Video Logs: "& Son" Interim Presentation

Hello Everyone,

Its taken a while to upload but it is here all 22 minutes of our interim presentation last Friday (08/11/2013). For those of you that do not know usually once every Unit we have to give a presentation to our tutors and class to get the fabled "Green Light". A green light is the tutors way of giving the all clear to a project that they are satisfied with its direction. This also allows the tutors to give feedback to any areas of a project that need improvement or adjustment. From our presentation it was mostly positive but there are little areas which our tutors (Phil & Alan) thought could need adjustment.

To make things easier on everyone I decided to embed the actual full version of the animatic and pre-pre-viz into the video so people could experience it full screen. I will time code these areas just in case anybody would like to look at those solely. Other then that everything else is the actual presentation and feedback directly from Phil and Alan (you should be able to see them in the bottom left of the video). At this point we were just trying to be in a half decent place to receive more advice from our tutors. This is also why our interim document was quite short as we were told just to show the things which were finite at this point in our creative journey for "& Son".

Anyway to view the crit video please check it out below... I will time code the extras!


The video above shows the entire 22 minute duration of our presentation to our CG Arts class. I was feeling a bit crap on the day so there were not many words from me. Our show runner Samantha Butler lead the presentation and myself and Chrissie Peters tried to jump in where we could. The presentation was largely about the Animatic just to see what peoples impressions were of the story at this stage. We didn't exactly get feedback from everyone in the class but Alan and Phil gave us some much needed input which will hopefully shape its outcome further.

The image above shows a test shot I took before the presentations had gone underway. I think at this point everyone went out to fill up on energy drinks and snacks for a day of presentations. All of them took place in our home away from home Lecture Theatre 1 which I hadn't been in since mid-year-2 (Sept-2012 - when we were doing film reviews). I was a bit shocked as we usually get to do our presentations upstairs hey-ho. I had to sit at the back of the room for this one just so I could get a decent shot of the stage... It was a bit dark though.

The image above shows a Still from the Animatic which Sammy posted to me and Chrissie in a face-book discussion. It shows the hair raising moment before the coffin is knocked over (MWAHAHA). The animatic can be found in the video above at 1.35, so if you would like to just watch that you can skip to that point in the video. I thought it was more clear to post these videos within the video as opposed to watching the screen from a distance. Sammy wanted to explain a bit more before the Animatic was played but Chrissie managed to talk her down.

Last but not least was a showing of Chrissie's 2D/3D experiment "the 3D Pre-Previz". This was to show how 2D digital sets could work with 3D character models. Smokestack Studios "Charles" was the 3D character used in Chrissies 2D Environments. This section can be found at 12.28 into the video above so please check it out if you haven't already. Aside from some lighting woes and the absence of texture on Charles it looked pretty nice to see the 2D with the 3D. The scaling was also out on some objects but at this point it was just to test the water.

I wanted to get this video up at some point today (yesterday now), of course it was quite massive and took all evening to get onto vimeo. Its like I said it is quite long running in at 22 minutes but it is still a vital step as we continue onwards with our animated short. From here we have a few little things to fix with the Animatic (with a little refinement here and there). I myself have to dive head first into turnarounds now after getting to a place I am happy with the dissertation. Chrissie has to get deeper into her 2D environments and characters so we have plenty to go next year.

Over & Out,
xXStItChXx