9/22/24
Shoot day
Shooting today went pretty well. From my past experience on sets, we were able to get picture up in about a half hour from arriving at 8am, and broke down set around 10:30. I shot primarily in HDR so getting the HDRI's for the cg assets to be lit correctly has been pretty seamless so far. I made sure to take note of the best light settings in the room, which according to my light meter, 800 ISO, F-stop of 14 and exposure 1/10 seconds, was the best jumping off point to get everything properly exposed. I used my Canon EOS r7, with my 18-300mm lens, taking note of when the zoom changed. I also was able to use the macbeth chart, and grid to be able to get a good gauge on the distortion of the camera and change in light color for the cg to match.
My teammates, Kulin, Eva and Saw all helped with setting up the chrome ball, foam ball, and wood cube for reference. Because of where we ended up shooting, along with having really good natural lighting for what I believe will be an efficient scene extension, and window replacement behind our actor. I shot in raw srgb, and have exported the files as EXRS. As the footage was shot in HDR, getting the right exposure to match on the compositing side should be seamless. We made sure to get plenty of reference while shooting, including cleanplates, LIDAR scans using polycam, and Luma; for additonal hdri support using hdreye.
Our plan has pivoted a bit as we are going to be extending and enhancing the environment based on where we shot. This is going to require a decent amount of Roto-work on my part, which I am going to use a mix of Mocha Pro and Nuke's tracker nodes. I might use some of Nuke's Copycat nodes to try to speed the process up, but I don't believe it will improve the time it takes for Rotoscoping.
9/19/24
Class 4
Our current plan is to shoot on Sunday, 9/22. We have just about finalized the framing based upon the storyboards that are from blocking with my phone. All of the people I have outreached to for assistance across different departments are also confirmed for that day. We are doing it this early so we have as much to work with as possible, in the event we will (likely) need to shoot again, we can work off of what we have already.
For all of the elements that are going to be integrated into live action I am in charge of getting the HDRI's and LIDAR scans on top of shooting the live action shots while on set. Getting the assets I believe is going to take up the most time, but from my past experience on sets it will be worth it in the end.
We are going to be using my Canon EOS R7, to get the HDRI's we are going to be using a chrome ball, along with my fisheye lens filter and HDReye to get as much information as possible and make the rest of my teams jobs as easy as possible with matching lighting, reflections and tone. For getting LIDAR scans, we are going to be using Polycam.
To help with lens distortion, we are going to be using a grid prior to our shots and for color matching, we have access to a Macbeth chart.
Saw, our lighter has acquired and created lighting reference for when we shoot so we have reference. We plan on using as much natural light as possible as we want to add in increased illusion of depth in post which I will be in-charge of doing.
9/18/24
Work Session
We have pivoted our story to fit the idea our mentors mentioned drawing an emphasis to product enjoyment, and show our character inspired from her love and enjoyment of the skittles. How they drive her to create art. Here is our current updated storyboards in sequence, the painting that is on the boards was a temp one while we were deciding on a final painting.
Due to how well known the Mona Lisa is and painter Leonardo Da Vinci, we wanted more creative liberties to be taken in this already whimsical ad and have swapped the artist and art piece out for another renaissance painter, Sofonisba Anguissola and her Portrait of Caterina Micaela of Spain.
9/17/24
Pitch day!
We pitched our idea today along with the rest of the groups, and got very valuable feedback.
We met shortly after that class session to debrief with our notes and plan for where we are going to go from our presentation. A few major updates we have had to the story were to make sure the distinct color of the skittles MEAN something, so we did a LOT more research into the specifics of skittles ads and their history even back to 1971 via Archive.org when they originally had started the brand itself, and still had fruit on the packaging.
We met shortly after that class session to debrief with our notes and plan for where we are going to go from our presentation. A few major updates we have had to the story were to make sure the distinct color of the skittles MEAN something, so we did a LOT more research into the specifics of skittles ads and their history even back to 1971 via Archive.org when they originally had started the brand itself, and still had fruit on the packaging.
During our research, we came across a ton of ads that had the whimsical aspect of skittles ads that define their brand. Lots of burst of the moment segments in time. Similarly to our ad one in particular, they use color and the skittles themselves to bring color to the world. Skittles randomly appear in this ad, practically stumbled upon, so we have pivoted our story to take a page out of that book. Where Skittles are in a burst of inspiration now fall into our characters hand, give her continuous inspiration and an idea to use her joy from the Skittles to create a world of color. This answers the question of why the character uses the skittles to create art.
As was brought up in our presentation and crit, I recruited a few peers in different majors to help my team. MUA & Costume Kaicey Rahn (Production Design 2026), and our actress Ruby Dugan (Performing Arts 2025) will be on set along with my other teammates to assist in the shoot. Kaicey has been kind enough to lend us a renaissance period accurate attire for our actress to really help tell our story.
For the Motion Media Aspects of our ad, I have recruited MOME artist Sarah Greenberg (MOME 2026). We are still in the process of recruiting a sound design major.
