VFX WORKSHOP PROMO VIDEO

During March 2019, I created a promotional video for a VFX workshop that I facilitated. The purposes of the VFX workshop were not only to provide knowledge of visual effects to SIAT students and develop their interest in it but to also promote a film festival event “IATSU Film Fest 2019” hosted by the Interactive Arts & Technology Student Union (IATSU) in May 2019. Also, to increase the awareness of climate change as part of the design challenge of the year.

Since I mainly organized this workshop solitarily with small aids from other IATSU committees, I decided to create the promotional video in the same manner as well. I created a storyboard through sketches, directed, filmed, and edited the video in Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Storyboarding

During the early stage, I visualized the shots of the video by sketching them on a storyboard in Photoshop with a written description for each shot, which I used as a reference while filming and it helped me to know how each shot should be filmed.

Shot list

Furthermore, I created a shot list using Google Spreadsheets to provide more details about the camera angle, movement, and shot size of each shot which acted as an instruction for the ways of filming the video.

Videography

During the process of filming, I set up all the lighting, camera, and other filming equipment in SFU Surrey Campus’ green screen room. To make the filming process more efficient, I asked one of the IATSU committees to assist in operating the camera under my direction, while I acted as a stranded traveler in the video.

Since the background of the video is based in the Arctic, I brought my snow clothing, and a powerful fan to mimic the wind of a heavy snowstorm.

With the clear instructions of the storyboard and shot list, the filming process went pretty smoothly.

Iteration 1: Video Editing

During the process, I filtered out all the awful extra shots and selected the best ones to import them into Premiere Pro. To make two different shots transition into each other seamlessly, I matched the timing of the action and position of the actor (me) in the different shots and then cut from there. At the same time, I added some royalty-free sound effects, such as the windy sound to make it more realistic and dramatic.

Iteration 2: Visual Effects

To make the magic work, I imported several background images of the Arctic that I snapshotted from a virtual reality video filmed by Greenpeace International, and some royalty-free smoke footages into After Effects and edited each shot individually. Then, I applied the chromakey effect to erase the green screen background in the original footages and stacked the Arctic background, the actor, smoke footage together in layers.

However, I later noticed there was something off when I previewed the edited shots, it wasn’t as realistic as it seemed. After receiving feedback regarding the edited shots from other committees, I realized it was lacking snowflakes in the air. Therefore, I created a snowing effect from the particle effect and sped it up with motion blur to make it identical to an actual blizzard.

Takeaways

From this project, I learned about the importance of critiques as they helped me spotting errors that I couldn’t discover on my own and to know what the general audience wanted to see. Furthermore, it improved my self-disciple and organizational skills while working mainly independently.