Zenith

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THE “ZENITH”?

The Freestyle Zenith Project focuses on the essential question of, “how do you ignite your passion and elevate your skills and experiences to create your ultimate and most successful Freestyle project?”

The word “zenith” itself can be defined as “the time at which something is most powerful or successful”. This relates to the Freestyle program in having us culminate all of our skills we have mastered throughout our time here.

[recording will be added soon here]

WHAT IS MY ZENITH?

My Zenith project was a collaboration with my film classmates, Alex Beattie and Cristian Pilling. We tackled the concept of virtual production, a technique that tries to combine elements of computer graphics with real production using a camera. The foreground is shot in real life, with the background being keyed out by a green screen. Several new movies and TV series have used this technique to improve the efficiency and quality of their special effects production, such as the Mandalorian and the new Lion King. This form of production essentially combines the best of each world, digital and real production. Camera movements and focus pulls are recorded and used as keyframes to direct camera movement in the virtual world. Essentially, the cameras that directors are using in real life are being used to shoot content in virtual reality, which is shown on displays that are effectively used as a viewfinder on a conventional camera. But because the project will be a normal narrative, elements of pre-production and post production will also be used to make the final product. The main focus however will be on the technology used in production. 

PROCESS

This Zenith project is a new challenge for us due to how we have to learn about an entirely new software, (Unreal Engine), and visualize the shots’ many details before we shoot them. Virtual production requires more planning than traditional production, and if used to its fullest potential will be a lot more things to handle and manage during production. Later on in our process, we would have to utilize Blender in order to export the assets we needed into Unreal Engine. With numerous other programs that were compatible with UE4, like Bridge or Adobe Substance, we textured our assets to appear more realistic in their virtual environments.

Our roles in a group helped us complete the film despite running into numerous challenges.

I was head of the virtual graphics, and art direction. I was in charge of sourcing assets and building our backdrops, as well as real life props. This included our virtual space station and interiors. Alex was mostly responsible for integrating the technology behind taking the environment and assets made by me and placing them into a virtual film set where he can set up a camera to film. He was directing as well. Cris was focusing on refining the film’s story-line, practical effects, as well as managing sound effects/music. 

FINAL PRODUCT

Our final product was a trailer for a science fiction movie.