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Project.two
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Project.three
Task.five
Project.three
Task.five
Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
A level 3 VFX students FMP
Production
Editing it together
26.04.21
Production Plan
When I'm doing what
The final stretch now, Below is my plan for the three week production timetable, I gave myself three days to do each part of the project as more of a fall back than an actual plan, I'm hoping that I can get each section done within a two day window at least, But if I can't then I have a reasonable fall back plan should I need it.
I do think that as I get into the zone of editing it will get a lot smoother I will be able to do a lot more in a shorter period of time after the first week, as always the plan is up for review every week and If I over or underestimate the time I need I can always change it.
I do also have a 'break glass encase of emergences' plan if it all goes to pot and I really mess up the editing, The plan is to cut off the video at the end of the first Mongol invasion. Now this would work and It would be a fine standalone video, But it would be a shell of what the full video could be and a lot of the work I've put into the pre-production planning and scriptwriting would be waisted, Its defiantly something I don't want to do.
26.04.21
Script recoding and editing
Production in audition
Animating the flags
Mongol Conquest & Japanese Defence
27.04.21
The First day of production went pretty smoothly and the revision of the script really helped to cut down the time of the script from around 30 minutes, back to a much more manageable 17:50, this is with time spared for the quotes.
The final script with all the audio editing shown in my experimental research is presented below.
Both the recoding and editing were done in Adobe Audition, a piece of software that up until a few weeks ago I never used. Now you could say that was a little reckless with this being my final couple of weeks I don't want to waist time getting to learn a new program, However Audition is very similar to the program Audacity, a app that I have used for all of my past projects, In-fact I would argue that In Audition it was a lot easier for me produce great quality audio as a lot of the interface is similar to the other adobe products.
I figured the whole point of the fmp is to experiment and push ourselves and what better way to do that than to learn and use a new program as part of it.
28.04.21
Starting Production
In Premier and After Effects
After the first day of production this is what I achieved
The reason I titled the video Proof of concept is I feel like this is confirmation that all of what I've been working towards is finally coming together, with a few tweaks and changes I'm sure I can get what I have here looking polished and professional.
There are a number of techniques I used when animating the map, Its a technique I'll use throughout the project to create similar results, Its all based off the camera tool, a feature in After Effects I've used many times to give off the impression that assets are being moved around in 3d, Its also helpful to create transitions by using motion blur.
The virtual camera is linked to a layer I've named cam control, This is the layer I use for all the keyframing to make the camera move in 3d space, This streamlines the editing process immensely as I have to only move one layer when wanting to change what is on screen. This can only be accomplished if the layer has the 3D setting turned on as shown below.
I made sure to turn motion blur on (its the three circles near the 3d select) and easy ease the key frames, both of these combine to make the animation smoother as a whole.
29.04.21
For some unknown reason today I had an issue with the audio, The music quality on the premier pro timeline was much reduced compared to how I had left it the night before, I managed to quickly fix it by re-doing the whole premier file in a different sequence, I checked the audio sample rates and they were the same, I'm not sure what happened to cause this but I moved on.
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Today I wanted to add some texture to both the map and a separate on for the sea I used a site called pexels.com to get some high quality texture images to try out in after effects, both of them are shown below.
I started by importing them both into after effects and adding them to the 'Yuan' pre-composition This is basically a composition that I can use in other composition to declutter my workspace, it also lets me easily have them follow the map without having to animate them individually, after adding them to the pre-comp I started with the texture I was going to use for the sea, I added a dark blue solid and put it above the texture on the layer stack and made the blending mode 'multiply', This basically makes the layer see through, and as the texture was white it gave it a blue overly, with that I had my sea texture.
I did the same with the burnt old paper texture, made the blending mode multiply and it turned into an overlay to put on the whole map, giving it a nice worn-out look.
As you can see from the video above I added a number of simple but effective effects to the project to give it a slightly more grungy look, This included a vignette mixed with a gaussian blur added to a mask layer to not effect the centre of the frame, I upped the feathering of the mask to give it a nice transition from the blurred to the focus point in the middle.
Aside from that you probably noticed the sort of montage of clips from Takezaki Suenagas Mongol invasion scrolls, This was a lot of fun to edit and I think it turned out alright, The one huge problem I have with it is the Low resolution/pixilation of the images, I tried everything I could think of to remove or lessen the pixilation, I added them all to separate illustrator doc, to make use of the continuous rasterization, It worked a bit and did lessen it slightly, honestly though I don't think I'm going to get any better than what's shown here.
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I created it using the same keyframing and use of the camera tool as the first bit with the portrait with kalbi khan.
That's how I finished off the second day of production, its going slow but I expected this as I'm trying out techniques that I may not have used before and a lot of trouble shooting is still going on, I'm sure production will start to ramp up next week as I get more use to the tools I'm using.
30.04.21 to 3.05.21
Over Friday and the weekend I have been working on the section covering Kublai's ambitions and supposed reasons for invading Japan.
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This started out as with mentioning Marco polo, so I did a similar thing to what I did for the portrait of Kublai at the start, animated a mosaic picture of him using the exact same technique, The background of the image was white so I had to edit that out in photoshop. This time I also had to include a quote from Marco regarding the Japanese's 'king's' use of gold, I used the same techniques to animate this as I did with pretty much everything else.
I chose a relatively basic font as all of the evadable cursive ones were a little too hard to actually read, and the motion blur required to make the animation smooth really didn't look good on it.
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In premier I plan to add a 'woosh' effect when the frame transitions to Marco
The audio in this clip isn't at the right level and it got cut off at the start, I fixed all these issues in the premier pro timeline so just Ignore that.
Wako raids & the Song Dynasty
Continuing with the reasons for the invasion I move on to the Japanese Pirate raids on Korea and the trade with the song dynasty.
I began with the wako, at first I wanted to zoom in on the map I've been using so far but that wasn't any good as the difference in detail between Korea and Japan whilst not noticeable normally I way more apparent when zoomed in as shown below.
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I decided to try and use the map I made specifically for this purpose, The map of the Tsushima straight also shown below, after trying this out I wasn't exactly pleased with how it looked, it didn't really fit the screen and it wasn't in the correct positions to animate how I wanted to, I resolved to make a new version with a fully mapped out Korea and Japan, This map will be great for showing the fleet movements latter on.
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The map was made in the exact same way as all of the others in this project, Once again shown in my experimental and pre-production tabs.
This is what It looked like
The assets used were all made in illustrator following techniques I've used countless times already same with the animation, I made two sets of arrows for the Yuan (red) as well as the Japanese (blue), You may notes that the colours used for the Yuan and the Japanese are not the same as the ones shown in my troop blocks where they are switched, I just decided to change them as I already had these colours in all the footage I exported.
Below will be shown the recoloured troop blocks. The reason I did this now is that I originally didn't use the swords but was going to put a Japanese troop block there instead I tried this and I didn't think it looked too good.
As for the Song dynasty I used multiple mask layers to slowly revel it in the pre-comp, I plan to do the same but reversed when it comes to the Yuan take over of the dynasty later in the project. This is the same technique I used to animate the arrows pointing to kora to signify the Japanese Waco raids as well as the clashing swords and arrows.
04 05 & 06.05.21
So far I've shown you the development of the production as a 'play by play', showing techniques as they come up, The next few days will be mostly the same with little difference between them in terms of what I'm doing.
Today for example I did little more than animate a few images to keep the movement of the whole project going, this serves the purpose of keeping the viewer interested when there is little more that me narrating.
I feel it is especially important to do this to accompany the facts and information as I think it would get especially boring without them, I won't update this any really meaningful way unless I have a new technique to show.
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It takes a while to export all of the animation, even if its not that much, I fear I might not be able to complete the project at the current pace with the spec of PC I currently have. I may have to resort to going into college to use their high spec machetes, This offers a number of problems as the versions of Adobe Creative Cloud (Premier After Effects etc.) are out of date, the 2019 versions I think, This is a problem as I use the 2021 version of all of the apps.
I If if downgrade the files to 2019 to edit a college, I can't then upgrade them back to the 2021 versions to use at home, Its a predicament I will have to think on, And in reality It doesn't matter that much as the college is shut down due to a cyber attack that happened last week we don't know when it will be resolved but I hope it will be soon.
The back-up plan I've had in place so I can still use and document all of the assets and techniques I've created so far is to cut my project at the first battle of Hakata bay, This will drastically shorten the whole thing and cut out most of what I was looking forward to making, but will leave me with a sort of Part one for the documentary, I will still use all of the maps, flags, a good few of the quotes and most of the music, as well as all of the techniques as the second half is basically the same as the first when it comes to how to make it.
This would be drastic measures but I'd rather have a polished first half than a middling full documentary. If I choose to cut the Project in half I am confident I will of shown in one way or another all the skills I would want to of used throughout the whole film.
07 08 & 09.05.21
These past few days have been relatively the same simply getting on with the parts of my project that I can do relatively easily, I have been talking to my tutor matt and he said there will be a number of macs available on college campus to use next week. A few stipulations on that is the fact that the macs have the 2018 versions of cc, this presents a problem of downgrading files, a much bigger problem however is the fact that the college still doesn't have wifi connections, due to the previously mentioned cyber attack.
This means I will have to gather all my assets before going in as I'm not going to be able to get more via the internet. This just means I will have to do a little more advanced planning for day to day editing.
10.05.21
Cutting down the film
Where to stop
If my after effects worked as I hoped it would I would of been around half way through a 17 minute film right about now, But that's not the case. Right now I've created around 3 & a half mutinies of content that I consider relatively finished, But I need a place to cut the film to make a sort of Part one.
I need to make sure it has a satisfactory ending that could be used to build up suspense for a perspective part two whilst also getting in enough content that I could demonstrate all of the techniques I want to. As I've already used all but one it masks since to stop at a point after a battle as I haven't shown off the troop blocks or a battle sequence yet.
This makes the point at witch the outlying islands are overrun a perfect place to cut it, The section ends with the line: 'With the two outlying islands overrun this left the Mongol supply lines secure and the way to the mainland open', This could defiantly be edited to be suspenseful with some slowly intensifying battle music, This also comes just after the quotes form Hojo Tokimune so it allows me to use the majority of the commissioned Voice acting.
16.05.21
still too long
DO IT AGAIN!
As the days rolled on and the problems with rendering continued I realised that I simply don't have the time to finish the half of the project I set out to do whilst also documenting and finishing up my website, I resolved to cut the project around about where I was up to(around the 4 and a half minute mark effectively halfling the project again), as It was at a fitting place to conclude Part 1.
It didn't include a battle or use of my commissioned voice assets but I'm not overly worried as I do intend to finish the whole project as a three part series in my own time, using the assets and techniques I've built up starting with part one I.e. what I've completed during this project.
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A talked to my tutor Matt and explained my problems as well as my plan to cut the film here and continue with the cleaning up and documenting on my website, I made sure to ask about if this would effect my grade in any way, He said it wouldn't and that the main reason he wanted us to complete our projects, is for us to have a sense of satisfaction and that It would be a shame to waste all the time and effort we put into them, I would of loved to fully complete the whole project and I fully believe I would of been able to within the time constraints, if only my pc worked fully and didn't have some terrible problems when rendering.
Here is what the whole documentary looks like as of now This is a relatively accurate depiction of what the final cut edit will look like, but with some transitions cleaned up and voice lines/quotes for Macro Polo and Kublai Khan added in. I do also plan to create an end screen with a small message tanking people for watching. and telling them about part two as well.
21.05.21
Quote recoding & final edit
Better late than never
This may seem a little 'at the 11th hour' but I assure you its all part of my plan, I made sure to leave more then enough space in the Premier Pro edit to slot the audio snippets in.
The two lots of audio were supplied by my dad and my brother (professional I know) they were both recorded the same way as the rest of my script with the same audio setup, edits, noise reduction, base boosting and overall mastering using a parametric equaliser.
‘(the Japanese) have measureless quantities of gold… The King’s palace is roofed with pure gold… and the floors are paved in gold two fingers’ thick’ - Marco polo
‘The Emperor of the Great Mongols, being commissioned by Heaven, hereby respectfully presents a letter to the King of Japan.’
‘From the time of our forefathers, have received the Mandate of Heaven and have ruled the universe. Innumerable people in far-off lands have learned to fear our power and have longed for our virtuous rule.’
Moreover, the sages consider the entire universe one family. Therefore, if we should not establish friendly relations with each other, how could it be in accordance with the doctrine of one family? Who would care to appeal to arms?’
- Kublai Khan
final edit
Almost done
21.05.21
Making the Thumbnail
And Uploading to YouTube
As I was finishing up the edit I started to think about uploading to YouTube, I realised I didn't have a thumbnail, This is the picture that appears on the YouTube homepage, so its the first impression a perspective viewer gets of your video, This needless to say is pretty important.
I will be taking inspiration from many of the content creators I've mentioned throughout my research and development of the project, Including Kings and generals, The Shogunate, and linthamy.
The main artwork I planned to use is that provided to me by my aunt showcased all the way back on my primary research page, but the scan came out a little too small.
I opted to take the design of my website and carry it over too the thumbnail, I thought this gave the whole project a nice interconnection. I will probably come back and do a remake of this later but I feel like this is more than adequate for the time being.
