Yr2 Week 6: Film Room Written Evaluation
- katiemorganbyrne
- Nov 12, 2015
- 9 min read
Written Evaluation - Film Room
The first task of the project after being assigned our teams was to decide on a film which we would like to base our project upon. Many films were suggested, and I had suggested detailed and decorative interiors such as in the television series Sherlock and the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, due to their elaborate decorations, which I have mentioned previously in my blog. Amongst many other suggestions, we eventually narrowed down our choices to have a darker theme, and began to look at Kill Bill, the Home Alone basement, and Psycho as our final three film choices to pick from.
We eventually all came to a decision on the film Psycho, as it has a rich and deceptive storyline which is reflected in our scene of choice; the murder scene. A simple motel room that seems completely innocent to the blind eye, yet when inspected further has a lot of secrets, such as the peep-hole, hidden money stashed in the newspaper, and of course the location of the murder.
One of the challenges of the film to take into consideration was the major factor that due to the age of the film, it is entirely in black and white. We had discussed the possible options of interpreting the colours ourselves or recreating the film in black and white to make it more recognisable. We decided that we would keep it black and white, but possibly add slight hints of colour; such as a green tinge to the lighting as old films typically had a slight coloured tint to them, but leaving the blood from the murder in colour, to add atmosphere and depth.
Coming to a decision for the final still to be used for our beauty-shot was quite a difficult process. We collated and numbered main frames of the film and examined them all to see which would be the best suited. The style of the film seemed to lean towards favouring more close-up and personal shots, mainly of the characters themselves, rather than the scenery, so selecting just one of these stills makes a hard decision as the entire room cannot be seen and understood fully from such little visual information.
We eventually went the above still, as this was after the murder, and would give us a good opportunity to create the murder scene and add dimension; it will be more visually interesting if the room appears completely normal, but then in the bathroom in the background, hints of a disturbance and blood can be seen in the bathroom.
Assigning out assets for the project was quite a simple process, each of our team-members selected a few assets they would like to create, and then following this the remaining assets were delegated out accordingly to ensure everyone had a fair amount of work by our asset manager, Oliver Rea. We made a very basic whitebox in Unreal, so we knew where each asset would be placed.
Originally, I was assigned the bath tub, the shower curtain and rail, the faucets for the bath tub, and the chest of drawers in the bedroom complete with accessories. As always, I found creating the assets very enjoyable and started them right away, meaning that I had finished modelling relatively quickly in comparison to the rest of my team. Due to this I was given a few more assets to produce, as there were a few things we hadn’t originally thought of including, and a few team mates were struggling with their assets and had not managed to produce all of their assets after a few weeks, so I took on the job of creating extra, as did a few of the other group members to help ensure we were on track and would be able to include all the assets that we wanted.
Along with the previously mentioned assets, I also created a bathroom mirror, a towel rack, a rug, and photo frames for the bedroom. Below are some images showing my untextured assets all collected together for ease of viewing purposes.
(Clicking the above image brings up a interactive 3D preview of the assets)
Unwrapping the assets was simple yet tedious due to the sheer amount of them created. In hind-sight I wish I had unwrapped the models after creating each one before starting another, but it was useful to have models ready to put into our white box rather quickly so we could see the scene coming together.
Using physical based rendering to texture the models was a great deal more time consuming than I had anticipated and this is where the bulk of my time on this project has been sunk into. It was a challenge to make all of the materials look correct and realistic, and was something which often needed tweaking, even with the aid of programs such as Substance’s Bitmap2Material, as the final material would end up looking quite drastically different when imported into Engine. Even though this process was very long winded, I found it to be very rewarding and learnt a lot about using normal, roughness, metalness and other similar maps during this time which encouraged me to think of how I will be able to use these in the future and even consider the difference they would have made in previous projects. I used photo textures found in varying places around the internet to produce my textures, making sure I edited and tweaked them all accordingly to fit better into the scene, as every texture had to be desaturated. I have added a link to the source for all of my photo textures at the bottom of this blog post.
I had originally been assigned to create a wallpaper texture along with texturing all of my other assets, which I was struggling with as patterns are not my greatest talent. Luckily, one of my group members noticed I was having problems, and offered to switch jobs with me and asked me to texture his sink to match my bath tub whilst he drew the wallpaper, which created a much nicer outcome and demonstrates our use of team work to over come problems.
This method of texturing has definitely opened my eyes, as I previously didn’t quite understand how other students and artists were able to produce such realistic looking textures. Below are the assets I created, put into a scene by themselves with the textures applied for display.
As a team, we implemented our assets into Unreal as we went along, placing them into our earlier made whitebox and making sure that nothing looked out of place and allowing us to determine whether things needed changing. This image shows the very beginning of our assets being placed into the scene, with many assets and textures still place holder or missing.
We all then began making tweaks to the project, such as making changes to the scale and placement of objects, some of the materials used on objects, and the lighting in the scene. We managed our assets mainly through dropbox, and would upload all of our assets and textures, along with the unreal project folder, meaning that if someone had updated the project someone else could then download the newest version, add anything else they might like, and then upload it back to dropbox for everyone else.
Whilst we did manage to get a good working method doing this, it wasn’t as practical as it could have been, as this meant that only one person could be working on the scene at once, as Unreal does not allow you to import assets and materials from different scenes with ease. I do think however, that this was a better approach which allowed all of us to add input to the scene, rather than giving the responsibility to one person.
Towards the end of the project I tried to aid my group members as much as possible and helped with the final touches, such as adding decals to the scene and fixing lighting, which was quite a huge issue over different scenes. I also helped in creating the final still and matinee where ever I could.
Personally, I think I performed quite well in this project. I completed all of my assets and textures, plus additional tasks and helped my group members throughout the process, taking the initiative when needed and discussing problems and concerns. I feel as though I have learnt a great deal and I am very proud of what me and my group have achieved considering the problems we faced in regards to a few of our group members struggling with the project and not communicating with the rest of us about their problems. At times the project became quite over whelming and stressful due to the lack of participation from certain group members which put pressure on us to do what they had not, which took a toll on our personal assigned tasks development and extras we had planned to add to the scene. Hopefully in future group projects these kind of problems will be recognised and dealt with sooner as to not add additional stress towards the middle and end of the project.
Of course there are a few things I wish I could have done differently, such as coming in to labs more often to do work rather than at home, but I insured I always communicated with my group members throughout the project. I also would have liked to have had more input on things such as the whitebox and tweaking of light maps in the scene, but of course unfortunately in a group I am not able to do everything, and this is something I have accepted in the project, trying to allow other members to do their part whilst still assisting as much as possible when help is needed.
I think that our final still submission represents the selected still quite well, we have managed to capture all of the important assets and it is easily recognisable as being from the film Psycho. There are a few minor differences such as the lighting; in the film there would have been set lighting used, whereas in our scene, we had to create our lighting as naturally as possible. Unfortunately the still only shows a very small portion of the scene, but every still in the film is like this and there were no better alternatives which still showed story and character.
There isn't much I'd change about the final still, one of the main things being the scale in comparison to the movie, but I think our still allows us to show off our assets more. If I were to do this project again I would have chosen a different film, as Ithink that there is much more opportunity available in a larger scene and I would like to push myself to see how much I could produce. I definitely think that the scene as a whole works well, and I am very proud of what my group has managed to achieve, the matinee of the scene definitely shows our hard work a lot better than the still.
Monochromaniacs – Group Manifesto
For our project, we chose the 1960’s horror movie Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. After looking at a selection of film frames we negotiated within the team which shot is the most visually interesting.
Our shot must identify the structure and layout of the room. Shot 1, 2 and 14 have a good 3D structure and readability. 3, 5 and 13 were the alternative favourites, except they’re based on 2D principle of cinematography and composition. These shots we selected reflect the most important scene in the film, the scene of the murder. Recreating an old film presents challenges due to lack of documentation, also since it’s in black and white, we planned on using a limited colour pallet, focusing on mood and lighting etc. There were concerns about using shots which limit the amount of assets in the beauty-shot. We decided the scene after the murder had a greater atmosphere to the scene. Eventually the group had filtered the ideas down to three major shots labelled 1, 2 and 14. 14 and 1 are quite similar so we resolved the shots by taking a slightly customised angle, moving the camera further back, showing more of everyone’s assets whilst reserving the structure and compositional elements of the final shot.
We delegated the assets evenly within the group. Each member volunteered for their desired assets. The remaining items were assigned accordingly; everyone had one or two fairly large or important objects to create, and a few minor decorative objects.
Our asset manager kept track of the assets being produced, estimating the duration of tasks and their priority towards completion. Each week we noticed smaller details in the scene. Newly found assets were assigned to whoever was up-to-date and available for more responsibilities. For ambiguous scene elements we improvised, researched and created assets which fit the style and setting of the scene.
We wrote a timetable incorporating weekly goals and two major group meetings, scheduled next to course seminars, so everyone can attend easily. Most planning and task organisation was setup through online group discussions. This includes things like our group blog and Dropbox folders and exhibited models, textures and reference images to develop and document each other’s goals and progression, throughout the project.
Initially we worked independently, creating our designated assets. As the project unravelled, a couple members experienced difficulties creating assets and texturing using PBR techniques. In response, we came together to help complete each other’s assets and textures. We pulled through; creating all the assets we’d planned in the asset-list, even the minor features such as a skirting board and door frames. We worked together importing assets, tweaking objects and lighting in engine to develop a recognisable recreation of the film.
Texture Citations:
All textures have been modified from their originals and have references citied below.
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