As said above, I didn't quite like the product of the final film, with its slight distortion in the audio, just ruined it slightly for me, but I did like the outcome of the film on the After Effects program. In fact, I liked the whole process of making this film and putting it together. It was a lot easier for me to create the effects, especially the teleportation effect, which I had trouble with before. The only effect I had a bit of trouble with was the green screen effect, in finding the suitable background for it, and of course exporting the film itself, but other than that, I have to say, I quite enjoyed this process. I also like the sound effects I put into it, not just the texting sounds but also the teleportation ones, I didn't think I would be able to find the sounds I did on the internet, like with the backgrounds. 

A couple of things I thought could have been better was the lighting in one of the scenes recorded and, of course, my selection of of backgrounds for the final scene. For that, I feel like I could have gotten creative by taking some footage of the near by landscape (like in my original plan) but this time, added a CGI structure in the background, like a city and mountain, to make the scene look more realistic and to have more control of the surroundings for my film.