Personal project

Dissertation

The idea under this project was to showcase the moment in which we decide to do something, and we jump to the decision of making it. The moment in which the time stops, represent the moment in which we have already jumped to do something and we are half way to know if we are going to succeed our goal or not. In the dartboard, there is a specific point in which we know if we hit it we have achieved the best score: the bullseye. But in life there is not a bullseye, and sometimes in our way to achieve a goal we learn so many things, that our goal changes. Or even in we fail our goal, trying to achieve it is worthy just becuase all the things we have learned in the jurney. Sometimes, just the actitude with which the enfront our victories or defeats is the most important thing to be happy or not with our results. That is why the first thing we see is her smiling, that make us think that she could hit the bullseye. But after, we see that the dart is totally outside of the dartboard, which is the worst result possible. Alsso, the camera zooms in into the dartboar which is behind her, so we can even think that the dart is hitting that dartboard and not the one in which she is in. Therefore, it is a result in which the number does not matte, she did not hit the bullseye of her dartboard, but she failed doing something much more overwhelming, which is hitting the impossible.

In conclusion, I wanted to show how sometimes when we risk to do something, most of the times we do not achieve our goals, but we achieve something more spectacular. And it is all in our attitude if we take that as a defeat or as a wonderful positive experience.

“When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

Siddharta, Hermann Hesse

For the final editing, I would like to showcase that sentence at the end of the shortfilm, and name it Siddharta.

 

Critical conclusion

I have learn quite valuable things by doing this project.

Frist of all, by being responsable of all the organization, production and postproduction I have encountered some things that did not go as planned, and I realized how difficult is sometimes to do shootings and do a whole project. By my mistakes, I am improving in order to be able to be more organized for other projects, more important or professional.

For example, as I did not try the steadycam before the shooting, I realized that it was not working properly with th ecamera I was using. Therefore, the day bfore the shooting I needed to find another steadycam and reorganize the shooting with it. This steadycam was not designed for such a heavy camera, but we managed to add more weigth and use it anyway. Consequently, all the shots had jitter and not smooth camera movement, so it was really important that we recorded in Ultra HD.

As an inconvenience, the Ultra HD was really heavy for the camera, specially recording in Apple Pro Res 422 HQ, so I needed to empty the card 3 times. Therefore, I learned for my next shooting to bring many extra SD cards, so I did not need to waste the time while I am copying the footage to the laptop.

Before this project, I was not skill at all with Maya. By doing it, I learned with practice how the materiars behave, by changing all the materials of the dart and seeing the result in the render.

Also, I learned how important is to have a HDRI 360 degrees picture when we are working with 3D elements. By doing the lighting, I also learned a lot of how lights behave and how to place them in order to have the result that I wanted. Then, I did a render for the first time, and I got to understand really clearly what is every pass, how can we use them for and which ones are the ones that I need.

I am really proud of how the dart integration is. Integration is a really difficult process to teach because it really depends on the shot how do you integrate the 3D element. I explored it really deeply spending several hours playing around with the layers and the settings. With the guidance of my tutor, Billie, I finally achieved a nice integration of the dart, and I am really happy with the effect.

Also, I improved my skills with Davinci, decidig not to use LUTS and doing the color grading by myself. It is certainly something I would like to learn more about.

If I could do the project again, the thing I would like to fix the most is the long shot, doing it again with a better steadycam and fixing better the exposure to avoid the dartboarts of being overexposed. Also, while editing, I noticed I did not have enough shots to use as an introduction, and I should have planned to do more. Finally, I also thing I could have added more shots at the end, about her leaving and seeing that her dartboard is empty, in order to be able to the people to understand the message better.

To sum up, I am really happy with this project and I think it has been a great frist step into 3D CGI integration, which is a technique that I certainly wasnt to develop for my professional life. As it was not a hard piece to integrate, it helped me to use it as a first excersice achieving a good presentable final result.