Visual Effects

Visual Effects

Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects often involve the integration of live-action footage and computer generated imagery (CGI) in order to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. They have become increasingly common in big-budget films, and have also recently become accessible to the amateur filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.


Development of the Visual Effects Industry

Ever since I was a young boy, I marvelled at how films entertained me with there visual effects. Films like Star Wars, ET and Raiders of the lost Ark were the leading films in Special effects. But these films were still based on physical equipment such as motion controlled cameras, matte painting, blue screens, models and pyrotechnics. The only use of computers was used to control the movement of film cameras.

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) are probably the most influential, innovating and leading company responsible for the evolution of visual effects industry. It all began in 1975 when ILM founder George Lucas was about to embark on his Sci Fi epic Star Wars. He realised quickly that all special effects companies had disbanded in Hollywood and he had to establish his own effects company Industrial Light & Magic.

ILM consisted of a small team of college students who were a mix of artists and engineers. They have since go on to achieve 16 Oscars and 20 nominations. It was in 1979 when ILM established their use of computer generated imagery; they hired two computer graphics animators, Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter. They were responsible for the first fully animated CG feature; Toy Story. ILM constructed the first non linear film editing computer the Edit Droid which was later sold and named Avid Express, the leading editing software company in the world. In the Late 1980’s ILM supervisors John and Thomas Knoll created an image processing program as a summer project; today we know this summer project as Adobe Photoshop.

ILM are responsible for two major breakthroughs within the visual effects industry and in 1989 they created a fully three dimensional computer generated characters for the movies, The Abyss and Terminator 2 Judgement day. The year 1993 saw the arrival of living breathing characters with skin, muscles and textures, these were dinosaurs created for Steven Spielberg’s movie Jurassic Park. This was a breakthrough for the cinematic art of storytelling.

Second was in 2002, George Lucas shot Star Wars Episode 2 entirely on Digital Video, this was the first movie of its kind not to be filmed on celluloid. Film is a hundreds of times more expensive than digital video. In an interview with one of the Star Wars producers Rick McCallum, said they spent $16,000 on 220 hours on digital technology, and they would have spent about $1.8 million on 220 hours of film.


For the filmmaker, the most exciting element of digital technology is how easy it is to use. Most filmmakers have already switched to digital editing systems because they make it so much simpler to put a movie together. In the current process, filmmakers actually convert the film footage to a digital format for post-production and then back to film again for its theatrical release. The conversion process is costly, it ends up degrading the image quality somewhat, and it takes time.
Digital video doesn't have to go through this conversion process. As soon as they shoot digital footage, filmmakers can immediately play it back and start editing it. With film, they have to send the footage off for processing before they know what they have. A director might spend all day shooting only to discover the lighting was off and the footage is totally unusable. On the "Attack of the Clones" set, the crew could review the footage after every shot. They could shoot a scene in the morning and start editing it that afternoon.

Since these breakthroughs with digital technology it has been possible to acquire animation and modelling software at a relatively cheap cost allowing an amateur filmmaker to achieve professional techniques. By the late 90’s the arrival of companies such as Adobe, Macromedia and 3D modelling software such as 3D Studio Max and Maya offered enormous opportunities for everyone interested in film.
In 2007 the production of HD camcorders has allowed the public to film in a digital format.

Holiday

What I did on my Holidays

My final project is based on the experience I feel while working. When we finally get good weather in Manchester I don’t get the opportunity to enjoy it as I'm always working. I gaze out of my window at work watching everybody enjoying themselves and it ticks me off.

For this project I opted to do an animation. This gave me an opportunity to use After effects and my other skills in Photoshop, Illustrator and editing software.

For research I looked at graphic styles and colours we associate with summer. My inspiration for the animation came from the Diet Coke Plus advert. I’ve always wanted to make a video animation using compositing software. I first used illustrator to draw different scenes
for the animation. This was a long winded process that requires a lot of problem solving of how graphic images would animate on screen. Storyboarding can only give a rough guide so I had to rely on a lot of improvisation to make the animation as fun and interesting as possible. I then had to transfer all my vector images in to after effects and teach myself how to use the software finally adding a complementary music track.

I really enjoyed doing this project I was given free range on content. This was an opportunity for me to develop new skills with software I’ve never used before and I personally think it was a good animation for a first attempt with after effects.

George Lucas Flash Site

Flash Interactive movie

This project was a love and hate relationship for me. I chose to do an interactive site on the director and producer George Lucas. This was a good opportunity for me to talk learn about a director whose films have influenced the film industry. These films have given me the inspiration to get involved in visual effects software.

I knew from the start of this project what I wanted to showcase. The design of the interface was the challenging part of the brief. I did a lot of research on flash websites for usability and design. After series of ideas I settled for a storyboard layout for the interface design. I got this idea from watching the behind the scenes documentary of Star Wars and caught a glimpse of an old storyboard scene which was a perfect layout for the flash movie.

Now that I have all the elements that I needed. It was learning how to use the flash software to covey the information. This was difficult for me as I only have a basic understanding of flash, but complexity of this movie required a lot of action scripting which I don’t understand.

For this project I’ve have had to study flash for myself, studying many late nights till the early hours of the morning to get this project completed. Due to this project I have learnt how to do basic action scripting and extended my previous knowledge of the flash software. Although i struggled with the programming side of the project i was really impressed in what i acheived with the final product.

Doritos

Doritos advertisement

To be honest the product does not fill me with any excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any memorable Doritos ads since the late 90’s. They must be desperate resorting to college students coming up with ideas. Doritos have never really had a memorable ad campaign. I have never liked the taste of Doritos which makes it harder to gain inspiration. I found this project really boring and did not want to it.

The challenge with projects like these is that college projects are always limited with inadequate resources where as advertising companies have a lot of money and access to professional equipment that opens up thousands of possibilities. So to compete with the professionals you have to come up with really clever ideas that do not require big budget props. For these reasons I have had to hold back on many of my ideas.

Of the five ideas I generated I settled on one that enabled be not have actors or big effects. The idea consists of two sock puppets. The concept was two socks would both fart and smell each others fart realising the flavour of the Doritos they were eating.

Now because I am doing this project on my own and not working in a group. I’ve had to rely on friends with no skills in filming or acting. This was my second challenge, because I knew what I wanted, my friends had no experience in the creative field it was difficult to get them to understand the concept.

I had drawn storyboards and written a screenplay to help me and my friends play out the scene. We occasionally improvised which really worked well. But when it came to editing the shoot I found the filming was not as I hoped.

The editing of the film was really tricky as I did not have many shots and the time to reshoot. As we were acting with sock puppets the cameraman managed to catch our heads in the shot which he was supposed to just focus on the socks. So I skilfully edited film to get away with the mistakes. I really enjoyed the editing and felt a real achievement in the final cut.

My next challenged was the dubbing. Our Manchester accents did not work well with our sock puppets so I had to record myself with a high pitched voice that work out better for my sock characters.

Towards the end of this project i felt that it was the best brief ive work on this year. I thought overall advertisement was a success and it was a good opportunity to work on a live industry brief. Due to this experience I have found a love for the editing profession.

There is a link to the Doritos advert in the video bar above.

Code Computer love

Code Computer love is a digital design company based in Manchester’s city centre. It is one of the leading digital design agencies in the UK and the number one agency outside of London. Their fresh contemporary and innovative style has gathered over forty awards in the last five years and has acquired an impressive portfolio of clients such as HMV, Umbro, Waterstones, and Huggies.

Code continues to define the digital industry here in Manchester and offers a wide range of services such as online marketing, web development, interactive technologies and TV and animation, making them the only full service digital agency in Manchester. Code is proud of its heritage and collaborates with the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Manchester Digital and E-Consultancy to raise the digital profile of the region.

Code has a team of 46 designers and marketing specialists priding itself on the work they produce, this means that they recruit knowledgeable people with extraordinary skills. Code is always recruiting the ‘very best’ talent around and has a tough recruitment process where only the right person gets through. In 2006 they head hunted an award winning freelance interactive designer ‘Stewart Hamilton’ so they could offer his skills in the latest technology to clients. They insist and thrive on experimenting in new and exciting ways of presenting clients with innovative ideas in order to connect with their consumers, offering them a service beyond the norm.

The company established itself in 1999 and started off small, in a rented room above a hairdresser’s shop in Stockport. Tony Foggett, Wini Tse and Louis Georgiou are the founding directors of Code. Tony and Louis first crossed paths whilst studying an educational media design degree at the MMU and coincidentally they met again working at the same design company, Mainstream. This is where they met their third partner, Wini Tse and became friends.

As the three colleagues worked with each other they realised that there was a potential market for multimedia at a time when design was predominately paper based. This was a perfect business opportunity to be taken advantage of; as people did not realise. As Foggett recalls: “For us it’s the specialism that’s always been the key, and that’s why we decided to jump ship”.(1)“There’s a huge difference between a specialist agency and a full service advertising agency that offers digital as just one of those services. When digital’s a ‘bolt on’ you may get a nice integrated approach, but digital in its own right needs to have a much more on-going, focused and long term strategy”.(2)

“It surprises me that there aren’t larger agencies with the capabilities of us around. In fact I’d argue that we’re now emerging as the only real full service digital agency (in Manchester) – in that there are other design and build, or advertising based agencies, but nobody that’s actually integrating creative, media and planning like we are.”(3)

In April 1999 they started their business with a mere £3000 and bought a new computer with basic equipment in order to setup their first office. They financed their office space by trading five months of rent for a website! The team then planned a strategy to attract cliental by teaming with the same traditional design agencies that undervalued digital so they could build their client base. Traditional design companies agreed with this and would bring Code on board to develop digital solutions as they could not offer such services themselves. This allowed Code to have access to renowned brand names and media exposure.

Over the years they took on many projects; however, one in particular positively changed their future and cemented the company reputation. The website commissioned by ‘Doctor Martens’ the shoe company’s. This was a breakthrough for them as their work on the website was impressionable and instrumental in securing them a permanent place with the massive corporation KCC Kimberley Clark Corporation (Huggies).

Tony Foggart: “We put an awful lot of love and attention into that website, really demonstrating how well we could get to grips with a brand, and it paid off. We got a lot of great jobs off the back of it and secured a great relationship with DM. It was a real turning point.”(4)

The managing director of Code has well established the company and has acquired a great achievement by attracting big brand names that opted for them over their competitors in London. “We love sticking it up the south”. (5) “We’re Manchester people and we love it here. I think that fact makes us more determined - gives us an extra yard in preparing for pitches – and that usually pays dividends.”(6)

http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-features/special-features/deciphering-code-20070814801/ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

How Stuff Works 'it's good to know'

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movies-channel.htm

This is an odd but interesting website, it's layout is terrible, there is too much information on its home page and you need a little bit of time to get your bearings.

The interesting part of the website is the behind the scenes information of the movie industry.

Sometimes when i've watched a movie and thought to myself how did they do that. Well this Website tell you exactly that.

There are over a hundred articles explaining Hollywoods secrets ranging from movies like 'Monsters, Inc.' to visual effects companies like Industrial Light & Magic .

These next paragraphs are extracts from the website

The Film 300

Scenes involving horses were particularly complicated. “In the first battle scene,” Watts relates, “we had the riders ride the horses up to the edge of the blue screen and skid to a stop. That was a challenge we got around through clever editing and a convincing backdrop.” But the Persian messenger‘s ride over the hill to Sparta actually had to be shot outdoors. “We couldn’t get the horses running fast enough [otherwise],” says Snyder. He was intent on having a real feel to "300" despite the artificial setting. “I didn’t want the movie to look like it was made in a computer, like 'Polar Express.' The movie was shot on film. We added grain and lens flares because I wanted it to feel rough. It’s very organic-feeling.”

The Perfect Storm Visual Effects

The model of the Andrea Gail (the main boat in the film) is itself a wonder, with objects on the boat, such as cables and buoys, reacting to the wind and movement of the ocean as well.
In addition, to help capture the rolling motion of a stormy ocean, ILM placed a virtual camera into the simulation on a second boat. The virtual camera pointed to an invisible target object located on the boat that was the focus of the shot. The virtual camera had a certain degree of freedom that emulated the difficulty a person would have holding a camera while trying to stay trained on an object that is moving. This method is used in several shots to enhance the realism.
Most of the actual 3D modeling work took place using a commercial software application package called Maya, made by AliasWavefront. The cool thing about Maya is that it contains a complete programming language, C++, that allows animators and designers to write their own custom plug-ins. "The Perfect Storm" team at ILM wrote more than 30 plug-ins for Maya for this movie. They also wrote several stand-alone applications for specific aspects, such as shaders and particle systems, of the ocean scenes.

Whether your a nerd like me or just curious you should take a peak you might be surprised. It may even give you idea into what specific area of media you would like to persue.

Enjoy!

You Tube

You Tube is a video sharing website where people can upload, view and share video clips. You Tube was created in mid-February 2005 by three former Pay Pal employees. The site uses Flash software to play its videos including movie clips and music videos, as well as amateur content from around the world.

Personally, I think it’s a fantastic resource for multimedia and film students. It is easily accessible if you need to research a particular film or music video new and old, You Tube is the answer.

For example, I always wanted to see the Turkish delight advert from the 1980’s, I found it on You Tube with ease. I would also use this site for training tutorials and to watch American shows that you would not be able to see in the UK.

Any project that I would work on I will use You Tube for research. Not only is it great source of video footage, you could use it for a video portfolio as anyone across the world could access your work . I have recently uploaded my video footage on You Tube which is perfect for me to access it if I need to show somebody my work.

The key to any good website is how easy it is to navigate around it You Tube is one of those websites that is 'dummy' friendly.