The Return of Nibiru - Trailer

This is the final piece submitted for Haydn and Alex's final major project. Some rough scenes will be replaced, whilst a feature film script is soon to be developed. Watch out at the cinemas in a few years time, this will be the next British Blockbuster.

Trailer Analysis

This video has my voice over explaining why I have chosen to have the shot look like this, etc. What more can I say? just watch the vid.

Evaluation

At the start of the project I was a bit lost with exactly what I should do, I knew that for a final major I needed to create something actually worth doing which I would want industry to look at and that I’d be proud of. After some conversation Haydn and me decided that for a project this important two heads were better than one, in the past we worked together and struggled somewhat. These times however I feel as though we had learnt from our previous experience to be more compromising towards the other member, we also understood that in order for a successful working relationship you have to release an amount of creative control.

We started the project by thinking seriously into planning the project and decided that a script idea, which Haydn had written, would make for a good piece to create. Due to the nature of the script it was destined to be a visual effects extravaganza. We started to look at films and trailers, which were out there and soon discovered that a trailer would be the best application of our time. Seen, as it was Haydn’s original idea we decided that he should have control of the script. After a few treatments the script was pretty much concluded, at this time we were unaware how long each shot should be within the trailer so shot a lengthened version to give maximum editing opportunity. Haydn delegated himself the job of sorting actors out, seen as he had a few contacts on his cast call pro already it made sense. The large number of applicants we had for each field more than surprised us both, I am unsure what the final count was but I’m sure it was at least forty. After whittling down due to location and cost we arranged a casting session, which lasted an entire day with the remaining applicants (one actor being from Hollyoaks). After initial thoughts we reviewed the audition footage and cast our final actors. We had a predominant amount of green screen related shoots that were shot over a week, at first we had a few issues lighting correctly, but by the second then third got progressively faster and better at doing it. Location shoots have always been an issue for both Haydn and me seen, as we are not allowed any equipment out without a car we haven’t been able to really go anywhere, which is really quite annoying. I recently got a canon 550d that shoots 1080p HD footage, this allowed us to go out to a psychologist office and use the location for part of our shoot. I was not used to all the settings on this due to how it was very new so some of the original shots are not that good but I had not visited the location before to check about art direction. For the shots we used a 50mm 1.4fps lens that looks really nice.

In post we had a massive amount of work I had lots of CG elements to produce that due to how the files are huge took some considerable time to render, I had to learn about pyroclusters, emitters and effectors and the way they would work for me. I also experimented and used quite heavily programs such as xbreaker, xplode and a newer option thrausi, these automatically break a polygonal object into many separate parts and adds dynamics for realistic impact. When producing some of the effects I realized that having a second member to talk to work about meant that time was not as wasted being blinded by enthusiasm. I created the titles previously and simply used the original after effects and changed the type. Also Haydn and I collaborated on the spaceship that was more realistic to industry in the sharing of resources.

To conclude I have to say that the final piece is everything that we said it would be. It is an exciting and highly professionally finished piece. The sound is fantastic thanks to an external sound engineer and I have to say that both Haydn and me are extremely proud to put our names on this. Personally I think this is the best piece that I have been part of on this course and it is something that I hope to enter into competitions and send to production houses and funding bodies.

VFX Breakdown

This video demonstrates a quick breakdown through all the visual effects shots I have composite and produced in cinema4d along with some basic looks applied in final cut to colour grade blending all the shots together for continuity purposes. It is probably one of the most important videos on the blogger showing how the layers are built up to give the overall visual effects.

Green Screen Shoots - Development

Not much more to say about this one apart from I've found out that these were taken at alisons shoot. HR

We tried her body at a few different angles to see whether that would change the look and feel and also to give options towards editing the footage and compositing later. AM

Green Screen Shoots - Development

Here are some images taken of one of our many green screen shoots. I'm not sure which one exactly as we had five including auditions and I've only just found these images knocking about my hard drive. Anyway it shows we know how to set all the equipment up and get a perfect flat back light on a screen to making keying a walk in the park... nice.

The Return of Nibiru - Trailer Edit

Preliminary export, this was used for the purpose of giving to the sound design and music producer so he can put his magic touch on it. Can't wait to hear it, and feels good to have the final video done and dusted a few days before hand-in. HR

This is pretty much as Haydn says, the sound was a bit iffy in places due to how on the days of location shoot the boom mic adapter was not available. However i'm sure that the skills the sound producer has will be good enough to equalize the levels and create professional sound. AM

Costume Hire for Lightning Shot

After all the effort we went through of casting the first time round it seems silly to go through all that effort again for a quick shot where the face doesn't necessarily have to be seen. So for this lightning shot I decided to dress up as an old man to get blown to smithereens by a bolt of lightning. I think the shot works really well. Certainly better than the video copilot tutorial, the elements that gave it the edge, are subtle things like; the fine rain, the umbrella, the car in the background and the piece of meat composited to look like a fleshy mess. Anyway the point of this post is to say I've been hiring costumes again, it was only around £10 which along with a bit of time I'm prepared to spend to create a shot like this.

New Look Newsreader alison - development

This is the new studio I composited together for alison, I'm not sure about the graphics at the bottom right corner. This will be resurrected if there is time at the end of the project to polish one or two things up.

Whilst I'm talking about newsreader development stuff I may as well qickly explain that I have just finished directing Alex with his newsreader and we have also a little news intro helping to separate the intro of the trailer with main tension building scenes. Anyway, I'll comment more on that when Alex post the videos for these scenes.

Asteroid Composite

Alex made me a pretty cool looking asteroid using a plugin called pyroclusters in C4D. We took some nice footage of an underpass the other day, where you can see cars on the bridge above that were just itching to get taken out. This was a "must do" sort of shot for me, especially after David was unable to play the part of the crazy religious guy getting annihilated by an asteroid. Any way I'm loving the tacky CGI look. Although I didn't want to go down this route initially, I'm know thinking that this is the best way to go about the producing a finished piece we can be satisfied with.

Spaceship Finished - The Anunnaki Moonship

Ok so this ship was basically put together using elements from Alex's earlier spaceship, duplicated, morphed and plugged in around a giant rock to give the desired effect of the Anunnaki moonship. I won't to come up with something unique for the spaceship. I managed to come up with this, ok so it looks pretty random but there's a concept behind this ship. I came up with the idea by trying to image what sort of tech we would have if we were 450,000 years more advanced. The best I could come up with is that they have inhabited their moon and by some kind anti-gravity forcefield they are able to live quite happily on a moonship. I've tried to find reference to my idea but seems fairly unique indeed, the closest thing to it is the magnetic floating ground in Avatar but there to dissimilar, it would be like saying district 9 is a rip off of ET purely because it's a film with alien in it.

Backplate - Newsroom

I spent ages trying to work out a good background shot for this newsreader footage, in the end I just decided to render out an image of Europe from my C4D Earth as I wanted to suggest this is a European continental news network, I'm not sure if there is such a thing but for this film it works perfectly as the world is forced into a one world government. As we are currently bailing out europe for the financial state they are in, it seems we are as much a part of Europe as we have ever been. This image has been blurred and put into the composition beneath different layers of still and motion graphics.

Spaceship

I liked the idea of a large imposing craft, me and Haydn had initially thought of something very technological looking and floating planet like, as to not clash with avatar flying cones of earth are out the window and a more spherical shape is what is going to be used. I had wanted to make it district 9 style seen as that is of cinematic grade but Haydn rightly pointed out we dont want to be a copy. He a ship model in maya which we liked but was unfortunately too cliche in terms of its correlation with star trek, even though this is huge again for reasons of similarity it was written off. I created a ship in C4d that was like the one from district 9 which i liked the look off but was far too similar. Seen as Haydn had an idea i gave him the model i had made which he took assets from to create the ship which was used in the final piece.



i had also initially played with mograph within c4d and made this simple animation which was going to be an element of the ship but due to how the emphasis was on scale and style over detail this idea was dropped.

Anunnaki Mothership Moodboard - Research

I've been trying to think of a mothership that could be unique, as this is something that has been explored many different times with often similar looking results I figured the only choice I have is to jump on the bandwagon.

I started trying to think what we might create if we were about 500,000 years more advanced. This involved thinking about what sort of technology they might have, amongst nuclear fusion power which we are just about learning to harness the power of, the one thing I found most interesting is anti-gravity.

Taking a massive object for example a moon out of orbit and using this as a mothership is fairly unique.. I think. This would be depicted with mechanical structures on the top of the moon to suggest it is inhabited whilst the moon it's self would be an elongated spherical shape with craters and jagged edges.

Reptilian Moodboard - Research

Reptoids range from five and a half to 9 feet in height. They have lean, firm bodies with powerful arms and legs. They have long arms with three long fingers and an opposable thumb. Their feet have three toes and one recessed fourth that is toward the back side of their ankle. The claws are short and blunt. They do not have teats on their upper torso nor do they have a navel.

There appears to be no bridge between the Reptoids eyes. Their nasal openings are at the end of a small, flattened nose and are described as two small slits that slant upwards in a V formation. 

Reptilian beings have no body or facial hair. Occasionally, eyewitnesses observed reptilian beings with thin, fleshy spines under their chins. From a distance, the spines are often misidentified as hair. (Even today, one can find lizards with these same fleshy spines under their chins. They are called Bearded Lizards.)

http://www.reptoids.com/Vault/phydes.htm

Anunnaki Moodboard - Research

The Anunnaki are a humanoid race very similar to us. They in my findings are Giants from 9 to 14 feet tall, beautiful and muscular. Super strong They are Caucasian white, light skinned blonde humans, with eye shapes asian style. blue to Albino eyes vary on person. They have a larger brain EXTENDED back of their SKULL- NOT UPWARD but STRAIGHT BACK capacity noticed only in a PROFILE VIEW, The males let their beards grow, but don't think of an old man of Earth. Think of the Powerful Greek God ZEUS.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=421452435&blogId=475961735

The Return of Nibiru - In-Depth Treatment

The Return of Nibiru is the prequel of a "future-cinema" style trilogy. It explores the idea of combining modern scientific theory with ancient religion and conspiracy theory, through the medium of a three-part feature film spectacular. The screenplay follows a fictional story of young man (Jack Rodigan) struggling to understand the world around him. As many young individuals in this situation often do, he turns to a life of celebrating the end of the week with a cocktail of recreational drugs and legal highs. Whilst for many years Jack seemed relatively unaffected by this large intake of narcotic substances, one over-indulgent night left Jack questioning reality.

The film begins with the monologue of a young man walking down a busy street with a rucksack slung over his right shoulder, philosophising about the world around him. Jack arrives at a friends door, once inside it is made apparent that Jack was carrying a large selection of drugs, these drugs combined with sleep paralysis will later result in the out of body experience which will open Jack's mind to a series of unimaginable events. Through the means of a psychedelic vision Jack is telepathically transmitted knowledge of;

Creationism
This story is taken from ancient Sumerian beliefs, engraved in clay tablets, found in Iraq and translated by Professor Sitchin. The gods in this belief system were physical gods that lived on Earth, they came from a planet called Nibiru which has an elongated orbit through our solar system, returning every 3,600. These gods are called the Anunnaki, they created humans as a slave race to mine gold and other minerals out of the Earth. (Draw on famous religious quotes "god made man in his own image," etc…)

Own Ideas
Cash for Gold and many adverts like this are initiatives sparked by the Government after they discovered the Anunnaki will reward the ones with most gold with great power. LHC tares a whole in the space time continuum causing a portal to appear, leading to the lower fourth dimension. The Elkein are a fictional race of humanoid beings from a planet within Orion's Nebula and are the creators of the Anunnaki, they designed them to create humans as a tool of knowledge.

Conspiracy
The world is ruled by a race of Shapeshifting Reptilians. Developed from the work of David Icke which suggests that all the ruling classes are shapeshifting reptilians from the lower fourth dimension. These ruling classes are part of secret society called the Illuminati.

Science theory meets science fiction
Much of what we now know about the Universe is only provable through equations and theories. Whilst some theories are beginning to be tested and put to use, eg. LHC and Nuclear Fusion.. there is still lots to explore. Trying to get an idea of what a race of humanoid beings that are 450,000 years more advance than ourselves would know, is incredibly difficult. The best things I could come up with are; nearly immortal, ie defied the ageing process, resistant to all diseases on most planets. Anti-gravity moving extremely large objects effortlessly, harnessing the energy of the sun, weather systems to there full potential. Whilst I believe their minds would be far more developed, they use technology to communicate telepathically and have an invisibility option on the clothes they wear.

Back to the Screenplay
After a drug fuelled night out Jack has been confronted with some of these thoughts and visions. He wakes up feeling bewildered by what he saw and heard. Walking out of his bedroom into the lounge, a couple of his housemates mock him for some of the things he shouted out during his trip. One says jokingly "yeah it sounded like he was talking about this," pointing at the television. The Newsreader reads; "In our main news tonight, Nasa has officially released these images of a mysterious celestial body, astronomers believe that this new found planet is what the ancient Sumerians called planet Nibiru."

The realisation that what happened in Jack's vision is now happening in reality occurs and Jack passes out due to shock. After a series of psychologist meetings and carnage occurring from the gravitational pull of our new celestial neighbour, it becomes apparent that the two events are most definitely linked. As this story develops so does the corruption in the governments and the ruling classes, combined with social chaos, as it seems the Rapture has come.

The Anunnaki are portrayed as the villain by the media, accused of being modern day pirates, whilst the true meaning of why they have returned to Earth is hidden from public knowledge. The Anunnaki need the gold to protect their planet, reflecting powerful and damaging UV raise as the pass close to the sun. The Humans and the Anunnaki agreed that any gold they find would be given to the Anunnaki on their return in repayment for the gift knowledge and consciousness. The Anunnaki discover that the gold is being used as the main route of evil on Earth, therefore returning to Earth to liberate their creation once more.

Whilst the Anunnaki first suspect natural human greed to be the cause of the refusal to repay the debt, as they story develops they become aware that the arch enemy of all humanoids in the universe is to blame. The Reptilians have been causing humans suffering on Earth for thousands of years, enslaving them whilst slowly stock piling all the gold to hold ransom when the Anunnaki return. The Reptilians have done this in attempts to cause friction between humans and the Anunnaki in order to make them destroy each other.

It looks as though the Reptilian plan has worked as the United Earth Armed Forces begin to the Anunnaki mothership. Whilst exchanges begin to take place between the UEAF and the Anunnaki mothership, society becomes divided as leaked archive footage of Jack's experiences is aired international news. Shortly after LHC scientist claim they have opened a portal to the lower fourth dimension, this leads to an army of shapeshifting reptilians spilling out into the third-dimension, slaughtering humans with laser beams and weapons we couldn't even begin to imagine.

The UEAF struggle to put up any resistance against the reptilians, after it seems that all hope is lost the Anunnaki join forces to fight the reptilians, causing the greatest battle the world has ever seen, much of the world as we know it is destroyed in the process, yet the humanoids emerge victorious. Just as it seems that all's well that end well a mysterious spaceship comes down from the heavens. A small humanoid being gets out. An Elkein from a planet within Orion's Nebula, begins to explain, the Anunnaki were created, to make the humans with the ability and knowledge to create their own universe.

This builds the story for the finale, the final feature film will look at how to create a universe and humanoid development after the great humanoid/reptilian war, whilst the second release looks more at the history and creation of the Anunnaki then the humans and how the reptilians took control.

Alison News - Development

I showed parts of this clip in a recent tutorial suffering some heavy criticism for it which is a good thing as it was all constructive. Basically the problem lies with the fact that the entire newsroom backplate I have made is contradictory of itself, the blurred out city background is an image of melbourne found on the net which suggest local news but the lighting and much the graphic elements suggest national or international news. at least there is still plenty of time to resurrect these problems

Alison News Test - Development

This is an initial test render for newsreader alison, it's looking alright for a first attempt however the footage could maybe benefit from having some curves placed on alison to crush the blacks.

Concept Art - The Anunnaki

Ok so here is the next instalment of Anunnaki Designs. Again I think they're spot on, just how I imagined them. Unfortunately we couldn't use keevas skills for more of this project.

Concept Art - Reptilian ideas

This is amazing I wish that we had been working with Keeva from the start awith the role of general artist, If I need to visualise something Keeva can practically draw what I'm thinking. Here she's drawn an armed reptilian but she drew the less humanoid head on it so we have another full bodied reptilian which was exactly what I had in mind. That's a quick turnaround if you ask me, unfortunately Keeva's unavailable now due to uni work but she has asked me to get in touch when I next need some artwork, which I am sure I will. It's good to work with people that are enthusiastic about their work and she's fairly skilled as well.

shape shift/eye replacement test - Development

This is a bit of an upgrade from the last test of this shot I did, whilst the lighting and background is an improvement, the composition still isn't convincing enough. I'll give it another go after looking at some other reference images and effetcs.

Asteroid Test

I tried applying a car bomb explosion to the comp to see how it would work with the asteroid and the car, this involved using the action essentials from video copilot and an asteroid made by Alex

shape shift/eye replacement test - Development

Original shape shift/eye replacement test. The effects aren't too bad on Daz but the background looks fairly poor.

Concept Art - The Anunnaki

In these sets of pictures, keeva has developed some Anunnaki from my descriptions and moodboards. I asked her to show the progression from human to anunnaki. The involves adding an extended backward cranium, a gold like beard, being between 9-14 ft tall and generally just being a bit of an upgrade from us.

Concept Art - Reptilian ideas

I decided to get back touch with my storyboard artist to see whether she would be interested in doing some concept art for the project, it just so happens that she did. I gave her some direction, made moodboards with a brief description and she set about generating some ideas, I decided from these the best thing to go for is the more humanoid looking reptilian as this would morph more convingly. We are only speaking hypothetically at this moment as these characters would be far too time consuming and difficult for us to produce in the amount of time and the capabilities of the computers we have on hand, however this is good practice now to get my head around what they look like in order to be in a better position in the event that an investor choose to take a chance on the film but will only do so if I can describe to him what the reptilians look like. It shows we have developed a thorough understanding of how our characters look even though we can't actually produce them at this stage in the game.

Maya Modelling - Anunnaki Mothersip

Here are some quick render results for the Anunnaki mothership I've recently modelled, it is textured only with a dark gray blinn at the moment and lit with a basic two-point lighting.

There is reason behind the style in which I have produced this ship in this way; "Chariots of the gods" is a book which some of our preliminary research was taken from.

This gave me an idea for the style spaceship the Anunnaki might use, I tried to think of how a spaceship might look if it was to be based on the style chariot driven by demonic faced front hub to suggest why mankind would believe this is a spaceship driven by the oppressors.

Topped off with heavy artillery and small guns on the main rear hub coupled with a small detachable voyager trailing behind for close contact battles. Everything about this ship screams "don't mess."

C4D Planets - Earth, Moon & Nibiru

After deciding to attempt producing planets in C4D it became apparent that for certain jobs C4D can give more professional results than Maya. These include a self-illumination option which Maya doesn't appear to have, among other things such as quicker render times, a more user friendly interface and an overall more impressive result

Video Copilot - Lightning tutorial

I followed this rather lengthy tutorial by video copilot. It was well worth it because now I will have a much better of how to do this shot in particular along with some nice compositing, sky replacement and colour grading techniques which will come useful when I get in to the main compositing in a couple of weeks.

Reptilian Newsreader - Hisses then semi-shape-shifts

There's masses of videos like these on youtube, they all seem to do a similar sort of thing. Morphing round the eyes and nose before cutting back to normal. I want to believe it's nothing more than poor compression and digital distortion quality but honestly who knows?

The Return of Nibiru - Auditions

These videos are a collection of auditions edited together for The Return of Nibiru Trailer. The actors that particularly stood out are; David & Daz, Stephen was also quite strong and also looked the part. The strongest two newsreader were Alison & Susan. The names mentioned had certain characteristics, looking and acting better than the rest.

West Yorkshire Playhouse Costume Hire

For this production we're going to be needing a a straight-jacket and some white trousers. The West Yorkshire Playhouse costume hure is the ideal place to try scope an outfit like this out. The Price was fairly reasonable with student discount off the overall cost this place was a life saver.

Storyboard Animatic

I finally managed to find a reliable storyboard artist, a fine art student from the met by the name of Caoimhe (Keeva) Sweeney. I gave her a copy of my script, the cast guide and a couple of test shots we've already done and she said she would call me if there's any problems, there was one or two quick questions but no major issues. She gave me just short of 50 could quality sketches, which represented the idea perfectly. I've since cropped them in photoshop and put them in to a timeline in Final Cut to make this animatic so I could get an idea for how the story will flow. I would post all the scan on the blog but I suppose it would be quite pointless really as the same pictures are here with movement.

Key Shot List

Scene 1 - Intro (studio)

Scene 2 - Newsreader (studio)

Scene 3 - Skyline Shots (street)

Scene 4 - Psychologist (room)

Scene 5 - Crazy Guy (street/studio)

Scene 6 - Newsreader (studio)

Scene 7 - Lightening shot (street)

Scene 8 - Newsreader (studio)

Scene 9 - Psychologist (office)

Scene 10 - Spaceship in the sky (street)

Scene 11 - Illuminati (studio)

Scene 12 - Newreader (studio)

Scene 13 - Psychologist (room)

Scene 14 - Anunnaki (studio)

Scene 15 - Psychologist (room)

Scene 16 - Newsreader (studio)

This helped us see how many scenes we have and what locations they will be shot at. As they won't be shot in a linear order we needed to make sure that we don't miss anything out on the shoot dates.

Psychologist rooms

Psychologist rooms

Psychologist rooms

Psychologist rooms

Psychologist office/rooms

Cast Guide

After Spending some time carefully watching the rushes of the auditions we held the other week, we have selected the following cast members to star in these roles;