Gopher Golf: Compositing

Compositing is a key part to the production of my film - I'm producing the film in a unique style which combines 2D and 3D elements, so when editing the two together, I had to tweak the raw footage quite a lot in Adobe After Effects to make sure the 2D and 3D would work well together.

The Golfer was very tricky to blend in with the backgrounds, because the movement of the puppet is much faster. There were still patches of blue screen surrounding the Golfer that took more time to remove. The Gopher, in contrast, was a very limited puppet to work with. After Effects was also a useful tool for working on props which would have been more time consuming to animate in stop-motion, such as the golf ball going around the golf hole.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #5

The final stop-motion scenes to feature the Golfer were finished today. I'm very pleased to have finished filming at this time, as I now have time to revisit any animation that needs re-shooting or tweaking in Adobe After Effects.

The animation features the Golfer reacting to his victory at the competition. The joints on the puppet had to be stiffened up many times during filming to make the puppet more stable.

Gopher Golf: Gopher's Burrow

The Gopher's burrow is only seen for two short shots in the film, but still required some thought in how it would be produced.

The burrow was initially to be a flat background behind the Gopher, but instead the Gopher was sandwiched between a background and two foreground layers, covering the top and bottom of the screen. This would give the illusion of the Gopher digging his way through a tunnel. Part of this idea was inspired by the way digging is shown in films such as 'Fantastic Mr Fox' (2009). Many recycled drawings from other scenes in 'Gopher Golf' - including the fence, a golf tee and some pebbles - were reused in these scenes, albeit slightly modified with darker lighting and more texture.

Gopher Golf: Blowing up the Mansion

Today I completed the first final shot to be used in the film - ironically, the end shot! This was easy to put together once I had all the 2D and 3D elements ready - all the various layers were combined in Adobe Premiere. I had more time to experiment with the chroma key effects, following on from my first attempt, so I was able to improve it a lot this time.

The fire and smoke effects were free CGI effects I downloaded. I'm interested in filming an explosion against a green/blue screen myself, but I may not be able to due to time constraints. I'm pleased with the end result of this footage all the same though.

These drawings were a test to see what the explosion would look like in my own, hand-drawn 2D style. However, the real fire effects are more unexpected so they make the comedy a lot stronger.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #4

Here are some photos from the Golfer's scenes which were filmed on 21st April 2015. Again, these were experiments and I was trying out which facial expressions suited the Golfer best. I needed to have a screwdriver on set, because the Golfer puppet had been moved around so much that some of the joints needed to be strengthened again.

Gopher Golf: Mixing the 2D and 3D

These pictures are stills taken from the trailer I made for 'Gopher Golf'. This is the first time I have tested 2D and 3D elements together using Adobe software - Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects, so seeing these two elements together for the first time was very exciting. It was also the first time I allowed myself to screen footage from the film to family, friends and colleagues, and it received a highly positive response.

However, there is still an outline around the character and odd moments where the character blends into the background. The lighting also does not match. I feel like I could have improved this a lot if I had given myself more time to edit the trailer, but hopefully, for the final film, I will have more time to resolve this issue and experiment a lot more with lighting and chroma key effects.

Gopher Golf: Additional Shoot Pics #1

Here are some additional pictures from the shoot of my film.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #3

Today I filmed further scenes with the Golfer in stop-motion animation. This was my first attempt at changing the Golfer's facial expression by remodelling his mouth for different shots. His hat also creates a greater effect when he needs to lower his eyebrows.

It was great fun to play around with which different facial expressions the character could generate. It helped inspire how the rest of the body should perform on camera as well, particularly when I filmed the character mouthing an "ooh" sound - the rest of the body turns away from the camera, as if something horrific has just happened.

Gopher Golf: Making the Trailer

This week, our university received the full details of a competition being judged by Cartoon Network. The brief was to create a trailer for our short films, using whatever completed material we had, including final footage, test footage, animatics, concept drawings and storyboards.

I wanted my trailer to sell my film and make audiences excited to see what would happen next. Therefore I centred my film around questions which sum up what the film is about, these being "what if you had only one second to change your destiny?" and "will the golfer be ready for his big game?".

The trailer has a dramatic first title card, accompanied by music, to set a very dark tone before surprising the audience by revealing this film is actually a very light-hearted comedy. The footage I shot especially for this trailer, of the golfer being hit by the golf ball, also shows audiences this will be a fun film.

I liked the idea of the trailer and I found it exciting seeing 2D and 3D come together for the first time in my own work. However, I really wish I had more time to work on it. I was working on the trailer on my laptop at home when a bug (caused by a fault with Skype) had caused the computer to crash altogether, losing all of my files. Thankfully my university work is backed up on numerous other devices, so I used a computer at the university to start the trailer again.

As a result of this, I had only a few hours to edit the trailer before its deadline, so although I met my deadline successfully, I would've liked more time to work on the lighting and chroma key effects in the trailer.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #2

Recently I filmed a scene in which the Golfer is required to lean down and pick up two leaflets. The puppet was capable of walking by itself, but it couldn't lean down by itself as it was too flexible. I solved this by using two magnets underneath the set - one for each foot - which were strong enough to hold the character down.

No additional support was needed when the Golfer was required to pick up the two leaflets, because the fingers move around freely and could pick up the leaflets by themselves. However, to make the puppet easier to stand up whilst leaning over, I had to remove the Plasticine from the feet and let the two magnets do the work.

Gopher Golf: Editing the Lighting

After reviewing all the footage filmed so far for Gopher Golf, there were a few problems which I had to sort out before filming could continue. Firstly, the blue screen was not flat enough and the lighting was not strong enough for the blue to become one solid colour. The blue screen still had a number of creases in it, which had to be ironed and then pulled taut to both sides of a frame.

The blue screen was moved right against the wall, as was the table I am animating on. The set lights were also moved closer to the set and the wall, improving the lighting greatly. It also gave me more space for any work I needed to do behind the camera, such as reviewing the film on the screen.

The other issue was that, after reviewing all the footage, a black smudge was in the middle of the screen. It was directly on the lens and I didn't have the correct materials to wipe the lens clean. Therefore it was agreed I could switch to using my own camera, a brand new Canon 70D which is more up-to-date and offers higher quality than the Nikon D300.

Keylight, a useful feature in Adobe After Effects, was used to delete the blue background from the raw footage, although the levels of black and white lighting had to be adjusted because the blue background was not a block colour. The outline also had to be erased. I have very rarely used After Effects before this year, so I had to look at online tutorials to help with certain features, although the software was fairly easy to use. It saved hours of time as I was about to try removing the black smudge frame by frame.

I was pleased with the results after I had doctored the footage in After Effects, although hopefully the consistency of the lighting will no longer be an issue. If I do have any more problems in filming, I'm satisfied that I have a solution.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #1

The first scenes to feature the Golfer were filmed this week. The Golfer was extremely tricky to animate as, sometimes, the puppet was easy to stand up, other times it wasn't. Plasticine was often attached to the feet to help the puppet stand up correctly.

I have finished animating the scenes which feature the Golfer walking - all other scenes now will rely mostly on his facial expressions. Two versions of a golf swing also need to be animated.

The Golfer, a key for his new home, two leaflets and a golf club will be the only "live" props to be filmed in these scenes. A golf ball will be added in later with After Effects for the golf swing scenes.

The walk was very difficult to animate as it was hard to make the puppet stand up by itself some of the time, but the challenge made it all the more fun to work on.