More Pre-Viz: DNA Damage

I have been working on more pre-viz stuff – visualising the DNA being damaged by the cell. There are many things I want to change about this, but I’m trying to resist my perfectionist tendencies and remember that this is only a dry-run for the actual thing.  However I will document what went wrong, and what went right, so that I’ll remember the next time this scene comes around.

Note: this scene now plays out very differently from the animatic – the reason for this being that Angus clarified that the DNA does not go “boom” – the damage is rather more subtle. The photons act more like tiny bullets that punch holes in the DNA (or create a “dimer” – a fusing of two strands). I was rather disappointed to be denied an explosion, so as you will later see (in further changes to the animatic), we have found an excuse for me to blow up an entire cell.

Notes:

• This test was conducted only using one strand, but the final film would show several strands being damaged.
• Obviously the UV ray coming down would be done in post-production, and would match the speed of the “photon” particles better.
• The DNA damage needs to be exaggerated and also slowed down (slow motion…?), and a close-up shot should go in there to better explain the process to the audience.
• The UV ray could come in at a more interesting angle – at the moment it kind of looks like the DNA strand is being abducted!
• The camera could probably be lower down and facing up to give a more dynamic angle.

Back to School…

We came back to university on Monday, only to be thrown headfirst into proceedings with two full-day classes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday’s class was a sound design workshop run by Dawn Campbell, a professional sound designer.  We had to create a completely new soundtrack to a 30-second clip of the film “Megamind.” So Ross, Fraser and I set out with a Roland portable recorder and for three hours we were slamming gates, walking on Shreddies and setting off party poppers, and Fraser narrowly avoided getting arrested in a successful attempt to record some police car sirens (the last part was a joke… sort of).

I have to admit that I was a little complacent going into the editing stage, having used Pro Tools before, but as I found out there is a big difference between using a program and using it properly. In the end we only got eight seconds done, but I think we got it done very well.  New things learned: how to “normalise” tracks (seemingly a form of compression), and also numerous keyboard shortcuts.

Yesterday’s class was run by Dawn’s sister, Sharon Campbell, and was about reflectiing on practice. I have to say that having suffered a few setbacks on my personal project recently it was extremely useful in that I learned to look at these setbacks more constructively.

Which brings me on to my personal project… I have found in recent meetings that the storyboard perhaps is not quite sufficient to communicate all the camera moves, particularly as there are some complex ones involved.  Therefore I have started work on a pre-visualisation animatic, which will also help me with dynamics and animation tests.  Here’s the story so far: