Casting was not something that was heavily focused on, but we realised that it was important to choose someone who many people (in this case our audience) would be able to somewhat relate to - this is called identification.
We initially chose Xenia Peter as our protagonist. The main reason was initially due to the colour of her eyes:
We wanted to really focus on the closeup of the eyes, as we felt there was a lot of significance in this shot for the opening. We also wanted to choose Xenia due to her eye colour mainly, as we saw felt that the opening was more of an art piece, rather than just a product.
We ran through difficulty in arranging dates for filming with Xenia however, and with the only possible plan with her, we would not have enough time to edit the footage and meet the deadline.
We decided on choosing someone for the role - Tanya Pongkanta.
The reason why I personally wanted to choose Tanya for the role was mainly ambiguity in ethnicity. Tanya's ethnicity is mixed, and it is not obvious. I felt that this ambiguity would help in the audience being able to relate with the protagonist.
The reoccurring comment we received was based on how the shots did not seem to relate and line up together. We did not establish a strong enough relationship between the city shots and the protagonist's shots.
A lot of the paintings were still not finalised, as we need to create a more consistent colour palette. This was mentioned among one of the feedbacks.
The HUD for the facial scan needs to be completely revamped, as the shapes were made in after effects, so painting new layers in photoshop may produce better results.
The aim of the opening is to create this image of a protagonist that is running away. The audience is left without the knowledge of what exactly she is running from, however it is revealed in the end that what she is running away from is a replica on herself. The audience would presume that because of the sci-fi style, the replica is a clone of the protagonist.
After the scene of being caught
We wanted to explore the theme of identity, and so by showing the audience 'clones' of the protagonist, we intended to suggest that they are representations of the protagonist's identity.
A small section in image above includes some of the plot summary
What happens is that the whole clip starts off very positive, the audience is shown elements that depict a very happy mood. The first shot, which is not shown in the story board, will be just be black with the words "it has been a year."
The next shots will be just what appears the protagonist preparing and getting ready like every morning (eg shower, shave etc. not all preparations are shown in the storyboard). He then puts on suit and grabs a bouquet of flowers.
I haven't included this story board, but we could add a picture of him and a girl - looking like a normal couple.
The purpose of these shots are to convince the audience that the 'one year' is a one year anniversary, or a year of being a couple.
The twist happens in the second page of the storyboards. Instead of walking up to a house, as the audience would expect, he goes to an empty field, lays flowers down, and says " Its been a year since I killed you".
We decided that this idea would become a flashback, and we joined it with another idea that Praew had.
Second Idea
Preaw came up with a rough idea revolving around crime, murder and detective/mystery. However we did not manage to confirm a solid plan or plot.
Third Idea
This is the final idea that we decided on. We decided to go with a sci-fi thriller theme opening. The initial inspiration with this came from Heavy Rain/Quantic Dreaming's tech demo clip named Kara.
Other inspirations include Deus Ex - Human Revolution cinematic trailer, Ex Machina and Cyberpunk 2077 trailer.
We wanted to explore the theme of identity.
The first shot will revolve around the main protagonist's head being shown, revealing that they're part human part machine. The camera will then focus on the face, the construction of the body being suggested by the soundscape. The music will start as the protagonist opens their eyes.
Throughout the construction of the body, the shot will jump to a running and chasing scene. The location will be in a city. The shots will primarily focus on closeups and reflections.
Above is the sketch I made in photoshop that would help us visualize what we were after. We planned to take real images and placed them to form something we already envisioned, rather than base our vision on something that already exists.
The sketch is actually based off a combination of 3 images we came up with. One from a scene in the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, another from a concept art of a dystopian city, and another from a street in Japan. I rearranged all the images, so in terms of the rules of perspective, they look cohesive and make sense.
The sketches below show a thumbnail of the girl from the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, to show the relation to the above sketch.
We saw a possibility in actually creating the set in photoshop, rather than film it all live, and use the '2.5D effect', or parallax effect, and shoot pictures of the actors in controlled lighting separately. This way, we would be able to really mold what we want.
Below is a short time lapse of some of the work we did
Final version of the first piece
This is the final piece. At this point of filming, we might just end up using this for the title. Due to how some of the painting is unrealistic, we might add motion blur.
Another thing which we looked at was giving the effect of a 3D plane using 2D images. This means that we would be able to turn this image and give it animated depth.
A small section in image above includes some of the plot summary
What happens is that the whole clip starts off very positive, the audience is shown elements that depict a very happy mood. The first shot, which is not shown in the story board, will be just be black with the words "it has been a year."
The next shots will be just what appears the protagonist preparing and getting ready like every morning (eg shower, shave etc. not all preparations are shown in the storyboard). He then puts on suit and grabs a bouquet of flowers.
I haven't included this story board, but we could add a picture of him and a girl - looking like a normal couple.
The purpose of these shots are to convince the audience that the 'one year' is a one year anniversary, or a year of being a couple.
The twist happens in the second page of the storyboards. Instead of walking up to a house, as the audience would expect, he goes to an empty field, lays flowers down, and says " Its been a year since I killed you".
We decided that this idea would become a flashback, and we joined it with another idea that Praew had.
Second Idea
Preaw came up with a rough idea revolving around crime, murder and detective/mystery. However we did not manage to confirm a solid plan or plot.
Third Idea
This is the final idea that we decided on. We decided to go with a sci-fi thriller theme opening. The initial inspiration with this came from Heavy Rain/Quantic Dreaming's tech demo clip named Kara.
Other inspirations include Deus Ex - Human Revolution cinematic trailer, Ex Machina and Cyberpunk 2077 trailer.
We wanted to explore the theme of identity.
The first shot will revolve around the main protagonist's head being shown, revealing that they're part human part machine. The camera will then focus on the face, the construction of the body being suggested by the soundscape. The music will start as the protagonist opens their eyes.
Throughout the construction of the body, the shot will jump to a running and chasing scene. The location will be in a city. The shots will primarily focus on closeups and reflections.
Above is the sketch I made in photoshop that would help us visualize what we were after. We planned to take real images and placed them to form something we already envisioned, rather than base our vision on something that already exists.
The sketch is actually based off a combination of 3 images we came up with. One from a scene in the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, another from a concept art of a dystopian city, and another from a street in Japan. I rearranged all the images, so in terms of the rules of perspective, they look cohesive and make sense.
The sketches below show a thumbnail of the girl from the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, to show the relation to the above sketch.
We saw a possibility in actually creating the set in photoshop, rather than film it all live, and use the '2.5D effect', or parallax effect, and shoot pictures of the actors in controlled lighting separately. This way, we would be able to really mold what we want.
Below is a short time lapse of some of the work we did
Final version of the first piece
This is the final piece. At this point of filming, we might just end up using this for the title. Due to how some of the painting is unrealistic, we might add motion blur.
Another thing which we looked at was giving the effect of a 3D plane using 2D images. This means that we would be able to turn this image and give it animated depth.
City shot 1
This came from the Photoshop art we worked on from
before. Looking at the overall project, this scene probably is the most
out of place, even though it received the most attention and work, so we
might just put the title or a name in front of this shot and blur it
out.
City shot 2
City [WIP3]
City [WIP2]
Layers used [WIP1]
Layers used [WIP2]
This is probably the biggest and the most work in a Photoshop painting we've done. When it started, it was a simple painting exercise, with no intention of being part of the project. Because of the nature of this image, being the visual representation of the city the opening revolves around, it had a huge amount of influence on the vision we had for the project.
Due to the complexity of this image, we probably have to approach animating as a 3D plane with a new method, presumably moving the individual layers separately.
Dark Alley shot
This shot was very educational to me, as it introduced the possibility of turning images from 2D into 3D. The original image was just a simple picture of an alley way we found online (legal use). We changed the lighting in Photoshop to make it appear night time and painted on top to make it fit better with the style of the other paintings. We then created vanishing points and exported it to After Effects to move the virtual camera into the painting.
Raining street
This shot originally came from another photo we found online. Praew painted on top of it, again to make it fit with the other paintings. We used vanishing points again, and exported it to After Effects to animate the camera to move upwards. We threw in a rain simulation on top afterwards.
Eyes
Photography and filming is something we did quite late in the project. I think the biggest challenge we had was combining the realism of the protagonist with the graphic paintings. The first shots we took of our actress were just simple closeups on her eyes. We used a single light source that was angle to her left. Praew edited the video we recorded of Xenia's eyes, and animated a robotic themed eye. The movement tracking is not perfect, so we may need to edit some of the keyframe paths, and we also need to blur it accordingly to when the camera blurs.
One of the main features we wanted to focus on was the music for the opening. Music can easily be overlooked and not given enough attention to, and with the condition of having to be legally permitted to use music for our opening, the choice of the right music is severely limited. Because of our specific sub genre, making our own music seemed the way to go. The video above shows the second half of the music writing process, taking about an hour and a half. Some of the glitching sounds came from a project we started only an hour before, but because of a bug the project file crashed, resulting in us starting a new one thinking that the first file was lost. All the sounds heard are built completely from the ground up, although they were not all made specifically for the project in mind. The result was something very minimal and simple, but contained enough crafted sounds to describe the soundscape we were imagining. Sound track 2 + Sound Design Once we progressed further with the editing of the video, we finally had a clearer idea of what we wanted to achieve with the sound. We decided to create a sound track that was inspired by the soundtrack used for the trailer of Cyberpunk 2077. We wanted something that was more exciting and gripping, in order to connect the soundtrack to the genre of thriller.
