Documentary Background Construction and Silhouette Tests

This week I built the frames for one of every type of tree that we are going to include in the forest, based on the designs I created the previous week. I had to make a few adjustments to the design when building them in reality however (for instance the strings were unable to move the branches when hidden inside the tree, so these will now be outside and will be painted out in rigging). The trees were also very unstable on the cardboard, so I replaced this with a wooden base, and tied them down with elastic band supports and screws.

Live plants:

Stinking Corpse Lily:

Teak Tree:

Fig Tree:

Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree:

Burnt/Deforested Tree:

I then gave these to Daisy to coat with latex, which is a great material for creating a bark texture. 

I also carried out some tests into the silhouette shots of the forest we are going to include at three points throughout the documentary (the first shot where the rainforest is lush and dense, the middle shot where the forest is on fire, and the last shot where the forest has been completely deforested). I started by cutting out rough outlines of trees from cardboard and paper, sticking them upright, arranging them in a way so as to recreate a dense rainforest atmosphere. These tests had varying levels of success. For the later tests, I included Daisy's air plants and bind weeds. 

First shot - Dense Rainforest:

I like the cardboard edges to the trees but otherwise the composition is very flat.

I like the hazy lighting and the composition is much better but the green is too luminescent 

This is my favourite test. I like the blue, however it's slightly too dark.

The oil effect is nice but makes the image far too dark.

The silhouette is too dark making the image too flat.

The grey-scale image is not as exciting as the blue version.

The shot looks better for having more of a foreground.

I like the mix of flat cardboard trees with real plants.

This is another of my favourite tests, which features cardboard trees covered in moss.

Middle shot - Forest on fire:

The oil patterns work well as creating a fire/smoke effect when combined with the original composition using blend modes. 

This composition includes an image with the light shinning directly through the forest towards camera (creating the bright fire in the centre). The shot looks much better for being tinted red as well.

Again, the real plants add that extra bit of detail that I think is needed for the composition.

Cardboard trees covered in moss with oil background. The moss gives even more detail to the cutout trees.

End shot - Deforested forest:

Cardboard tree stumps with dry moss and tree bark in the foreground.

Same composition with palm oil in the background.

What Went Well

• With a few tweaks, the frame building went according to plan
• The frames are sturdy and should be durable enough for animating
• The silhouette tests got me to a final shot that I like and think will fit well within the documentary
• I think the combination of real plants with cutout trees works well

Criticism 

• The initial plan to have the trees mounted on cardboard made them far too unstable
• The cut out trees were very basic for the test, however will be a lot more detailed for the real thing
• Some of the silhouette tests didn't work out so well, but I was able to see what looked wrong with them and how to improve it