FINAL MAJOR PROJECT:
This trailer is my final Major Project titled The Apex Predator for the UCA Epsom Foundation course I am studying.
This trailer for the 'film' The Apex Predator, which looks at the struggle between vampires who have a personal vendetta against humans (for almost wiping out their species) and the dragons (who were the creators of the world in this film's universe) once worshipped by the humans. Whilst some dragons fight alongside the humans that worship them, some have their own intentions. The time period the story is set is in the far future at a point where vampires have regained vastly in strength and numbers, they have spread their population across the planet and set up different outposts around the Earth in hopes of rebuilding a new civilisation. The dragons of the East once thought to be dormant have returned with vengeance against the vampires who once slayed their species to extinction. As the battle wages between the different species, a new threat arises: human/dragon hybrids. Those with the blood and abilities of a dragon but the body of a human. Their intentions are unknown but like the rest they want to tip the balance of the hierarchy and compete for who is on top. This battle is more than about power, land and faction rivalry, but about survival. The only way for them to remain at the top is to wipe out extinguish the enemy species. Only one can remain the Apex Predator..
Some of the sound effects such as music used are copyrighted material, which has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. I am not making profit by using it, and it is only being used for academic and studying purposes. This constitutes as ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
Although the video managed to upload, I still had to go through many incredibly frustrating technical problems. To my annoyance half way through the video, the audio begins to lag a little which removes the suspense to the trailer as the sound was vital for emphasising it.
PRACTICAL WORK
This page shows my practical work and the processes of how I produce them.
I began my planning process and routine of what I needed to do for my project by producing a Gannt Chart:
Gantt Chart
For my Gantt Chart I split the timings for my plan of when to do certain tasks for my project over 2 months and further subdividing it into weeks, Approximately in a month there are 4 weeks therefore I used this to plan what I would be doing within each week and how long it would take me. Each different task is colour coded.
I then created a second Gantt Chart showing the days where I did the actual filming for my final major project in comparison to the Gantt chart above to show the actual time frame it took me and reflect on how I had tackle filming certain scenes and organising what would be done when. One of the challenges I had to tack were relying on people so I had to work out when which people would be available for which day hence the scenes not being filmed in chronological order. Again I used colour coding for each scene. This Gantt chart shows that filming actually occurred over two weeks within four days.
For the editing software I used Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premier Pro and Windows Moviemaker. This is mainly due to the fact the Adobe programmes are Industry standard software so when I leave I have knowledge of this software when I enter the industry and Windows Moviemaker is something I have ease of using quickly. I also used a bit of Microsoft paint and Adobe Photoshop.
Practising with After Effects, Adobe Premier Pro and other editing software
As After Effects is required in my project and is essential especially for effects and to show the powers and physical appearance of the vampires and human/dragon hybrids.
One of the best and main ways of portraying that the character is a vampire is via the appearance of the eyes. A change of colour or a whole physical appearance helps reinforce to the audience what the character is and also helps differentiate between a dragon/human hybrid and a vampire.
One of my most favourite shows that I have watched growing up and still continue watching to this day is Supernatural. As it is a television show, the budget would not be so extensive for them to be able use complex prosthetics and CGI imagery to portray demons, werewolves or vampires. Instead they simplify those concepts and retain a humanoid form for the creatures. By using changes to physical appearances such as the eye colour, teeth, claws, magical powers etc by using after effects, they are able to present what the character is in a simplistic manner. I was influenced by how the dragons in supernatural take on a human form which gave me the idea to do human/dragon hybrids,
In supernatural the series is well renowned for the creepy blacked out demon eyes which is the classic infamous portrayal of demons in their show as demons are the primary antagonists.
I decided to test this out on After Effects. I learnt via tutorial which showed how to the demon eyes effect and I put it into practice.
To do this I first put in a null object. I then added a track motion tracker in and use applied that to one of the eyes. I then created a matte which was blue colour and drew that around the eye that I wanted to add the effect to using the pen tool. After that I used the mask shape to insert key frames to ensure the mask fit perfectly within the eyes. After that I had to create a solid black which would be used for the actual black of the eye. After that I had to then set the track mat of the black solid to alpha matte being the blue matte I had previously created. This allowed the black colour to appear where the blue matte was within the eyes. I then had to use the pigtail to parent the matte to the null object so it follows the motion tracker therefore it stays exactly where the eyes are on the actual footage. Now the eyes have the darkness of the demon eyes, I changed the opacity and the feathering to blend it in to the face in the mask settings. I needed it to look more realistic like an actual eyeball so I needed to include in the mid tones and the reflective highlight of the light source on the demon eyeballs. I achieved this by creating a white/very light grey solid object and then use the pen tool to draw a small white circle as the highlight. I then adjusted it's opacity and feathering to blend it in. I then used the pigtail to parent it to the null object so that it can move along with the tracker. The last step was the mid-tone to give the eyeballs a more rounded reflective effect. I put in a dark grey solid object and then drew a circle within the eye with the pen tool. This time I duplicated the original blue matte so that the grey object could fit inside the already draw around eye perfectly and then applied it's track mat to the 2nd Alpha matte. I then adjusted it's opacity and feathering until it was only slightly as this is a subtle touch to making the eyes look more realistic. The eye is completed.
Below is a short clip showing the result of a initial test of using after effects to do the "demon eyes" affect.
I also used this effect again on a scene I will use in my final major project. In this example one of the characters is a demonic/dragon like creature therefore I had to edit her eyes to resemble that of a creature which is an good way of portraying to the audience that although humanoid, she isn't human.
Again I used the similar technique as above but slight difference with how I did the tracking by using two trackers by making sure rotation was also tracked. As her eyes are quite small in this, the movement is a lot faster therefore it was harder for the trackers to stay on therefore for each frame I had to manually adjust where the trackers went. Not only for that I also had to adjust where the matte would go so it wouldn't move away from the eyes so for each individual frame I had to intricately adjust each part. It took me a while but I am pleased by the outcome.
Here it is shown below:
The clip after this was originally very shaky as I filmed it whilst on top of a wall therefore keeping balance on a wall whilst holding the camera was quite difficult which to my annoyance resulted in shaky footage. This made the scene look distorting and didn't give the focus and atmosphere that I wanted to create with that scene as it made it harder to focus on the character in that scene.
To fix this I used Adobe Premier. I used the Warp Stabiliser under the distort folder of the video effects. Using this it provided options to alter the stabalisation of the video. The two options were to either have smooth movement or no movement. This helped solve the problem.
Although there was another problem, by doing this there is an option already selected for borders where it cuts and crops the edge of the video to minimise the shake otherwise there will be visible black borders moving around the video. This reduced the dimensions of the video from the normal 1080x1920 to 480x720.
After this I did the effect using After Effects. Like above I did the same demon eye affect but after she blinks, I decided I wanted to make the pupils of the eye red and glowing.
Below is an example of the clip:
Sadly when uploaded to the blog the quality is reduced as the video is shown in it's full dimension or quality which may make it harder to see the red eyes.
The clip below also the same and similar effects and techniques as used below but in a different scene.
Again here is the similar effect of the vampire eyes but slightly improved. Each eye colour has a different meaning and this is explained further in the reflective blog where I delve into the lore of the story.
Below here I looked at adding an effect to make an actor breather fire. I had the video of the fire burst but it had a black background with it. I placed it in to the main composition on top of the original video but needed a way to make the black background transparent. I then used keying. I keyed out a single colour by using the key colour effect. Using the eye dropper tool from the key colour effect I then selected the black background to make it transparent. I adjusted the values and also the size of the flame. I also cut down the footage of the flame by using time stretch, cutting it down to 10% so it could fit the small clip I would use.
Here is another affect involving fire and I also had to track the eyes of the actor to make them turn from black and red after he blinks.
Looking at the powers of the characters I decided I need to show their abilities off using after effects. As this character has vampirism far back in her bloodline, she can combine still utilise the blood magic of the vampires even though she is a dragon, human/elf hybrid. I decided to show the magic she uses by using red to represent blood and the dark character that she is. Red is also a stand out colour. I was influenced by Scarlet Witch in the Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie.
I learnt the process of making this via a online YouTube tutorial which tries to emulate the same Scarlet Witch energy effect. I thought this was a good choice due to the ease of moving the "energy" and ability to be creative with it. It also looks a lot like blood magic from the game Skyrim which I was also influenced by.
To create this effect I created a black solid layer (as black is a good colour to see contrast with). Using this layer I searched for the effect: Fractal noise. I dragged this into the layer and began changing the options for this effect. I altered the contrast by turning it up and the brightness down to release emphasise the contrast between black and white. I then changed the sub.... settings so the pattern of the effect would look more energy like. After that I clicked on evolution and set it to time*200 which states how much the pattern of the effect will keep changing making it look like moving energy. After this I then drew masks for the layer by using the eclipse tool. I drew 6 eclipses and for each one I edited their paths using key frame, each time animating how they would move across the screen. After that I then changed the colour of the fractal noise by adding the tint effect, From here I changed the colour of the map white to a mid red tone. I then added a glow effect to add even more effect to it and emphasis. I set the glow colours to A&B and then set the glow colours of A and B to the same red as that of the tint. I increased the glow intensity and radius. The effect is complete.
Here is the clip below of the effect in action:
All the clips I had been working with exported clips that were over 1GB. Which I found was a problem when trying to save it on the UCA Library computer when I was working on the facilities there. As a lot of these exported clips had large file sizes it did become a problem for my home laptop as it was too slow to playback any of them sufficiently. Also whilst working on them in After Effects, a lot of ram was used and as it demanded quite a high amount of ram, my computer performed very slowly which I found infuriating at times.
Adobe Premier Pro
After editing and cutting certain clips. I managed to piece together into a trailer. Using Adobe Premier Pro I needed to tweak certain parts adding in more effects that were available from the Adobe Premier Pro software.
One example of this is the Lumetri Looks which really helped give a variety of cinematic colours to my film. It gave you the ability to add more than one style on to the footage which allowed me to be creative with the colour of a certain scene. For example I utilised the Bleach Bypass 1 and 2 a lot for the darker more cinematic/faded look you would achieve in an horror movie. Ontop of that I would use the temperature styles of the Lumetri Looks and select either Cold Mix or cold overall to bring out the colder colours in my footage giving an overall darker and chiller atmosphere to my clip really representing the aesthetics of a dark/horror movie.
Logo
In my film near the beggining I wanted a logo to represent my fictional film company. I decided that I would use a hipster style logo design (this graphical style is used a by a lot of pop punk and hardcore bands, two genres that I listen too) which I found appealing to my style and also added a professional look to the video.
Building logo and animating it in After Effects.
The finished logo.
Here is video footage of my logo.
I originally planned to use more software such as Adobe Flash (which I have used and learnt a bit about) and 3Ds Max or Maya (which I have not used before). I planned to learn more about the software I had not used and try and implicate those into my project but due to timing restrictions I was unable to and figure out a different way. I found that Adobe Photoshop was something I already knew but the two other software programs that I didn't have much experience in was Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premier which I knew I would use extensively, therefore I could only use my time to focus on them luckily finding Adobe Premier easy to use having being able to explore and figure out how it worked without needing many tutorials as I have had prior experience with other video editing software. Adobe After Effects was quickly learnt with watching the tutorials of the desired effects I required I using the knowledge I obtained and applying it to the software so I could work out how the basics of the software worked. In the end the final project became solely a movie and did not have any flash animation and I knew this was a sacrifice I had to make due to time constraints and organisation.
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