Assignment 4: Documentation

1. Title: The Mirage

2. Team Members:
Lim Xue Li
Lim Su Pei

3. Initial Ideas:

We spent like almost 2 weeks to come up with an idea. Well, from what we know, it's better to start off with a good idea then to quickly jump into things and realised everything did not proceed as expected and we had to redo. Hence, we had quite alot of ideas:

1) Normal heroic things: Girl time freeze accident and save another girl from meeting an accident.

Rationale for not using this idea:
Too normal, too boring.

2) "Heroes" the series: Chapter of discovery. Person accidentally realised he got powers. So he started training his skills and help others.

Rationale for not using this idea:
Idea is common and not unique

3) Inspired by the movie - "Prestige": 2 people competing in a magic show (with all kinds of stunts, include flying object, cloning, time freezing etc.)

Rationale for not using this idea:
Difficult to create the feel of the magic show. The surroundings are very important in portraying the right ambience and feel and scenario! In addition, we will have problems getting the audiences.
Xue Li suggested make it like American Idol kind of competition so that we just need a panel of judges. But there may still be problem with finding people to help out!


4) A combination of "Prestige" and "Heroes": Master teaches student the art of magic (hence resolving the problem of needing a stage, an audience, or judges. Master is an evil person. He intended to rob the bank using his magic. When he was about to exercise his magic/time freeze (which can be seen by some kind of special effects glow) to rob the bank, someone with mind reading and premonition abilities came to stop him.
Twist to the story - it is actually a grandma reading storybook to her grandchild. [We had this idea of using after effects/premiere to turn the video scenes into cardboard like pictures, which is part of a pop up book.

Rationale for not using this idea:
Major problem lies in the need to film the bank, need to apply for permission etc.

5) Version 2 of idea 3: Lecture theater 13 has got stage settings, thus, problem with idea 3 resolved. Added elements to the story - 2 friends enter the LT trying to compete magic with each other, thus, no need for audience or judges. Friend 1 compete with Friend 2. Friend 2 keeps teasing Friend 1 his tricks are very 'girly' and he is a sissy. Friend 2 keeps nagging on that fact till Friend 1 got so fed up that he turned Friend 2 into a chicken (as suggested by Xue Li for I don't know what reason. But we had such a good laugh over it. And I was thinking where on earth are we going to get a life chicken for the filming). Or turn Friend 2 into a woman. He screams and continues to be so noisy that Friend 1 literally used his magic to zip up Friend 2's mouth. Friend 2 ran out of the LT.

4. Final Idea (Version 3 of Initial idea 3):

As we have had problems with finding casts, so we decided to be our own actress. Thus, we changed the story. Our new story is about a girl competing with herself. In fact, she created an illusion of herself to be her partner in the performance as well as the audiences (see script for full story).

5. Production Process

We got Julian to help us booked LT13 for the filming of the show. We spent lots of time (almost 2 hours) on preparation of the composition of the video, which is finding the right angle, the right lighting, the right background and the right head/hand/body/leg spaces for the actress.

5.1 Input
Asset Name Asset Type
Black girl far .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
White girl far .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
Black girl close up .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
White girl close up .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
White girl- tricks .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
Black girl- tricks1 .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
Clap front .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
Clap back .avi movie file (Raw Footage)
Time freeze 1 Aftereffects file
Time freeze 2 Aftereffects File
Close up final .mov file
Intro far .mov file
Audiences final Aftereffects file
Audiences seats final .mov file
Audience sound effect .mp3 music file
City lights .mp3 music file

5.2 How it was filmed

Filming was broken up into 3 main sections.

1. Introduction of magicians walking into stage and waving
2. Close up of magicians walking into stage and waving
3. Magician Performing Magic Tricks
4. Audiences clapping

Section 1 to 3 each involves two parts as both magicians are the same person. SO we had to do it twice for each section.

As for filming of section 4, Su Pei had to sit on each seat of the Leature Hall and clap as all the audiences were the same person.

6. Post Production

6.1Effects

• Time freeze
• Cloning
• A solid overlay added to certain parts of the videos to darken the colors


All editing of video, Time Freeze effects and cloning was created in After Effects.

Song used:

Title: City Lights

Description: Cool vibes with a funky drum, acoustic bass and relaxed melody.

Composed by: Larry Buksbaum & Scott P. Schreer

Published by: Freeplaymusic

7. Challenges faced and Overcome

Challenge 1:

We merged files from our first fliming and second filming, and as we used different cameras for each filming, the quality of the files were different and the color was slightly different

Solution:
Using Aftereffects, we added an adjustment later and the blending mode of the layer is set to overlay. A solid of grey color was added onto the layers as an overlayer.

Challenge 2:
We added the audio in and after rendering it through Aftereffects, there was no sound at all. We tried using Premiere to solve the problem but it didn’t work.

Solution:
We went into Windows Movie Maker to add in the audio and it worked.

Challenge 3:
For some reason, the final file size was 3GB, and we had no idea how to compress it.

Solution:
We chanced upon a solution when we used Windows Movie Maker to add in the audio. Upon exporting our video as a wmv in Movie Maker, the file size reducing significantly without a reduction in quality.

8. Lessons Learnt

Lesson 1: Equipment matters. A better camera will result in better quality videos.

Lesson 2: Simple tool can solve a “difficult” problem. For instance, Windows Movie Maker allowed us to add in the audio within minutes while we took hours to do it in Adobe Aftereffects and Premiere but it didn’t work.