Lynth Update #12
Despite a week of technical problems and several team members catching Covid, we’re not in too bad of shape. we are not where we had hoped to be, but it could be a lot worse. Most members were able to complete their blocking shot revisions on time but we were still unable to get everything into Unreal Engine for render tests and for set dressing to be done more reliably. I want us to be at a bare minimum of that point by the end of next week. Ideally I would like to also get a few people started on polishing up some animations and moving them along. We also absolutely need to have a stepped pass to the sound guys by then so they can start getting their sound effects in order.
After viewing our animatic last week, another teammate and I sat down and pinpointed errors and problems in the blocking shots and divvied out adjustments that people needed to make. Most of these changes have been implemented successfully but some shots will still need another pass this week. We also added in a few extra shots that shouldn’t add to much work but will hopefully add a lot to the continuity, emotion, and pacing. Overall I made either adjustments or full creations of around eight shots and gave some guidance to other teammates for a few other shots. I also set up a rig that allows us to use and maneuver the teeth from Lynth form 4 with the Lynth form 3 rig that a teammate modeled for a specific transformation shot we have. I’m horrible at rigging but at least I was able to accomplish that much. In general, while it’s still not where I’d like to see it, it’s already looking a lot better than it did last week.
I’m starting to really try to figure out interesting cinematography techniques we can try to use to compliment our film. The camera work is something I find to be very difficult but I’m trying. I think it’d be really cool to play with things like the aspect ratio at certain points of the story. I really enjoy in Everything Everywhere All at Once when they would change the aspect ratio to ultra widescreen whenever a scene got intense and I think given the fact that we are doing a bit of a horror short, a similar style might go with our film quite nicely.
We’re still having a problem with a particular teammate struggling to grasp or follow anything we ask for no matter how we present the information, but I’m hoping after sitting them down and showing them what do while helping get a scene started for them that they’ll be able to handle it a little better. We’ve also tried to reduce the member’s workload as much as possible which they are not happy about but they also continue to fail to complete even the reduced workload so I don’t really feel that bad about it.
Fingers crossed we can get back up and hit our goal for next week without any more crises.
