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April 2015

Day-to-Day

The 100.

April 30, 2015

Não é do meu feitio dar mais de uma chance quando tento começar a assistir uma série. Ou me convence de cara, ou cai no esquecimento e eu não termino nem o primeiro episódio. Já perdi a conta de quantos pilotos eu abandonei no meio. Tendo essa informação, o caso de The 100 é bastante (BASTANTE) peculiar.

Março de 2014, The Last Of Us tinha saído alguns meses antes, e eu já tava alucinado com o jogo, por tocar um conceito de universo pós-apocalíptico muito interessante. O jogo se alinhava um tanto com Revolution (que estreou quase um ano antes), uma série baseada na idéia de que, um dia, subitamente a eletricidade cessou de existir, e a humanidade teve que se adaptar pra sobreviver. Revolution tinha (morreu, coitada) sérios problemas, e não consegui continuar acompanhando a série quando a segunda temporada começou justamente por achar mais defeitos que qualidades.

Temas pós-apocalípticos me interessam desde antes dessa febre zumbi “iniciada” com The Walking Dead, e em minha opinião, independem de zumbis ou monstros. Pra mim, quando mais pautada na realidade, melhor a série. The Last of Us tem zumbis, mas não é uma série, e é uma história tão bem amarrada que não tem como não se apaixonar. Agora que essa introdução confusa já tá explicada, voltemos à estréia de The 100.

Quando a série estreou, a gente tava na véspera de começar a rodar a primeira temporada do Zona SSP. Quando li a premissa de The 100 – daqui a não-sei-quantos (acho que 300) anos no futuro, uma guerra nuclear acabou com a civilização na Terra e os únicos sobreviventes da humanidade eram aqueles à bordo de estações espaciais. Quando a série começa, essa mega-estação está passando por crises com volume populacional e oxigênio disponível. É preciso reduzir a população e para tal, eles decidem mandar cem criminosos para a Terra, tanto como punição como para descobrir se o ambiente já é “sobrevivível”. Até aí, bacana. Minha birra começou quando descobri que os 100 condenados eram praticamente adolescentes, em seus quase vinte anos.

Lembrei de Jogos Vorazes, onde tanto o livro como os filmes não tinham decepcionado, apesar da idade dos protagonistas, e tentei superar essa birra inicial, continuei assistindo o piloto. Primeira coisa que a galera faz quando chega no chão: festa. Porra, sério? Ambiente hostil, e vocês vão fazer festa? Depois começaram os draminhas românticos de “fulano é a fim de sicrana que é a fim de beltrano” e por aí vai. Depois impliquei que todo mundo tava sempre muito limpinho e bem cuidado, e tudo lindo e maravilhoso – essa era meu maior problema visual com Revolution, os personagens estavam sempre limpinhos, não importa o que acontecesse, eles ficavam um pouco pintados de carvão quando algo explodia nas redondezas, mas isso era tudo.

O piloto termina quando um dos cem é atingido por uma mega lança, arremessada por algo que parece um macaco gigante. Planeta dos Macacos agora? Achei os efeitos visuais fuleiros, não fui muito com a cara dos personagens, achei os dramas muito adolescentes e só curti mesmo a premissa, mas não como tinha sido desenvolvido. Triste e decepcionado, abandonei o show.

Quase seis meses depois, já aqui em Vancouver, a segunda temporada da série se aproximava do fim e lendo um review sobre as melhores séries do ano, lá estava The 100. Fiquei MUITO curioso com isso. Como aquela porcaria tinha ido parar numa lista dessas? A review falava maravilhas de muitas coisas e achei tão convincente que dei mais uma chance – tava disponível no Netflix, e isso é sempre um incentivo. Odiei tanto o primeiro episódio que não tava disposto a passar pelo stress de novo. Comecei direito no segundo, porque lembrava vagamente dos eventos.

O segundo episódio também era uma desgraça. Eu não costumo assistir séries enquanto faço outras coisas – trabalhar no computador, ler, escrever, whatever – e fiz isso com o segundo episódio, porque tava começando a ficar com raiva pelos mesmos motivos do piloto. Faltando sete minutos pra acabar, desisti.

Mais seis meses se passaram e, um dia, voltando da aula de noite, conversando com o Nicko e falando do Zona SSP, ele disse que tava vendo The 100 com a Nat e que a série tinha MUITO em comum com o nosso projeto. Fiquei encucado, mas ainda não aceitei que o diabo da série podia ser boa depois de duas decepções tão grandes. A Nat então explicou a teoria dela de três episódios. O primeiro e o segundo episódios de qualquer série geralmente são péssimos, mas tem como função apresentar o universo onde a história vai se desenvolver. Se no terceiro episódio a coisa não tiver engrenado ainda, é aí que ela desiste. Não pretendo adotar essa teoria, a menos que muita gente me indique um show em particular. Como já tinha visto 2 episódios e só faltava um pra me livrar definitivamente dessa, algumas semanas depois, num momento de tédio, retomei o final do segundo episódio e emendei no terceiro.

Aí fodeu. No mesmo dia eu parei lá pelo oitavo. Outro dia tedioso e vi mais sete episódios seguidos. Hoje vi mais cinco. Faltam três episódios pra chegar no final da segunda temporada. A série é incrível. Tudo que eu tinha de reclamação foi resolvido. Na verdade, tá num ponto onde todos os caminhos envolvem decisões e consequências incrivelmente cruéis ou fatais. Todos os personagens chave já apanharam tanto e bateram tanto uns nos outros e em terceiros que em certos momentos é difícil ler as expressões faciais por baixo das camadas de ferimentos, sangue e sujeira.

Além dos 100 originais – onde pelo menos mais da metade já foi dizimada -, mais gente da estação espacial entrou em jogo, outros grupos (facções?) humanos entraram em contato (todo mundo querendo matar geral), e tem mais outros tantos que a gente só ouviu falar. Em alguns momentos a série me lembra Jogos Vorazes, mas principalmente o terceiro livro, quando é guerra declarada contra a Capital. Em outros momentos fico impressionado com o nível de violência no mundo da série, e em muitas ocasiões fiquei impressionado com decisões tomadas a respeito do destino dos personagens.

No começo da série rolavam muitos flashbacks meio explicativos das histórias dos personagens enquanto viviam na estação espacial. Conforme a narrativa evolui, esses flashbacks vão diminuindo em volume e duração, o que é uma alegria. Uma coisa que acontece bastante em The 100 é achar que o personagem vai morrer, porque não tem como escapar – e não é nem escapar de uma situação, mas sim das consequências, como ferimentos, vírus, fogo, ácido, etc – e o desgraçado consegue sobreviver, e pior ainda, de forma bem aceitável, sem parecer deus ex machina pra salvar um elemento chave.

Enquanto escrevia esse post, percebi que a série não tem grandes perguntas, tipo LOST, onde não dá pra explicar nada. The 100 tem tudo relativamente bem explicado, e me prendeu não por não saber explicar determinado acontecimento, e sim porque eu sempre quero saber o que vai acontecer depois, que decisões os personagens vão tomar e quais as consequências disso. Diferente de The Walking Dead, onde sempre tem um núcleo onde quase nenhuma ação acontece, em The 100 todos os núcleos estão sempre lutando com força total pela sua sobrevivência. Outro ponto positivo é que acho que 90% das posições de liderança entre os personagens são ocupadas por mulheres – definitivamente algo diferente do padrão, e uma mudança bem aplicada.

Bom, não sei encerrar o post mas não queria enrolar até terminar a temporada pra escrever porque ia acabar esquecendo de pontos interessantes. Vira e mexe ainda aparece um diálogo explicativo, ou uma cena com a luz MUITO estranha (leia-se: a noite no deserto, no episódio 12 – se não me engano – da segunda temporada), mas são situações tão passáveis no quadro geral da narrativa que nem incomodam. Fica aqui minha reflexão sobre uma série que me decepcionou terrivelmente duas vezes e depois provou seu valor superando muitas outras que eu ainda assisto. Se você leu esse post e for tentar assistir, não desista no primeiro e no segundo episódios. É difícil, eu sei, MUITO difícil, mas dá, e o que vem depois compensa o sacrifício.

Hovering Lights

001_000 – Intro Breakdown.

April 30, 2015

Since Hovering Lights is kind of an episodic story, with scenes taking place across several different dates and times, I wanted to make them clear to the audience while avoiding “one week later” letterings. Each clip’s length is limited to 15 seconds, so cards between them aren’t that bad. For these timestamp cards I wanted something sci-fi looking but not full-blown sci-fi otherwise it wouldn’t match the amateur side of shooting with a phone. All the work was done in After Effects without any third-party plugins.

Good references were the beginning and ending of Cloverfield, where we can see some classified-looking cards, as the tape was collected and archived for future research.

Luckily for me, on the week I had to create these I started watching Knights of Sidonia on Netflix and its colorless palette caught my attention. Everything is kind of black or white – not many grey midtones – while not too white-clean. I can’t explain the look very well, so just check the trailer below. It’s futuristic, has to do with aliens and space and at the same time tells a very personal story instead of just focusing on combat.

And the luck I mentioned is related to how they present the episode’s number and title.

Looks and feels sci-fi, not heavy handed as Plexus, and yet very mundane, like Black Mirror‘s title card (which I absolutely love).

If something works, mix it up and test it out. I liked Black Mirror’s blinking, while the crosses and general shape from Knights of Sidonia were a good layout, the result was this, where almost every single element was hand-keyframed since it’s so fast. On the final design I’ll have a dirty glass overlay on top of some areas and background that isn’t 100% black or static, looks good, but not totally done yet, and I didn’t want to spoil it completely by posting here (the GIF turned out pretty heavy, as an even stronger reason towards the simplified version below).

For the other text elements (intro and credits), I still wanted to keep that feeling, so no other colors, while adding the whole redacted-state-secret idea. Cloverfield was one of the starting points, but Watch Dogs had some pretty neat motion graphics that relate to the same idea, in more of a techy and dynamic way (one of my other reel pitches was strongly based on Watch Dogs, since we mentioned it).

There are several tutorials and templates on how to achieve that effect, but I had a lot more text than those examples and I didn’t want the whole flickering nor that much glitching on the text since it’s gonna be very quick on the screen and people still have to read it.

The idea around the white blocks over a black background – instead of the traditional black lines over white paper, from printed media and real redacted documents – comes from the thought that the audience might not want to be completely blind by staring at a full-white screen with blinking stuff on it. Also, the movement to reveal and cover the names is like peaking briefly into that information, unlike Watch Dogs where the information is being revealed for good.

I still kept some of Black Mirror’s blinkiness to switch the the words on, combined with expressions to randomize the intensity and characters that blink on each frame. The white lines are masks and mattes combined with the text. Doing these animated titles instead of simple cards was only possible because of my After Effects and motion graphics background back in Brazil. Each section (intro, timestamps and ending credits) took me about a day to set up, and a couple more days to fine tune, organize and adjust everything in a way that changes and fixes can be made quickly and in a civilized manner.

Day-to-Day

Riscando a May.

April 29, 2015

Hoje eu tinha várias coisinhas do demo reel pra trabalhar, mas passei metade da tarde fazendo isso aqui, e foi muito mais divertido e relaxante.

Hovering Lights

001_010 Shot Breakdown.

April 27, 2015

Starting off easy to see if this is gonna work or if it’s too confusing.

This was a very simple shot, designed simply to introduce May’s character and the whole instagram-point-of-view thing. Since there’s a crazy TV in the room, I thought I could enhance that feeling by adding some flickering to May’s face, using The Kick. We set it to a bright blue tone and Petar shaked it at random intervals aiming at the wall, so the light would bounce back on her face without harsh shadows and in a very soft way that could be understood as a flickering TV.

When in post, the effect wasn’t as clear as I thought it would, too subtle, almost invisible, so it was time to try and enhance it. Happily, while checking the separate RGB channels I noticed that the blue hue of the light was very represented in that channel, but not on the others. Isolating the blue channel I still had an alpha that was too “diffuse”, including the side of her face that shouldn’t be so affected by the light.

Looking at the red channel, it could be used to “focus” my current mask on the desired areas. So I subtracted the red channel values from my current blue, blurred and increased contrast, of course, and got an alpha that looked like this and its area of effect behaves accordingly to the light flickers on the wall. When there’s no bounce, there’s very little white on the alpha.

Next step was to create a grade that represented the glowing areas. TVs are 5600K or 65000K screens, while most indoor lighting is 3200K, so the glow had to be bluer than my current white balance. Also soft, because May doesn’t have her face right up against the screen and not too intense for the same reasons.

Then, the last trick was to input the alpha as a mask to this grade and add a random expression to its mix, setting the minimum value at 0.5, which guarantees that the glow won’t ever be entirely off, but can flicker much more (and faster) than Petar’s movements, giving it more of an digital feeling from the cuts and changes of lighting on the imaginary TV screen – yes, I have watched TV without looking at the screen just to see how its light should act. And it does look like this.

It’s much more interesting in movement, but this GIF will have to do for the breakdown. The full reel is coming out soon enough.

Hovering Lights

Shot-by-Shot Breakdowns.

April 25, 2015

Well, it’s my last break, between Terms 5 and 6, so it’s better to get things moving around here. I thought I would have plenty of time to keep posting useful information around here during the development of the reel and it turned out that I was… immeasurably wrong.

During Term 4 I kind of got one of the shots working, but the first three weeks of Term 5 were a real nightmare with the (I’m yet to discover a worst) feeling of not moving forward at all, in spite of working days in and out. Half the issues came from tracking, but I’ll get properly to it when writing about each specific shot. This post is just to introduce and name them all. Seven REAL VFX shots along with some small tweaks (or weird blends that I wouldn’t call VFX since we didn’t have classes to learn these) to shots that didn’t NEED them but benefited greatly from a couple nodes down the pipe.

I was thinking about saving the story and all, but that would stand in the way of the explanations, so be warned: spoilers ahead!

001_000 – Intro titles and timestamp. I don’t feel Nuke being very friendly for motion graphics work, so I just went back to After Effects, in which I have a good deal of experience to make these.

001_010 – Upshot of May talking about the TV while some light flickers on the wall and her face.

001_020 – Reverse shot, from her “point of view”. I had to replace the TV, remove the boom mic twice, replace the notebook screen and play a little with light colors and intensities. Also removed the TV and speakers brand and a small light on the speakers.

002_010 – May is working on her final assignment, I’m bothering her at the break of dawn. This one had a lot of cleanup because I reshot several times for the tacking never worked. Then the objects fly around and there’s some more cleanup for the metal objects on the table, camera projections for the smaller cans, texture painting, a little modeling, shading and lighting for the can close to the camera. I also replaced the Cheerios brand with Ceereals, so the school would advertise my reel.

003_010 – This was the first shot I worked on, and felt like the hardest one. Tracking was hard, and then there were the ships and foreground elements in front of them. Had to deal with 2D tracking, modeling and texturing, being smart about the render passes, some luma keying, integrating the ships, doing the “reveal from cloaking” effect, lens flares and volumetric light.

003_020 – My roto shot, I had May cut out of the plate in order to play better with the light behind her and added some dust/particle elements to the shot to make it more chaotic.

004_010 – Ruuuun! Lots of running, no VFX until the very last frames where I added some flickering to the lights down the ramp in order to hook up with the following shot. Roto and expressions did the trick.

004_020 – The fastest and heaviest VFX shot. All skills are shown here. The alien silhouette walks around and jumps onto a car. I think that reshooting this one about three times helped in figuring out what was going on. 3D track, set extension, RGB lighting, painting, animation, camera projections, roto, 2D track, expressions for the flickering, integrating the shadow, darkening the ramp, changing the color of the spec highlights on the car, this was fun.

004_030 – Small bits and pieces of running around the parking lot. I wanted to make it more hectic, but it’s so fast that I thought it wouldn’t make much of a visual difference besides adding a ton of work for shots that aren’t even 12 frames long.

005_010 – The outside of the garage is on a totally different place from the garage itself and there used to be a cut between these shots. I spent some time grabbing pieces from one and the other in order to achieve an almost seamless transition – a black line disappears mid process, but you have to know it happens in order to see it. Then there’s some more running and hiding. Ships in the sky mean 3D tracking, rendering and compositing passes, heat distortion, lens flares and so forth. Feels like a 3D version of the balcony shot, but much easier to make it work. Then I turn back to the garage and the alien is coming towards us.

005_020 – Another cut transition that was blended together combining pieces of two different shots. This one is still kind of a surprise thing because I haven’t put much thought into it yet. As soon as I have something working for May’s abduction, I’ll post it here. Meanwhile, we have all the other shots that we can talk about.

End Credits – will be analyzed with the opening titles and timestamps.

That’s it, shots have been introduced and will have their own posts.

Day-to-Day

26.

April 20, 2015

Yesterday was my birthday and, due to my Canadian-low-key-personality, until Saturday afternoon I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to do something (anything) involving other people than myself or just let the day pass without fuss. Main reasons being “I’m terrible at parties of any kind”, and I mean it. There’s the fact that I don’t drink any alcohol, I’m unable to make small talk and there’s also my (not so) recent indisposition towards food of almost any kind. Whenever people say “bring food or drinks” I’m stuck and I also feel bad if I don’t bring anything. The turning point was when May told me she would spend most of the day at school, finishing up her last big assignment for this term. My options then were to stay home working on the reel – which I already felt pretty happy with what I have for this Term’s final presentation, so it would be kind of stall-working -, watch a thousand episodes of something or play a game – I’ve been doing this too much, lately -, go to the movies – too lazy for a Sunday, the movies are always packed -, or meet some people to talk. Last option was definitely a winner. Now, another choice: go out, or invite people over? Taking into consideration the above-mentioned facts, inviting people over was an easy choice.

The plan was to have not so many people in a way that I would be unable to listen and talk to everyone, or feel uncomfortable squeezed somewhere (the apartment is very small, you know), and, on the opposite side, not sit around all day waiting for everyone to show up and having just one or two people over – curiously, this actually happened at some point and was nothing close to my worries. I think I’m worrying too much about social things, and the day ended up being all of the above possible scenarios. During the morning I worked on my reel, nothing major, just a couple tracks and cleanup, stuff that’s easy to do and doesn’t take much planning.

By the time I got tired of tracking and removing brands it was almost 1:30pm and I suddenly got curious about playing Transistor – got the game a couple weeks back and didn’t get excited to play it until yesterday. Sure, why not? Played for a while until Paul arrived. We hadn’t talked for a very long time and we used to be like twin brothers (or a couple, to some people, in the most awkward situations) when we moved to Vancouver. School has played a major part breaking us apart and we talked for three hours non-stop yesterday, until he had to go, rehearse for a presentation today. I was walking with him to the bus stop when the phone rang and Pan asked me about my exact address. Time to get back home!

The moment I entered the apartment, Fernão called as he arrived at the Lobby. Before we got up, Pan arrived too. After a while, Maísa got here, and then around 5:30, Petar, Clem and Dani, that were at school. Nicko and Nat also showed up, then May came home early – and so tired, poor thing – and the last one to arrive was Rityka. The most people we had here, before yesterday was when I was shooting the reel, that Nicko, Petar, May and I walked around light stands and cameras. Feels good to know this place can take a 10-people party without falling apart – and by the time we were done the apartment was almost as clean and organized as the moment we started. I didn’t see this one coming, and also a good surprise, on a day of good surprises.

Speaking of good surprises, Rityka even brought cake – so it was officially a birthday party – and the cake had a number of slices that matched precisely the number of people in here. Oh, and it was a goooood cake. I have pictures to prove it.

Back to my social awkwardness. I always feel I’m too quiet and isolated so that people don’t actually know me. I’m much more interested in listening than talking, if I don’t feel like going to things and places, I won’t do it and won’t feel bad about it either. It’s not that I do it on purpose, I just don’t know any other way of being. It feels a little strange being like that AND being the host at the same time, gotta tell you this, but yesterday all I felt I was that I was among true friends and I enjoyed every single thing that happened. VFX111 also kind of wrecked my illusion that “people don’t know me” based on what they gave me and brought as food (granola bars, chocolate (different options), cake, cookies, chips and ice cream). Nothing could say “we know you, dude, and we care about you” louder than what you did, guys. Thank you for the best birthday abroad I had so far – not that I had any other, but without you, this one wouldn’t even count.

I feel there’s still something left to say, but it’s early morning and my english fails me. I’ll finish it up with our group photo for the combination of strange and yet amazing elements in it sums up how I’d love my life to be until next year comes.

Now I feel weird about this post, but I’ve spent almost an hour finding the words and I don’t talk much, so, fuck it.

ps – Thank you, Rityka, for the pictures, and the caaake!

Day-to-Day

Descanse em Paz, Term 5.

April 17, 2015

Na história dos Terms relâmpagos, o Term 5 de longe tá na liderança. Parece que era ontem que eu tava me matando com meu primeiro plano de efeito, sem conseguir fazer o diabo das naves grudarem no céu de forma apropriada. De lá pra cá, consegui atingir minha meta de deixar só o último plano pro Term 6, e um pedacinho de outro – que tá se revelando mais complicado do que deveria. De forma geral eu tô gostando bastante do que tá acontecendo no reel, e do ritmo que tô conseguindo tocar, tirando coisas do caminho e fazendo ajustes rápidos pra melhorar o visual.

Temos a apresentação final desse Term na quarta feira e tirei hoje (e o fim de semana, se preciso) pra dar uma arrumada no som, que é o mesmo desde o fim do Term 3, além de correções sugeridas pelos professores e mentores. Tô montando a versão final já no After, pra poder ir substituindo as atualizações de cada plano sem ter que me matar no final. O esqueleto já tá todo estruturado, e só falta mesmo ir martelando as versões finais. Três semanas atrás eu duvidava que fosse capaz de chegar no fim com o filme pronto. Agora, acho difícil chegar no fim SEM o filme pronto.

É engraçado que, apesar de termos bem menos aulas de verdade, parece que tô aprendendo muito mais nesses últimos terms do que quando tínhamos aulas de fato, e assignments mais “básicos”. Falando em assignments, nesse term tivemos um só, composto de duas partes. A primeira, fazer uma Camera Projection, tipo aquela da TV aqui em casa, ou as do Portal, e depois integrar uma simulação de fluidos de maneira realista. Por “fluidos” leia-se fumaça, fogo, água, vapor, poeira, enfim, coisas não sólidas.

Fiz a camera projection em um dia, quando tiramos as fotos, e os fluidos foram um pesadelo, porque tem um bilhão de parâmetros e cada um deles tem consequências muito mistas, daquele tipo que você acha que foi causado por uma coisa e na verdade foi por outra, mas aí você já mudou a que achava que era e fodeu uma terceira coisa, e assim por diante. Não pretendo mexer com esse treco nunca mais, tamanho o stress. Simulação não é comigo, entendo isso cada dia mais!

A primavera parece estar começando a dar espaço pro Verão, os dias estão ficando consideravelmente mais longos, ontem 9 da noite o céu ainda tava azul escuro, e às 6 da manhã já tá tudo claro também. Começando dia 23 temos um break de praticamente duas semanas, possivelmente com um clima adorável. Compramos ingressos pra ver Sweeney Todd dia 01 de Maio, no teatro e fomos ver Relatos Selvagens no cinema, no final da semana passada. Já tem no piratebay, e é um puta filme, muito divertido mesmo, de gargalhar alto no cinema.