I was feeling super lazy about working on slap comps. Fact.
In film production school all we do before the shooting is, SOMETIMES, a demo, which is a rough version of the whole movie in someone’s living room, with the director, producer and whatever crew members are available. It does help a little with figuring out the timing of things, but not too much. Almost all the ‘thinking’ is done during storyboarding and editing. We figure out how things should go together, we can see them playing in our heads, and foresee when the cut should happen. If it goes wrong, or isn’t fully achieved on set, it will be fixed during the editing process (which is quite long, even though most shorts are really short and don’t need all that time).
For our reels, we had a whole term (two months) of pre-production. Before the first class started I absolutely didn’t see the point in two classes a week to talk with mentors. I mean, it’s not like our projects are gonna be changing so much, so fast! Could’ve I been more wrong? Probably, because it can always get worse, but before breaktime of our very first class, I was already enjoying this much effort into pre-production.
Things escalated pretty fast until week four, when we met our mentors and had feedback from them. From their, I think I was too attached to my old ideas, and wasn’t so excited about changing them so much, to the point of reshooting a bunch of plates that seemed good enough for what they were supposed to do: kind of help people understanding my goals with the project. To me, everything was always clear as day, and when it wasn’t, I waited until ideas became less foggy.
Then last week happened and I noticed I had less than seven days to work out my final presentation for the term. I had a lot of changing in the script, reshoots, slap comps (which are quick and dirty versions of what you aim to achieve in each shot), new designs and a new premiere file to put together. CRAP!
Shot last Saturday (or was it Sunday?), just enough to make it work. I didn’t want to wrestle with Nuke and Maya for this, otherwise I was sure to miss the deadline, so I stitched the shots together in Premiere and from there I moved into After Effects – since it’s quick and dirty, nothing beats that definition from my experience with AE (eight years and counting).
I started doing the shots, as simple as I could, putting in as much of the final look as I could. Color correction? Check. Camera overlays? Check. Damaged footage? Check. Noise, practical effects faked in post, poor roto and garbage mattes, even a lot of audio work. After about six hours non-stop, new ideas started to pop up. Simple things that could make the shots better whithin themselves, an extra 2-second shot without any VFX that could really help blending between cuts, elaborate ways to fake camera movement and avoid nightmarish tracking, lighting setups, suddenly I was checking the ceiling for holes and gaps where I could attach a screw to hold a flashlight, or shooting reference of shadows through the curtains.
Most of this happened during Monday morning. By the time I left home to class I was so euphoric I couldn’t even take the bus and went walking so I could better process new thoughts. Wrote down a couple pages of notes, methods, plans and ideas that will be put to the test during winter break and term 4. Slap comping was also great to feel the timing of the effects. Imagining a person’s actions or dialogue is easy, but how can you measure a brief second of floating objects and your reaction to it? Where are they floating, exactly? What objects are floating? How long does it take? Everything we can’t see with our own eyes when shooting is greatly improved with a slap comp.
I feel the animatic itself is a little fast paced at this moment, and I will fix that when the final shooting comes. I’ll also need some extra hands to deal with practical tricks that will reinforce the digital effects. Last version coming up here on Friday, along with feedback from mentors and classmates.
I’m really excited with this project right now!