NXT Evaluation

Optional Pathway - Evaluation

This project hasn't exactly gone according to plan. Alex and I started out with the best intentions for this brief as we both planned to use this piece of work in our Port Folios. However it must be said that towards the end the workload was rather unevenly shared between us. Due to Alex’s work commitments I found myself completing the majority of the 3D and post-production work. This was the main reason I instructed Alex to produce the sound otherwise apart from helping me film he would have no creative input in the production of the final piece. I found myself often waiting about for a convenient time that Alex was able to come help me film. This is the reason why I feel Alex became a strain on the progress of work. Having said that, this only applies to the period after the given deadline had passed. I felt as though I was the only driving force by the end having taken on many roles from director to cameraman and editor to compositor. If I had known this would be the case I would have opted to do this project alone, as it is clear to see that if I hadn’t put in the hours then none of this would have happened. Before this however we were equally intent on producing a professional standard of work.

Alex started the project off by building up the Lego Mindstorms NXT in its humanoid form. This took somewhere in the region of three to four hours, much longer than originally estimated. Even at this early stage in the project it became apparent that this would be more time consuming than first considered. Never the less we decided to follow the original plan of filming the NXT in stop frame animation showing it building up piece by piece then rotating and showing each sensor accordingly, filming all this in front of green screen so that the background could be edited out afterwards, this would later be composited with the 3D work we planned to do with the logo in Maya. We planned to get filming right away, Alex and I managed to get a green screen test shot done before the criteria, using only the ceiling lights in the AV suite, this came out much better than expected however the shadow was hard to key out without loosing the quality of film. Matt from the AV suite suggested creating a sort of green screen podium to stand the NXT on so that when we filmed it there wouldn't be as much shadow because it would be raised and straight on towards the camera. He also suggested lighting it with the spotlight however early research had shown that the shiny plastic of the NXT caused too much glare from the reflection. We took Matt's advice on board and decided to attempt lighting the NXT differently, using two spotlights from either side to reduce shadows and a modeling light on the front to define the NXT. I looked at some suitable materials that could be used for a possible green screen podium and came up with a large industrial tub of mayo. This gave us the idea of rotating the NXT using a motor hidden inside the green screen podium however after much time spent creating it the green screen podium failed on several fronts. This was a case of trial and error although a colossal waste of time it seemed liked a good idea before hand. This wasn't the only time wasting we did in this project, a week or so after we were handed the brief I had started building the Mindstorms logo in Maya block by block I managed to get it finished a few hours later only to find Alex doing the same pain staking work I had just been doing. This is time that could have much better spent. That aside, it was even before the interim criteria that some availability issues with the NXT became apparent. This became more of a problem when the discovery was made that there was only one full NXT kit. The lack of equipment can most definitely be the number one factor in causing the failure to meet the deadline. As the end of the project approached it became a case of everyman for himself which determined who managed to get their final shoot done with time to edited it still leftover, unfortunately Alex and I were a amongst a few others who were left out to dry. I wouldn't have been too fussed about this if we hadn't made the effort however this was not the case. We had carefully planned this out leaving countless notes on the NXT stating we planned to commence filming the following day and for anyone using the NXT could they please return it by then, these were ignored every single time. The inconsideration of others in this project made getting the required equipment needed to film nearly impossible. From here on in we were constantly having setbacks. From Alex having trouble exporting anything from Maya to the modeling light disappeared when we actually managed to track down the NXT. This meant that when we were able to film the NXT for the final time it was lit properly from the front making the footage a nightmare to key out leaving us with such poor quality footage it would simply be embarrassing to hand in, frankly we were both absolutely gutted after having such high expectations for this brief, especially after receiving praise from Annabeth in the interim criteria.

After missing the deadline I took it upon myself to try and redeem the project by hiring out all of the required equipment the following day. This meant that we had a good few weeks to shoot and edit over Christmas, it was when I told Alex I had done so that he explained how he was working practically all Christmas and new year working right up to weekend of the 4th January. Never the less I built up the NXT and completed all of the 3D work. Alex reminded me how to track cameras in Maya giving me the required skills to materialize my idea of having the camera track through the 'S' of the Mindstorms logo rotating, panning and finally zooming out unveil the logo. I made sure all this work was done over the Christmas period so we would be ready to film on Monday 5th January. I also experienced rendering issues with Maya, often crashing an hour or two into rendering, I overcame this problem eventually by rendering clips of no more than five seconds at a time pending on how long the camera tracking animation was. To cut down on unnecessary rendering time I decided the best thing to do was to time map in After Effects and stretch the length of footage to compensate for the time where the camera is not being tracked, this worked much better. Unfortunately when we came to film we where greeted with yet more technical difficulties, we spent hours trying to log and capture live footage yet every time we tried Alex's version of Final Cut unexpectedly quit. after exhausting every possible technique we decided to call it a day. The following day we shot all the footage on to film and fortunately I was able to get into the AV Suite in order to capture the footage. At this point Matt explained about changing one of the settings in >Audio/visual to a non controllable device, this was because the footage we shot on film still wasn't as good as it could have been. We tried this technique yet still Final Cut quit on us. So we decided to record in Imovie, it seemed to work OK but I was unable to view the footage on my computer and therefore unable to edit it at home. So the following day I managed to sneak into our room despite it being closed except for third years. It was here that I discovered that all of the footage recorded in Imovie was of an incredibly poor quality. I decided to make do with the footage we filmed to tape earlier in the week, this is why the lighting is different from each angle however adjusting the color balance and adding a block dissolve helped blend the separate pieces of footage together. I spent countless hours over the weekend compositing the film footage with the 3D work from Maya, often having to scale and position footage frame by frame in order to obtain a fairly smooth motion. My main regret in this project would be choosing to film in front of green screen. The shiny nature of the NXT made it pain to light so it was bright enough to key out yet not too bright so that the NXT wouldn't reflect too much of the green. In all I'm not entirely satisfied with the final footage however I feel I have done the best job I possibly could given the circumstances. A major crippling factor for me in this project has been compatibility between film exported from Final Cut and my PC. Fortunately I plan to invest in a Mac in the near future so soon issues like this should become a thing of the past. I explored a wide range of areas of specialty in this brief, I have decided that directing is not an area for me to go into, I have enough trouble motivating myself sometimes never mind ensuring others do their share of the work. After all I have said about the downsides of this project it has taught me a few vital lessons for the future, I have also found that I have an interest in working in compositing 3D footage and film together, although it can be one of the most frustrating jobs at times it is by far the most rewarding.