VSP - Final Project Documentation

Visual and Sound Production - Final Report 

Yong Sun Lu / 0376945

Creative Media/ School of design 

 For this project i got paired up with a friend of mine, and since we are just normal design students we were tasked to film a short video based on the tarot card we pulled as our main theme. The theme we got is The Empress card which in short basically means infertility and pregnancy kinds of stuff. 

When we discuss about how to do this project, my friend said "let's make a combination of 2D animation and Live Action", of course that sounds cool but it will be hell to do but nevertheless, we still went on with the idea. We also invited an outsider, his name is Nathan, to cast the role as the "Entity" that haunts the main character

On the day of the shooting, my friend dragged me to a place near a mall and of course at night time, there we found a sketchy looking alley way and we filmed there, we filmed multiple scenes from inside the mall to the dark alley until a bridge linking to a hospital parking lot, there were no major preparations since all we need is just a tripod and a phone.

After the shoot, we went home and work our parts, i did the VFX and putting together the scenes while my friend worked on the 2D animation

Me and my partner have agreed to include 2D animation into the project itself as I was fully placed in charge of doing so, and as such I will go into detail as to how this whole brainchild came to be. I first started with slowing the original clips into a crawl so that I may pick out its individual frames for tracing later on as the animation as mixing a 2D entity along with a live action sequence would prove to be troubling otherwise. The background will largely be in the standard green screen hex color so that when the time for overlaying comes it will not pose too much of an issue.

After slowing the clips down to a crawl, I will have them separated to be animated in different projects. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the content here remains unused due to the project being deemed too long in both length and filler by the lecturer. There are about 8 animated sequences in total amounting to more than 60 frames individually drawn, not all of the movements present in the frames selected will be traced as animation is best left at the standard 12/24/30 fps rule to avoid a phenomenon referred to as uncanny valley as too many frames per second may result in the animation looking unappealing.

As scene 1 only featured a static shot of the actor standing perfectly still, the way this entity is animated in an animation loop of 5 frames pieced into each other in a perfect cycle. The first 6 frames in the intro ended up being unused for implementation issues, as it was supposed to feature the entity manifesting before transitioning into the looped idle animation of 5 frames.

Scene 2 featured a fully rotoscoped walk cycle drawn in about 40 frames, each individual movement and step was traced and drawn to simulate a shadowy figure stalking our protagonist. half of the animation ended up being scrapped as per feedback, the entity is best to only cross from pillar to pillar once instead of twice allowing the scene to finish quicker.

Scene 3 showcases the entity taking a similar idle animation with a key difference, its world starts to bleed into the real world as it pulsates and glitches before ultimately engulfing the entire frame. Seamlessly transitioning into scene 4 a 5-frame loop was drawn for both the idle and the pulsating background before having a 3-frame transition.

Scene 4 would feature the aftermath of Scene 3, as the world around our protagonist have been fully engulfed with pieces of geometry flying around as light struggles to get by, symbolizing the hopelessness our protagonist is experiencing. This scene featured a medium close up shot of the entity looking dead straight into the camera with the same 5 frame animation loop and an idle.

Scene 5 featured a scene that the protagonist will behold as it is a portal type sequence that will initially start from an extreme close up shot on the eye before seamlessly transitioning into the portal that will then move onto scene 6. This was done by overlaying 3 different loops of rotations with a pulsating effect given to add the feel of velocity.

Scene 6 won't have much to talk about as it is simply meant to be a flashed image as a representation of the entity peering into the soul of our protagonist. 

Scene 7 of my part was a slightly alter video of glass shattering that will then be used for when the protagonist shatters his horrid reality ultimately breaking free of the entity's influence.

Scene 8, the final scene of my part. Scene 8 features the entity fading away slowly before ultimately being carried away by the wind indicating the protagonist's triumph. This was animated in the same fashion as scene 1 was when the entity faded in. However, this scene ended up being entirely unused due to the pacing of the film being demanded to be made shorter.

After the 2D Animation is done, the VFX itself is very simple, all i did is mask myself using pen tool in some of the scenes and every time the entity reveals itself there is a SFX and a glitch effect (i use BCC Cross Glitch) hinting that I (the main character) is getting dragged into his world and the way i put it is just to use adjustment layer and slap in S_Cartoonpaint from Sapphire plugin, mess around with the frequency and jitter effects to create this "other world" not only that, i also add in some Hue/Saturation effect to De-Saturate the background making it almost black and white.

As for the climax scenes i just use the same effects and mask but this time i desaturate it more by using Magic Bullet Looks giving it some contrast and chromatic effect to make it a bit more horror. Another sound i used is a revealing SFX every time an eye scene pops up and the last one is glass breaking sound and that is when i punch the screen and through.