Documentary Production

Our group is now in the production stage of the documentary.

We started with the panning shot. The pan is a lot smoother when filmed rather than taking individual photos.

The blue backdrop was slightly creased so wasn't the best for green-screening but it will do. The blue screen lifts up too high in areas and these needed to be masked out by hand. Otherwise, with the stabiliser effect, runs very smoothly.

Next we animated the palm oil weave element. 

The animation is very smooth and will be able to be duplicated in editing to look like it's covering the whole forest. There is only one strand of paper that we forgot to animate for one frame, however I went back and edited this in photoshop after - it is not noticeable.

We next animated the trees blowing in the wind on the main set. Initially we tried animating them altogether, however found it impossible to loop them seamlessly. We also started animating them from their midpoint rather than at their extremes, which in hindsight made the loops impossible to produce. 

We also realised halfway through that one of the trees was moving in the opposite direction. 

So we started again, this time animating each tree individually, and they'll be edited together in one frame in post-production. We started animating the trees from their most extreme-left position to their most extreme-right position, making the loops achievable. 

For variety, I switched the positions of the trees and re-rigged them up, which took a couple of hours as the strings were so complicated. This was a good time for fixing the strings that had got tangled during animating. 

What Went Well

• The trees loop well and combine together on the same terrain seamlessly in post-production
• The actual animating process was fairly quick and simple once we figured out the best approach
• The weave element is very smooth and will look good when duplicated through the forest scene

Criticism

• Re-rigging the strings took hours to do, however this reduced the animating time down to around 10 minutes per tree loop
• Lighting the blue-screen has been an issue in some shots and has meant more work will be required in the editing