Digital Media 3.1

After having a pretty low start to the week I have managed to select one of my three finals, despite what the common selection was I have decided to go with the clip where Natasha is sat still, rather than picking a shot that has a lot of movement in this is primarily to remove the need for rotoscoping and should (fingers crossed) mean that I can get this shot finished over the next few days and cross it off my list.

With this in mind I had spent most of monday working on this shot and with a little help from John I managed to get this test render exported; the 3D elements stick to the floor well and don’t move, however there is a small issue of seeing the floor planes shadow that was rendered, will try to sort this with the next export.

Today (Tuesday) however, I have gone out and about Lincoln trying to shoot locations that would work for my 3D Projection Mapping. I have a number of images that might work as the main plate for a matte painting and able to be built upon… Though next time I should take a tripod, guess that will teach me to make sure I have the correct days booked for equipment.

 

This was shot from the floor that was below the floor leading to the roof which was blocked off to the public so that makes this location less viable than others that I shot later in the day. Whilst there I also found that there were the same risks as all the other locations such as traffic hazard, pedestrians could be a potential risk and potential slip and trip risks.

However with this location in mind I also went around other car parking locations, one of the main ones that I liked was a private parking area between shops such as the Card Factory on the highstreet (opposite Iceland), and other larger ones such as the NCP Car Park at St. Rumbled Street and the Lucy Towers multi-storey car park near the Odeon cinema. (see below)

Out of the numerous photos I took for my projection mapping aspect of the project there were only a few that I liked such as the following.

 

 

Today I have been pretty sick, even had the shakes and dizziness so that put filming on hold for today. However I have decided to go into uni mostly to take my mind off of being sick and do some work on the shot I have along with creating a 3D model or a few based on my project. The current idea for the model is for some sort of air tank to be left behind and rusted in a location.

Last night I asked for feedback on the shots I had recorded with Natasha yesterday, so far I have had 3 responses and so far the common agreement is on shot 2 and 4 which is great because these were some of my favourites but I kinda like shot 2 most as there is little movement but there is still enough to draw the eye to Natasha rather than looking around the location. I am considering using this shot as a plate for a matte painting though in hindsight it would have proven more effective to use a green screen at the end rather than try to “eyeball” it, with this in mind I may have to rotoscope Natasha’s head out of the shot to separate her from the background; the issue that I can potentially see is that the light cast on Natasha’s hair might make the shot more difficult than planned as differentiating the colours may be a little more tricky.

 

To start with I decided to model a large gas tank that would be a in urban locations narrative wise the idea is that it will be a large oxygen tank, which is why the main colour is a light grey with a blue trim on the indents.

 

 

 

Today I started my reshoots as the footage that I had captured was incorrectly white balanced in previous work. Luckily the location was left the same since last time, no construction had begun and the weather was pretty good, yet oddly cold. As with last time my friend Natasha helped me by being in the scene, adding a subject to focus on made the shots work as there is at least some action being shown in the scene.

I took Jon’s advice and decided to use the slider to make the shots interesting but also so the shots had some parallax, unlike last time I decided to book the larger slider (which was larger than I expected) and shot a number of variations of the shot I plan to use for my final work, however whilst filming the tripods had the spirit levels removed and the one on the slider itself was always centred. Another issue I had was that for some reason the slider wasn’t as stable as I had hoped, there was also the issue of having to deal with the slider itself getting stuck on as it went over the spirit level.

Jon also suggested that I take a 360 panorama of the location to get a sense of the lighting for later; I tried out a number of free apps on the google play store and found that most worked up until stitching the image together then they required a payment, so instead I used Google Cardboard to take this panorama:

https://goo.gl/vrphoto/7ecgXCWmaITW7I1f2

hopefully this will work as an environment map… But I get the sneaking suspicion that it won’t.

However, despite the few issues I decided to continue on and got a number of shots that I like but can’t decide which one to use:

Today I finally got around to shooting some footage under the bridge that I had mentioned in a previous post.

Reccee-wise there isn’t really much to say other than the usual traffic and pedestrian risks, there is also the risk of tripping on uneven surface etc but nothing comon sense wouldn’t help fix. One of the main issues I had with the location was that it was easy to get to and there were no signs telling me to keep out, there were also little problems when filming. Luckily  I don’t need audio because the levels were constantly peaking as it is a busy road… Bridge… Thing.

Image here

So I asked my friend Natasha to help me film and be part of my project as I thought it’d be more interesting if there was someone in the footage to focus on rather than lacking a focus point to the footage, it just seemed odd to have footage without someone or something to focus on. We tried a number of shots that might work, trying to film a handheld shot with a bad back was a little more difficult that I thought (that will teach me for carrying too much and using my back to lift things rather than bending my knees >_<) but the shots I did get I’m actually quite happy with, the exposure could be better but if I hadn’t tried filming today then I would likely have missed out on filming at least until Monday. Plus it gave me something to think about other than worrying about things I can’t help with back home.

 

The plan is to do another shoot on Monday in the same area, providing the weather being okay. Though I should make sure I have my camera set up correctly and make sure I have my glasses with me (as much as I don’t mind wearing them they do get in the way a little) anyway… The plan is to re-shoot but it also depends on Nat’s group work. However I feel like my work is starting to progress a little more now.

There are two main plans for the footage I have recorded today, first is to see if it’ll work for some planar tracking if it does great! If not, then the back up is to create a matte painting to tick off that criteria, though I am a little unsure if it’d work since there is a lot of movement. Then again I do have a few shots that are static and on a tripod, just in case.

I also took time to use the Art, Architecture and design (AAD) building as a secondary location, just so I would have something to fall back on. This also allowed me to test out the slider I booked from media loans. The shots I have done aren’t fancy at all, in fact they are a basic track left to right giving a little movement but nothing major. The idea is to model something and place it on the cube… That or attempt planar tracking on said cube, this is (hopefully) the focus of my tests and beginnings of my finals.

(Insert images here, after getting a card reader)

Fast forward a few hours, and I was on my way home (With some more bad news from back home) when I got near the bus stop, (which had me debating going to the hospital annnyway) I noticed some open plots of land, a few of them had ‘for sale’ signs; however nearby the bus station there is a nearby bridge that seemed to have an open area underneath that may give me a gravel area to work form the next shot for my work.