The Return of Nibiru

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.