OPENING SHOT TEST

Earlier today, Louis and I, and two other crew members - friends we asked to join us from outside of school - ventured into the city of London and shot the panning time lapse, aswell as part of the first scene. The GoPro camera managed to break itself, using its own charger; so the time lapse needed to be shot on a DSLR. In last minute preparation for this I bought an extra DSLR battery, incase the first ran out (which it did) and multiple SD cards to record the several hours of footage.

Louis and I also realised That the area near Waterloo Station is far busier with famous landmarks, so we re-located the time lapse to Waterloo bridge. We started by filming the sky at 3pm; two hours later (after freezing half to death in the cold December air) the time lapse finished, having panned past the IMAX cinema, settling on a glorious shot of the London Eye with Big Ben behind it, both glowing with lights. 

I put together a rough test of what the time lapse looks like combined with the Earth zoom, and here is the result. 








 For the examiners, ignore any slightly innapropriate language used by Imo in the video... the cold got to her (it got to all of us)

A screenshot of the video on my Youtube(which hit 10000 total upload views yesterday, hopefully meaning I'll get plenty of traffic and therefore feedback and response on the final opening when I upload it), moments after uploading (above)

FACEBOOK BECOMES USEFUL IN SCHOOL?

For once Facebook becomes useful in education - in this case, planning our out shoot in London this coming Sunday. Group messages have allowed me to attach Louis and myself, along with two crew members - in this case friends Greg Flynn (who later could not come, so we found another friend - a few hours before the shoot - Imo Allen to join us as crew) and Tom Guyatt, to help with the shoot by 'clapping', 'booming' or filming as cameraperson on Sunday while Louis and I act out the needed scene. We will also shoot the panning time lapse with the fish-eyed GoPro.

PIXEL POLLY

 

Some weeks previously Louis and I discovered an effect for a shattering title. The effect explodes the words 'BOOM' which are in a large metalic, 3D looking font made completely within AE. The words just sit there innocently, until a bright blue light ignites and shatters the title into hundreds of shards of flying metal in a violent explosion.

This was an effect I re-created with the words 'boom', after having watched a Video Copilot tutorial making use of the pixel polly effect. The next lesson I showed the effect to my partner Louis who immidiately re-created the effect on his laptop, instead combusting the words "Gaia's Army" with a flying ball of light. 

While I doubt this effect will be used for the actual title of the film, it is a good inspiration for a production company ident. We already have the Venturay ident; but we may also need to invent a European production company aswell. This effect could give that possible ident an extra edge, but rather than to violently explode, perhaps use the techinque to transition in a title, slowly, delicately.

THE OPENING SHOT

For our opening shot, Louis and I have created the cosmic zoom - it finished by zooming into the road and blurring into a murky grey. This will become a murky grey sky, which will begin to timelapse as the camera pans down to reveal ST. Pancras station. To storyboard it, Louis and I used Google Earth once again, and in streetview we checked out and walked around the location to get an idea of what our location will consist of before we go there, so we can properly plan the opening shot and the rest of the scene.

I screenshotted St Pancras Stationand took the image into AE. There I added a day to night effect, and then set the 3D "Gaia's Army" title above the station. The day to night was included for when we shoot the shot, we plan to timelapse from day to night.A while after this I went back, moved the title, and added more realistic lighting in a location where if the time lapse stops, a bus can wipe-fade the title away. 

We have also decided based on what we saw on Google Earth where we would shoot: different frames to use, which angle to employ.

3D TEXT IN AFTER EFFECTS

If you are wondering why AE is suddenly brighter, it's because I got bored of the grey to boosted the brightness. Anyway, I discovered after watching a Video Copilot tutorial how to make 3D text on AE! To do it, you need to make the text layer, then make it a 3D layer. Add a null object, call it 'Control' and put on an effect called 'Slider Control' from the 'Expression controls' tab. Next, make a top layer - duplicate it, and bring up the position for the lower layer.

Alt click on the position, and type in the following expression; 'value+[0,0,index*thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slider Control")("Slider")]'. or you can type 'value+[0,0', then pigwip the position to the slider control effect on the null. This will do the expression for you... then make sure you close the expression with another ']'. Dulicate these layers however many times you wish - the more layers, the moer depth.

Finally click on the null, look at the slider number and type in '1' or higher, this will send the layers back in Z space and make the text 3D. And if all that sounds a bit jargony, Video Copilot's explanation here makes it much more easy to understand... I think