Unit 66 Digital Video Production for Interactive Media

Research

The uses of digital video in interactive media

Digital videos are heavily used within the interactive media industry, for trailers, advertisement, demonstration videos,  review videos and plenty more... So digital videos help quite a lot on an interactive media project.

Some indie film makers enjoy making video parodies of games they like and sometimes they would get hired to help advertise a game by making a short film for the company.

5 examples of video games "re-enacted" in real life

Master Grief - Halo

Short comedic film about Master chief the main character of a fps game franchise called halo.

The film was made by Freddiew who is well know for making fun and silly short films on YouTube.

The film was highly made with comedic purpose in mind. 

The way it was filmed was very professional with clean footage and some lighting effects to make the overall film seem more cinematic. 

Multiple visual effects were used in the film to show different types of things/actions. One of the effects was to show master chief's point of view by filming a kind of first person angle and by adding a visual hud to show what he would be seeing from the inside of his helmet.

Overall the film achieves it's purpose to being a short and funny parody of what happens in the game from on of the NPC point of view.

Sentry Sabotage! - TeamFortress2

Short comedic film showing the type of action that happens within the fps game TeamFortress2.

This Film was made by Corridor Digital on YouTube which are a small film team that usually make short comedic films based off of videogames.

The Short was professionally filmed, with props and some simple acting and it's serves it's purpose at being an enjoyable short film. The films is edited with lots of small short cuts to make it seem a lot more fast pace to go with the action and the film had many special effects like explosions, gun shots and invisibility effects in it and even the use of a 3D model for the sentry turret.

Overall the film achieves it's purpose to being a fun and enjoyable short film that gives a basic insight of the gameplay that happens in TF2.

Rust in a nutshell

Another Short comedic film that shows the game "Rust" in a nutshell.

This short was made by Nukazooka on YouTube who often make short films based off of videogames.

The short film was well filmed, it didn't seem to have any lighting effects but it had many different visual and special effects. There was use of 3D models, a representation of in game UI, popups on resource gathering, blood effects and some shooting effects.

Overall the film achieves it's purpose to being a fun and silly representation of the game Rust.

Assassin's Creed Unity Meets Parkour in Real Life

This Video is one of those cool parkour videos you see from time to time on YouTube, but this one was themed around Assassin's Creed Unity after being commissioned by Ubisoft the company who makes the Assassin's Creed franchise, so basically this video is a cool marketing move.

The film was made by Devinsupertramp on YouTube.

This film was professionally filmed in Paris (to fit the game's lore) and was filmed in public areas.

The films pacing is fast with many small cuts to show that everything is moving quite quickly but there aren't many special effects as their aren't necessary. The music was well fitted and went well with the visuals. Overall the film achieves it's purpose of showing how "real life" assassin would go around the city of Paris.

Portal: Survive!

This Short film is about Chell's escape out of Aperture laboratories and a visual representation of what happened with the apertures employees in the past when they were nearly all killed by GladOS, which is a part of the game lore in Portal.

The film is very well filmed, and I could see it being a really good feature length film if they had the resources. The film uses many different special effects, lighting, the portals and portal gun and Glados which is a 3D model.
Overall the film achieves it's purpose of showing Chell's escape and backstory in real life.

3 extra videos analysis

36,000 Kids You Don’t Want to Mess With

This video is more of a cool music video than anything else.

It shows The Shaolin Temple Kung Fu Academy student's training and daily lives, which is accompanied with some music that goes well with the training.

All the footage in the video is taken from a documentary about the school that National Geographic made and was edited into this music video, it is professionally filmed and edited.

Overall the video does a great job at being a cool insight on the daily lives of students of the academy.

Virtual Reality - SteamVR featuring the HTC Vive

This video is a promotional/advertisement video for valves virtuality headset HTC Vive.

In the video they show footage of people using the headset and interacting with virtual world in VR.

This video was mainly made to promote and show the functionalities of the HTC Vive to get potential customers excited to buy the product.

In the video they show people within the virtual world thanks to a green screen and a special camera that captures the player and the VR world the player is interacting with at the same time.

The video does a great job at showing off the product it's trying to sell.

Amazing Crabs Shell Exchange

This video is a small extract of a documentary film made by the BBC. The video is narrated by david attenborough and it shows the rare event of hermit crabs exchange their shells to have more space to grow in. The video is fascinating to watch as the animal event is truly remarkable and entertaining.

The video's cuts are professionally edited and in time with the narration, which is well mixed with some nice background music.

Overall the video does a great job at showing and explaining the natural animal behaviour/event.

Different video sharing platforms and file formats

Video platforms

Video technology has evolved a lot in the past years and since then a lot of platforms have died or are starting to die. One of the most popular platforms to die is the VHS video cassettes and players as they have now been replaced by DVD's and digital media/content, but even DVD's are starting to die out with instant online streaming that is way more easier to obtain through the internet, Video streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and others.

The most commonly used platform for watching and uploading on the internet is YouTube. And all kinds of different types of content is posted on that website every day.

Video File Formats

"A video file format is a type of file format for storing digital video data on a computer system. Video is almost always stored in compressed form to reduce the file size." 

-Info taken from Wikipedia.

There are many different video file formats that are all used for different reasons, but some of the most common ones are MOV, AVI and MP4 as they are widely used through many different applications.

Click HERE if you want to see more about the different types.

Proposal

Project Introduction

For this project I am required to make a short 3min film with about 2 mins of gameplay from a game of my choice and 1 min of live action footage to represent the game. I have decided that I want to create a short film on the difficult situations and choices that are made in the game FTL: Faster than light.

Constraints of the project
The constraints of this project is that I need to make a short film with gameplay of a game of my choice and live action footage that I will film myself.

Context of the project

have a look at research part for some professional short film outcomes that involve videogames.

Initial Ideas for the project

For my film I have decided to create a short film of myself playing "FTL:faster than light" and struggling to get out of a bad situation in the game. I have also decided that I will be using Adobe After Effects to do all the editing and special effects.

Deliverables

My main target and goals for this project is to: research well edited media videos, come up with a video idea and a game that i could use for gameplay, make/produce the film and get the final film reviewed by different people.

Evaluation Methods

To evaluate how good my short film will be, I will be showing it to multiple people and will be uploading it to YouTube to get feedback.

Ideas Generation

To come up with some film ideas I created a mind map for some possible videogames I could make a short film with. I mainly just chose some of my favourite games.

Games list and some ideas:

• DarkSouls - short film on the many horrible way you can die in the game.
• FTL - short film of being stuck in a deadly situation.
• Skyrim - short film about an amazing adventure in Skyrim
• Rust - Short film about bucket helmets
• Garry's Mod - short film about prop hunt which is a special game mode within the game
• Please don't touch anything - short film about having a button that should not be touched
• Binding of Isaac - short film about the life of Isaac
• Darkest dungeon - short film about the monsters of the game

After thinking about the different games I could do a short film of , I decided to do a short film of the game FTL aka: Faster Than Light, I was also tempted to do the Rust idea.

Faster than light is a rogue-like strategy space game that has the player controlling a spaceship with a crew, the goal in the game is to go through multiple solar systems while trying to survive all kinds of situations, like being invaded by pirates attacked by the rebellion or going through asteroid fields.
I decided to do a short film on this game as it is one of my favourite games and I also have never seen somebody make a short film of this game before.

The game is very sci-fi and futuristic, so it would be cool if I could make the short film represent sthat in some way and I was thinking of having myself play the game through a hologram.

FTL mood board

Some FTL gameplay to show what the game is like.

The game is quite well known for being quite hard and unforgiving.

My ideas for the short film

My main idea is to have a short film of me playing the game and having to pause the game to make difficult decisions as my ship is about to get destroyed in combat. In the film while the game is paused I will eventually realise that there is no way out of the situation and that my only option is to play the game and let my ship get destroyed.

Originally my first idea for the film was to have myself playing the game on a futuristic holographic board with a 3D model of the ship and the rooms inside I thought this could be a great challenge to make a do, but the only problem is that I have 0 experience in making special effects of that kind and I really didn't have the time to learn how to make that, so instead  I have decided to make a simpler hologram effect that I would learn to make thanks to some online tutorials i found recently.

Location, feel and ambience of the short film

Currently I'm thinking of filming it in my room at home and having myself play the holographic game at my desk with some kind of device that is projecting the holographic screen.

Ideas Development

Storyboard

Panels by number from left to right

1. Beginning footage of the game being started up and played and then skipped to the part where the player finds himself in a tricky situation.
2. the game get's paused and the camera zooms out to reveal that the game is being played on a holographic screen.
3. closeup shot on the eyes of the playing, the player is frowning at the current situation. this shows the viewer that the player is in trouble in the game.
4. View of the back of the player to show the whole scene. the player is worried that he might lose.
5. Front view of the player. The player is trying to think of a solution to get out of the current situation.
6. another closeup on the players eyes. The player is looking around the screen to find some kind of way to counter the enemy's attack.
7. View of the back of the player. The player is interacting with the holographic screen and still searching for a way of defence.
8. Front view of player. Player shrugs to show that there is no solution other than being really lucky and hoping the projectiles miss.
9. Closeup of the spacebar being pressed ti resume the game.
10. Game view of the player's ship exploding after being hit with missiles and a game over screen popping up.
11. Full Scene view of the player walking away from the game out of frustration that he lost.
12. end screen of film. 

Live Action video shot List
This is the list of live action footage that I need to record for the film.

Shot #1 

Scene 1, Zoom out of hologram to show table scene

props include: Keyboard, Mouse, table and holographic device (phone or something)  

Shot #2

Close up on eyes of character 3rd scene & 6th scene

Camera: Extreme close up

Shot #3

Scenes 4 & 7 showing the back of the player at the table in front of the hologram

Props include: Table, chair, keyboard and mouse

Camera: Mid Shot

Shot #4

Scenes 5 & 8 showing the character figuring out a plan then giving up. 

Props include: Table, chair, keyboard and mouse

Camera: Mid Shot

Shot #5

Scene 9 showing the spacebar being pressed

Camera: extreme close up

Shot #6

Final Scene of the player walking out of the room

Props include: Table, chair, keyboard and mouse

Camera: Mid Shot

Making the film

To film the movie I will be using a 

Samsung galaxy S4 phone with a small tripod as the camera quality on this phone is HD.

Before I actually started to make the final film I first wanted to do a test to see if I was capable at creating a hologram effect with Adobe After effects so I did a quick test film.

I needed to follow a few different tutorials on youtube to achieve the effect I wanted but eventually I managed to make something that looked pretty good.

Screen shot of the footage with the hologram in After effects

I think that the test turned out quite well and I am now a lot more comfortable with using Adobe illustrator to creating simple visual effects. In the final film I won't have monitors.

Now that i'm more comfortable with Adobe after effects and i know how to make a basic hologram it is now time to film all the raw live action footage.

But before I do that I'm going to need some raw footage of the gameplay to use for the hologram and start of film. So i spent about 2 hours playing the game while recording, surprisingly I did quite well within the game, I managed to get to the end boss without collecting many weapons for my ship. Once I got to the End boss I knew I wouldn't survive so I was quite confident in getting the right footage for the film.

For the main scene I took away my monitors and I placed my phone in it's place, the phone will serve as the hologram device/emitter to explain where the hologram is coming from.

This is the set-up I had to use to capture close ups of my face.

 And this is the set-up I used to capture myself from the back

When filming myself I would do multiple takes for the same scene just in case I didn't like some of the takes. This proved to be very useful as the final take i would do would usually be the best out of the lot. 

Here are some screenshots of the editing of the raw footage 

and adding in the holographic footage.

I found that the hardest thing to film and edit was the raw footage of the camera zooming out from the screen to show the desk and hologram. The main problems with filming this was that I didn't have any good way of doing a smooth zoom out so the raw footage ended up being quite fast and shaky. I changed this in After effects by using a warp stabilizer and by slowing down the footage a bit. The outcome of the zoom out isn't perfect but it is a lot better than how it looked in the raw footage.

another new thing that I added to the hologram that is different to my test film is the floating holo rings between the hologram and the projector (phone), I thought that it would be a nice addition/touch to make it look a bit more sci-fi and stylized.

After doing all the edits and special hologram effects within Adobe AfterEffects I went on to taking all the edited footage into Adobe Premier Pro (Premier Pro is for video composing and editing) to assemble all the footage together to create the whole film. The process took quite a lot of time as i didn't have much knowledge with Adobe Premier pro and I also didn't find it very enjoyable.

While I was assembling all the footage in Premier Pro I realised that it would be best to change certain things that i had planed out in my Storyboard as certain footage wasn't really usable.

I also felt like my story wasn't very fun as it starts off quite slow and ends with the player losing and just walking away, so at the end of my film after the player leaves the room and before the end sequence I added THIS image for a second or so, it pops up and then the end sequence appears. The Phrase "So much salt" or "Salty" is a gaming term that is used to explain how somebody's feels after being beat in a game. The phrase is a way of depicting somebody who is bitter and angry and it's usually quite funny.

Adding this image adds comedic value to the end of the film making it more funny then it is sad. And I'm hoping that those who recognize the phrase will find it funny and laugh.

The final short film

Viewer comments
#1- cool film. starts slow but then get's more interesting and it has a funny ending.

#2- Slow beginning. Loved that the phone is the projector, I liked the "too much salt" but i think it could be improved.

#3- That's pretty good, but I don't think the "too much salt" joke should be there as it's too silly in my opinion, but overall i think it's a good short film.

Final Evaluation

Overall I think my approach towards the design cycle for this project has 

been pretty well thought out and executed.

My research was pretty well made and I had many different examples of videos to get inspired by although I could of done a bit more research on the different video sharing platforms and file formats.

I had a look at many different types of videogames to base my film on, when doing my ideas generation and I felt like it was a great idea to do a short film on FTL as it is not a very well known game and I haven't seen any other short films based on that game before so it's very new.

My plan for making the short film was well detailed with a fair explanation for each thing i had planned, and my execution for the plan went very well.

The After Effects and Premier Pro editing was quite difficult to do with my lack of knowledge on how the software functions but even then I managed to create what I wanted.

And I feel like my short film turned out better than what I was expecting so overall i'm quite happy with the outcome.

But if I were to do a project like this again I would definitely change a few of my approaches, but it would mainly be small things like the way I filmed the zooming out shot, instead of just using my hands I should of attached the camera to a bigger object in oder to have less shaky footage, and then I would change other things like the way i use Premier Pro and certain software techniques.

Making a show-reel video

This is my 2 minute showreel of my best work