SunCoast Production Log #016

MAR 24 - MAR 30

ETHEN DENT

Photography

To add to the remainder of the blog posts, I did some additional photography in the studio.

[Production Log thumbnail examples, taken with Canon 1300D, 18-35mm]

Mini Showreel

Based on Mike Gulvin's feedback, I've 'dusted off' my editing skills and put together a mini showreel to display on the landing page. As it is the first version of the video, I expect to receive more feedback over the course of the website development and improvements will be made accordingly.

[Mini Showreel version #001]

Website Resolution Fix

Found a temporary solution to the resolution issue we have been having for a couple weeks. This fix is just on the landing page.

[SunCoast Studios, website landing page]

CRM Spreadsheet

After feedback from Daniel Waterman, I've updated the CRM spreadsheet to include companies from TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms. Targeting companies that already post disposable promotional content. Categories have also been added to the CRM spreadsheet.

[Master Spreadsheet, CRM spreadsheet, category update]

Outsourcing Documents

Per request, I have revised my outsourcing document that I had made previously. Currently awaiting feedback for the document.

Persona Segment Document

Responding to Mike Gulvin's session, Priya and I each developed one persona document. One for Ocean Generation (Priya) and the other for Jungle Culture (Ethen).

Maya Set-Up

In preparation for my modelling contribution, I've set up Maya 2018/9.

File Management

Upon request of the team's TD, I have made a folder with all of the production images so far in the project.

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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GEORGE MORRIS

Import into Unreal and Troubleshooting

"I have finished and rendered out the final deferred renders to pass onto our 2D Comp artist. SH_010A of the sun set was first. I implemented feedback given by the tutors and added more rubbish in the ocean and made it less foggy under the ocean. The first render I did of it was a 4K image with 62 samples. It took a long time for my PC to render out the shot and once I sent it to our 2D artist there were some problems, rubbish in the ocean sometimes bounces off the water and materials for props changed. I rectified the problems and instead of rendering the sequence in 4K with 62 samples I instead rendered at 2K at 16 samples. This made the render time a lot quicker and gave off the same relatively clear image after comp."

"I did the same to SH_050 fixing problems and adding more rubbish in the ocean and moving containers where the director wanted them. I rendered that shot out and handed it over to the comp artist."

"When doing a deferred render I have to do things such as: render out the World Depth, World Normals, Ambient Occlusion, Detailed lighting, and Actor IDs (for cryptomattes)."

"I have also posed and done some high resolution screenshots for our poster in the Unreal engine. The characters were posed by an animator then exported as Alembics, I posed them in a separate scene and lit and set dressed the scene to make the base of the poster. Once done I sent it off to the director for the credits and some colour grading."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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JACK DEVEREUX

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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JESSICA HILES

Dailies and Troubleshooting

"Moving on from my blocking, I got some feedback from Priya. Troy and the goldfish rig are missing from my shots. I was unaware that this was the case, as I thought they had set the animation files up, but it might’ve been a miscommunication on my end. I quickly added them in before dailies so we could see an accurate framing of the shot. Because of this feedback, I mostly focused on trying to get those additional characters animated to the same degree as the current ones. This meant focusing on the blocking of the recent additions. I also decided to take a look at the launch party we were holding."

"We decided we wanted to host it at Escape and so looked into ‌ways we could go about that. The recent VFX festival was an inspiration and we decided we wanted to do something similar."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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MUHAMAD USMAN

I have been grabbing many assets that will contribute to the trashy look to the environment when looking at quixel bridges. I have textured all of the assets that were set for me so I will be making a few adjustments to the project. I needed to create 16 planes for cigarette buds and use the vertices to cut off the other colours.

I created two blueprints for the project. One is to create a cart track around the environment. It uses a spline to create instances of the same mesh, deforming it using the approximate size of X axis location of the mesh. This is the same for the modular chain asset.

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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PRIYA SHAH

The main debate this week that went back and forth was whether to have the main character assumed to be dead or alive to the audience. After feedback from our supervisors, there were quite a lot of counter arguments about whether to have Troy be shown at the end or not. This was similar during the decision process with my team. From this, I decided to make a poll on our SunCoast Instagram story. I gave them a brief introduction to the film and let them pick Troy’s fate. Surprisingly, with around 30 votes, the poll came 50-50 when it came to whether Troy should die or not.

As a director, it was my final decision. I thought about the two possible scenarios. Initially, I wanted Troy to not be shown at the end. I believe not having the hero character shown gives more of a realistic perspective on life. However, the counterargument is that I was killing the hero character and if I wanted to push this short film into the series I would not be able to. This is when I decided to change the ending.

In the second last shot, I decided to have Troy visible in the fishing net and we have Dex and Maya trying to help him out. Nonetheless, in the shot, we see an apocalypse happening where only Dex and Maya can be seen. This ending can be interpreted in many ways. Some might think that Troy could not be saved. This could also be interpreted that Troy did get saved but might be in a ‘Fish hospital’ or is at home since we still see Troy alive after the fishing net fell on him. This is up to how the audience interprets the ending and gives Suncoast the opportunity to keep the short film as it is or pitch this as part of the series in the future.

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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