Unit 1 and 2 (Media Edition part 1): Tension Building

Today, we were doing some experimentation with various angles as a way to build tension for things such as being followed by a stranger and a panic attack. The reason we did this was as a form of experimentation with the camera equipment, particularly to experiment with different camera angles, The first thing we did was get together and discuss what shot types we’d do in order to tell the story (we decided to do still images because it was much simpler than doing a video), we had had 6 Ideas in total (3 for each scenario), mainly mids and close ups:

it took some getting used to to handle the cameras at first, and I’ll admit it did take a few tries for some of our shots, but it’s ok. We still got all the shots we needed:

Scenario 1: Being Followed

Scenario 2: Panic Attack

The other Attempts

Reflection

As you can see, things ended up a little different than expected particularly with the first scenario, mostly because there were complications when I tried to get my hoodie over the camera, needless to say the flash kind of ruined the effect and instead tinted the entire picture red (which while it has the potential to make the character who’s following the character in the image seem more alien, it wasn’t what we were going for), we didn’t quite use a tripod to take these images (mostly because we couldn’t find a particular piece in the studio we used to take the images in the first place) and instead did it using the handheld method because it was simply easier than searching for the missing piece the entire session (while not Ideal, it did end up working in the end)

Some Exercises I Did Myself

In this section we’ll be going over some camera exercises I did in my spare time to help with the tension building using a video game called Dreams for the PS4, the reason I did these was because I figured it would be a good way to 1. Help me build some tension in unique and interesting ways, 2. Enhance my animation skills and take the camera work to the next level, and 3. To show off the power of the game itself and just how versatile it is as not just a game development tool, but a piece of animation software too.

Camera Exercises 1 and 2: Camera Exercises 1 and 2

The Pre Stream Production Video (from before I thought to actually stream it instead): Pre Mamma Jamma

The Production Stream (for evidence Purposes): Mammer Jammer's Grammar Cameras

For Exercise 1, I wanted to have it be from the perspective of a secret camera that was surveying Super Sheep himself (who does little more than stand around in this one because the camera’s the focus and not the character animation), making this one was as easy as taking a Super Sheep model I’d already made, painting a cube a little bit and adding a bush so that it looks like the camera is covert and then moving the camera a bit via some keyframes. The real hard part was actually me fumbling around with the camera die to the way the game stays in the camera editor after you finish recording the key frame for it (and if it moves the default position gets changed) but eventually I was able to get the hang of it, the reason doing something like this is a cakewalk for me is because I’ve got quite a bit of experience with the game (being part of the early access and all) and thus I’m able to do these exercises in under an hour (per exercise)

For Exercise 2, the main focus was creating a vertigo effect using the power of the wide angle lens to emphasise how steep of a drop this will be if The Night Pig falls off, I figured since the first one emphasised a decrease in the field of view to zoom in on Super Sheep, this one could focus on an increase in the FOV (field of view), that way instead of emphasising the character directly, I’d be emphasising the character indirectly via a deadly fall. Once again it was really easy for me to do given how this is a quick little exercise meant to warm up for the big tension building exercise next week, and this is due to my premade assets and experience in the software once again. The hardest bit meanwhile was actually doing the musical cue for when the camera increases its FOV while panning down, but by a stroke of luck, it all ended up working out in the end. Animating The Night Pig meanwhile was rather simple because at the end of the day he’s not really doing much here (just skidding and looking at the camera)

Camera Exercise 3: Camera Exercise 3: And Knuckles

(you know, I’ve got to be honest, I wish I could simply insert the video like I could back on Wordpress, but I suppose links will have to suffice)

Production Stream (once again for evidence purposes): More of Mammer Jammer's Grammar Cameras

Now for this one, I wanted the tension to be built from the mystery as to who this evil shadowy figure is (his name’s Hex Moother by the way) and what nefarious deed he has up his sleeve, so here, I decided to make the camera perspective be that of a security camera mounted on a wall. The room itself was created by simply copying the default floor and moving the copies around to create a ceiling and some walls (pretty basic stuff but this needed to be done quickly), the hardest parts this time came from getting the lighting for the area outside of the room to make a part of Hex’s shadow appear on the wall because I had to fiddle with the light’s position and range as well as the brightness, and getting the right colour grading so that the footage appears to come right from a security camera. (as well as a minor animation hiccup with Hex that was solved by removing the keyframe smoothing) The easiest thing was actually doing Hex Moother’s walking animation because 1. I’d already done the animation itself beforehand, and 2. I only had to move Hex Moother a bit and he’d already do the walking animation thanks to a movement sensor inside the character’s microchip (and I’d wired the logic in such a way that if he stopped he’d do his standing animation, thus saving me lots of work in the long run), Syntha-Sheep was actually added into the scene at the last minute so that the audience could infer that the robotic cartoon sheep has something to do with Hex’s evil shenanigans. (thus getting the audience to imagine what kind of evil chicanery is about to go down)

Overall Thoughts

Overall I had fun doing the experimentation with my friend (and by myself in the case of the Dreams PS4 exercises) because it will help us both gain an Idea as to what’s possible with a couple of camera angles and some creativity (so I believe we’ll do well overall), for example I was able to recreate the feeling of a security of a low quality security camera (because sometimes even the footage quality can build up tension, if done properly)

Building The Tension Builder

Ok, so the tension building unit will end up just a little bit different than us and the teachers had initially planned, originally we were supposed to do it in groups (which would have given me a chance to finally atone for the Super Mario: Before The Odyssey short I’d made back in high school with a group of friends) but because the teachers are having to self isolate we’ve been given the option to do it by ourselves instead (I’m electing to do it by myself, given how we’ll be working from home next week anyway), already I’m starting to gain some vague Ideas as to what I want to do. (I.E: something related to Super Sheep or someone getting into a sticky situation)

Of course in these new circumstances one of the first things that popped into my head was to do an animation of some sort, but what stopped me going too far with my thoughts was whether or not it would even count if I did that, so I simply decided to throw an E-Mail to one of my teachers asking if it would count and surprisingly, she said yes (which means it’s time to kick this baby into, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!)

(the E-mail addresses have been censored for Identity protection purposes)

Research

Ok, so since it was assumed we’d be doing the whole thing in small groups last week we were expected to do some research on building tension and how the camera plays into that, I actually created an entirely separate document dedicated said research if you wish to read it (it’s certainly to a better standard than the stuff I’ve mentioned here): Tension Building: Dedicated Document Edition

However for the sake of marking I also have to put the contents of that work into this document too (except the part that explains why that was a separate document because by all accounts it wouldn’t make sense):

What is this “Tension,” And how do we build it?

Tension is when the audience that’s engaging with a piece of media (be it a game, movie, TV Show, Music Video, Website, ext) starts to feel a little bit on edge about the current situation, be it a character ending up in an unfamiliar location or even in a situation where they could die (either by a monster/killer in a horror movie or an army of bad guys chasing our hero down in an action film), lots of practitioners from across the media landscape try to build some form of tension in their works. (whether it’s Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Dickens, Errnest Hemmingway,The Coen Brothers, Walt Disney, Shigeru Miyamoto, John Carmack and even Matt Stone and Trey Parker) There are lots of different ways that many of these guys (and many more) build tension in all their works, although we’ll mainly be focusing on visual storytelling for this piece of research.

One main way you can build tension (this doesn’t apply to books) is by using the power of camera angles and movements (as well as other forms of visual and auditory trickery such as sound effects, clever colour grading and lighting), one way to do this is to not immediately tell the audience where we are in a particular scene, this can be done in lots of ways from showing lots of close ups of things very quickly (or slowly depending on whether or not you want the audience to only take in certain points of interest in a scene), give the camera some jittery movements to simulate the human eye looking at stuff quickly, messing with the camera’s focus during a scene to make everything blurry that way the scene is even less clear much like what The LEGO Movie did when Emmet stumbles into reality.

You could even do a single camera shot that never moves (like that of a stationary security camera for instance) but keep the villainous character in the shadows by playing with the lighting (yes even lighting can be used to build tension) as seen in my 3rd camera exercise I did in Dreams: Camera Exercise 3: And Knuckles. The tension here is supposed to come from the main subject (that being my big evil Cartoon Cow, Hex Moother. Super Sheep’s main nemesis) being represented only by a vague (not even full) silhouette that’s cast on the wall (and the fact the audience can see a horn would likely make them think of the devil) in combination with the Robotic Cartoon Sheep (which the audience should presume to be what Hex is maniacally laughing about) that’s in the room should get the audience using their imaginations to imagine what Hex wants to do with the Robot Sheep (aka. Syntha-Sheep), because the audience’s imagination will always be scarier than anything even the best people in the industry could conjure up with real (or animated) visuals

Example 1: The Interrogation Scene from The LEGO Movie (2014)

Scene uploaded by IDK What My YouTube Name Should Be (yes, that’s the actual user name):Bad Cop's interrogation Scene from The LEGO Movie (2014)

Getting Analytical

In this scene, the first shot we get is that of an out of focus first person shot as Emmet (the construction worker getting interrogated by Bad Cop) wakes up to find himself in a strange room that he’s never seen before (and at this point neither have the audience) so the fact this shot is out of focus means the audience can’t immediately gouge where the scene takes place which means like Emmet, the audience questions where they are exactly, but what little the audience can make out at this point (mostly grey and some kind of chair like object) might make the audience feel slightly uneasy about what’s about to happen. (which is also aided by a rather echoey voice asking a bunch of questions)

After Emmet’s piece of clever callback dialogue (that being “Good morning apartment?” which is framed as a question here to contrast the way he said the very same line earlier in the film) we then quickly do a vertical turn upwards to meet Bad Cop via a quick jumpscare (nothing too intense though because this is meant for all ages) which turns this shot into a brief close up and then we have a cut away to Emmet’s reaction and then it’s back to his perspective with Bad Cop getting up close and personal (thus making the audience uneasy, much like Emmet would probably feel), in fact, most of the first quarter of the scene where Bad Cop is involved in the shot is done in a first person like manner to really put the audience on edge.

Another little diddy they do here is that whenever the camera is in shakey first person (the shaking is mostly subtle in this scene as to really get the audience feeling really tense), we actually see Emmet is looking up at Bad Cop ever so slightly which facilitates some very subtle high angle shots and subtle low angle shots whenever we’re looking over Bad Cop’s shoulder to make Emmet seem weaker than Bad Cop in this scene, despite them both being the same size with the same body type.

The Camera actually tries to hide The Piece of Resistance (the big red thing stuck to Emmet’s back) by mainly showing Emmet from the front, and even when they do need to show Emmet’s back for some over the shoulder shots of him and Bad Cop (some of which are actually done at a dutch angle), we see that Emmet himself is out of focus so that the audience can’t clearly see The Piece of Resistance yet. (they even cut to some robots in one of the other rooms as a form of foreshadowing for when the robots themselves are needed later in the film) It’s only when Bad Cop asks “then why is it permanently stuck to your back?” that the camera reveals the piece in focus because now Emmet’s seeing the piece stuck to his back to his back (almost as if the piece is saying “peek-a-boo”)

Another Important thing that makes this scene even tense is the context in which it takes place, this scene actually happens right after Emmet has already had crazy visions after touching the piece, which leave the audience very confused which creates a prime situation for all the other tension building techniques to be plopped on top of the initial confusion the audience already feels. (considering the fast paced nature of this whole film)

Example 2: Woody and Buzz being chased by Scud (From Toy Story)

Scene Uploaded by ABC TV (and their little watermark on the top right corner): Scud Chasing Woody and Buzz

Getting Analytical Again

Ah yes, this classic scene. Everyone remembers this one like the back of their hands (myself included), let’s see how tension gets built up in this scene.

So the first thing that happens here is that Scud gets established as a threat right away when he wakes up, this threat is established via him waking up in one shot, the camera cuts to an over the shoulder shot of him looking at Buzz and Woody chasing after the truck and then we get a close up of him growling to establish his lust for plastic and stuffing, this first bit of tension building is important because right away the audience can tell that Scud’s not quite out of the picture yet. (and Woody and Buzz won’t know what hit them)

Now before we move further into the scene, I just want to note how the camera isn’t quite as up close and personal with the characters in this scene (nor does it do as much jittery movement in this scene) as it did in The LEGO Movie’s Interrogation scene (probably because they both take place at different points in their respective films), That’s because while yes, a lack of clarity can build tension, so can having clearly defined stakes and well placed moments where characters could be killed (especially with clever camera work)

Now anyway, once Buzz and Woody do eventually make it on the truck, we actually end up hearing Scud coming towards us (and Buzz even notices this before Woody) but we don’t see him until Woody looks behind him because only then does the camera actually cut to a backwards pan with Scud running towards the camera at full speed, then we get a quick J-cut to a first person shot with Scud and then a low angle of Scud just chomping on Woody’s leg (likely animated at this angle because they’re trying to get us to see it from Buzz’s Perspective) now the camera is rather clever here because when Scud is on screen at this moment, the main focal point is actually his mouth, because when he’s running towards the camera it almost gets eaten (because his mouth opens as he runs) and when he chomps Woody it’s one of the first parts of him that even enters the frame (well besides his nose but that’s part of his snout)

Afterwards we get a long shot (because this film is from a toy’s perspective, but if this exact same shot was of some human characters it’d probably be more of a close up of some legs if nothing was changed to adapt to the new perspective) to establish the characters stageline (with Buzz being to the right and Woody being left) for the next cut to a two shot where we can’t see Scud (which means the tension now comes from whether or not Woody will remain on screen long enough for Buzz to assist him), after Woody almost goes off the screen we get a close up of his hands slipping to the bottom of the flappy bit on that moving truck and then we cut further away to really drive home the stakes of the situation.

Luckily for Woody, Buzz eventually jumps on top of Scud to save him from getting ripped to pieces by Scud, thus releasing all the tension that’s built up until this point in the scene, and thus we have another area where our two scenes differ in terms of approach to tension, (and again, this is due to where these scenes take place in the context of their movies, with The Lego Movie’s interrogation scene being near the end of the first act while Toy Story’s Moving Truck Chase scene is happening in the film’s climax) because while The Lego Movie builds it’s tension over the course of the interrogation scene with it not really releasing until we reach the western scene later on (I’m calling this slow building tension), Toy Story’s climax takes what I like to call the build and release approach where tension is built and released multiple times in the same scene, and the second time this happens starts right around when Woody kicks RC off the truck.

After we see Woody do this, we cut to a Quick Zoom in on the other toys and their reaction to this seemingly heinous crime, which quickly establishes a new threat entering the ring in the form of the other toys’ lack of understanding of the situation at hands with a similar foreshadowing approach they’d used with Scud earlier (probably due to how intertwined Woody and Buzz’s parts of the scene have become), Once the moving truck gets going, Andy’s other toys start their attack on Woody with a close up on Mr Potato Head taking charge and telling the others to “GEEEET HIIIIIIIIIM” and then we get a long shot of the other toys tipping the box over (even the box that says “more toys” gets in on the action), and then afterwards we have a shot of Woody realising he needs to act quick. The tension here come from how the camera is used to tell the audience that Woody doesn’t have much time to get Buzz over to the others which forces him to act quickly.

From here on out (until RC does his big jump) we have lots of cross cuts between Woody and Buzz having to deal with their respective threats with what happens to Woody actually having a direct impact on what happens to Buzz (I.E: when the other toys are spinning him around, RC is then forced to move in circles because of his remote controlled nature) so in a way the tension of this scene from here on out is actually a fusion of two smaller tense moments being built that complement each other rather nicely (because if Woody can’t deal with the other toys, Buzz and RC are in big trouble) to form one big load of tension.

After RC does a big jump thanks to Hamm’s “pig pile” we then get another brief first person shot of Buzz looking backwards and seeing Scud still on his tail after all this time. Afterwards we actually get an establishing shot of the road ahead (which Buzz could get killed by if he doesn’t navigate it properly) but the tension here doesn’t last for more than a couple of cuts between buzz and the road before Scud gets his comeuppance when he gets stuck between all the cars that crash in his wake (and thus releasing all that tension that had built up over the scene in one big climax)

Example 3: Mewtwo’s Escape from Pokemon: Detective Pikachu

Scene Uploaded by Fajar: Mewtwo's Escape

Getting Analytical for the third time

Ok, so this scene from Detective Pikachu takes place at the very beginning of the movie so we get to see how right away they try and build up tension from their first establishing shot where the camera actually pans across a mountain to reveal the facility where the character of Mewtwo is being held, this helps build up tension because the audience then gets curious as to what this place is and what it holds, and the reveal of this place via a pan across the mountain gives this place an air of secrecy to it which makes the audience feel tense because they don’t really know what’s about to go down they only know that whatever’s about to go down won’t be good (because of the music cues they used here)

Next we get a moving high angle shot that eventually rotates upwards into a long shot of a containment capsule (where we then get the dramatic reveal of Mewtwo via someone turning on the power from outside. This establishes who the main threat of this situation is right away by cleverly keeping some of the human characters in the same shot to make Mewtwo (who’s already fairly intimidating from the onset) seem even more intimidating, especially if you’re not necessarily a long time Pokemon fan because now you’ll be wondering what kind of power Mewtwo has in order to be kept in such an advanced looking capsule, but if you’re a long time Pokemon fan you’ll know all about his abilities as a psychic type Pokemon and how he’s genetically modified clone of Mew (hence the name Mewtwo), and the tension will now come from imagining how he’s going to get out of this predicament.

The next thing we get is a mid shot that pans upwards towards the sleeping Mewtwo’s face, where he then wakes up looking directly at the camera. (much like the ending of psycho, only it’s more sudden and with a rather powerful looking Pokemon) The tension from how up close and personal we get with Mewtwo and when he wakes up, it’s quite frightening because it’s almost like he’s breaking the 4th wall in a way (even if that’s not actually what’s happening) which is actually quite clever because it really ramps up the tension ten fold because now the audience believe (even if for a brief moment) that Mewtwo somehow knows about our presence as an audience which breaks the security an audience normally feels when watching a movie. (that being how none of the characters in theses movies can actually get them)

After that we get a low angle shot of a hallway with a mysterious shadow (which we later find out belongs to Detective Pikachu, who we follow throughout the movie) running across the wall and some alarms short circuiting. This shot is meant to show the catalyst of how Mewtwo’s escape begins and build up tension as to who’s shadow this is and why they’re seemingly helping Mewtwo escape, are they good? Are they bad? We don’t know yet because the camera won’t show us the source of the shadow, which builds tension towards this mysterious creature (although if you look very carefully you can vaguely recognise that this shadow belongs to a Pikachu)

Afterwards we get a high angle shot of a mysterious car driving away (and it’s filmed from far away so that you can’t make out who the driver actually is), the tension here comes from the mystery of who the driver is (thanks to the camera being too far away for us to be able to even make them out) and how quickly they’re fleeing this place as if they know what’s about to go down (and how it relates to the Pikachu we saw earlier), are they the one responsible for this? The audience is left guessing on the edge of their seat until later on in the film when we get the answer. (which I won’t say here for spoiler reasons)

We later cut back to a close up of Mewtwo using his power to deduce exactly where the car is and then it’s a cross cut of the car driving away and then back to Mewtwo charging its power in order to escape. The camera here actually does a slight zoom in on Mewtwo and actually shakes a little bit to sell the impending impact of Mewtwo’s power thus building up some further tension as to what’s about to happen. (will he blow it up? is anyone going to get killed?) After this we cut to a close up of some glass getting cracked by Mewtwo’s power (thus really selling that he’s about to do some serious damage), afterwards we quickly cross cut to a screen that’s showing an “Alert Condition Red” on the screen to show the dire situation that’s going down (because typically in movies, a code red is reserved for the worst possible situations) and then back to Mewtwo finally doing the deed and destroying all the equipment. Now here’s where they release the tension that’s built up over the course of the scene at this point, and what’s interesting is that they do quite a few quick cuts to really show the impact (first a long shot of Mewtwo destroying the equipment on the left from inside the capsule, then a close up of the resulting explosion, and then back to Mewtwo destroying the equipment on the right and then another close up of the resulting explosion, and then afterwards a close up followed by a zoom out of him breaking the glass and a long shot of him flying up out of there as the whole room explodes) now the fast paced nature of these shots actually makes it so that the audience can barely process what just happened as Mewtwo escapes before we really get a good look at what happened (and the camera shaking as the equipment explodes is a really nice touch to help sell the impact and really disorient the audience)

We then get a long shot of the explosion happening from the outside as the car from earlier is speeding down the road to really give the audience a sense of just how big the explosion really was (which then makes Mewtwo seem more imposing) when we cut to him later. This then smoothly transitions towards another moment of tension being built when we do cut back to a zoom in shot of Mewtwo (who we then see can actually fly), and then a first person shot of him finding the car and afterwards a close up where he flies away to (presumably) go kill the driver. The rest is a chase scene where Mewtwo’s only represented by a light we see every now and then until we cut behind the car and see that something off camera (which we’re suppose to assume is Mewtwo until later on in the story) has finally sent the car flying right off the bridge thus ending the scene before we even find out the fate of the driver. The tension this time comes from the audience not quite knowing where Mewtwo is (outside of a vague light that pops in occasionally) until the very end when an attack that comes from the left hits our driver.

Practitioner 1: Brian Fee

(Image Sourced from Collider.com)

Cars 3 is actually his directorial debut (and it’s currently the only film he’s actually directed)

Brian Fee’s Work: Cars 3 (2017)-as the Director. Wall-E (2008), Cars (2006)-as a storyboard artist.

Ok, so I know what you’re thinking, “boy why are you picking a director who’s only directed a single film so far, you got a death wish or something?” well to be honest, it’s really just an excuse for me to talk about how the camera is used to build tension in Cars 3, Particularly this scene where Lighting ends up crashing: Cars 3 Crash scene (scene uploaded by Jared The Animaniac)

Now here, you can see that the first shot is filmed from a distance (but we do pan and zoom closer to lightning himself) so that we can see all the next gen cars as Lightning scoots by looking for his friends. The fact that we eventually zoom in on lighting makes it so that we only see his emotions in a clear and defined manner with all the next gens either being to far away to tell their emotions or you’re unable to see their faces due to how they’re facing either away from or to the side of the camera which creates the effect that these guys are rather intimidating due to a seeming lack of nerves, thus making the audience feel similarly to that of Lightning McQueen (and building tension in the process)

See? You can’t see anyone else’s face except Lightning’s, this helps build tension because none of the next gens look like they have much emotion on them (because they’re lean mean speed machines), this builds tension because you can’t actually determine their emotions (mainly due to the camera) but you can tell they’re ready to win because even the parts of their faces you do see, you usually see squinted eyes, which communicates their determination immediately to the audience (and again, puts them in a spot similar to poor Lightning)

after this we cut to a long shot where Lightning actually witnesses one of his friends (called “Brick”) in the process of being replaced by someone new and different (because he’s old), now here, the camera is framed just to the side of Lightning listening to the conversation from a distance, this allows the audience to eventually imagine this scenario potentially happening to Lightning if he loses this final race (of this first racing season, not the movie) by showing the same thing happening to another character, I would say that because Lightning interacted with Bobby Swift beforehand,l it would be better (and build a bit more tension for the audience) if he and Brick switched roles (because in this scene, Bobby had already been replaced off screen), but if you think about it from a certain perspective it actually does make sense given what happens next.

In this shot Lightning and the camera move towards what would be Bobby Swift’s garage only for someone else to reverse on out of there (giving Lightning a good spook), afterwards we cut to the other car (who’s name is Danny, bro) and we can see he’s rather confident and serious just from his face (because how else are these characters supposed to emote, they can’t even do any body language) and then we do a few cross cuts to get Lightning’s reaction, Danny telling Lightning “name’s Danny bro” and then Lightning’s look of shock because now he’s (as well as the audience) realising these next gens are here to stay.

Now skipping ahead a bit (because I want to get this done on time) to where Lightning manages to get the lead, the first shot I want to discuss here is the tracking long shot where Jackson ominously moves in effortlessly towards lightning. The reason this part builds a little bit of tension actually has to do with the way the camera is actually moving slightly slower than Jackson Storm to make it seem like he’s going faster than he is (which sets up the beginning of the end for Lightning’s chances of winning because this is early in the film)

next we get this two shot of Jackson and Lightning, the camera angled so that we can see both their faces (and thus show the contrast of how much effort Lightning’s putting in compared to Storm’s effortless gliding), this ends up building tension after Storm glides off camera telling Lightning to enjoy his retirement, the tension here comes from the audience being actually being able to determine what’s about to happen and thinking “no Lightning, don’t do it Lightning! You’re gonna crash Lightning!” (that’s right, even knowing what’s about to happen to a character before hand can build up tension if it’s being done the right way) but he doesn’t listen

Afterwards we get an interesting cross cut from a first person perspective, to Lightning’s reaction and then back again as all of lightning’s efforts to take the lead get ripped away before his (and our) eyes, thus tensing the audience up for when he makes one last push for victory before his tires give out. Speaking of the tires, we actually get a quick close up on one of the back tires to establish to the audience that they’re about to give out (thus tensing the audience further for when it does happen)

After that shot we get a shot of Lightning from behind, then in front getting closer to the camera, a first person shot of him and then this close up to really show his determination towards his futile efforts despite every first person shot showing the other 3 cars ahead of Lightning getting further and further away, especially in the final first person shot before his tire gives out.

Speaking of the tire, to give the effect that all this is happening quickly the camera quickly cuts between several already established angles (and spending the least time showing his eyes) to heighten the tension even further as everything is suddenly happening at breakneck speed. That is, until he crashes into the wall. There we get a long shot where Lightning flies over the camera in slow motion, a quick zoom in on Sally, and then the classic moment from the teaser trailer

Now this is the part I really wanted to talk about (and the entire reason I even chose Brian Fee as the first practitioner to delve into {even though it mostly turned into a bit about Cars 3} in the first place), in this long shot, everything’s happening in slow motion so that the audience can actually process what’s going on and really feel the tension build up to when he hits the ground (especially if you’re a long time fan of Cars like me), now slow motion can be used in lots of ways, whether it be to highlight two characters re-uniting (like Marty and Alex from the first Madagascar) or it can be used to really show the details of an intense moment that’s just happened. (like here, in Cars 3) as you can see, Brian really used his experience with storyboards when Directing Cars 3 to really bring out the tension with his team’s camerawork.

Practitioner 2: Steven Spielberg

(Image Sourced From Wikipedia)

Steven’s Work: Jaws (1975) E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)

Ok, so since Steven’s actually directed more than 1 film this next bit shouldn’t randomly turn into an analysis of a single scene from their movie. (instead we’ll be looking at random shots from various films he’s made)

First I want to take a look at this first person shot from Jaws:

In this shot, we’re viewing the character swimming from Jaws’ perspective as the camera slowly tracks the character’s movements whilst ascending towards her ominously, the tension here comes from just how low the angle is to give off the appearance that we’re in Jaws’ head. This builds tension because the audience can see that this woman is unknowingly in danger (but this shot exists to clue us in on that fact before the character can realise), in fact, you barely ever see the big threat of the film (at most we get the fin and maybe the odd appearance here and there, but other than that, it’s mostly clever camera work. The reason for this is actually because the shark animatronic they used kept breaking in the water (that’s right, in a twist of irony, the shark couldn’t handle the waves) so they had to minimise how often he appeared on screen as to not appear hockey, and it actually works to the films advantage in the end because whenever the shark does actually appear, the audience knows thing are about to intensify, so the tension actually comes from the audience not knowing when the shark’s going to appear next.

Another classic spielberg shot I want to discuss really quickly is this travelling mid shot near the end of E.T.:

In this particular shot we have one of Elliot’s friends looking behind him as a police car suddenly comes into view around the corner during this chase scene (now, chase scenes can be a good way to build tension while heightening the action, but our focus is on the camera), now this shot builds tension because it shows that the police have quickly gained on our characters as they realise they need to think of a different strategy to outmaneuver the police. (which luckily for us this character later comes up with the idea of splitting up) The tension here actually comes from the police car veering into view (given how they were already established as a threat beforehand) causing the boy to actually look behind him briefly. (although you can’t really see his eyes due to his sunglasses but I’d imagine they’d widen after the first look and then light up once he got his idea) Now there are many more examples I could go over where Steven uses the camera to build tension (I.E: Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s list and many more) and the different approaches that have to be used, but this is supposed to be a quick little diddy into how Steven (and the other practitioners) use the camera in their movies.

Practitioner 3: Jeff Fowler

(image sourced from Sonic News Network.Fandom.Com)

(now this film’s actually Jeff’s first feature film, and yes, I put him in here as an excuse to talk mainly about Sonic)

Jeff’s Work: Gopher Broke (2004) Sonic The Hedgehog (2020)

Now in the case of ol’ Jeff Fowler (because he was directing a Sonic The Hedgehog movie), a lot of the tension here has to be build up while keeping the fast paced nature of the film intact, and I’d say the best example of this actually comes in the final chase scene during the climax because in there, Sonic’s always running away from Dr Robotnik so a lot of the time, the camera’s actually on the move with the action (which makes the grand majority of these shots the travelling versions of themselves), one example of tension being built is actually when Sonic narrowly dodges one of Robotnik’s laser bursts:

Here, the camera actually goes into slow motion very briefly so that you can actually take in how quickly Sonic had to think in order to dodge this one (also, Smash Ultimate references), this also shows how cunning Dr Robotnik himself can be (anticipating where the Sonic would be by the time the laser hit where he was aiming) which is a good way to build tension from just a brief moment of slow motion. We also have the part where Robotnik’s actually in Sonic’s sand tornado trying to find him, particularly the over the shoulder shot that does a zoom and track once Sonic becomes visible:

Here, the camera transitions nicely into an almost first person like shot once Dr Robotnik sees Sonic The Hedgehog (who has no Idea this is even happening) running up one of the pyramids in this scene, this part builds tension because of how quickly the camera (which the audience can infer to represent Robotnik’s eyeline) picks up Sonic again as Robotnik begins to regain the advantage again. (which has the audience feeling tense because of what Robotnik’s going to do)

Before we end things off I just want to mention a quick little invisible edit that happens in this scene (mostly as a reminder for when I do the editing document next time)

Now here, we go from a long shot to an establishing shot via a cloud of sand Robotnik’s laser kicks up while trying to get that hedgehog and I think this is a particularly clever choice because now the audience can see with clarity where the characters are (location wise) without breaking the flow of action.

Closing Remarks

In conclusion, the camera plays a very large role in tension building and how it’s used can often mean the difference between a good clear scene where tension can naturally build up in a film like The LEGO Movie or a poorly thought our scene where the audience can barely tell what’s going on like in most modern action movie fight scenes (with their shaky cameras)

However the camera isn’t the only tool that’s used to build tension as sound, visuals and even editing styles can have an impact on tension building as well (as you can no doubt tell from the way this document also mentions things like the emotions a character is feeling or even the stageline of the shot), as similarly to the way the camera itself is placed, good sound choices, clear visuals and the right editing choices can make the difference between good or bad scenes. See you next time.

How will I make this piece?

Well since I’ve pretty much got the go ahead I’m going to do an animation for this one because animation is awesome and It allows me to do whatever crazy nonsense I want without worrying about the pesky limits of reality getting me down (at the cost of it taking hours to build the scene rather than minutes), also I actually have quite a bit of experience doing this (which I acquired last year)

The software I plan to use is called Dreams, however this might seem like an conventional choice because technically it is a PS4 game, but I’ve actually done quite a bit with this thing both in and out of college: It was used to animate my final major project, Super Sheep In Convention F-3. It was also seen in the background of Captain Cartridge and the rubbish skinubbish as well as the Colypsia website https://40084662.wixsite.com/mysite-1. And most recently it was used to completely remake the Captain Cartridge Cartoon from the ground up: Captain Cartridge in Operation Compact Disc.

As you can see it’s quite a versatile tool set (for a PS4 game), the main drawback however is that I can’t use it in College (unless there are PS4s present) so I’ll have to be quick about animating this one

Project Management

Ok, so before I do anything else, I want to actually produce a Project Management table (because those always seem to help me with larger scale projects such as the Colypsia Website, The Super Sheep Cartoon and The Captain Cartridge remake):

Because this one’s being done over the course of two weeks I can simply update this daily which may mean daily interruptions to see how this thing’s getting on (let’s see how well I remember to do it this time)

Idea Generations

Alright, it’s time to generate some Ideas for this thing. But before we begin I just want to establish that I’ll be using existing characters for this one, mainly because if I’d made new ones it’d take away from time being spent on this project, which is key because there’s only two weeks to do this. (maybe in bigger projects I can start making new characters but for now, it’s existing characters)

Idea 1: Super Sheep in a Dark Room

Who’s in it?: Super Sheep and his robot copy Syntha-Sheep (who’s inspired by Metal Sonic)

What happens in it?: well to sum it up, Super Sheep goes into a fairly dark warehouse and Syntha-Sheep stalks him waiting for an opportunity to kill him

Son, how will this one build tension?: well there’s all sorts of ways I could build tension here. 1. I could keep Syntha-Sheep in the shadows while very occasionally showing just his shadow on the wall.

2. I could have the odd First Person perspective (from Syntha-Sheep’s perspective in a similar vein to that of Jaws)

3. I could have neither character say a single word so that the visuals can do all the talking (much like my Super Sheep cartoon from last year)

4. I could also have a first person shot from Super Sheep’s perspective when he’s looking for Syntha-Sheep

5. I could mess with the depth of field to emphasise certain parts of a shot at different times

Idea 2: a big ol’ jump

Who’s in it?: Guyzo The Mechanic

What Happens in it?: Guyzo has to make a big jump across a huge gap or else he’ll get crushed.

Son, how is this one going to build tension?: again, there are so many ways one could build tension with this scenario:

1. I could have a vertigo shot similar to what I did in my second piece of tension building experimentation: Camera Exercises 1 and 2 (you’ll have to go 13 seconds in for the second exercise)

2. I could have moments of slow motion so that the audience is gripping on the edge of their seats (in a similar vein to the 2020 Sonic The Hedgehog Movie’s chase scene except longer)

3. I could quickly cut between certain angles to emphasise the closing walls

4. I could slowly have the camera get closer to guyzo before he makes the jump as an indication for how close the walls are to crushing him.

5. I could actually have a low angle shot that goes down into the pit to emphasise how steep of a drop this is (thus establishing the stakes if he fails the jump)

Idea 3: The Night Pig and the self destruct sequence

Who’s In It?: The Night Pig and Hex Moother’s voice

What Happens In It?: The Night Pig has to get out of an evil office building before the whole thing blows up

Son, How’s this one building tension?: now this one depends on the tone of the scene, but I could still do a lot of stuff either way:

1. I could do lots of quick cuts to emphasise the fast paced nature of the scene

2. I could have some brief slow motion moments (again, like in the 2020 Sonic The Hedgehog Movie) when The Night Pig barely dodges some explosions

3. I could include some 1st person shots as The Night Pig’s running to get the audience to really feel immersed in the scene (thus ramping up that tension)

4. I could do an invisible edit (similar to that of again, the 2020 Sonic The Hedgehog Movie) where the camera goes into an explosion and then out of that same explosion, I could transition to a new shot.

5. I could have The Night Pig run past the camera at certain points as the room explodes.

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You a Project Management Update

now these interruption features you’ll be seeing are actually a carryover from the big Blog back in level 2 (which to be honest I was expecting to either continue with that or make a new one), the reason this was done back then was because I didn’t know how else to do this (and since this is now a Google Document I basically have no other way of doing this, the only part that won’t carry over is the “we now return to our program” bit, because it’s utterly pointless if this is happening every day)

Anyway the point is, I’m currently on track with this part (considering I’ve already generated at least 3 Ideas), all I have to do is do a moodboard and eventually pick one and then it’s script city baby!

The Moodboard

Ah yes, the moodboard, this is where a creative artist can pool together images they either found or made themselves in order to inspire them with new ideas (or help them pick a particular Idea in this case) for whatever their current project may be. (whether it be films, tv shows, games, board games or in our case, a tension builder)

for this one I’ll be using Pixlr because I can use it anywhere that has an internet connection (which means I can use it at home and at college if I need to) and it has features similar to that of photoshop (although it doesn’t have every feature that photoshop does if I’m being perfectly honest)

here, I’m actually porting in my own images I made myself (and thus giving you a sneak peak at the repository of cartoon stuff I’ve done)

now that I’ve taken my images that I made myself beforehand, I’ll need to copy and paste them all into the main picture (the one called untitled)

and of course, with my luck I actually need to rename the layers as well (so that I can tell what I’m messing with at this time)

Now that I’ve gotten all the characters together I can actually start resizing them into their respective thirds (one third for each idea) and then I can start sourcing images from the internet

Now that all the characters are in their respective thirds, I can start the internet chicanery

and here’s one of the benefits of Pixlr, you don’t actually need to save any images you find online locally as long as you hit the “copy image address” button when right clicking (I’m sure many-a hard drive are thanking their hard drive lords for this feature)

After that you just go back to Pixlr and from there the path is as follows: File-Open image URL and then you’ll get taken to this sub window. Just paste your image URL, hit load…

...and hey presto, your image is in the software ready for you to do what you wish with it. In our case it’ll become part of the moodboard. (image sourced from UK Film Location.com)

(image sourced from Imaginations.com)

uuuuuuuh, remember when I said you had to copy the image address and open the url in Pixlr? Well it turns out I can now simply copy and paste the image without using the url (thus cutting the “open url” middleman out of the equation entirely)

I even tried copying an image of Sonic using both methods and the results are the same (must be a hidden change of that update from last year), looks like I’ll be saving myself some headache after all.

(image sourced from Taste of Cinema.com)

(image sourced from psychology today.com. Also, hi Shadow)

The way I’m actually formatting this moodboard is that each third is dedicated to different bits of inspiration that relate to each Idea (for example, the Jaws image relating to the Super Sheep and Syntha Sheep Idea, jumping images relating to Guyzo’s jump ext.), this is because I’m doing this before picking which Idea I want to do.

(image sourced from wired.com)

(image sourced from Sonic News Network.fandom.com)

(Image sourced from MCM.com)

(Image sourced from The Runescape Wiki)

and after pasting tons of images together all that’s left to do is save the image twice (one PNG and one PXD just in case I need the layers) aaaaaaaannnnnd…

hey presto, one moodboard whipped up for my inspiration.

Some Moody Thoughts

Ok, so making this Moodboard was quite fun (if a little bit simple considering all I was really doing was collecting together a bunch of images), especially when I ended up discovering that I could actually use the regular copy and paste method for Pixlr (which I couldn’t do in the older version of Pixlr, likely because it was flash based before [and Flash is no longer being supported by internet browsers as of the end of this year, hence why they made their big update in the first place] but who knows) which was actually quite mind blowing all things considered, which made everything much easier as now it didn’t take as many clicks to get images in anymore. Overall I wish I’d picked a bigger canvas size (because splitting a canvas size of 1920 by 1080 turned out to be surprisingly difficult in terms of finding space for everything)

So which Idea am I going with?

Well after much deliberation, a single Moodboard, some internal bouncing and thinking about what resources I already have, I’ve decided I’m going with Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep in a dark warehouse. Why? Because 1. I think it’s the Idea that has the most tension building potential (because of all the tricks I’ll get to use such as POV shots, shadows on walls, close ups and many more), not only that but I actually already have 3D models of Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep that I can simply use for this one:

(Images sourced from Sam Gordon’s Media Journal.Wordpress.com. Hey wait a minute, that’s my old one from last year)

Not only that but it’ll help me figure out how to keep a character’s face (particularly the mouth) visible in dark spaces without resorting to pointing a bright light at them to put their faces on blast. (because here, the room’s supposed to be dark and spooky so that the audience won’t notice Syntha-Sheep right away)

In terms of dialogue, there’ll likely be little to no dialogue. (much like with my Super Sheep In Convention F-3 short) The reason i’m thinking this is because I want to let the visuals do all the talking (especially so that the tension can build naturally on it’s own), in fact most of the sound design for this one will be quite ambient because it’ll help add to the mood better than having random goofy sound effects playing at a rate of 16 sounds per second, think that one scene near the end of Monsters University but again, next to no dialogue (and none of the behind the scenes stuff we get of Mike and Sully orchestrating the whole thing): Monsters University: Mike and Sully's big scare Scene uploaded by Tech with Imran. (even if the audio isn’t the best quality, it still illustrates the point of what I’m trying to convey with this one)

For the length however, I’m thinking about either doing 1 and a half minutes or 2 minutes, although it’ll probably wind up only being 1 and a half minutes because this is only being done over the course of next week so I don’t want to push my luck too far. The reason for this is because although I managed to animate the Super Sheep cartoon in 2 weeks, that was simply me animating the whole thing for 2 weeks straight (this two week timeline doesn’t account for the weeks I spent doing research, writing the script and storyboarding the cartoon beforehand) where as this project is being created in two weeks. (and that’s for research, writing, storyboarding and the animation itself) and I don’t want another Captain Cartridge situation on my hands.

We Interrupt This Program Again To Bring You Another Project Management Update

Well what do you know, I’ve actually gotten slightly ahead of schedule (I swear the Project Management table is pulling some voodoo magic on me), now I simply need to write the script for the whole thing and after that we can begin the storyboarding phase.

The Script

Now before we begin, I’d just like to give a brief overview as to what a script is.

A script is like a set of directions that outlines what’s going to happen in any given media, be it Movies such as Wall.E, Gone With The Wind and Taken. TV Shows such as The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, Looney Tunes and Garfield and Friends. Video Games such as Sonic Adventure, Super Mario Odyssey and LittleBigPlanet. (although with games the format is slightly different depending on what kind of game you’re making) And Plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Shrek The Musical and even West Side Story. (of course things are formatted differently depending on which medium you’re writing for)

The reason the Script is so important is because it lays the foundation for the plot of any given work (From Charlie Chaplin to Captain America and so on) and it helps the actors know what they’re supposed to be doing in a story and when they’re supposed to be doing it (and even what they’re supposed to be saying if there’s dialogue involved) and it allows other members of the film crew to know what elements they may need to gather in order to move forward with production (unless the script keeps changing every 5 minutes)

One of the beauties of writing a script is that you can do it on any device that has some kind of word processing program installed, but you don’t even need a computer as you can also write using either a paper and pen or even a typewriter if you wanted to, the only con with doing it this way is that you need physical paper and a well inked pen (or typewriter) unlike a computer where all you need is some electricity, a monitor and a keyboard and mouse. The accessibility of it allows any random joe like me to get stuck right in, so let’s get stuck right in before this turns into another essay.

of course the first thing we’ll need to is get everything properly formatted (because this is being done professionally you know), so I’ve got to set the font size to 12.5 and the font itself has to be a nice crisp Courier New (which can usually be found with all the other fonts that begin with “C,” the reason it was so easy for me to find was because I’d been using it a lot recently)

After doing all that (and setting the text alignment to “center”), we can begin with the first page (which simply exists to tell everyone what the script is called) these usually share the same name as the final production (I.E: the script for a film called “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid” would simply be called “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid”) but sometimes the name will have changed by the time the script is finished (an example of this actually comes from the script I wrote for Captain Cartridge’s cartoon) and sometimes they’ll simply use a codename depending on the directions the writers receive from the higher ups

Next, we have to go ahead and establish where our scene takes place. The reason this is important is because it allows the crew to visualise where the scene takes place. (because we’re not all psychics) in this case, our scene takes place inside a dark warehouse at night, so I’d have to type “INT.” which is simply shorthand for INTerior, next I’d have to type the name of the location in question. In this case the name is simply “A DARK WAREHOUSE.” And last but not least, we need to tell the crew what time of day this scene takes place in, so for this, we could either take broad strokes (which simply means typing in things such as Day, Night or Evening), or if you wanted to be very specific about it (which can come in handy depending on the story you’re telling) you could write the exact time down so that the crew knows the exact conditions they need to replicate for the film. (I.E: 6:30PM/18:30PM) There are other approaches to that final time piece too, but those are usually a bit more genre specific (for example, you’d also type in the year if you were telling a time travel story) so we’ll leave them for the time being.

Here, I’ve added a small paragraph that explains what’s happening in this part of the page (usually the first thing you want to happen would go on the top) and it doubles as an excuse to describe our hero and who he is so that I can have an Idea as to what he looks like (even though I’ve already done the design for him years ago, hence why he and Syntha-Sheep are in this one):

We Once Again Interrupt This Program To Bring You Yet Another Project Management Update

ok, so I’m still on track as of right now, but I’ve got to keep at it with the script or else the writing process will bleed into the day I’m meant to be doing storyboards

Back To The Script

Here I’ve actually made a new paragraph for Super Sheep turning on his torch. The reason this is a seperate paragraph instead of simply being a part of the first is because for each thing that happens you usually want a quick paragraph describing what’s happening.

sometimes the writer (myself in this case) will need to specify which shot type is needed to get a specific effect across, but this isn’t always necessary (because usually you’d save most of the decisions about what shots you want when you get to the shot list) because the higher ups will need to do some back and forth decision making with the writer, director and producer. (and sometimes certain elements will change once the draft is read)

Now, you’re probably wondering what is meant by “screen left” or “screen right.” Well you see, this specification lets the folks in charge know which direction that a character needs to go relative to the camera’s view this is usually in-spite of the direction a character is facing, so for example, someone coming onto the screen from “screen left” would be walking in from another character’s “right” depending on whether they’re facing the camera or not.

In this screenshot I get to answer a writing question that I’m sure comes up a lot when people want to write scripts, “how do I know how long this film’s going to take?” well you see dear reader(s), you actually determine how many minutes worth of material the script contains by looking at how many pages it is and subtracting the title page. So for example, if a script has 121 pages in it, you’d subtract the title page in order to get the length of the media in question. (in this case i’d be 120 minutes, or 2 hours) This is actually another reason professionals usually go for Courier New with a font size of 12.5 because it allows people to fit a good amount of events and/or dialogue within a 60 second window.

Now here’s I’m actually describing what Syntha-Sheep himself looks like later on because this is the moment he reveals himself to the audience and Super Sheep, although I should have done this near the beginning like I did with Super Sheep because the script is supposed to give the crew an Idea as to the nature of the production they’re working on (the reason I did it like this is because like with Super Sheep, I’d already designed him years ago):

(although since this image was made I did change his eyes from red to pink)

Here, I’m actually debating with myself as to whether or not I should end it with them charging at each other. The reason for this is because on the one hand, it does mean I meet the 1.5 minute mark. But on the other hand, it would be kind of a cheap ending because we never actually see who’d win the fight.

After a quick bit of thinking (and knowing that I don’t actually have experience animating fight scenes yet), I’ve decided to do the cheap thing and simply end it with a punch noise in a black background, and here is where I’d say some nonsense about how “oh it leaves the audience to guess who won” and whatnot, but let’s be honest, I’m only doing it this way because it’s easier.

The Full Script

Super Sheep’s Robo-counter

By Sam Gordon

INT. A DARK WAREHOUSE. NIGHT.

We hear a Door open and then see a shadowy figure enter the room, this is our hero Super Sheep (a blue cartoon sheep with a yellow cape)

Super Sheep then turns on a torch he’s carrying as he advances further in the warehouse.

We then have a brief first person shot of Syntha-Sheep (a robot duplicate of the Main Character) stalking Super Sheep.

We cut back to Super Sheep exploring the warehouse until he hears Syntha-sheep whoosh across the screen (from screen left to screen right)

Super Sheep quickly shines his torch from screen left to screen right for a moment, shrugs it off as his imagination and simply goes back to exploring as he goes off the right end of the screen.

Afterwards we cut to Super Sheep facing away from the wall as we see Syntha Sheep’s shadow slowly creep up on our hero

As Super Sheep shines his torch to investigate however, Syntha-Sheep’s shadow swiftly disappears.

Super Sheep starts getting a little bit suspicious but decides to keep looking around.

Eventually he starts hearing Syntha-Sheep’s jets going off

He tries to shine his torch towards the direction of the sound but Syntha-Sheep gets out of the way too quickly for our hero to even get a good look.

Syntha-Sheep’s jets charge up once again as Super Sheep tries to shine his torch on him, but once again he’s moves too quickly for Super Sheep to shine his torch on.

Syntha-Sheep does this two more times in order to throw our hero off his tracks.

Super Sheep (expecting to hear Syntha-Sheep’s jets go off again) then starts shining his torch in every possible spot he thinks Syntha-Sheep could be in.

We then cut to the entrance (still facing Super Sheep) as we see Syntha-Sheep’s feet slowly descend onto the ground.

We then cut back to Super Sheep looking around with Syntha-Sheep in the background in front of the door.

Syntha-Sheep then turns off the lights, which causes his silhouette to cast a shadow that reaches our hero.

Super Sheep then turns around with a frightened look on his face as he finally see’s Syntha-Sheep (who actually has horns where the ears would be and is rather spiky in nature to combat Super Sheep’s round figure)

The two characters then stare each other down for a bit.

They then charge towards each other

We cut to black as we hear a punching noise.

THE END

aw nuts, I didn’t catch that grammatical error (it should be “sees” not “see’s”)

Scripted Thoughts

You know, I actually found doing this part to be quite easy because I’ve done it quite a bit before (Examples include Super Sheep In Convention F-3 and Operation Compact Disc), It’s nice to get back into the swing of this as it will no-doubt come in handy once I move on to create the storyboards tomorrow. But before we go I should mention that because there’s no dialogue in this (much like with Convention F-3), I never actually got to show what that actually looks like: so here’s what that usually looks like (example used came from The Captain Cartridge Script), as you can see, the format here is the character’s name (in all caps) followed by a bracket telling the actor how they should portray that line (if it’s needed) and then you type in the character’s line after that. So for example it’d look something like this:

SUPER SHEEP

(rather confident)

We got this one boys.

This helps the actors get to know who their characters are and how they should say their lines, which is especially important if the actor is in something that’s live action where they usually have to memorise their lines as well as what actions they’re supposed to do. (unlike in animation where you’re just using their voice so they can have the script in front of them)

Now that the script is taken care of, we can move on to…

The Storyboard

The storyboard acts a lot like a script, but instead of simply using words to describe the action, you include quick sketches to show what you want the scene to look like and let the crew know how it should play out visually. Before we begin however

We Interrupt This Program For The Third Time To Bring You Another Project Management Update

as you can see, today is storyboarding day, and if I want to stay on track, I’ve got to pick up the pace and do all the boards at once.

Back to the Storyboards

for this project I want to use the same template I used last time (that being the StudioBinder 6 frame template pictured above with Super Sheep boards from the final major project I did last year), the reason for this is because again, I want to get this project done on time. So let’s not waste anymore time and just dive right in.

in this screenshot I’m creating a new layer for the actual images themselves, that way whenever I need to make any alterations I don’t have to worry about altering the background in the process.

For your average storyboards, you don’t really need to worry about getting all the characters on model (or even having decent drawing skills for that matter) because they’re designed to be thrown away as quickly as they were made (if it’s decided the scene in question should be axed from the final product)

a good example of this is Super Sheep’s hand in this shot, which I would usually undo after making it because it’s low quality, but in this case quality doesn’t matter as much.

now, that line I just drew above the door is what’s known as a motion line, the arrow on the end is meant to indicate which direction something is travelling (I.E: the door is rotating to the right because Super Sheep’s opened it in this first panel)

right now, I’m using the text tool to describe what’s happening in this shot with words (this is done so that other members of a film crew can understand what’s happening in the scribbles)

and here’s a nice example as to how inconsistent the character can get during this phase because in the last panel, Super Sheep didn’t have ears. Where as here, he does (there’s probably going to be plenty more examples of this throughout)

this is a little technique I’ve created (as far as I’m aware I’m the only person that does this) where I have an arrow outside the frame that jumps to the next one and says how we transition to the next panel. (in this case, I’m mentioning that the two panels share the same shot)

and now I’m doing the other version of this trick where the arrow does a Pac-Man and warps to the other side so that I can cover the next panel (which is below the first one)

one thing I actually forgot to do before we began was open the script, I mainly do this as a frame of reference so that I know how much of the script I’ve already boarded (which I indicate by doing some highlighting on the word document)

just a reminder as to the quality we’re working with here. (it might be horrendous but as long as you can tell what it is, it’s good enough)

now here, we have what may appear to be a little bit of redundancy at play, the reason I actually mention Super Sheep walking off screen twice in this part is in case the handwritten version gets considered unreadable

Here, I’ve added a box with some lines and arrows (to form transitional lines) connected to it. This is to tell the crew where the camera should end up after the transition with the box representing where the camera should move (or in this case, zoom) towards (or away from depending on whether the arrows are pointing towards or away from the box itself), these exist because it’s next to impossible to convey camera movement in a mere still image.

I also figured the text could help to clear up that this is Syntha-Sheep’s point of view. (because I’m trying to keep this guy a mystery for the audience, not the theoretical crew)

and all that needs to be done now is saving it twice (one for the layers and one for the PNG)

and hey presto, batch one is complete already.

and now comes the fun part, making a new layer for the next batch (while making the first layer invisible in the process)

and boom, no need to open the image a second time.

and here’s where the text becomes useful once again (because you can explain the order of events so that the crew understand what’s going on here)

now, after doing Syntha-Sheep’s whoosh I’d realised I’d mixed up which direction he’s supposed to go in (in the script it says left to right, but here he’s going right to left), in this screenshot you can see that I’ve just decided to roll with this mess up and change Super Sheep’s direction to match. (luckily I’m in the storyboards and can make these on the fly changes)

here, Syntha-Sheep’s Shadow has actually been coloured in to make it more clear that it’s his shadow (of course, none of the other boards have anything that’s been coloured in because it’s often not needed)

and here, I specified some sound effects that should play at this given moment because it’s impossible to insert them in the storyboarding process (unless you have some elaborate sound system stuck to your paper)

And that’s batch 2 in the bag (and the tedium of this task wearing in)

Here, I mention about a dolly happening in this shot (though I could be wrong about the meaning), what I mean by this is that I want the camera to rotate as if Super Sheep was looking in Syntha-Sheep’s direction. (though again, I could be using the wrong term for it here)

In this part I decided that instead of one long first person shot, I’d split it in two by having a quick cut to a close up of Super Sheep so that the audience can see how spooked he’s getting.

oh great, we’ve now gotten to the point where Super Sheep’s become a stickman (mainly to establish distance)

and that’s batch 3, now with less Knuckles related Sonic in jokes (oh man, the crunch is real now. I never usually miss out on that opportunity), I’m feeling confident I’ll get these done now (honestly I wasn’t feeling confident I’d get these done in one day)

now, for this shot. I’ll actually have to do the focus change thing again because as far as I know, Dreams doesn’t currently have a way to do split diopter shots, which are shot on a special lens that’s split in two pieces placed at different elevations, thus creating two focal points rather than one. One example of a split diopter shot is in Toy Story 4:

(scene uploaded by Movie Clip Trailer, even though it does skip a bit)

here, I’m setting up for when I have to use the fill tool to colour this part in (I still need to paint the panel border or else the whole canvas gets filled)

and boom, instant darknesand with that, we’re done, we’ve finished the storyboards (go us)

Thoughts Across The Board

Overall I’d say the storyboards still aren’t my favourite part of production (although I am glad I did all of them in one day to get them over with) because they can get quite tedious to do (especially over long stretches of time), although that doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t have fun doing them (I mean, I’m still doing cartoon stuff at the end of the day, of course it’s still fun), just not as much as I did the script (because there I was coming up with the story as a whole), although having a quick excuse to mention the split diopter shot was a nice treat (even if it was to say that Dreams can’t do it at the moment) because it allowed be to flex a little bit of knowledge I’d gotten from watching a video about P.I.X.A.R.’s animation and how it’s improved over the past few decades.

So to sum up my thoughts, I would say the storyboards were fun, just not as fun as other parts of production (I.E: doing the script and the animation)

Now that that’s all been cleared up, let’s move on to…

The Shot List

Ah yes, the shot list. A key component for compiling what kinds of shots you’ll need to capture for your production (whether they be First Person shots, Establishing shots or even a close up) to help the camera crew know exactly how to shoot the scene (as without them the camera people will be stuck trying to figure out what shots they need based on the storyboard)

so let’s get to work.

first, I’ll need to make the table itself (that way I can actually put the shot list into a comprehensible format)

then we need to get all the shot types we’re going to need for this production (the format I’ve chosen would go something like this. Left column: Mid Shot. Right Column: Super Sheep’s Opening the door)

and after a few minutes of work with some extra cells needing to be added, we’re done (and in quick time too)

The Full Shot List

Shot TypeWhat’s HappeningMid ShotSuper Sheep’s Opening The DoorClose UpSuper Sheep approaches the cameraClose UpSuper Sheep turns on his torchFirst PersonSyntha-Sheep’s stalking our heroLong ShotSyntha-Sheep Whooshes across the screenMid ShotSyntha-Sheep’s shadow creeps up on our heroFirst PersonSyntha-Sheep evades the torch’s shineClose UpSuper Sheep’s eyes dart from right to leftFirst PersonSyntha-Sheep’s still evadingLong ShotSuper Sheep’s trying to find Syntha Sheep as he lands near the doorTwo ShotSyntha Sheep Turns off the lightLow Angle Mid ShotSuper Sheep gets a good look at his robo-rivalClose UpSyntha Sheep Stares down our heroClose UpSuper Sheep Returns The FavourTwo ShotSuper Sheep and Syntha Sheep go head to head

Shooting Thoughts

I’ll be honest, this one was much quicker than I thought it would be (which is refreshing given how long the storyboard took), although I will admit, I may have done too fast to properly gather together my thoughts. You know that feeling when you’ve done something so quickly you don’t even realise it’s over? Yeah, that’s how I’m feeling after having done this. Although I will say this was rather fun to do, although that could be because of just how fast I’ve done this.

Phew, I’m really on a roll this time aren't I? (although saying that could jynx the whole thing), I might as well do…

The Asset List

And here we’ve got what I think will be another quick phase, the asset list is essentially a list of things needed for a production (be it props, music, actors, locations or any other things you may need), asset lists are important because they help the crew figure out what they need to get (or make) in order to help production move along nicely.

3. 2. 1. Go!

now here, I’m formatting it just a touch differently than I usually do (forgoing the tables in favour of a straight list)

You know what, never mind. Back to the tables, they’re so much better

and after all that, we’re done here.

The Asset Lists themselves

CharactersDo I have them?How will I get them?Super SheepYesI made Him In DreamsSyntha SheepYesI Made Him In Dreams

LocationsDo I have them?How Will I get them?A WarehouseNoI’ll make it in Dreams

PropsDo I have them?How will I get them?A TorchNoI’ll Make it in DreamsWarehouse ContainersNoI’ll find them in the Dreamiverse

Music and SoundsDo I have them?How will I get them?Robot SoundsyesI used some when making Syntha-SheepTorch SoundsNoI could fish for them in the DreamiverseTense StingsNoI can make them in DreamsFootstep noisesYesI used them when making Super Sheep

Asset Thinking

Whoooooooooo, I’m really on a roll today, making the asset list was actually a similar situation to that of making the shot list. (in that I ended up doing it so quickly that I can barely get any thoughts down) You know, I think having some experience in making these asset lists might have actually helped me get this done faster than I would have otherwise. (and with the speed I’ve been going at, I actually feel like Sonic The Hedgehog)

Although I will say that attempting to do it in a format that didn’t involve creating a table (or 4) was a bit of a stupid Idea in hindsight (that’s at least something for the asset list, unlike the shot list where it all went off without a hitch), I’m never making THAT mistake again.

But let’s move past that, as tomorrow I can begin gathering all the stuff I need for the production, which I think will happen so fast I can begin animating that very same day. (although I don’t want to say anything definitive) But first, I just want to say that things will work just a bit differently. How so? Well since I’ll be using Dreams (A PS4 game) to make things I’ll be able to live stream the production of everything as it happens (which does mean I won’t be as active on this document, except to reflect on what happened with the stream and the photography stuff), but before we begin…

We Interrupt This Program yet again to bring you another project management update

and we have already completed most of the asset production (say for the music which I can do later), now we can reflect on what we’ve done today.

Asset Creation (or Production Day 0)

I’d say today was actually quite productive, If I keep up this momentum I think I’ll be done by tuesday.

But First a link to my Youtube

For your convenience: SG Level 3 Creative Media Channel

Production Stream

Torches n' Warehouses

Reflection

Well, I’m glad to be back here once again reflecting on a good production stream like I did during the final major project and the Captain Cartridge remake. (which means once again, Video games are carrying this course for me)

Today I produced Super Sheep’s torch, the warehouse this short takes place in and the warehouse containers that are strewn about. The whole thing was rather easy for me to do considering how 1. This is a video game I’m using so the controls are much simpler compared to something like blender. 2. I’ve got quite a bit of experience using it throughout creative media level 2, I.E: there’s the Colypsia website and the original Captain Cartridge where the backgrounds were made in the early access and for the final major project, I used the full release because by that point development had finished. (except they’re still updating the game with new features such as VR) And 3. I play the game a lot in my free time where I sometimes make things such as characters and objects. Now that that’s all out of the way, let’s discuss each asset in order. Starting with…

The Torch

I’d say making this was actually the easiest thing I’ve done today, as all I really had to do was use the sculpt tools to make a cylinder that has a steep bump on one of the ends (while my torch doesn’t quite look the best it still gets the job done just fine in my opinion), here I’ve used Super Sheep as a reference to how big the torch should be (because he’ll be the one using it in the end) because I knew that if I didn’t I’d accidently make the torch way too big for him. (which theoretically could be fixed by simply scaling it down) After that I simply made a new sculpt that consisted of a white sphere (to represent the bulb) and group the two of them together. Afterwards it was a matter of actually getting it to light up, which I did by simply taking a light gadget from the toolbar and attaching it to the torch group.

Now here is where we get into the most challenging part: getting the light to look right (because early on I’d deleted the ground and the sky was actually quite bright), to solve this predicament I decided to whip out the “sun and “sky” gadget so that I could simply turn the sun and sky brightness all the way down (thus making the scene pitch black in the process), however, there was still the matter of the light not shining on anything. To fix that one, I decided to bring in a volunteer for Super Sheep to shine his torch on (that being The Night Pig) and after a little bit of tweaking, I’d finally gotten the torche’s shine correct.

But one final thing I needed to do was make it so I could turn the torch on and off as I need to, so for that I simply got a microchip so that I could then stick a keyframe into that microchip and use that to turn the light on and off again. (by turning the keyframe itself on and off. Yeah I find keyframes to be quite a handy tool for not just animating, but for turning things on and off) After that I simply deleted Super Sheep from existence and voila, the torch is complete.

The Warehouse and Warehouse containers

Yeah, I did both of these at the same time so this section might get a little long.

So first the warehouse. (because I’d started that one first) For the warehouse, it was actually really easy building the place itself considering it was just 4 walls a floor and a ceiling (most of which were created using the clone tools), the door was simply made from a cube sculpt I’d stretched to fit a hole I’d made in one of the doors. After that I’d simply hooked the door to the wall using a bolt connector (to represent the door hinges), that ended up being a little bit of a challenge because at first when I tried to open the door it took the whole wall with it because I’d foolishly attached the parent nod (which is the yellow node) to the door and the child node (which is the blue node) to the wall (yeah, despite having rigged Randimeer B. Process with connectors for the Captain Cartridge remake I’ve still got a little bit to learn about these things), but after making a new connector where the parent is on the wall and the child is on the door it ended up working fine in the end.

Afterwards came the Warehouse containers. Those ended up being the hardest part for me to do because at one point when I’d gotten started I thought to myself “hey, why am I doing all the cylinder bumps individually when I can simply use a mirror (which duplicates edits done on one side to the other) to speed up the process” (I thought this AFTER I’d already resized the main cube), so I turned on the mirror guid expecting it to make things easier for me and needless to say, it didn’t quite work how I’d expected it to. So I simply decided to redo the cube with the mirror already turned on and after that I’d hit another roadblock, because even if it did work, I never accounted for the mirror only working from one side. To fix this I tried turning on the kaleidoscope feature (which creates multiple mirrors) to see if that would help me. Nope, much like the mirror it didn’t do what I’d expected it to do (as it would have left floating cylinders) so I simply re-did the cube from scratch once more and after that, it finally worked perfectly. (there was much rejoicing) After that it was a matter of cloning all the containers around and using the hue tool to re-colour some of them and presto. Containers finished.

At one point I’d also wanted the containers to have doors that opened on both sides, but I thought that would have taken too long partway through so I’d scrapped it entirely. (although saying that, I could always edit the warehouse container to include the door feature after this project is done)

Ok, so back to the warehouse, after I’d finished the containers it was simply a matter of getting the atmosphere down (because this is a tension building project after all so in this case the atmosphere is super important), so I decided to once again whip out the Sun and Sky gadget in order to get the general atmosphere down pat. So I decided to go for a sort of Sunset sky (that way I could have the light of the sun seep into the warehouse (that was fun to do because all I had to do was literally drag the sun down and mess with some sliders and boom, instant sunset. (although still not being able to see Super Sheep’s mouth is a problem I’ll need to solve) After that came the scene’s grading, so for that I’d whipped out the “grade and effects” tool (which allows me to do things such as mess with the colour saturation of the entire scene among other things) to help enhance the atmosphere of the scene (by doing things such as turning the colour saturation down and even getting rid of the motion blur), I actually quite like how the whole thing’s coming together and can’t wait to start animating, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After I’d done the grade and effects it was time to add some extra lights to the warehouse so that there’s something for Syntha-Sheep to turn off later in the story, now here it was a little bit tricky because I had to make sure the lights were bright enough so that you could see Super Sheep, but not enough to where it overpowers his torch and after I’d gotten it right on one light I used the cloning feature to clone that light enough to cover the entire warehouse. After that it was a matter of recolouring the warehouse using the tinting tool (which is different from the hue tool) to tint the place a nice shade of grey (and after that I simply gave the place a shiny texture and made the containers look more metallic and I was good to go)

Overall thoughts

I had a lot of fun making things in Dreams again thanks to the experience I’ve gained over the course of Creative Media Level 2 (as well as my personal time) and cannot wait to finally dive right in and start animating once more the trouble is how will I explain this live streaming thing to my tutors (although I do have friends that have used streaming for their college work in the past, but the difference is it wasn’t with a video game like I’m using so things might look screwy out of context), guess I’ll have to find out after I’m done self isolating.

We once again Interrupt this program to bring you another project management update

Well then, we’re already on our first day of actual animation, although I’ve had to push back the release a little bit so that I have more time to get some feedback (at the cost of that oh so precious evaluation time)

Production Day 1

And today begins our hyper-sonic animation process

Production Stream

Tension Animation Day 1

Reflection

Well today was certainly a wild ride by first day standards. One minute it would be rather easy, and then the next minute things would get really challenging to do. (why do I get the feeling this’ll be the theme with all of these projects)

One example of something easy was actually animating the walk and thinking cycles for Super Sheep (one walk with the torch in hand and one without the torch as well as the thinking loop), the reason doing this was so easy was because much like with Captain Cartridge in his remake and even Hugo and The Night Pig in the final major project, I only had to animate a single instance of the walk (as well as thinking) and set the timelines each animation was in animations were in to loop and presto. Nice, clean looping animations ready for me to toggle on and off as and when I need them. Of course whenever the characters are standing still I’d animate the keyframes on the main timeline.

Speaking of the main timeline, I actually did something different that you may have seen me do during production of the Captain Cartridge remake. I gave Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep their own timelines that are housed in the main timeline (that way I don’t have to worry about placing the keyframes in the wrong area), the reason I did this was so that I could more easily organise the keyframes used to animate each character while also keeping everything in sync (because if you place a timeline within a timeline at the beginning it actually syncs up nicely), I can also do this for the voice lines each character would theoretically have (as well as any related sound effects) so that way I can just use the main timeline to animate things like the door that opens in the beginning of this animation. But now I’m getting off topic.

One of the main challenges this animation has provided so far (because it’s still a work in progress) actually came when I had to turn Super Sheep around after he’d heard Syntha-Sheep wizz by and assumed it was his imagination. The reason this was such a challenge was because I had to figure out how to make him turn around while he was walking (which is something I don’t really have to do very often) and it took me quite a few attempts to get it to even look halfway decent.

After that came a much greater challenge, and that was getting Syntha-Sheep’s shadow to actually move across the wall. The main reason this ended up being a big challenge was because I had to add in an extra light that would cast both Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep’s shadows onto the wall (that way I could actually pull off the effect in the first place), after that I had to tinker with the new lights position after having tweaked the brightness of it, after I’d found the perfect position I’d realised that those warehouse containers were getting in the way (with their pesky shadows), so to fix this nonsense I simply decided to create a keyframe in order to make the boxes invisible in that specific part until they’re needed later. (because with the camera angle I was working at there was no way anyone would see this happen anyway)

So after that nightmare of an experience there was the matter of actually animating Syntha-Sheep in such a way to where his shadow would appear on the wall (which was comparatively much easier than the ordeal I went through before hand), I did this by first animating his position using keyframes. After I’d got it moving in a way that I liked all I had to do from there was get his whole body to slowly change his pose (so that it didn’t look like he was simply a static 3D model being moved along the X and Y axis) and I did it.

Something that was much easier (that I actually did before doing the big shadow effect) was actually Syntha-Sheep’s first person view because for that it was simply a matter of creating a new keyframe to briefly mess with the grade and effects so that everything looked like it was being viewed from a robotic camera (and I also made Super Sheep glow to make it seem like Syntha-Sheep can see him no matter how dark it gets)

Overall Thoughts

I’d say I’m actually doing pretty well on this project (although I don’t think I’ll actually make the 1 and a half minute time frame I said I would because by the time I was done animating I’d done about 32 seconds of rushed animation) and may very well be on track to finishing it tomorrow (if I can keep this momentum going), although I will still have to make the music once the animation process is finished. (that way I can sync the music with the animation without worrying about a lack of visuals, much like how the big boys do it) I look forward to carrying on tomorrow morning

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update

Well boys we did it, the animation is finished (visually speaking of course, I still need to get the audio together)

Production Day 2

And now the animation process is finished (just need to get the music and sound effects in there and I’m all set

Production Stream

Tension Animation day 2

Reflection

Well then, I’d say today was rather productive given how I’ve now completed the visuals. (and I still have at least one day left to change anything I may need to before moving on to getting that feedback)

If course, the whole thing only turned out to be about a minute in length (but I don’t really want to add any extra fluff to it), which while good for keeping within the 2 minute boundary (because it’s under 2 minutes), it does mean I never actually made the minute and a half mark like I originally wanted to, which while that is a bit of a bummer, I wouldn’t call it the end of the world or anything.

One thing I found rather easy to do this time around was get Super Sheep himself into a different position, mainly because I could teleport him there off screen before the camera cut to the floor where Syntha-Sheep’s foot would eventually come. I also found doing Syntha-Sheep moving around to be surprisingly easy too, although that one was mainly due to me being able to simply repeat certain keyframes multiple times. (after doing all the hard work once)

The Main challenges for today however were camera based, one challenge involved getting Super Sheep’s first person shots right, because while sticking the camera to Super Sheep’s head was easy enough, actually positioning his head so that the camera was looking at Syntha-Sheep was the difficult bit because in dreams, you can’t actually preview multiple angles at once (which is actually one of the few cons Dreams has that something like Blender or Maya doesn’t) so it did take a few attempt for me to get it right. The other camera based challenge I ran into was actually the final shot where Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep lunge at each other in a vain similar to various trailers for Super Smash Bros (Super Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS Greninja Trailer, Super Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS Bowser Jr Trailer)

The main issue I had there was actually keeping both the characters in the frame so I had to keyframe the camera to move slightly when they lunge at each other and I even did a depth of field effect because I thought it would look cool.

Of course looking back at it, my main concern is whether or not people are even going to be able to make out what’s going on due to the low light, so I’ll probably have to brighten the image up later on.

Of course now I’m currently composing the music and getting the sound effects together, so far doing this has been quite a snap because with the sound effects, I can simply stick them into whichever timeline makes it easier for me to sync everything up, and in the case of the music it’s much easier here because unlike with the Captain Cartridge Remake where I composed everything beforehand, I’m composing these quick pieces within the animation itself. (which so far, is easier because I can resync the music if I so need to)

Breaking News!

So my support worker called me at 1:00pm today to ask me how I was and I mentioned my animation, it was then she mentioned I didn’t actually have to do that part this week because the Idea was that I would animate it next week, which means I would have had to scrap the Idea of using video games to animate because as far as I know, the college still hasn’t got any PS4s on hands (and why would they, Dreams is still relatively new and PS4’s aren’t typical college equipment), so once again I’ve gone deep off the rails and did more than what I was supposed to (that’s funny, this exact scenario happened last year with the board game assignment. Must be a pattern I guess), this also means I’ve actually got more time on my hands than I originally anticipated (this isn’t even the first time I did something earlier than anticipated)

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You A Rather Big Project Management Update

ok, so due to the extra week I found out about yesterday I’ve had to rearrange the project management table to add in that second week and I’ve even had to re-jig the layout a bit so that it could all be in view (on the bright side, at least I have more time on my hands, it’s just a matter of what to do with it)

Production Day 3

This one’s the shortest of the bunch

Production Stream

Tension Animation day 3

Reflection

So today I mainly did a little bit more composing and added a couple more sound effects to round off the animation process. Of course this wasn’t all I did today, as I also fixed the issue of not being able to tell what’s going on at the end by going back to the grade and effects tool and literally turning up the brightness.

Naturally, I couldn’t quite decide whether to make it brighter by 100 or 200%, so I simply previewed what the end shot would look like with both by setting it to +100% and then +200% (which is the maximum), and after running through it with both settings, I ultimately decided to just do +100% because it allows us to see what’s supposed to be happening without making it so bright that there’s no difference between the lights being on or off. As a direct result of this I had to add in an extra keyframe for when the camera points at the roof in order to maintain the black screen effect I had going on.

Overall today was refreshingly easy considering all the challenges I had to overcome in order to get to this point (I.E: The Lighting, and Super Sheep’s first person shots) because I was simply adding a few sounds and extra music cues (while making sure everything syncs up nicely, which so far I think it does), in fact while I was writing the previous paragraph I actually had the Idea to put the video (which I had to use the PS4’s capture feature to get) onto my pendrive so that I can get some feedback during the LLC hour. (that way I can have a bigger sample size than my teachers and family)

Anyway, I’d say my favourite piece I’ve composed thus far is actually the drum loop when Syntha-Sheep’s flying around all over the place on the warehouse containers because of how I was able to really give it that nice fast pace the scene in question required.

Another thing I did was actually add in some motion blur to the animation (mainly when Syntha-Sheep moves around) by simply getting some keyframes and making it so they switch on the motion blur (and then once the motion blur is not needed anymore the keyframe will end and the motion blur will be no more)

Feedback

So now that I’ve done the Animation and gotten all the sound effects and music in place, it’s time to get some feedback, I started doing this during my LLC hour and so far only one person’s responded. But first let me explain how this section will work.

I’ll be updating this section with responses and I’ll try and make changes to my work on streams that are based on that feedback. However, the screenshots of said feedback will have all the names redacted to protect people’s Identities (this is the same reason I’m referring to everyone anonymously)

In this screenshot my friend mentioned that he thought my short looked pretty good and said he couldn’t think of anything that needed improving at the moment with the exception of the frame rate, which he mentions as being out of my control. While that’s technically true (I don’t have any direct control over the frame rate), what I do have control of is how well optimised the scene is (which if I’m lucky, may very well raise the frame rate of the game, even if I may not notice the increase), so in other words, I’ve got some optimisation to do

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update

Ok, so far things are going good, I’m now on the actual feedback phase

Feedback Implementation Day 1: Optimisation Optics

Ok, jokes aside, today I did some optimisation to try and improve the frame rate a little bit

Production Stream

Home Improvement Day 1: Optimization

Reflection

So Today, I was mainly focusing on optimising the short so that I could attempt to get a higher framerate, which refers to how many frames are shown in a single second, most films and tv shows simply stick with 24 frames per second (the reason I say “most” is because of things like The Hobbit being 48 frames a second) due to their non interactive nature while video games (at least some of them) will try and aim for 60 frames per second or higher (although other games end up only gunning for 30 frames a second for some reason) because for gamers, higher frame rates means faster more precise gameplay. (which for platform games like Sonic and Rayman where precision is required to beat the game, it’s ideal)

The main thing I did to optimise this scene was reduce the sculpture detailing on things such as the floor, walls, ceiling as well as the shipping containers, and because of that I was actually able to bring the graphics thermo down to a cool 11% (a ten percent decrease from 21%), although when I went to check the analytics again to compare it with the two tests I did before (one happened at the beginning while the other happened off-camera the day before) and much to my surprise, the graphics cost somehow ended up peaking higher than it did before I reduced the detailing of everything with the previous peak being 53% and this one being 58% for some reason (which simply tells me I need to understand the way Dreams operates a little bit better), so after I reduced the physical cost of everything (yes even the stuff that doesn’t move because it makes no sense for non moving objects to have a mid to high physical cost in the first place) and found that it helped a little bit. (with the peak now being 52% which isn’t bad because now it costs slightly less overall)

Today was also a very big help in solving multiple issues I’ve been having with the models themselves for a while now. (all at the same time even) The issues I’m talking about are related to the hands and the way they’ll jutter about when characters teleport (you may have already seen this with Captain Cartridge and Super Sheep last year), and another issue (that was more of an inconvenience really and even then, it only affected characters with 4 fingers due to the hand I used, characters with five fingers were totally fine) where whenever time would play and the hands hadn’t been keyframed yet the fingers would flop. I fixed both of these issues by simply turning their physics off (which I’m surprised I didn’t think to do until now if I’m being honest), this is cool because now I can apply this fix to every other character I’ve made thus far. (and subsequently do the same thing for any future characters I plan on making like Elfrix and friends) The only thing I wonder now is how I’m going to continue improving the animation while I’m in college (Because I can’t just bring my PS4 into college, that’d be absurd, and it’s not like the remote play feature would even reach out that far without introducing lag), maybe this might be a sign that I need to learn Blender (which I have at my house), Flash Animate or another proper animation program if I want to actually get the same results I got last time (or higher, because honestly, I’m curious to see how far upwards I can go)

Feedback 2: The Feeding

Ok, after a few days of waltzing around doing next to nothing of value I’ve finally decided to get back to getting feedback for my project, I’ve just sent an E-mail out to my media tutor for review, hope it turns out well. But while I’m waiting I’d like to discuss working in groups vs working on your own (just so I have something to do while waiting)

What are the benefits of working in groups

Well for starters, working in groups allows for more tasks to be done over a quicker period of time due to the ability to allocate different tasks to different people, this can’t be done when yourself (oop, I got my feedback, I’ll discuss this later by adding the rest retroactively) because you’d be the sole person working on the project (unless you either have clones or can move really really fast), another nice benefit of working in a team is that you can bounce Ideas off your teammates it’ll lead to some really great ideas (for example, a team could come up with around 63 different ideas while a single person could come up with around 14), even the most talented of individuals can’t always come up with the best ideas. (no matter how hard they try)

The Feedback itself

Ok, so My tutor thought it was really good overall (she particularly liked the way I did Syntha-Sheep’s Shadow shot), she even liked the way it ended in darkness (which I wasn’t expecting to be honest, although her reasoning is pretty solid) although one point of constructive criticism she had for it actually involved Syntha-Sheep’s perspective shot and the way it looked out of place compared to everything else in the scene, mainly how the bright colours wash away the texture and makes the whole thing look amateurish. Luckily for me, this is rather easy for me to change because all I’d have to do is simply go back into the keyframe and alter the grading from there.

The second thing she suggested to help the audience tell that this is Syntha-Sheep’s perspective is that I could add in some counters to the screen at this point so that it becomes obvious that we’re facing something that isn’t human (except Super Sheep isn’t human either so it’d be more correct to say we’re facing something that isn’t biological), I could actually do this by grabbing some number and text displayers and layering them to create Syntha-Sheep’s heads up display. (or H.U.D. for short) now if Only I was in my house, then I could get started right away, but I’m at college right now so it’s currently a no-go (because once again, college understandably doesn’t have PS4s for me to use and I didn’t think to bring mine because the Idea got shot down by college and my parents), this essentially makes me a bit of a glass cannon where I’m really good at using a certain toolset (5 minutes of animation in 2 weeks in the case of Super Sheep in Convention F-3) but here, I’m kind of powerless at the moment due to a lack of PS4s.

We Interrupt This Program to Finally Bring You Another Project Management Update

We did it, we finally did a thing

Feedback changes 2: Robo-Revisions

And so it begins

Production Stream

Home improvement day 2: Robo-revision

Robo-reflection

This evening, after I’d gotten back from college it was time to get right to work improving that first person shot, so the first thing I did was get the saturation down to where it was before, which I did by simply going into the keyframe, then the grade and effects, and then I removed the edit by hitting triangle (which is the delete button), after that it was simply a matter of doing things such as emphasizing the scanlines so that it looks more like he uses CRT (or Cathode Ray Tubes) on his screens, making the vignette more visible (and pink to match his eyes) and even adding in some HUD elements (which activate at the same time as the re-grading) via the number and text displayers to make it clear he’s a robot.

Speaking of the HUD elements, getting the number displayer to work the way I wanted it to (that being a timer that counts up) was a little bit of a logic challenge but eventually I ended up getting it to work right by simply connecting a timer’s current time output to the “number/range” input and presto, instant timer.

As for the re-grading, that was a little bit more of a challenge than the HUD elements, at one point I tried getting it so it only upped the saturation on Super Sheep but it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to (because the default saturation level is brighter than I’d set it in this short), so I decided to try de-emphasise the glow on Super Sheep to adapt for the new colour range (and by that I mean the colours are now the same across the whole scene) and I’ve got to say that after all the re-jigging, this part actually looks a lot better now and it doesn’t contrast as much with the rest of the scene. (so much like with my friend from earlier, this one helped me out in a big way. Except with my friend’s feedback I can apply what I’ve learned for future projects I might make using Dreams, while with my tutor, it helps one piece of the scene look a lot better)

I suppose what I’ve really learned today was actually the importance of consistent grading because with the old version where the colours suddenly become bright, my teacher described it as looking “quite Pac-Man-y” in comparison to the rest of the scene. (which has helped me come to understand the consistency of visual styles a little bit better I think)

We Interrupt This Program (on a Mac This Time) to bring you another Project Management Update

Woooooaaaah, we’re getting smantsy now. All I have to do is export the video and release it later today and then we can get started on the evaluation (although I’ll have to get started on the evaluation now because I forgot to export the video like a fool)

Release

Super Sheep in a Dark Warehouse

Evaluation

Well folks, it’s that time again where we evaluate the finished project, starting with…

Idea Generation

I’d say that generating ideas was quite easy for me considering how I’m always coming up with spontaneous Ideas left right and center (though I should mention that there was always one winner amongst the lot: Super Sheep), the main thing I did here was make the decision to use characters I’d already created years for these various ideas, those being The Night Pig, Hex Moother, Guyzo The Mechanic, Syntha-Sheep and Super Sheep (with Super Sheep and Syntha-Sheep being the winners before I’d even generated the other Ideas, although the other two do have some potential I could take advantage of in the future)

The Project Management

I’d say that project management was actually pretty good (even if I did end up having to completely re-work in near the end due to having more time than I initially thought), I managed to stay on top of everything and even got ahead of myself at certain points (this seems to be a running theme whenever I do these project management tables), however in this case I’ve somehow done the entire thing a week ahead (although I did at least make some changes during the feedback stages), the only thing I’d say needs improving here is that I could have checked how much time I actually had left that way I didn’t accidentally do it ahead of time. (although considering the software I used, that one was probably for the best)

The Script

As for this piece of work I’d say it turned out quite well, mainly due to the major lack of dialogue, which I did because I wanted to let the visuals do all the talking rather than have characters state the obvious (figured it would build tension a lot better if I did it this way since I’m working in a VISUAL medium), not that having dialogue would have ended in complete disaster mind you but still, it’s a personal preference. (and another benefit to doing this is that it also saved on doing the voice acting, although I wouldn’t say it was a proper benefit because I actually like doing goofy voices)

As for formatting on the other hand, I could have done better because after the script was written we were all shown the proper format of writing a script and while I was most of the way there, it did end up looking slightly different than I’d remembered it looking last time I saw it, which meant this would be thrown into the BBC’s bins never to be read again. (at least now I’ll remember for next time that only character dialogue goes in the middle while the rest is aligned from left to right like most of this document)

Now, in terms of a script with Dialogue, I believe a good one should try and strive for naturally flowing dialogue (stuff that a particular character would actually say in a given situation), which can actually be quite difficult to achieve (especially if you don’t know what they’re doing) but if you can do it, the story will be all the better for it this means minimising stilted and/or expository dialogue as much as possible and letting the visuals take charge as much as possible or masking the exposition behind a natural conversation like directors such as Quintin Tarentino and Stanley Kubrick like to do in their works.

The Storyboards

For this I had a lot of fun visualising what I wanted each shot to be (and unlike my final major project last year I actually did this before the asset list so there was no fumbling around adding to the asset list at the same time), although doing this part did eventually get tedious after a while I will admit, the reason I did the storyboard before the shot list was because I figured it would be better if I visualised what each shot was going to look like before doing the shot-list where I could change my mind if I so chose to.

You may have noticed that when I do storyboards for projects like this one, the characters tend not to be on model a lot of the time. For example, in the storyboards for the tension builder I just finished, Super Sheep has a distinct lack of ears (and his cape’s missing), here’s what he’s supposed to look like compared to the storyboards:

(what he normally looks like)

(Storyboards)

The reason he’s not on model (and even drawn inconsistently) in the storyboards is because, like I said in that section, storyboards are meant to be done rather quickly so that if anything changes during production, they can quickly throw out the storyboards (likely into an archive somewhere in the studio) and replace them with new ones in a moments notice.

Although I didn’t quite have the time (or so I thought) to do another piece of the storyboard process where I take the shots I made and turn them into their own video to help time out the sound effects. This “video storyboard” I’ve described is what’s called an animatic, and much like the regular storyboards, these are done quickly so that they can be thrown out if anything changes by the time they’ve reached that point. (they do this by often using temporary audio such as scratch voices and some stock sound effects)

The asset and shot lists

I’m not going to lie, the reason I’m putting these two together is because I have so little to say about them individually.

For the shot list, I did it much quicker than I thought I would. (just a couple of minutes and I was done, it was a real snap) This is likely due to me getting into some kind of second wind after having done the storyboards in a single day. (although with that being said, it was only a minute and a half’s worth of material I was working with)

Although I should say that I doing the shot list was one of the least memorable parts in my opinion (again, due to how quickly I did it)

As for the asset list, it’s a similar situation to the shot list (but at least this time I can pad it out with a paragraph or two about asset production) where I did it really really fast (like, I think I may have gone to fast to form proper thoughts for a reflection piece), so much like the shot list. The asset list wasn’t a very memorable part either. Although just because the list wasn’t very memorable, that doesn’t mean making the assets was the same way.

Quite the opposite in fact, because making the assets themselves was rather fun, mainly because it was the part where I could finally harness the power of video games to get the job done. For all the assets I’d used Dreams’ sculpt tools to form the assets themselves and for the torch, I also had a tiny bit of logic thrown in to make it so it could be turned on and off at any time via keyframes.

For the warehouse itself, all I did was copy the default floor multiple times and modified them so that they could act more like walls and a ceiling (as well as copying the floor once more for the exterior), after that it was a simple matter of changing the colours and sheen of everything so that it looked like a proper warehouse (with a conspicuously shiny floor), after that it was simply a matter of creating the warehouse container prop (which was a bigger challenge than I thought), cloning that multiple times and then changing the colour of the clones (as well as adding the lighting) and I was good to go. (and the brilliant thing is that I could save the warehouse container as a separate creation for future use)

The warehouse itself was a bigger challenge than I anticipated however, although after a little bit of fumbling around trying to get the right mirror and kaleidoscope combe, I was eventually able to get it to work (and I think what I’ve done with it looks pretty good if I do say so myself)

The Animation Process

Ah yes, the animation process, my favourite part of the entire production. The reason I enjoyed this part so much was because I finally got to put everything into motion. I’d say doing this part was really easy because I was more or less in my comfort zone (because now I’ve actually got some experience animating things), doing the movements for when Super Sheep was walking was quite easy since all I had to do was make a walking cycle really quickly and then turn that cycle on whenever I needed him to walk (although the transition from standing to walking can get a little bit jarring since I never did a proper transition animation), and if he wasn’t walking, he and Syntha-Sheep were often being teleported to their next position. (especially Syntha-Sheep because he wasn’t on screen as much)

The biggest challenge was actually doing Super Sheep’s first person shots where the camera is trying to get a good look at Syntha-Sheep, the reason this part was such a challenge was because of the way I attached the camera to Super Sheep’s head, thus meaning I had to manipulate his head at the right angle to get Syntha-Sheep in frame (for the two seconds the camera can see him before he leaves again), this provided a challenge because in Dreams there’s currently no way to preview the camera angle while manipulating a character’s head at the same time which means it took a couple of tries to get well composed angles. (but I got there in the end)

Gathering Feedback

I’ll admit, having two or three pieces of feedback isn’t a very big sample size, but the small amount of feedback I managed to gather ended up helping me immensely.

The first piece of feedback from my friend about improving the frame rate helped me by giving me an opportunity to see if turning down the sculpture detail (and thus reducing the graphics memory used) and it actually helped me (albeit unintentionally) fix a bug I’ve been having with the models of Super Sheep and friends where if I teleported them within the frame their fingers would lag behind slightly, turns out it was because they had physics enabled, so I turned than nonsense right off. (although this only works for 4 fingered characters, as for people like Cartridge who have 5 fingers, I’ll need to do something different) I’ll be sure to keep this in mind for any future characters I decide to adapt into 3D.

As for my Tutor’s feedback, it helped me in a more direct (albeit short term) way where she gave me the Idea to change Syntha-Sheep’s first person shot to fit more in line with the rest of the scene because before, I’d simply upped the saturation all the way to the max and made Super Sheep glow a lot. After my tutor brought up that it wouldn’t immediately be obvious that we’re looking through a robot’s eyes, so after I went home that day my mission was to change the grading so that it looked a lot better and I’ve got to say. I think I succeeded. All in all, this piece of feedback has taught me that sometimes it isn’t necessarily a good idea to randomly change the grading to accentuate that we’re viewing things from a character’s perspective. But before we move on to my final thoughts…

We interrupt This Program One Final Time To Bring You Our Last Project Management Update (for this project)

Well folks, we did it. We conquered yet another fun filled challenge.

Final Thoughts

Overall, doing this exercise was quite fun (even if it ended up taking a slightly different turn than we were all expecting thanks to some forced self isolation), I got to practice animating some more (and show off some video gaming action in the process) and I got the opportunity to see if I could pull off a more serious tone for a change but with that said, I do still like me a nice bit of comedy in my work as this document and my blog from last year will no doubt tell you.

Originally we were supposed to do this project in groups (which would have allowed me to finally atone for causing the disaster that was Super Mario: Before The Odyssey), but thanks to self isolation, that never got to pan out which means I got to show off the power of video games earlier than expected. (honestly I was expecting to not be able to whip out the games until around december, but self isolation made it so that we could do the tension builder all by ourselves, thus facilitating me using video games to accidentally animate earlier than expected)