After the dip to white transition (00:39:13) the next clip is of my character running through the a forest, with a sword in a first person perspective. I filmed this clip after capturing some footage of a real forest, because of this I knew to look for a similar type of woodland in game. I think I found a similar piece but definitely not identical, this is something I would like to change by either finding a different place within skyrim, or a different forest for live action footage. Due to the difference in forests, a dissolve effect didn't have the desired effect, it was too obvious and very distracting meaning the viewer focussed more on the differences rather than enjoying the trailer. Aside from the type of trees, one of the main differentiating factors was the colour scheme. To combat this I changed the brightness and contrast of the clip to 51.8 and 61.4 respectively but this still didn't provide a smooth transition.
At 00:39:13 the clip starts to fade into black and white, this was achieved by slicing the end of the Skyrim clip and the start of the live action clip with the razor tool, applying the black and white video effect to both of them, then used the cross dissolve transition between the 4 clips to fade from Skyrim colour, black and white, then to live action black and white and finally to colour. As I also had clips in tracks 4 and 5 that started midway through the transition, I had to clip them, apply black and white, then a cross dissolve so all clips were consistent.
Once the black and white fades into the colour (00:42:21) there are 3 clips running in parallel. The forest clip speed was increased to 257% as it was quite a long clip and needed to fit between my other clips, the speed starts to get reduced at 00:45:05, where it falls from 100% to, eventually, 1% by the end of the clip, this is to simulate the slow down at the end of sprinting. To reinforce the idea the person is running I applied a camera blur of 3% at the start of the clip which begins to reduce at 00:46:13, (when the running slow down begins to become apparent) it reaches 0% a few milliseconds later to simulate focussing on the trees.
In track 4 I have the green screen footage of me 'running' with the sword. This effect was achieved by standing in front of the screen, holding the camera at my chest and lifting the sword up and forward, then down and back. Once the footage was completed, I applied an ultra key video effect and tweaked the settings so that the green was eradicated, but did not erase any of the sword detail.
Due to the sword's reflective surface, some of the green screen can be seen on the sword itself. To combat this I used the change colour video effect, and after keying out the green screen, used this to dull the sword colour slightly and spread the silver effect. I then copied this clip into the one above and changed the blend mode of the one below to lighten. Upon close inspection the forest can be seen through the sword, in motion this merely looks like a reflection, although I would like to tweak this more if I have time. To finish, the sword clip speed was set to -128% to match the running speed of the forest clip.
At 00:47:24 the dragon can be seen swooping down, after being sped up. On the track above is a clip of the sword being held and swaying slightly, this was created by using a section of the original sword clip just before I started moving it, this section was then slowed down to simulate it being held still. The track below is a still from the forest clip, this was used as the person isn't moving. The dragon was downloaded from youtube, I then applied an ultra key and tweaked the settings so the green couldn't be seen but also didn't cut off any part of the dragon. I also applied basic 3D to change the angle of the dragon by 3 degrees as I felt it wasn't looking at the center of the screen.
As the dragon lands (00:49:13) I used a dust green screen effect. This was taken from youtube and an ultra key applied to it. Aside from the usual changes to make the green not visible but not cut into the dust, I also changed the luminance in the colour correction segment. By changing it to 75 the original white colour was changed to a shade of brown that matched the dirt on the floor in my forest clip, this adds to the idea that the dragon is swooping down with tremendous force. To add to this, I sped up the beginning of the clip so the dust flies up quickly, then using time remapping, slowed it down to 35% of the original speed so the dust slowly falls as there are no other forces in the scene such as wind. At 00:49:23 as the dragon rears it's head, the speed is reduced by 50% to give the impression it takes a lot of effort and power to shoot it's fire breath. At this time, the idle sword clip is changed to the sword being sheathed. This was originally at the start of the clip when it was being raised, by right clicking the clip, selecting speed/duration and clicking reverse speed, the clip played in reverse giving the impression that it is being sheathed.
At 00:52:17 the screen suddenly goes black, I did not use fade to black as I wanted the effect to be sudden after the fire had reached the screen. The clip following it had the opacity set to zero for 1 second as this fit in with the music trailing off (I will expand on this in another blog post) before slowly increasing the opacity to reveal the flames, this gives the impression they are the dragon's flame remnants. The title begins to fade in at 00:53:20, this is a screenshot of the title from the cover. Using the colour replacement tool in photoshop I changed the black background to green, then imported it into premiere, this allowed the ultra key to be easily applied eradicating the background. This technique was also applied to the developer logo seen at 00:56:22.
The date begins to fade in at 00:55:22, this was created using the title tool. I used the center tools in the bottom left to ensure the title was central. I selected a font that matched my overall theme and found one similar to the font I used for my description on my game cover. I initially wanted the colour to be similar to that of the title so it was consistent but as I began experimenting, this changed. I positioned the fiery background behind the title, and wanted my date to reflect that there was fire present. By using the colour seen in the screenshot with the gradient, it gave the impression the fire was being reflected from the date. To aid this effect, I used a red sheen to intensify the flame colour, the angle match where the title was placed and the offset so the flame reflection was at the bottom of the letters as it would be. Finally I used the texture tool to make the date look like it was made of slightly reflective stone, this fits in with the rugged theme of my project.
The title, date and developer logo fade in one after the other so the user has time to focus and acknowledge each one, before they all begin to fade out at 00:59:05 along with the music so the trailer finishes with a black screen. I felt ending with a black screen was important as the majority of trailers I saw finished with the date and title before fading to black.
No comments:
Post a Comment