Zandria Ross | Lighting Artist
  • Demo Reel
  • Resume
  • Projects
  • Photography
  • Doll Story

The First Project

10/22/2018

0 Comments

 

Does this Still Count?

For my History of Cinema final, we have to make a project on Cinematic Influences. The project is pretty open. Project examples maybe, but not limited too:  audio commentary for a scene, reconstructions of a notable costume or prop, create a diorama, storyboard a scene, or make a movie poster. We were assigned this project 6 weeks ago, and I couldn't find much inspiration for anything. One idea I did have was to make a 20's style movie poster for my senior film Doll Story. The problem behind that was finding the motivation to draw. So I put off the project until now!

When I was searching for images to match, I was reminded of a project I did in Digital Lighting and Rendering. For the final in that class, we took a shot from a film known for it's cinematography and fully recreated the shot in 3d with a focus in matching the lighting. I began to think about redoing that project and while also using it my History of Cinema class. This is where I find the grey area between personal and class project. Since, I have full reign of what I could have done, I'm deeming this as a personal project.

The more focused search was on! I wanted a scene with a nice camera angle, wide angle shot without any characters, nice lighting! I got some of that. In early cinema, more specifically Early Hollywood, the characters were the focus. They would be center frames and take up a 70% - 80% of the frame. You could say that establishing shots had not been established yet. Eventually, I found several clips of Orson Welles's The Third Man. I remember seeing the film for the first time for a SCAD Cinema Circle showing and remembered several cool scenes. The one in particular, is the one I ended up choosing.

Picture

A Do-able Scene

This is a nearly perfect scene! The lighting is casting this great big ominous shadow on the building. As the man turns the corner, it is revealed that he is holding a bunch of balloons. He keeps walking and his shadow is bounced over a building across the street. I think the most challenging part are the statues in the foreground.

Texturing

​Since everything is grey-scale, I do have the option of texturing in grey-scale or texturing in color then converting to grey-scale. I also think that the textures on the buildings and windows are pretty simple. The ground is very wet. I think I can get away with a mask on the specular.

Lighting

​Based off of the clip, I see about 4 lights, and a sky. 1 light pointed at the main building, 1 light pointing on the side building, 1 light on the statues, and 1 light on the interior walkway of the main building.

Models

The character might be the simplest part of the whole scene. I can create a similar character with Adobe Fuse. Then, bring the character into Mixamo and apply a walk cycle. In MotionBuilder, I can repose one of the arms and have that instantly baked into the animation. Finally, I can model some balloons and parent them to the character. Typing it outs complex, but I have a good idea on how to do this.
​
For the getting the statue models, I will have to find similar models online. I might be able to find photogrammetry scans.

Next Step

I want to do a little research. The scene is very dark, so if I can find where the scene was shot, this will greatly help with layout and finding focal length.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    242 Abbey Road
    Halloween 2020
    Texturing
    The Third Man
    Violin Still Life

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Demo Reel
  • Resume
  • Projects
  • Photography
  • Doll Story