Evaluation Part 1

My script:
My video is about a beautiful flower growing from a small seed into it's full form. The flower then gets destroyed in seconds by a foot. I have decided to do the flower as a stop motion as that is field field I want to go in to in the future. This is so it gives me more experience in making stop motions. For the person walking, I did a live action. I went with this idea as I thought it would be a nice contrast to the flower. My inspiration mainly came from "Monster in Paris" which shows things growing to extraordinary sizes. I then brainstormed ideas around the "human vs nature" theme and implemented the idea of growing to your fullest form. i also looked at David Attenborough shows of flowers growing which really inspired me to do a flower growing. I then went onto researching software that is used to create stop motions. The one we use at college is Dragon frame. I researched deeply into this so I could understand the software when it came to it.I also took a look at VFX companies and looked at how much work that goes into creating a VRX film. This gave me a clear idea of what needs to be done and when.
After doing the experimental flower I realised that it was going to take a lot of time and effort to create the stop motion half of my film. I really wasn't prepared as to how much was needed to be done so I ended up behind schedule. In future I will try to have a better understanding of the time management. When it came to filming the legs, I have a struggle to find a suitable filming site for the green screen. This is most likely because I left it too late and the lecture theatre that I originally wanted was fully booked. I eventually found a filming site at Vernon Street. There were a few problems with this as it was quite small so we ended up really cramped. I will in future definitely make sure I have booked a filming site further away from the deadline.
Once I had all my footage needed it came to the After Effects bit. I had quite a bit of trouble in this area as I had to slow down my footage and add rain. Once I slowed down my footage it ended up becoming really jumpy which isn't what I was going for. I added on frame blend to get it less jumpy, it worked but not as well as I thought it would.
after that I had to add the foot footage. I composited the green screen out, I then had loads of problems as the trouser leg kept disappearing in certain areas and once I had got it back the foot would start to disappear. I worked really hard on overcoming the problems. I believe it turned out well. I just wish that I had enough time to work on it more as there are parts in the film where bits of the foot goes missing in my final video. I was hoping no body would notice as I didn't have enough time to change it again. I also had problems with matching the foot up to the flower, but with expanding the legs I managed to do it. When I was playing back my footage I noticed it really wasn't that long so I made changes to add more nights and days, I also slowed down my footage more. This still wasn't good enough, it was still only 20 seconds long I then decided to add more scenes which wasn't in my original idea. The scenes included a full field of grass and the person walking across it, this added to the suspense that the person was walking toward the flower. I added another scene after the flower gets crushed that is similar to the previous one, to give the feel that the person it walking away without a care in the world. I think this really worked.
Whilst editing in Premiere Pro I added frame blending in there also, I really wanted to get it as smooth as possible. I think it worked well. The sound choice I went with was  a free to use piano piece which I think helps the video a lot, to get the emotions across. I used simple footsteps in the grass for the obvious foot steps on the grass. I originally wanted to use a piece by Jesse Wilson called "Memory" but Jesse took too long to get back to me so that's when I found the similar piano piece. I think that I made the better choice in using the second piece as it has more mixed emotions running through it. One thing that I believed worked incredibly well was the credits as they ran with the theme of growing plants and they were very easy to do although I used maya to do it. I was really surprised with the outcome of them. I didn't really blog on the post production as I were doing it so I ended up having to do so much all at once. Next time I will blog as I go along so then I aren't left with a big chunk of blogging to do.
Overall i think it was a success with room for improvement on such areas as compositing as that isn't my strong point but with working on it more in the future I believe I could get better. I will also manage my time better in the future although I think it has got better since the year 1 modules. But I can get it much better. I will also blog whilst I am doing the work rather than leave it until the last minute next time.