Today we learnt more in-depth about Previsualisation and why its useful.
The idea of previsualisation is blocking out scenes and movements of the character and it allows us understand and explore a couple things. It lets you understand the cost of the production, plan camera/light positioning and to find any problem areas that can be fixed before production begins fully. This stage isn’t supposed to be perfect, it helps to anticipate risks, understand and plan for issues and accommodate the amount of time the animation will take during production. There are a lot of movies now who use Previs and begin to build on the basics of it to gradually refine the animation and models until it looks finished.
Henry showed us examples of these, and gave us some names of companies that are known for using previsualisation, and to do some further research into their work.
Understanding Cameras
The first thing that we had to do before we started previs of our own work, was to understand how to use the camera in blender ( how to edit the settings, keyframe and create cuts in the timeline).
We were provided with a file to do this, and I had a lot fo fun exploring the different settings like focal length, depth of field, composition guides ,etc. I then made some different shots to explore these I wasn’t too worried about the length of shots and was just having fun but I think I got some nice effects from these. For my first render I just used the Sun light source, but for my second I went ahead and used the Tri-Light plug in to practice setting up the key, fill and back light that is used in film for characters. It is still a bit dark after this, so I will need to do a bit mroe exploration on how to use this to maximise my cinematography for my short film.
Understanding Previs Steps
Next we were provided with another Blender file to practice a previs. The first thing to do is to make up some basic models that reflect any characters, props and locations, then set these up with proper origins so they rotate and move properly as well as parenting these together to get our movements properly ( essentially making a simple ragdoll using primitives or whatever blocking you have for the character set up). Then once that is done, you can focus on blocking out the movements and cameras, build it up shot by shot to ensure the camera and action lines up well (using a storyboard if u have one to aid in this). The idea is to focus on the basic timing, movement and storytelling actions, once those are set you can go back and add further animations to plan secondary/overlapping actions.
For this I looked up a quick example of how a skid would look when running, and then got to animating the character. What I got done in class isn’t spectacular but I did try to have fun and practice camera framing and movement, I even practiced doing a dolly zoom and I really like the effect it gives. I might go back and refine this at home, since more lighting is required and the movements could be timed better, etc. but for now that render works at building my knowledge of how to construct a previs.
Building a Previs From a Clip
The next task we were given was to create a previs of an already existing clip, 40 seconds from Jurassic Park.
The first thing I did was I took a look at the layout of the scene, and placed the characters accordingly. Then I went and added any cameras that I found, and placed them in their rough location as well as noting down how long they ran and what type of movement they had.
I only manged to get a small amount done by the end of this day, since I have other work to do, but I will come back to this exercise to get the full experience of camera work and balancing all the moving parts. I think this really helped me to know what to expect when it comes working on my own short film, as well as learning how to plan certain parts of animation over an extended period of time. I now understand that their will be a lot of planning and coordination needed to execute what we all want.