Week: 8 – 14 November

I went to the university this week to record all the footages that I’ve planned in the storyboard last week. I actually don’t have any proper shooting equipment to get high quality visual. I only used the same iPhone 6s for most of the shots like I did for my previous personal project in Term 3. This time I also use the old Galaxy Camera for several closeup shots since this camera can do optical zoom up to 21x. I recorded multiple version of footages for each shot as backup.

The exterior scene especially last shot is probably the hardest to shoot since I can’t control the crowds. I have to get the perfect timing and position of the crossing pedestrians and vehicles on the road that happened spontaneously. I need a shot with not too many people, with good placement, direction and empty spaces among crowds for me to place 3 or 4 characters walking together with them. I also don’t want any moving vehicle that obstruct the view and attention for the crab character that will wave his hand to the camera towards the end of the shot. The shot will be panning slowly from left to right, so I need to capture the moment during the shot duration of traffic stop at the crossing. After multiple attempts, I finally got 2 to 3 shots that I think usable for the last scene.

The interior scene on the other were fairly easy to shoot because there are always time where not many people walking around in the building. The major problem with interior scenes is the lighting. There are many areas in the building that have a relatively dim lights so it caused a lot of noise on the footages as the camera try to increase the ISO to brighten the shots. The worse shot is the stair scene since the area was very dark. So I will remove the shot from the final video.

There are also shots that I changed from the original plan especially the classroom and library scenes as I can’t find suitable areas and angle for the shots. Most rooms were a bit crowded and equipped with students when I was there, plus the empty classes I found does not have a very good lighting either. So I ended up with hallway shots only.

When I got home, I quickly transfered all the recording into my computer to check on a larger screen if the footages are usable for my project. Upon checking I found the footages are not as good as I hope, but I think I can still use it, so I don’t plan for re-shoot. 

I then made the footage selection and cut using Final Cut Pro. There will be 10 shots with 9 of them will require CGI treatments (camera tracking and animation). I exported each individual shot that has been confirmed for camera tracking phase which will begin next week.