I knew that I wanted to tell a solid story that felt earned and climactic, despite at this stage having no characters (I may play with this later, will update on here!).
To do this, I focused on a firefly that I built on Niagara. It was actually a duplicate of the candle flame I made, but with a smaller drag value and scale and an adjusted colour. I animated this firefly flying into the cave. This immediately draws the viewer into the temple, guiding them with a sense of direction that enables me to set up shots without being too expository or repetitive. We know the direction of the cave now, so it’s easy to piece together where all these objects lie on that path. The firefly would later link to the reveal that there is loads of fireflies in the cave. This is a common trope, where an element of the supernatural environment we are about to enter presents itself humbly on the outside, drawing us in to a wider array of magical happenings.
The next element in my story was the Triskelion on the book cover. It was super important that I paced this shot slower, because it directly foreshadows the final shot of the film of the triskelion environment.
In this environment, I wanted to play with perspective and show the assets at eye-level until the very end, enveloping this Esher idea of ‘more than meets the eye’. In the way, it’s an optical illusion because we are not seeing the triskele as we see these other Celtic elements on the surface.
In terms of the edit, I tried to make it seem as fluid as possible. I did not want to overdo cross dissolves. I wanted it to feel like a theatrical film, as per our art style guide.
I think the 1 minute was a successful length, it does not drag or feel like its overstaying its welcome.
Things I will continue to work on over break:
- I want to try ray-tracing!
- Light beams and masks in After Effects
Done on still using Lightroom! I know how to do it on Ae, too, will do when I am next in the uni studio. 🙂
I did a lot of iterations of the above image.
I am also going to try rendering a couple diff ways! I did a Quicktime render on the Render Queue although I think it made it ever so slightly jumpy. I am going to try and use Media Encoder to see if I can get a smoother result.
Update: I did it it using After Effects! See updated film here. I also tweaked the colour grade a little and added some masks.