REVIEW DOCUMENT (Dot points)
Trevor Saves the Universe
- The way the player is directed in this Video Game is very humours and fits with the overall story and characters in a way that I personally find charming and really entertaining. Sometimes the viewer can be annoyed by constant hand-holding, but I think this game solves the issue pretty well.
- Making something such as 360 VR Video Game gives opportunities of immersion as never seen before giving the viewer control of the adventure while guiding him at the same time.
Minecraft Earth
- This AR game combines the virtual world and real-world together giving the possibility to the people to build virtual buildings in the real world. Giving the player a way to interact with the real world through these means is something that always appealed to me and this game showed me how important it is to actively engage the viewer.
- This makes me want to experiment with this technique and fuse it with storytelling. Maybe making a detective story where you are asked to find virtual clues in the real world.
Disney Movies 360
- There is something very fascinating about living the most important scenes of your favourite films as if you were there.
- I would like to make something that like these shorts, transport you in a place so far from reality, making you live in a world of magic and mystery.
360 FILMMAKING TIPS (Dot points)
- Location scouting and scene construction are crucial to make the 360 scene interesting.
- Make sure the viewer looks at what you want them to look at. It’s important to find creative solutions to guide the persons focus maybe with sounds or visual ques.
- Pay attention to the lighting and making sure everything is visible.
- Experiment with a different point of views to make the scene interesting.
- Always use the maximum resolution available (4K if possible), anything lower than 1080p will result in a blurry or out of focus image.
- Use the maximum frame rate available to make the experience as smooth as possible for the viewer.
- It is advised to use more than one camera since by using the before mentioned settings, the Samsung camera can run in severe overheating that will result in the camera shutting itself off for a while.
- Always have a charger for the camera with you, trust me.
- Use as less cuts as possible otherwise the viewer could experience confusion jumping rapidly from a place to another.
- Same could happen also if the camera moves to much.
- 360 video making is still at its beginnings, so don’t be afraid to try out any ideas you may have and see if it works.
PREPRODUCTION (100 words)
The preproduction part was probably the most stimulating part. It was not easy to come up with a good idea for a VR project, after going through some ruff ideas we decided to settle on a story that would cover bullying and its effects on both the victim and the bully. There were many faces in our preproduction that included things like scriptwriting, sketching, scene constructions and auditions. To make sure we would get the perfect lighting for our scenes we visited the shooting locations (my apartment as well as Trent’s). In a 360 video making sure you have the perfect lighting is crucial since you are not able to use things like light stands and other artificial lighting.
TEST SCREENINGS REFLECTION (100 words).
Thanks to the test screenings we noticed some of the things we had to refine for our 360 short film. One of these things was the way we stitched the two different 360 scenes in one. During our experiments, we weren’t able to stitch the two images properly together having them resulting a bit flat and distorted. Thanks to more experimentation we were able to get the effect we desired. Thanks to our peers and our tutor Alan we also changed the way comments appeared on the screen to make them ore visually appealing. Showing our prototype to everyone really helped improving our work and thanks to this I learned how important it is to show your work to others, collect their feedback, and use it to improve your work.
FINAL 200-300 WORD REFLECTION (on the finished work and the process of making it. Try to draw out lessons and analyse things in relation to our studio focus, rather than merely describing what you did)
The final product my group and I came up with is the result of a lot of planning and work. Being the first time we ever made a 360 short film, we were not sure what would work and what instead would have not been ideal. Preproduction was crucial to make the best film we could so we carefully planned everything we could. First, we had to came up with a feature that would make our 360 film stand out, so I came up with a prototype idea which consisted in making two different videos and stitch them together in one, making it possible to see two different locations and characters at the same time.
To make sure we had the best actors possible we decided to put an ad on the website Star Now and made them participate in an audition. All the actors were amazing, and it was difficult to pick between them but in the end, we settled on the ones who in our opinion were the best ones. This is something I never did before in my group assignments, and until now I did not realise how crucial this aspect is. Choosing the correct actors and making sure they are fit for the part makes the film way closer to how you envisioned it and raises the quality of the final product exponentially.
XR WORK:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WP1V3JUMDJ2IB-oXeAeOkHJhjD97wSql?usp=sharing
