”A(LONEly)”
For this VFX cinemagraph storyboard project, I decided to explore themes circling around being alone, isolation, silence. With the events through the whole of 2020, world-wide and personal, I wanted to tell my own experiences regarding this matter.
While we are in progress of the second lockdown, and with online learning in place, I have observed the time I have spent alone. And truth be told, that is a lot of time.
What I noticed was that even if I was completely alone, I didn’t feel lonely. I have assignments to do and lectures to attend, sure, but the time I spend with only myself helped me get to know myself a bit better.
While being in solitude, my interests were always on the top of my list. With no expectations from others, the boldness to try and giddiness to fail and learn from it was reheated. The self-reflection and self-expression became my main priority, to go and discover yourself.
The idea of taking isolation, loneliness, caged up feelings, and emotions and making them turn, evolve into freeing solitude, opportunities for self-discovery, and comfortable silence. I want to illustrate this transformation in my cinemagraph project.
I want to use the lighting to create an airy, safe, comforting feeling, to establish a separation between the outside (busy streets, train tracks), and inside (comfort bubble, personalized space).
The sketches around the concept of being alone, but not lonely. I used them to generate some basic shot ideas as well as bits of animations I could put in.
Experiments with photography
After thinking and sketching out the general ideas of the shots, I moved on to the photography side of the assignment. Trying to get a hang of the manual settings and experiment with them.
While working on the general concept, I started to think about the negative and positive sides of being alone. I have noticed from my own experiences the transformation from being lonely to enjoyable and peaceful solitude.
To move on, I defined the progression steps, stages I want to explore:
- Loneliness/isolation – silhouetted figure near the window, staring while the train passes by.
- Frustration/creative block – empty page/sketchbook, the table is full of mess and discarded paper.
- Reflection – reflection in the mirror opens its hand where an origami bird is sitting.
- Self-expression/comfort – a cup of tea, full pages of a sketchbook, comfort through familiar spaces.
The shots will be getting brighter and more vibrant as shots progress to show the transformation, acceptance of the situation.
After the ”Reflection” I want to put origami cranes in the shots, to symbolize the silent presence of a companion. To show how the connections and relationships can still be strong and felt even if the distance of separation is huge.
STORYBOARD
Raw footage / screenshots
PRODUCTION / EDITING
After completing and compiling raw clip material for production, I moved on to learning the basic functions and features of NUKE. The nodes mechanics were challenging to get a grip on at first. The biggest struggle I experienced while producing cinemagraphs was drawing masks while keeping an eye on the shadows for them to look natural. But overall working with NUKE was enlightening and I am intrigued by its other mechanics that could be efficiently used while producing other projects.
FINAL RENDER SCREENSHOTS
I decided to put a black and white filter on the first part of the project to enhance the transition, the break that happens after the ”REFLECTION” shot. My goal was to stress the contrast, emphasize the metamorphosis that shapes throughout the clip. By adding chromatic aberrations I wanted to create an eerie, unsettling feeling, isolation, and separation.
CRITICAL APPRAISAL
Through the whole process, I set the goal for myself: to realize my concept and acquire as much knowledge about visual effects, theoretical and practical sides of it. And I am pretty happy with the outcome that I managed to produce with a given time frame and limited beginner’s skills regarding the subject.
The beginning – concept generation – was a tricky part to start with. I knew I wanted to produce something that would reflect my personal view on the chosen subject, but the general concept came only after researching and looking for inspiration, creating a mood board. After that, expanding the concept and making a storyboard out of it was quite fun and intriguing.
Production stage – filming the clips. I am satisfied with the composition aspect of the shots and the movements I managed to capture. However, I knew that I am not as proficient or skilled in the art of photography yet. For the next time, I would make myself take an even more daring approach to cinematography: use more experimental exposure, try to further myself from my comfort settings and concepts even more.
Post-production – creating cinemagraphs and editing. The stage of creating cinemagraphs was probably the shortest. By watching and following the tutorials provided, I managed to get a grip on basic compositing tools in NUKE and create my cinemagraphs without much hustle. While editing I modified the clips to have a saturation shift through the whole project. To emphasize the point where peaceful solitude bleeds into constricting loneliness, conceptual shift. After some debating, I made a choice to cut out the last frame. It didn’t look right and the concept of it wasn’t communicated clearly. Additionally, I add audio to the clips. They all are connected through the noises of outside transport and by using it I wanted to establish unchanged physical space.
Coming to conclusion, I am proud of what I managed to achieve, even if my personal constrictions stopped me from trying a more daring approach. I had fun working on my A(LONEly) concept and its realization from beginning till the end.